June 13, 2012 • 19 mins
The manic pixie dream girl is certainly a memorable film trope, and numerous movies feature these characters. But where do they come from, and where are the manic pixie dream guys? Tune in as Caroline and Cristen explore manic pixies and film.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen, You and I talked
(00:21):
on our TV episode not too long ago about some
of the female characters, female writers, the fact that there
were more women on TV. Yes, and this is a
good thing. Yeah. And one name that came up that
it's still in the the media a lot is Zoe Decanal. Yes.
(00:42):
And one reason that she's still circulating in the media
a lot, Well, it's because the New Girl did great. Sure, Yes,
it's doing very well. It was renewed for a second season.
And also because it reignited this conversation that started in
two thousands seven about a film and TV trope referred
(01:05):
to as Manic Pixie dream Girls. Yeah. I bet a
lot of you are rolling your eyes right now. If
you know what it is. You know what it is
if you search. It's kind of funny to do a
search for Mani Pixie dream Girl because you can tell
there's a an internet debate going on. People are either
very angry or defensive or hateful or whatever. And so
some of those titles that pop up, Why are manic
(01:28):
Pixie dream girls getting dumber? I'm afraid I'm a manic
Pixie dream girl. Manic Pixie dreamgirls are the scourge of
modern cinema just as a as a few examples. Yeah,
that's coming from the Gloss Exo, Jane and Jezebel, respectively.
So from those three we I'm sensing a little negativity.
There's there is a little, but I mean, what's to
(01:49):
hate this is? This is a character to get into it,
who is Basically she's bubbling. She's happy, Yeah, what could
be wrong with She has diverse interests that tends or
the artsy. She tends to listen to vinyl records and
indie rock music. Now I sound like my mom the
(02:12):
kids in their wraps. Yeah, she probably has some nice
vintage threads. Yeah. Well. The term was actually coined by
a V Clubs Nathan Rabin in two thousand and seven
to describe Kirsten Dunce's quirky female love interest character in Elizabethtown,
which that movie itself has also garnered a lot of
(02:33):
um anti praise on the internet. It's terrible. If you
haven't seen it, I don't recommend that you see it,
because I don't I would not want to be responsible
for that hundred minutes of your life gone exactly. And
so the whole thing is, you know, Kirsten Dunst is
this bubbly little flight attendant and she takes uh Orlando Bloom,
That's who it is. That the guy who's depressed and
(02:54):
things are going terribly for him, and all this terrible
stuff keeps happening, and she comes along and brightens his
day and changes his whole life and sends him on
uh well spoiler alert sends him on this road trip
that is perfectly timed with a mixtape that she created,
which to me is just creepy because at that point
(03:15):
in the movie, she's known the guy for like a
week or something, and yet she is She's orchestrated this
whole thing. And I gotta say, I mean, like Kristen Dunce,
it's nothing against her her acting abilities, like I I
enjoy her generally on film, and Kirsten Dunce in Elizabethtown
is different, I would say, than this whole thing that
(03:38):
is morphed into the uh manic Pixie dream Girl that
we hear about a lot with Zoe and similar characters,
and alongside the manic Pixie dream Girl is is that
down and out guy? You know? The The arrival of
the manic Pixie dream Girl is usually precede it by
(04:00):
some kind of close up of him in bed but
yet with bags under his eyes indicating sleeplessness or substance abuse,
or a montage of his life slowly falling apart and
his his clothing becoming more and more disheveled. Yeah, exactly,
And then you know a little burst of pixie dust
(04:21):
arrives on the screen exactly, just like a muppet or something. Um. Yeah, Raven.
His definition for this character is basically that she exists
solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer directors to
teach brooding, lee soulful young men to embrace life and
its infinite mysteries and adventures. Or, as Anita sarkasan at
(04:44):
feminist frequency puts it, she is a shining beacon of
childlike joy that will rejuvenate our fallen hero. And that
sounds great, Yeah, but what about her? Yeah, well, she'll
just she'll flit her away on some wings that she's
crafted out of tool and glitter. Nice. Yeah, that's the thing.
She she just falls by the wayside because she doesn't
(05:06):
really matter at the end. It's really the transformation of
the male hero who was almost always straight, almost always white.
Same thing. And we'll talk about race in a minute.
