On the death of the ‘manic pixie dream girl’
I was very excited to read this article by Kat Stoeffel in The Cut the other day.
It heralds the death of the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’, a character type I have always despised in movies and tv. She always inexplicably has a ukelele, a fringe, coloured tights and is some form of painter. She cuts her own bangs and does weird stuff like sing at mundane moments and drink soy milk (LOL WUT?). Her eccentricities both frustrate and entrance the bookish main character who needs her as his sole means of waking up to life. However, by the end of the film the emotionally challenged cardigan sporting lead always realises his dream girl can’t be tamed Miley style because women are a whimsical yet fickle mystery and love does not exist once Zooey Deschanel decides to be alternative enough to ditch you.
Cool story bro. My major problem with these types of well lit Sundance ready pieces is that they are always about the socially challenged male throwing a tantrum in a supermarket because his idealized view of woman kind is being constantly disapointed by chicks already out of his lead.
This is why I found 2012’s Ruby Sparks very very interesting.
The movie is all about a male screen writer, Paul Dano in true awkward form, who manages to bring to life the mythic dream girl he creates through fiction. Like, she literally comes to life in all her whimsical glory, and even wears PINK TIGHTS. Of course, Paul Dano, in true brooding form, eventually gets sick of the titular Ruby. She’s too independent, too human, too normal. So he continues writing her, making scary adjustments to her personality like
“Ruby was miserable without Calvin”
“Ruby stripped and sang”
and distressingly
“Ruby barked like a dog”
But in any case, Paul Dano, in true lost form, realizes he cannot possibly understand women who transgress outside of his own view of how they should be. And this is taken further in the fact that Calvin does not superimpose his idealism onto someone, rather he completely contrives his ‘perfect woman’ and is still disapointed by her.
Can the nautical chino sporting hero ever win?
These manic pixies seem hellbent upon the sexy destruction of their feels, but I don’t think I’ve ever met one in real life. Capturing the multifaceted gorgeousity and terror of womenkind seems to be left up to male screen writers mostly and I think this is why they recur so often in Hollywood narratives.
However, if it were left up to females, representing femaledom would probably contain an excess of cats, shoes and tears in nightclub bathrooms over that anniversary you forgot.
Ooops, I find that I am now venturing into the land of stereotypes. Well Miss Deschanel and your creators, I’ll give you that. How else can we make sense of reality?
