On The Manic Pixie Dream Girl: How A Problematic Trope Became a Breeding Ground for Lady Hate

With this year's onslaught of 20 something media deigned “quirky girls” on television, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is back in the limelight, sowing more hatred than ever before. “So what is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, you might ask, “and why should I care?” The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in 2007 as a response to Kirsten Dunst's character in Eizabethtown, refers to a narrative trope wherein a bubbly female characters “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodily soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” Feminists immediately took to this theory, critiquing the MPDG as a blatantly problematic narrative tool that serves merely to provide a heightened self-awareness and enjoyment of life. (If you're like me and dig feminism and watching far too many movies, check out this video which does a fantastic job of exposing how much this trope sucks) Gross, right? The trope is undeniably at work in a whole slew of films wherein women are relegated to quirky stock characters with little substance in male centric films. Since the publication of Rabin's article, the likes of Annie Hall, Holly Golightly, and Kate Hudson's Penny Lane have all been identified as MPDGs. Even a handful of Katharine Hepburn characters from her stint in a series of unforgettable 1930's screwball comedies have been placed in MPDG territory. Let's all just take a moment to meditate on that: Katharine Hepburn functioning as a one-dimensional muse deterring a male counterpart's existential crisis? She is rolling in her grave. Rolling. The term has been broadly applied to a number of characters, some with questionable legitimacy. The term itself seems largely arbitrary and easily manipulated, and at times seems to be a way to delegitimize some awesome lady characters.

So the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope is problematic, if not sometimes a tad misused. Awesome, I'm glad can now critically approach this kind of character and assess how sexism may be functioning in this film I'm watching! My Women's Studies professor would be proud! And now that this trope has been voiced, maybe Hollywood will start serving up some more complex lady characters. Well, not exactly. Instead, the manic pixie has been adopted into our cultural vernacular, becoming a blanket term for 20-somethings with a penchant for indie singer-songwriters, Wes Anderson films, and shopping at Goodwill. NaturalDiastronaut's recent video does a pretty good job of depicting this, and how MPDG has become a reductive jab directed at real women, not just characters in films. The video itself operates on some seriously sexist bullshit. (Thank god the caring boyfriends of these MPDG are rehabilitating their ridiculous lifestyle choices! I guess that's what happens once the MPDG sprinkles her magic fairy dust and cures her broody boyfriend). Just a quick gander through the comments on the video works as a pretty comprehensive example of the visceral reaction to the Manic Pixie. A similar distaste is featured in countless online articles slamming the so-called manic pixie queen Zooey Deschanel, but rather than calling for more developed representations of women in media, it has essentially become an insult thrown at quirky female characters and real women. No, seriously.

And here lies the problem. By definition, the MPDG describes a deeply sexist narrative trope, not some girl at your local coffee shop rockin' Bettie Page bangs. Women, regardless of how they dress, what music they sing in the shower, or how they choose to adorn their bodies, are not narrative tropes. Nor should their lives or their choices be reduced to a stock secondary character in a shoddily written film. Real women are not one-dimensional muses inspiring broody Zac Braff types. So next time you feel the urge to slam some girl on the street as a manic pixie, consider what's coming out of your mouth. So okay, you hate vintage dresses, Zooey Deschanel's bangs, and devotees of French New Wave cinema, that's cool, but let's stop calling each other manic pixies and participating in super unproductive girl-on-girl hate. I's just another excuse for the population as a whole to participate in sexist rhetoric. As a girl known to rock my Grandma's hand-me-downs and an extensive indie folk playlist routinely placed on repeat, maybe I'm a little sensitive, but I refuse to be categorized as a trope, and I refuse to see it done to other women. I am not the manic pixie in anyone's film, I am not here to inspire your broody protagonist, and I will not actively participate in reducing other women's lives to a caricature. I'm here to live my life the way I choose to live it, and sometimes that involves jamming out to The Smiths, but I'm not here to be anyone's muse but my own. 