Uh man a pixie dream girl, a very cookie cutter
kind of white character too. Um. And in addition to
elizabethtown uh and Zey d in The New Girl, a
(05:30):
five days of something Yeah, really five hundred days of summer.
I don't I don't know, I've I gotta say I
have seen every episode of The New Girl. I am
a closet. Now out of the closet, I just came
out fan as a fan of this is quite that's
quite a change for me or attitude when we talked
about the TV show back on our TV episode. Yeah,
I mean partially it is my lust over her glasses,
(05:52):
which is great. Um, but no, I find it enjoyable.
And there's actually one episode where she's confronted by Lizzie Capelan,
who plays more serious female character, about being so girly
and She's just like, what this is who I am.
I've always liked being crafty and cute. See, and it
doesn't mean that I'm stupid. And that's part of the argument.
(06:12):
That's a lot of the debate going on online. I
feel like, is you have these people who are saying,
you're grown up woman, You're talking about kiddies and cupcakes.
I'm not going to listen to you. But then there's
this other group of women saying, like, so what if
I'm girly, that doesn't take away my power. But then
there's that third little middle argument that says, Okay, you
like cupcakes, but did you like cupcakes before this whole
(06:33):
trend came along in pop culture? So yeah? Um, and
just quickly to name, I guess a couple more movies
just pops up in Garden State Natalie Portman's character and that, uh,
you have going back. The A V Club also did
a post on I think it's fifteen or sixteen movies
featuring this trope, and they even cite Annie Hall as
(06:56):
a manic pixie dream girl bringing up baby with Katherine
hepper Up saying that it goes way way back. But um,
in that Gloss article that you mentioned, why are MP
d g s and getting dumber? Um? They say that
from Katherine Hepburn down to Zoe. She's become she's lost
her agency. Yeah, she's kind of become a caricature of
(07:18):
a of a carefree, fun loving, independent, strong female down
to somebody who stinks when she's nervous and bakes cupcakes,
which not that there's anything wrong with that. Yeah, I
like cupcakes. I do too, shoot man, just because I
don't bake them. But if I if I had more time. Yeah.
As New York Magazine pointed out in September, um there's
(07:42):
also grumbling about all here heroines of the past, people
like went On a writer and Parker Posey, who were
had the same quirk um, but they had more of
an edge to them. They might have left by the
end of the movie because they just wanted to, not
because they they poofed into a glitter bomb. Left that
(08:06):
sulfs like such a mess. Once you get glitter on,
you can never get it off everywhere. Yeah, I mean,
it's possible that, um, Zoe Additional's character and other Manic
Pixie dream girls could just irritate the heck out of
somebody with all their like sweetness and everything. But you know,
I think that maybe the argument that they're very flat,
two dimensional characters is not always warranted. Yeah, I mean,
(08:28):
and I think that Zoe de Chanelle herself would agree
with you Caroline on that point. She said at one
point quote that people equate being girly with being non threatening.
I mean, I can't think of a more blatant example
of playing into exactly the thing that we're trying to
fight against. I can't be girly. I think the fact
that people are associating being girly with weakness that needs
(08:50):
to be examined. I don't think that it undermines my
power at all. Right, But then part of the argument
goes back to, Okay, well what are we doing with
this power? And what are we doing with this girlishness
and cuteness? Um over at the gloss. Jamie Peck back
in January said that she she actually hates the manic
Pixie dream girl because while this character, this woman has
(09:12):
some pretty amazing intentions behind her, some pretty amazing characteristics.
She those characteristics, like living life to the fullest, are
often made to seem trite and easily mocked. So uh,
Peck was saying, basically like, I share some of the
characteristics of this stereotype this trope, Like I have some
of the same freewheeling, care free, independent attitudes, but characters
(09:36):
like this, the media portrayal of women like this is
sort of ruining it for some of us, basically. Yeah,
And there's the whole concern too of like, well, are
we creating this message that men what men need are
our girls really, rather than more level headed women who
might not have the time or the desire to frolic
in a meadow, you know, exactly who might enjoy their
(09:59):
BlackBerry and cubicles more. Right, And the women versus girls
debate and what men want was brought up by Willipashkin
and The Vulture back in February, and she she said
that this whole thing does kind of shed light on
how women are choosing to portray themselves to men and
what they think men want. And so if there's this
(10:20):
whole cutesie, like, ah manic pixie, yeah, let's run in
the rain kind of thing, and they go for it
and they end up just looking like little girls. Yeah,
And it's also a very heteronormative, a white heteronormative trope
that I think gets to a lot of these feminist bloggers. Um,
and especially when it comes to that issue of race.
