Manic Pixie Dream Girl

For the album, seeDoll Skin.

AManic Pixie Dream Girl(MPDG) is astock charactertype in fiction, usually depicted as a young woman with eccentric personality quirks who serves as the romantic interest for a male protagonist. The term was coined by film criticNathan Rabinafter observingKirsten Dunst's character inElizabethtown(2005). Rabin criticized the type as one-dimensional, existing only to provide emotional support to the protagonist, or to teach him important life lessons, while receiving nothing in return. The term has since entered the general vernacular.

Katharine Hepburn's role as Susan Vance in the 1938screwball comedyfilmBringing Up Babyhas been described as an early example of the character.

Origin

Film criticNathan Rabincoined the term in 2007 in his review of the 2005 filmElizabethtownforThe A.V. Club.In discussingKirsten Dunst's character, he said "Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl", a character who "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."

A year later,The A.V. Clubran a piece listing 16 characters they deemed MPDGs, includingKatharine Hepburn's character inBringing Up Baby;Goldie Hawn's character, Jill, inButterflies Are Free;andWinona Ryder's character inAutumn in New York.Thereafter, the new term spread throughout other media, includingNational Public RadioandJezebel.

Response

Zooey Deschanelrejected the Manic Pixie Dream Girl label in 2022.

In an interview inNew Yorkabout her 2012 filmRuby Sparks,actress and screenwriterZoe Kazanexpressed skepticism over the use of the term, noting that its use could be reductive,diminutive,andmisogynistic.She disagreed that Hepburn's character inBringing Up Babyis 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,AllMoviecritic Cammila Collar embraced the term, noting that its pejorative use is mainly directed at writers who do not give these female characters more to do.

In December 2012,Slate'sAisha Harrisposited 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" and that the trope had largely disappeared from film.

In July 2013, Kat Stoeffel, forNew York,argued that the term has its uses, but that it has sometimes been deployed in ways that are sexist. For example, she noted that "it was levied, criminally, atDiane KeatoninAnnie HallandZooey Deschanel,the actual person.How could a real person's defining trait be a lack of interior life?"

Similar sentiments were expressed by Monika Bartyzel forThe Weekin April 2013, who wrote "this once-useful piece of critical shorthand has devolved into laziness and sexism". Bartyzel argues that "'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".

In July 2014, writing forSalon,Rabin stated that the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" had frequently been deployed in ways that are sexist and had become as much of a cliché as the trope itself. Rabin acknowledged that the phrase has its uses in specific, limited contexts, but overwhelming popularity had limited its effectiveness. Rabin concluded by saying that the term should be "put to rest."

In 2022, actressZooey Deschanelrejected the label's application to her, saying "I don't feel it's accurate. I'm not a girl. I'm a woman. It doesn't hurt my feelings, but it's a way of making a woman one-dimensional and I'm not one-dimensional."According toVariety,the label had followed her throughout her career since her appearance in500 Days of Summer.

Male variation

A male version of this trope, the Manic Pixie Dream Boy or Manic Pixie Dream Guy, was found in Augustus Waters from the film version ofThe Fault in Our Stars(2014); he was given this title in a 2014Vulturearticle, 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 canactuallyhave in our lives. "

The Manic Pixie Dream Boy trope has also been pointed out in sitcoms such asParks and Recreationand30 Rock.The female protagonists of these shows marry men (Adam Scott'sBen WyattandJames Marsden'sCriss Chros,respectively), who, according to a 2012Grantlandarticle, "patiently [tamp] down her stubbornness and temper while appreciating her quirks, helping her to become her best possible self."

See also

• Damsel in distress
• Foil (fiction)
• Gamine
• Johanson analysis
• Magical Negro
• Mary Sue
• Smurfette principle