Manic Pixie Dream Girl

A Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character type in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after observing Kirsten Dunst's character in Elizabethtown (2005), said that the MPDG "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."[1] MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up; thus, their men never grow up.[2]

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 white savior protagonist. In both cases, the stock character has no discernible inner life and usually exists only to provide the protagonist some important life lessons.[3]

Examples

MPDGs are usually static characters who have eccentric personality quirks and are unabashedly girlish. They invariably serve as the romantic interest for a (most often brooding or depressed) male protagonist. Examples of an MPDG are described below:

Manic Pixie Dream Girls in film
Character Portrayed by Movie Date References
Susan Vance Katharine Hepburn Bringing Up Baby 1938 [3]
Gery Jeffers Claudette Colbert The Palm Beach Story 1942 [6]
Princess Ann (Anya "Smitty" Smith) Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday 1953 [7]
Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk Marilyn Monroe Some Like It Hot 1959 [6]
Fran Kubelik Shirley MacLaine The Apartment 1960 [3]
Patricia Franchini Jean Seberg Breathless 1960 [8]
Catherine Jeanne Moreau Jules and Jim 1962 [6]
Coquelicot Geneviève Bujold King of Hearts 1966 [9]
Corie Bratter Jane Fonda Barefoot in the Park 1967 [10]
Sara Deever Sandy Dennis Sweet November 1968 [11]
Toni Simmons Goldie Hawn Cactus Flower 1969 [12]
Mary Ann "Pookie" Adams Liza Minnelli The Sterile Cuckoo 1969 [13]
Dame Marjorie "Maude" Chardin Ruth Gordon Harold and Maude 1971 [14]
Judy Maxwell Barbra Streisand What's Up, Doc? 1972 [2][3]
Jill Tanner Goldie Hawn Butterflies Are Free 1972 [12]
Audrey Hankel, a.k.a. Lulu Melanie Griffith Something Wild 1986 [3]
SanDeE* Sarah Jessica Parker L.A. Story 1991 [15][16]
Faye Faye Wong Chungking Express 1995 [17]
Layla Christina Ricci Buffalo '66 1998 [18]
Penny Lane Kate Hudson Almost Famous 2000 [2]
Sara Deever Charlize Theron Sweet November 2001 [3][19]
Sam Feehan Natalie Portman Garden State 2004 [1][2][4]
Claire Colburn Kirsten Dunst Elizabethtown 2005 [1]
Kim Rachel Bilson The Last Kiss 2006 [3]
Violet Lucy Liu Watching the Detectives 2007 [20]
Allison Zooey Deschanel Yes Man 2008 [21]
Maggie Murdock Anne Hathaway Love & Other Drugs 2010 [22]
Ramona Flowers Mary Elizabeth Winstead Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 2010 [23]
Penelope Lockhart Keira Knightley Seeking a Friend for the End of the World 2012 [9]
Bainsley Mélanie Thierry The Zero Theorem 2013 [24]
Sofi Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey I Origins 2014 [25]
Clara Troian Bellisario Clara 2018 [26]
Stargirl Grace Vanderwaal Stargirl 2020 [27]

Counterexamples
  • The titular character of Annie Hall (1977) is often called a MPDG but is arguably not one, as she has her own goals independent of the male lead.[8]
  • Kate Winslet's character Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 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."[6]
  • Although Zooey Deschanel's Summer in 500 Days of Summer (2009) 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, "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."[28]
  • Eve, the lead character of Stuart Murdoch's musical film, God Help the Girl (2014), has also been noted as a subversion of the trope, with actress Emily Browning approaching the character as "the anti-manic pixie dream girl" and describing her as having "her own inner life" and being "incredibly self-absorbed; [...] Olly wants her to be his muse and she's like, 'No, I'm not having that. I'm gonna go do my own shit.'"[29][30]
  • Margo Roth Spiegelman in Paper Towns (2015) is a deconstruction of the trope, the author of the book, John Green, has stated "Paper Towns is devoted IN ITS ENTIRETY to destroying the lie of the manic pixie dream girl... I do not know how I could have been less ambiguous about this without calling the novel The Patriarchal Lie of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Must Be Stabbed in the Heart and Killed."[31]