(10:41):
It's something that the blog Racial Isious has talked about.
For instance, blogger Timmy Winfrey Harris uh rote a post
called who is the Black Zoe de Chanal and Um.
She says that the persona of manic Pixie dream girl
is bound by class and race, and that it's just
this perpetual childhood and whiteness. She says, whereas Black women
(11:05):
might be portrayed like a boho Lisa Bonet or more
of the earth mother Erica bad Do, they're never carefree
and childish. Yeah. Harris points out that often in the media,
African American women can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women, um,
but they're never They're never that saying like ha kittens
(11:28):
kind of portrayal. And she says even black girls are
too often viewed as worldly women and not innocent. Well,
and that's because a lot of times, Uh, African American
characters have tropes of their own that you're they're they're
used within movies to teach other people a lesson, they're
their own, you know, manic Pixie dream girls in their
(11:48):
own ways where you know you'll have a magical Morgan
Freeman come in and teach the stuck up white lady
a lesson about how she needs to loosen up a
little bit, and then he'll go and you'll appreciate her
transformation in did so. Since we talked about race, um,
you know how we don't see this trope reflected in
the same way, um from people of different colors and ethnicities.
(12:13):
What about gender? Where is the manic pixie dream guy?
Would the manic pixie dream guy be the same? Would
he come flitting in with his own color of glitter
and throw it at you and then kind of flit
her off and disappear after your transformation? Does it work
the same? It will? It's funny that U s there's
(12:37):
a post on nerve about this. They argue that an
audience would not want to see a woman left on
her own, that that would be more of a tragedy.
That even if a manic pixie dream guy like the
character in Under the Tuscan Sun who comes and revives
Diane Lane from her from her woes and breathed life
back into her body and soul, even though her alert
(13:00):
ends up, you know, not being with her in the movie,
we are still less satisfied. Because someone else comes along
to take that place, right, just when you think, right,
beautiful Italian Lane and her Tuscan villa. What a shame.
She has the magic guy who comes in and you know,
and takes care of her and gets her on her
way to taking care of herself. And then once she is,
(13:22):
you know, her own person, and she has someone else
to to enjoy being with for the rest of her life,
exactly for the rest of her life. But yeah, they
a nerve. They say that male free spiritedness is often
portrayed in a negative light and they say, I'm looking
at you, Don Draper, Yeah, because it's just not the same. Well,
(13:44):
it's the whole It goes to the whole dating logic
of you know, women not wanting to come across as
too needy. You know, the fastest way I mean, and
I'm and I'm quoting uh stereotype now, the fastest way
to to get a man to be attracted to you
is to be unavailable, you know, whereas UH men who
are free spirited, they're just gonna be bad boys and
(14:06):
they're gonna leave you and they're just gonna probably collect
lots of STDs and hurting you at the end of
the day. So, yeah, MANI Pixie dream guy would be
someone that you know, all of your friends would tell
you to stay away from. Probably, Yeah, who are the
Mani Pixie dream guys out there? Did you? Yes? I did?
How did it? Did he have glitter? Uh? No? Um,
(14:28):
although I remember one night and he ran into him
and his nails were painted. Uh. He was whimsical, you know,
and he he left as quickly as he came. So,
but it was the thing, is it? A months down
the line after the relationship, I realized that it did
sort of forced me to a point to where, um,
(14:51):
it did kind of make me and do some positive
things with myself beyond my normal scope. I'm not saying
he's necessarily the reason why, but uh, it was a
step along the way. Yeah. So there's been so much
made of this manic Pixie dream girl trope. Uh, and
we want to talk about it because the listener had
(15:12):
written in about it. But it's also been something that
I had wanted to explore. And I didn't realize that
the term has only been around since two thousand seven.
But my goodness, how much attention she has gotten. And
I wonder why she's gotten so much attention, and so
it's a cluster of contemporary films. Um, and yet she
(15:32):
arouses so much debate she does well. I mean, yeah,
you have to wonder what's going on in the writer's
minds that this is happening so much all of a sudden.
