The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a stock character type in films.
Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after observing Kirsten Dunst's character
in Elizabethtown, describes the MPDG as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists
solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful
young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."
MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never
grow up; thus, their men never grow up.
The "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" has been compared to another stock character, the "Magical Negro,"
a black character who seems to exist only to provide spiritual or mystical help to the
protagonist.
In both cases, the stock character has no discernible inner life, and usually only exists
to provide the protagonist some important life lessons.
Examples MPDGs are usually static characters who have
eccentric personality quirks and are unabashedly girlish.
They invariably serve as the romantic interest for a male protagonist.
An example is Natalie Portman's character in the movie Garden State, written and directed
by Zach Braff.
In his review of Garden State, Roger Ebert also described this kind of rather unbelievable
"movie creature" as "completely available" and "absolutely desirable."
The A.V.
Club points to Katharine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby as one of the earliest
examples of the archetype.
Later examples include Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Goldie Hawn's characters in
Cactus Flower and Butterflies Are Free, and Barbra Streisand's in What's Up, Doc?.
Zooey Deschanel's role in 500 Days of Summer has also typified the MPDG.
The Filmspotting podcast created a list of "Top Five Manic Pixie Dream Girls"; Nathan
Rabin appeared as a guest and created his own, separate list of MPDGs.
Among those included were Catherine in Jules and Jim, Jean in The Lady Eve, Sugar in Some
Like It Hot, and Gerry Jeffers in The Palm Beach Story.
Other examples of the MPDG the media has proposed include Jean Seberg's character in Breathless,
Belle in Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast, Maude in Harold and Maude and Penny
Lane in Almost Famous.
Counterexamples Kate Winslet's character Clementine in Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind acknowledges the trope of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and
rejects the type, in a remark to Jim Carrey's Joel: "Too many guys think I'm a concept,
or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive.
But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me
yours."
The title character of Annie Hall is often called a MPDG but also arguably not one, as
she has her own goals independent of the male lead.
Although Zooey Deschanel's Summer in 500 Days of Summer is often identified as a MPDG, the
movie can be seen as a deconstruction of the trope because it shows the dangers of idealising
women as things, rather than respecting them as real people with their own complex outlooks.
Director Marc Webb stated that "Yes, Summer has elements of the manic pixie dream girl
- she is an immature view of a woman.
She's Tom's view of a woman.
He doesn't see her complexity and the consequence for him is heartbreak.
In Tom's eyes, Summer is perfection, but perfection has no depth.
Summer's not a girl, she's a phase."
Criticism and debate In an interview with Vulture, the entertainment
section of New York, about her film Ruby Sparks, actress and screenwriter Zoe Kazan criticized
the term as reductive, diminutive, and misogynistic.
She disagreed that Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby is a MPDG: "I think that
to lump together all individual, original quirky women under that rubric is to erase
all difference."
In a December 2012 video, AllMovie critic Cammila Collar embraced the term as an effective
description of one-dimensional female characters who only seek the happiness of the male protagonist,
and who do not deal with any complex issues of their own.
The pejorative use of the term, then, is mainly directed at writers who do not give these
female characters more to do than bolster the spirits of their male partners.
In 2012 and 2013, several articles appeared in the mainstream media declaring the “death”
of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and calling for the retirement of the term.
In December 2012, Slate’s Aisha Harris posited that “critiques of the MPDG may have become
more common than the archetype itself,” suggesting that filmmakers had been forced
to become “self-aware about such characters” in the years since Rabin’s coining of the
phrase and that the trope had largely disappeared from film.
In July 2013, Kat Stoeffel, for The Cut, argued that the term itself had become sexist, citing
her opinion that “it was levied, criminally at Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and Zooey Deschanel,
the actual person.
How could a real person’s defining trait be a lack of interior life?"
Similar sentiments were elucidated by Monika Bartyzel for The Week in April of 2013, who
wrote “this once-useful piece of critical shorthand has devolved into laziness and sexism.”
Bartyzel argues that “[The term] ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ was useful when it commented
on the superficiality of female characterizations in male dominated journeys, but it has since
devolved into a pejorative way to deride unique women in fiction and reality.”
Bartyzel’s arguments were propagated by Tracey Moore for Jezebel a week later.
Moore quoted Bartyzel’s argument that “In its expansion, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl
designation moved from putting a spotlight on questionably hollow female characters to
marginalizing and dismissing all manner of diverse female characters on film,” and
then added “this catch-all now has authentically quirky women … with off-beat interests everywhere
thinking about the way the MPDG moniker now renders jokey and false any attempt at cultivating
what we used to call an interesting personality.”
Retraction of the Term On the July 14th, 2014, for Salon, Rabin prompted
a retraction of the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”
He argued that in “giving an idea a fuzzy definition,” he inadvertently gave the phrase
power it was not intended to have.
The trope’s popularity, Rabin suggested, lead to discussions of a more precise definition,
a reduction of the critic’s all-encompassing classification of MPDG.
While he coined the term to expose the sexist implications in modern culture, the “phrase
was increasingly accused of being sexist itself.”
Backlash occurred when many well-loved female characters were placed under this trope.
In response, Rabin suggested that nuanced characters cannot be classified in such a
restricted nature, and thus he apologized to pop culture for “creating this unstoppable
monster.”
The Male Gaze One possible explanation for the lack of professional
women in films may have to do with The Male Gaze, as described by Budd Boetticher which
is used in film so that the heroine is one who exists for the hero.
He says, “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents.
She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern
he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does.
In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”
In this way, the male gaze plays a role in the creation of the MPDG, as the way it is
put here makes it appear as if she would not exist without the male gaze.
Some believe that the male gaze provokes a sense of guilt in the female character as
she represents something to be lusted after but also a symbol of castration.
Manic Pixie Dream Boy Recently there has been discussion of a male
version of this trope, the Manic Pixie Dream Boy or Manic Pixie Dream Guy.
Augustus Waters from the film version of The Fault in Our Stars was given this title in
a 2014 Vulture.com article, in which Matt Patches stated “he’s a bad boy, he’s
a sweetheart, he’s a dumb jock, he’s a nerd, he’s a philosopher, he’s a poet,
he’s a victim, he’s a survivor, he’s everything everyone wants in their lives,
and he’s a fallacious notion of what we can actually have in our lives.”
The Manic Pixie Dream Boy trope has also been pointed out in sitcoms such as Parks and Recreation
and 30 Rock.
The female protagonists of these shows are married to men, who, according to a 2012 Grantland
article, “patiently [tamp] down her stubbornness and temper while appreciating her quirks,
helping her to become her best possible self.”
See also
Bechdel Test Foil
Feminist film theory References
External links Manic Pixie Dream Girl at TV Tropes