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."[32]

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.[33]

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.[34]

In July 2013, Kat Stoeffel, for The Cut, argued that the use of the term had become sexist, in 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?"[35]

Similar sentiments were elucidated by Monika Bartyzel for The Week in April 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."[36]

Retraction of the term

In July 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, led 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".[37]

Manic Pixie Dream Boy

A possible male version of this trope, the Manic Pixie Dream Boy or Manic Pixie Dream Guy, was found in Augustus Waters from the film version of The Fault in Our Stars (2014); he was given this title in a 2014 Vulture 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".[38]

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 (Adam Scott's Ben Wyatt and James Marsden's Criss Chros, respectively), 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".[39]

The character Jesse, played by Skylar Astin, in the film Pitch Perfect (2012) embodies the Manic Pixie Dream Boy trope. His role in the film appears to be to coax the very serious character Beca, played by Anna Kendrick, out of her gloom and embrace life to the fullest. He has no backstory of his own, and no major goals of his own in the context of the film. According to an article on Ohio State's Entertainment News site:

Jesse, the male protagonist, never fails to break my heart. His character is seemingly flawless: he is sweet, charming, funny, boyishly handsome, and talented, but in a self-deprecating way. The character radiates youthful appeal in a way that makes me want to sit close to him and watch John Hughes movies with him. He takes on the selfless task of cracking open the stony girl protagonist by showing her The Breakfast Club and becomes a victim—Jesse is unusual. Jesse is a background story-less charisma machine.[40]

Similar tropes

Algorithm-defined fantasy girl
See also: Magical girlfriend

Another version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is the algorithm-defined fantasy girl. The difference is that the latter is not human, but a robot or artificial intelligence of some sort. The function is the same one: to fulfill the desires of the male character and to help him in his journey without having any desires or journey of her own. Some examples are Joi in Blade Runner 2049 and Samantha in Spike Jonze's Her.[41][42]

gollark: And each letter is a tiny image, so no ctrl+F.
gollark: And it never refreshes, either.
gollark: Bad idea: biomes now show infinite-scroll list of tiny-font descriptions.
gollark: I see magmas in the cave quite a lot but never actually *get* them.
gollark: You can probably tell, since that's a fell.