But I like the distinction that a lot of these
writers have drawn between characters like Zoey Deschanel and Natalie
Portman and um, Kate Winslet's character in uh Eternal Sension
(15:53):
of Spotless Mine, Yes, ma'am, because she is that dream girl.
She's kind of cooky and crazy and fun, but she's
portrayed as having real, actual problems, and so that's what
At Slate they pointed out that the difference between a
manic pixie dream girl and a just you know, independent
cookie female characters or kind of like kristin Wigan Bridesmaids, Right,
(16:15):
it's the sense that something's actually wrong with the manic
pixie dream girl. Yeah. Uh, I'll be interested to hear
from our listeners what what everyone thinks about it, whether
it's being you know, is it too big of a deal.
I mean, uh, Anita Sarkisian over feminist frequency links all
of this to the problem of the female muse. You know,
(16:38):
you think of Warhol, Dylan, Picasso, what are you all
and all of them of cited. You know, these female
muses in their life who are the inspiration for their
great art. And she says, you know, a manic pixie
dream Girls serves a similar thing with fictional characters too.
You know, there are way too um they're a cipher
to allow them to do great things with their lives.
(16:59):
And she takes issue with that because she says, well,
these women should be standing on their own. But at
the same time, I don't know, I think sometimes we
might be making too much of the um high waisted
dresses and cupcakes. Yeah, and also I think people need
to need to tone it down as far as hating
on other women. I mean, yes, would I choose to
(17:20):
associate with some of these women in real life. Maybe not,
like seriously, take your kiddies and go elsewhere, lady. But
I mean that doesn't mean that I think they're less
of a valid persona or personality. No, I think that's
a good point. I think in the in the argument
it's a slippery slow because in a lot of these
arguments that are calling these tropes out for um, you know,
(17:44):
maybe not portraying women as well. It does quickly crumble
into women hating on women. So let's build each other up,
let's eat our cupcakes together. And you know, Manic Pixie
Dream guys you can you can come to craft it
as well. Well. With that, little to Boot said, I
want to hear your stories mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
(18:07):
Let us know what you think about the mpdgs too much,
too little? Uh? I don't know. And and guys too,
do you find these women appealing? Do Manic Pixie Dream
guys exist lots to discuss? Send us your letters. We've
got an email here from Martha and this is a
response to our episode on giving the Sex Talk, and
(18:29):
she writes the other evening, I was listening to the
podcast on giving the Talk to your children, and at
first I thought, well, that sounds really hard, but at
least I have a few years to prepare for it.
My daughter is fifteen months old, so it really is
a bit early. Then I thought again, my daughter has
two moms and we don't know who the father is.
We know other same sex couples with children. One of
(18:50):
these children started asking why he didn't have a dad
before he was two years old, so, in fact, we
are already working on our daughter's sex education now. We
have several books about families with two moms and are
just starting on families with two dads. We also have
a book on how children can be conceived by artificial
extermination that we haven't started reading about reading it at
bedtime yet. I think this is a conversation about sex choices, gender,
(19:12):
etcetera that will be an ongoing process. Could this be
an advantage of growing up in a non standard family?
Think it could be. So Thanks Martha for that insight,
and thanks to everybody who's written in. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send your letters,
and you can also find us on Facebook and follow
us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast, And if you
(19:36):
want to read what we're doing during the week, you
can head over to our website It's how Stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how Stuff works dot com? Brought to you
by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are
(19:57):
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen, You and I talked
(00:21):
on our TV episode not too long ago about some
of the female characters, female writers, the fact that there
were more women on TV. Yes, and this is a
good thing. Yeah. And one name that came up that
it's still in the the media a lot is Zoe Decanal. Yes.
(00:42):
And one reason that she's still circulating in the media
a lot, Well, it's because the New Girl did great. Sure, Yes,
it's doing very well. It was renewed for a second season.