The Role of Rhoda Morgenstern Has Already Been Cast

Lemme tell you, the pressure to prefect a witty, enigmatic, informative but not-too-informative introductory blog post is unfathomable. The fact that I'm actually hitting 'Publish' is in and of itself a huge feat. Unless you yourself are a seasoned blogger, in which case my current predicament is entirely fathomable, perhaps even charming in my earnest inexperience. But still, the pressure! If all goes as planned, and some day I achieve world renown (well, at least in the blogosphere), it's imperative that my legions of devoted readers click through the archives only to find I have maintained the same level of wit and panache since I was but a wee blogger. These are the kinds of things a neurotic, self-deprecating, highly self-involved, but adorably whimsical perfectionist considers. This is the blog you're reading.

I've entertained similar delusions of my inevitable fame for years now. Whether it be mock interviews with James Lipton acted out in my bathroom mirror as a budding actor (and by budding actor, I, of course, am referring to a one line part in my middle school play), the indeterminate number of Oscar speeches written in the bath tub, or my peculiar tendency to over-identify with Nora Ephron, I decided long ago the world needed to be graced with my personality (alongside my own need for validation from complete strangers). I spent the better part of my teenage years chatting with my best friend via instant messenger about pressing global concerns such as the script of future cabaret act, formulating a business plan for our Norma Desmond inspired turban line, and deciding which Marilyn Monroe film was best suited for a Broadway musical adaptation, landing us as our generation's Comden & Green. Perhaps most important among our many hours of tying up our parents' phone lines (It was dial up in those days, and roughly 600 miles between us) was choosing the perfect title for the gossip ridden autobiographies we would write in our old age. Inspired by a generation of ladies with heavily pencilled eyebrows and a penchant for sequins, it seemed imperative that we get a head start on this now. A little premature? Hardly! It's never to early to start planning for your gin-soaked, caftan-clad, old age!

The quest for the perfect autobiography title, or, as we matured into our college years, our debut collection of devastatingly witty essays, was an arduous one. Much like a first blog post, there's a lot to be considered.The title of one's autobiography sets the tone for the rest of the book, forever defining your persona for awkward 13 year old girls obsessively living through movies 60+ years old and gobbling up autobiographies written by the nostaglic gin soaked women who starred in them. I floundered around for years, unable to prefect the art of the witty title, until one Sunday I came across an interview with Rosie O'Donnell on CBS Sunday Morning. Being a child of the 90's, and naturally spending my free time between Barbies and dress-up watching day time television and re-runs on TV Land, Ro was a hero of mine. I watched her show religiously, her book of children's jokes worked as the main source of humor for my entire 8^th year, I eagerly watched A League of Their Own at least 300 times in 5^th grade alone. Who else could I turn to to remind myself that with enough pluck, obsessive love for Tom Cruise, and sassy jokes that I too could have my own talk show some day? At some point during the interview shifted to Rosie's own struggle to stardom, explaining how from the very start she was pigeon holed as a “loud Jewish type.” Rosie recounted a casting director at an early audition glibly informing her, “The role of Rhoda Morgenstern has already been cast.” The Role of Rhoda Morgenstern Has Already Been Cast! “That's it!” I cried triumphantly. I could just see it on the shelves, a brassy publication with the pithy subtitle “And Other Misadventures”. An instant hit, lauded by intellectuals and artists everywhere for my youthful biting wit. 

In retrospect, it seems unavoidable, really, that the story of my life be perfectly distilled by 70's sitcom full of spunky independent working gals. The perfect aphorism for my painfully cliché life of the perpetually single acerbic best friend with a penchant for loud prints and 70's style turbans. But if you're still itching for more, a quick overview of the basic: My name is Kate. Just another self-proclaimed quirky 20-something with a blog. Currently studying English in southern Ohio. An aspiring “I'm Not Really Sure Yet So Please Stop Asking Me”, more often substituted in polite conversation with “Maybe an editor.” In my dreams I get paid for being a world-renown wit, jet-setting socialite, and international clothes horse. A kind of Diana Vreeland/Dorothy Parker hybrid. Have I mentioned my frightfully self-involved delusions of grandeur? But in the mean time, I'm just a girl with a blog, trying to figure this life thing out.