See also

References
  1. Rabin, Nathan (January 25, 2007). "My Year Of Flops, Case File 1: Elizabethtown: The Bataan Death March of Whimsy". The A.V. Club. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  2. Welker, Holly (February 12, 2010). "Forever Your Girl". Bitch (46): 26–30. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  3. Bowman, Donna; Gillette, Amelie; Hyden, Steven; Murray, Noel; Pierce, Leonard & Rabin, Nathan (August 4, 2008). "Wild things: 16 films featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls". The A.V. Club. Retrieved April 16, 2009.
  4. Berman, Judy (August 7, 2008). "The Natalie Portman problem". Salon. Archived from the original on October 8, 2011. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  5. Ebert, Roger (August 6, 2004). "Garden State". Rogerebert.com. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  6. "Top Five Manic Pixie Dream Girls". Filmspotting. November 19, 2010. Archived from the original on June 17, 2016. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  7. "The Definitive List of Manic Pixie Dream Girls". BDCWire. 2015-01-22. Retrieved 2018-12-29.
  8. Kelly, Dominic (January 9, 2013). "Clip Joint: Manic Pixie Dream Girls". The Guardian. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
  9. Handy, Bruce (22 June 2012). "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The Worst Movie of Its Generation". Vanity Fair. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  10. TucsonSentinel.com. "Kooky 50-year-old 'Barefoot in the Park' shows its age | Arizona Repertory Theatre". TucsonSentinel.com. Retrieved 2018-12-29.
  11. LeVoit, Violet. "Sweet November (1968)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
  12. Ulaby, Neda (October 9, 2008). "Manic Pixie Dream Girls: A Cinematic Scourge?". All Things Considered. NPR. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  13. Christley, Jaime. "The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 19 June 2017.
  14. "Maude in Harold and Maude Represents the Best Manic Pixie Dream Girl". pastemagazine.com. April 17, 2018.
  15. Campbell, Christopher (June 4, 2010). "Their Best Role: Sarah Jessica Parker in 'L.A. Story'". moviefone. Archived from the original on 28 December 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  16. Brown, Kat (25 March 2015). "Sarah Jessica Parker's 11 best screen moments". The Telegraph. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  17. Dowd, A.A. (August 22, 2014). "California dreamin' on a Hong Kong night". Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  18. Tobias, Scott (August 19, 2010). "Buffalo '66". The A.V. Club. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  19. Dyer, Karilla (February 21, 2013). "The feminist perspective on the manic pixie dream girl". The Independent Florida Alligator. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
  20. Rabin, Nathan. "Dispatches from Direct To DVD Purgatory: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Edition". avclub.com. Onion, Inc. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  21. Bunch, Sonny (December 19, 2008). "Carrey's 'Yes' man eager to please". The Washington Times. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  22. Buckwalter, Ian (November 24, 2010). "Out of Frame: Love and Other Drugs". DCist.com. Gothamist LLC. Archived from the original on December 8, 2011. Retrieved October 5, 2014.
  23. Zarzyczny, Matt (September 7, 2017). "SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL". galsguide.org. Retrieved May 29, 2020.
  24. Lyttelton, Oliver. "Venice Review: Terry Gilliam's 'The Zero Theorem' Starring Christoph Waltz, Matt Damon & Tilda Swinton". IndieWire. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  25. Donnelly, Elisabeth. "The Manic Pixie Dream Girl May Be Dead, But Film's Shallow Female Characters Live On". IndieWire. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  26. "'Clara' Is An Ambitious Hunt for the Meaning of Life Directed by Akash Sherman". exclaim.ca. Retrieved 2019-03-08.
  27. "Stargirl: Is Disney+ Reviving the Manic Pixie Dream Girl for Gen Z?". vanityfair.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  28. Wiseman, Eva (August 16, 2009). ""'Is there such a thing as "the one" - and what happens if you lose her?"". The Guardian. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  29. Morgan, Laura (October 13, 2014). "Emily Browning On Playing An 'Anti-Manic Pixie Dream Girl' In The New Pop Musical God Help The Girl". Lucky Magazine. Archived from the original on October 13, 2014. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  30. Juan, Jada (January 26, 2014). "Sundance: Belle and Sebastian Front Man Stuart Murdoch's Glasgow Musical". Vulture.com. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  31. Leszkiewicz, Anna. "Paper Towns and the myth that just won't die: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl". NewStatesmenAmerica. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
  32. Greco, Patti (July 23, 2012). "Zoe Kazan on Writing Ruby Sparks and Why You Should Never Call Her a 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'". Vulture. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  33. Semantic Breakdown: The Manic Pixie Dream Bitch. YouTube. December 14, 2012. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  34. Harris, Aisha (December 5, 2012). "Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?". Slate. The Slate Group. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
  35. Stoeffel, Kat. "The 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' Has Died". The Cut. New York Media LLC. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
  36. Bartyzel, Monika (April 26, 2013). "Girls on Film: Why it's time to retire the term 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'". The Week. The Week Publications, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  37. Rabin, Nathan (July 15, 2014). "I'm sorry for coining the phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl": In 2007, I invented the term in a review. Then I watched in queasy disbelief as it seemed to take over pop culture". Salon. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  38. Patches, Matt. "He's Perfect, He's Awful: The Case Against The Fault in Our Stars' Gus Waters". Vulture. New York Magazine. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
  39. Lambert, Molly. "1D Internet Fantasies: Liz Lemon, One Direction, and the Rise of the Manic Pixie Dream Guy". Grantland. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
  40. Ross, Lacey (December 25, 2012). "Boys and Girls in Current Film: A Glimpse into 'Manic Pixies'". Uloop. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  41. Alexander, Julia (11 October 2017). "Blade Runner 2049 continues questionable trend of the 'algorithm-defined fantasy girl'". Polygon. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  42. Steve Rose. "Ex Machina and sci-fi's obsession with sexy female robots | Film". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
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