And also because it reignited this conversation that started in
two thousands seven about a film and TV trope referred
(01:05):
to as Manic Pixie dream Girls. Yeah. I bet a
lot of you are rolling your eyes right now. If
you know what it is. You know what it is
if you search. It's kind of funny to do a
search for Mani Pixie dream Girl because you can tell
there's a an internet debate going on. People are either
very angry or defensive or hateful or whatever. And so
some of those titles that pop up, Why are manic
(01:28):
Pixie dream girls getting dumber? I'm afraid I'm a manic
Pixie dream girl. Manic Pixie dreamgirls are the scourge of
modern cinema just as a as a few examples. Yeah,
that's coming from the Gloss Exo, Jane and Jezebel, respectively.
So from those three we I'm sensing a little negativity.
There's there is a little, but I mean, what's to
(01:49):
hate this is? This is a character to get into it,
who is Basically she's bubbling. She's happy, Yeah, what could
be wrong with She has diverse interests that tends or
the artsy. She tends to listen to vinyl records and
indie rock music. Now I sound like my mom the
(02:12):
kids in their wraps. Yeah, she probably has some nice
vintage threads. Yeah. Well. The term was actually coined by
a V Clubs Nathan Rabin in two thousand and seven
to describe Kirsten Dunce's quirky female love interest character in Elizabethtown,
which that movie itself has also garnered a lot of
(02:33):
um anti praise on the internet. It's terrible. If you
haven't seen it, I don't recommend that you see it,
because I don't I would not want to be responsible
for that hundred minutes of your life gone exactly. And
so the whole thing is, you know, Kirsten Dunst is
this bubbly little flight attendant and she takes uh Orlando Bloom,
That's who it is. That the guy who's depressed and
(02:54):
things are going terribly for him, and all this terrible
stuff keeps happening, and she comes along and brightens his
day and changes his whole life and sends him on
uh well spoiler alert sends him on this road trip
that is perfectly timed with a mixtape that she created,
which to me is just creepy because at that point
(03:15):
in the movie, she's known the guy for like a
week or something, and yet she is She's orchestrated this
whole thing. And I gotta say, I mean, like Kristen Dunce,
it's nothing against her her acting abilities, like I I
enjoy her generally on film, and Kirsten Dunce in Elizabethtown
is different, I would say, than this whole thing that
(03:38):
is morphed into the uh manic Pixie dream Girl that
we hear about a lot with Zoe and similar characters,
and alongside the manic Pixie dream Girl is is that
down and out guy? You know? The The arrival of
the manic Pixie dream Girl is usually precede it by
(04:00):
some kind of close up of him in bed but
yet with bags under his eyes indicating sleeplessness or substance abuse,
or a montage of his life slowly falling apart and
his his clothing becoming more and more disheveled. Yeah, exactly,
And then you know a little burst of pixie dust
(04:21):
arrives on the screen exactly, just like a muppet or something. Um. Yeah, Raven.
His definition for this character is basically that she exists
solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer directors to
teach brooding, lee soulful young men to embrace life and
its infinite mysteries and adventures. Or, as Anita sarkasan at
(04:44):
feminist frequency puts it, she is a shining beacon of
childlike joy that will rejuvenate our fallen hero. And that
sounds great, Yeah, but what about her? Yeah, well, she'll
just she'll flit her away on some wings that she's
crafted out of tool and glitter. Nice. Yeah, that's the thing.
She she just falls by the wayside because she doesn't
(05:06):
really matter at the end. It's really the transformation of
the male hero who was almost always straight, almost always white.
Same thing. And we'll talk about race in a minute.
Uh man a pixie dream girl, a very cookie cutter
kind of white character too. Um. And in addition to
elizabethtown uh and Zey d in The New Girl, a
(05:30):
five days of something Yeah, really five hundred days of summer.
I don't I don't know, I've I gotta say I
have seen every episode of The New Girl. I am
a closet. Now out of the closet, I just came
out fan as a fan of this is quite that's
quite a change for me or attitude when we talked
about the TV show back on our TV episode. Yeah,
I mean partially it is my lust over her glasses,
(05:52):
which is great. Um, but no, I find it enjoyable.
And there's actually one episode where she's confronted by Lizzie Capelan,
who plays more serious female character, about being so girly
and She's just like, what this is who I am.
I've always liked being crafty and cute. See, and it
doesn't mean that I'm stupid. And that's part of the argument.
(06:12):
That's a lot of the debate going on online. I
feel like, is you have these people who are saying,
you're grown up woman, You're talking about kiddies and cupcakes.
