Women as Plot Devices: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

This is the third entry, click to read the introduction, part one, and part two ♡

Nobody gets hurt here! Again, this is such a famous woman-as-plot-device cliché that it barely needs explanation. Let’s try anyway.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl has become increasingly common as contemporary fictional texts focus on individual feeling and suffering. The whimsical, chance meet-cute where two lonely strangers are cosmically brought together is a recurring cinematic and literary premise that relies on Miss MPDG.

We meet a male protagonist who feels isolated, burnt out, or nihilistic, like ‘something’s missing.’ Then he meets the perfectly-imperfect Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She’s quirky and funny, but mysterious and aloof. She’s amazing and perfect for our male protagonist. We know this because he tells us so, as he gleefully projects all his desires onto this new blank female canvas. In reality, we, the audience, and he, the protagonist, know very little about who this woman really is. She may hint at a troubled past, or current worries, but these are only abstractions. The text may tell us she is ‘creative,’ or ‘intellectual,’ but we see none of her own goals or achievements; we only see the way that she impacts our male hero. She is perfect and exists only to give care.

We see him blossom, become more relaxed and open-minded. They might ride on a carousel together, or take photobooth photos. Whatever. He’s become a better person. Now it’s time for the MPDG to leave, assumedly resuming her fanciful life travelling from town to town meeting disaffected Nice Guys, as her work here is done.  

The (awesome) term was coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in 2007, after seeing the so-bad-it’s-amazing Elizabethtown. In Rabin’s words, 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

 

In this discussion, he also mentions Natalie Portman’s Sam in Garden State. Other prime examples include Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sugar in Some Like It Hot, and Penny Lane in Almost Famous.

QUIRKY!

Image from Welcome to Ladyville ♡
 

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a reductive gendered plot device as she exists solely to impact upon the male protagonist’s life or worldview. She is a series of quirky abstractions rather than a fleshed-out character; she is a culmination of the desires of our male hero. She is an almost-anonymous muse, lovingly helping the male lead on a journey and inspiring him to improve his own life, at which point she is no longer required. Elizabethtown's resident MPDG Claire, played by Kirsten Dunst, sums it up: “I'm impossible to forget, but I'm hard to remember.”2

Some texts have, deliberately or not, highlighted the problematic elements of this plot device: 500 Days of Summer and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind jump to mind. Kate Winslet’s character Clementine in the latter film is markedly self-aware of her MPDG potential 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 looking for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours.”3

Once again, this trope is lazy and patronising as the MPDG is not a whole character, just a projection of an Ideal Woman ready to care for and teach our male protagonist, and an audience that assumedly identifies with him, Valuable Life Lessons. Whilst the male version may exist, this stock character is overwhelmingly female, perhaps due to the overwhelming number of straight male film protagonists.

The AV Club lists some more examples; have fun scrolling through the 1000+ comment discussion. 

The TV Tropes page for the MPDG is also fun. 

And this comic is the cutest and realest, go read it.

Next up for discussion, the Sexy Lamp plot device.

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1 Nathan Rabin, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown,” The AV Club, Jan 25 2007, http://www.avclub.com/article/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-emeli-1557.

2 Elizabethtown. Dir. Cameron Crowe. Paramount Pictures, 2005. Film.

3 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dir. Michel Gondry. Focus Features, 2004. Film.