I'm not going to listen to you. But then there's
this other group of women saying, like, so what if
I'm girly, that doesn't take away my power. But then
there's that third little middle argument that says, Okay, you
like cupcakes, but did you like cupcakes before this whole
(06:33):
trend came along in pop culture? So yeah? Um, and
just quickly to name, I guess a couple more movies
just pops up in Garden State Natalie Portman's character and that, uh,
you have going back. The A V Club also did
a post on I think it's fifteen or sixteen movies
featuring this trope, and they even cite Annie Hall as
(06:56):
a manic pixie dream girl bringing up baby with Katherine
hepper Up saying that it goes way way back. But um,
in that Gloss article that you mentioned, why are MP
d g s and getting dumber? Um? They say that
from Katherine Hepburn down to Zoe. She's become she's lost
her agency. Yeah, she's kind of become a caricature of
(07:18):
a of a carefree, fun loving, independent, strong female down
to somebody who stinks when she's nervous and bakes cupcakes,
which not that there's anything wrong with that. Yeah, I
like cupcakes. I do too, shoot man, just because I
don't bake them. But if I if I had more time. Yeah.
As New York Magazine pointed out in September, um there's
(07:42):
also grumbling about all here heroines of the past, people
like went On a writer and Parker Posey, who were
had the same quirk um, but they had more of
an edge to them. They might have left by the
end of the movie because they just wanted to, not
because they they poofed into a glitter bomb. Left that
(08:06):
sulfs like such a mess. Once you get glitter on,
you can never get it off everywhere. Yeah, I mean,
it's possible that, um, Zoe Additional's character and other Manic
Pixie dream girls could just irritate the heck out of
somebody with all their like sweetness and everything. But you know,
I think that maybe the argument that they're very flat,
two dimensional characters is not always warranted. Yeah, I mean,
(08:28):
and I think that Zoe de Chanelle herself would agree
with you Caroline on that point. She said at one
point quote that people equate being girly with being non threatening.
I mean, I can't think of a more blatant example
of playing into exactly the thing that we're trying to
fight against. I can't be girly. I think the fact
that people are associating being girly with weakness that needs
(08:50):
to be examined. I don't think that it undermines my
power at all. Right, But then part of the argument
goes back to, Okay, well what are we doing with
this power? And what are we doing with this girlishness
and cuteness? Um over at the gloss. Jamie Peck back
in January said that she she actually hates the manic
Pixie dream girl because while this character, this woman has
(09:12):
some pretty amazing intentions behind her, some pretty amazing characteristics.
She those characteristics, like living life to the fullest, are
often made to seem trite and easily mocked. So uh,
Peck was saying, basically like, I share some of the
characteristics of this stereotype this trope, Like I have some
of the same freewheeling, care free, independent attitudes, but characters
(09:36):
like this, the media portrayal of women like this is
sort of ruining it for some of us, basically. Yeah,
And there's the whole concern too of like, well, are
we creating this message that men what men need are
our girls really, rather than more level headed women who
might not have the time or the desire to frolic
in a meadow, you know, exactly who might enjoy their
(09:59):
BlackBerry and cubicles more. Right, And the women versus girls
debate and what men want was brought up by Willipashkin
and The Vulture back in February, and she she said
that this whole thing does kind of shed light on
how women are choosing to portray themselves to men and
what they think men want. And so if there's this
(10:20):
whole cutesie, like, ah manic pixie, yeah, let's run in
the rain kind of thing, and they go for it
and they end up just looking like little girls. Yeah,
And it's also a very heteronormative, a white heteronormative trope
that I think gets to a lot of these feminist bloggers. Um,
and especially when it comes to that issue of race.
(10:41):
It's something that the blog Racial Isious has talked about.
For instance, blogger Timmy Winfrey Harris uh rote a post
called who is the Black Zoe de Chanal and Um.
She says that the persona of manic Pixie dream girl
is bound by class and race, and that it's just
this perpetual childhood and whiteness. She says, whereas Black women
(11:05):
might be portrayed like a boho Lisa Bonet or more
of the earth mother Erica bad Do, they're never carefree
and childish. Yeah. Harris points out that often in the media,
African American women can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women, um,
but they're never They're never that saying like ha kittens
(11:28):
kind of portrayal. And she says even black girls are
too often viewed as worldly women and not innocent. Well,
and that's because a lot of times, Uh, African American
characters have tropes of their own that you're they're they're
used within movies to teach other people a lesson, they're
their own, you know, manic Pixie dream girls in their
(11:48):
own ways where you know you'll have a magical Morgan
Freeman come in and teach the stuck up white lady
a lesson about how she needs to loosen up a
little bit, and then he'll go and you'll appreciate her
transformation in did so. Since we talked about race, um,
you know how we don't see this trope reflected in
the same way, um from people of different colors and ethnicities.
(12:13):
What about gender? Where is the manic pixie dream guy?
Would the manic pixie dream guy be the same? Would
he come flitting in with his own color of glitter
and throw it at you and then kind of flit
her off and disappear after your transformation? Does it work
the same? It will? It's funny that U s there's
(12:37):
a post on nerve about this. They argue that an
audience would not want to see a woman left on
her own, that that would be more of a tragedy.
That even if a manic pixie dream guy like the
character in Under the Tuscan Sun who comes and revives
Diane Lane from her from her woes and breathed life
back into her body and soul, even though her alert
(13:00):
ends up, you know, not being with her in the movie,
we are still less satisfied. Because someone else comes along
to take that place, right, just when you think, right,
beautiful Italian Lane and her Tuscan villa. What a shame.
She has the magic guy who comes in and you know,
and takes care of her and gets her on her
way to taking care of herself. And then once she is,
(13:22):
you know, her own person, and she has someone else
to to enjoy being with for the rest of her life,
exactly for the rest of her life. But yeah, they
a nerve. They say that male free spiritedness is often
portrayed in a negative light and they say, I'm looking
at you, Don Draper, Yeah, because it's just not the same. Well,
(13:44):
it's the whole It goes to the whole dating logic
of you know, women not wanting to come across as
too needy. You know, the fastest way I mean, and
I'm and I'm quoting uh stereotype now, the fastest way
to to get a man to be attracted to you
is to be unavailable, you know, whereas UH men who
are free spirited, they're just gonna be bad boys and
(14:06):
they're gonna leave you and they're just gonna probably collect
lots of STDs and hurting you at the end of
the day. So, yeah, MANI Pixie dream guy would be
someone that you know, all of your friends would tell
you to stay away from. Probably, Yeah, who are the
Mani Pixie dream guys out there? Did you? Yes? I did?
How did it? Did he have glitter? Uh? No? Um,
(14:28):
although I remember one night and he ran into him
and his nails were painted. Uh. He was whimsical, you know,
and he he left as quickly as he came. So,
but it was the thing, is it? A months down
the line after the relationship, I realized that it did
sort of forced me to a point to where, um,
(14:51):
it did kind of make me and do some positive
things with myself beyond my normal scope. I'm not saying
he's necessarily the reason why, but uh, it was a
step along the way. Yeah. So there's been so much
made of this manic Pixie dream girl trope. Uh, and
we want to talk about it because the listener had
(15:12):
written in about it. But it's also been something that
I had wanted to explore. And I didn't realize that
the term has only been around since two thousand seven.
But my goodness, how much attention she has gotten. And
I wonder why she's gotten so much attention, and so
it's a cluster of contemporary films. Um, and yet she
(15:32):
arouses so much debate she does well. I mean, yeah,
you have to wonder what's going on in the writer's
minds that this is happening so much all of a sudden.
But I like the distinction that a lot of these
writers have drawn between characters like Zoey Deschanel and Natalie
Portman and um, Kate Winslet's character in uh Eternal Sension
(15:53):
of Spotless Mine, Yes, ma'am, because she is that dream girl.
She's kind of cooky and crazy and fun, but she's
portrayed as having real, actual problems, and so that's what
At Slate they pointed out that the difference between a
manic pixie dream girl and a just you know, independent
cookie female characters or kind of like kristin Wigan Bridesmaids, Right,
(16:15):
it's the sense that something's actually wrong with the manic
pixie dream girl. Yeah. Uh, I'll be interested to hear
from our listeners what what everyone thinks about it, whether
it's being you know, is it too big of a deal.
I mean, uh, Anita Sarkisian over feminist frequency links all
of this to the problem of the female muse. You know,
(16:38):
you think of Warhol, Dylan, Picasso, what are you all
and all of them of cited. You know, these female
muses in their life who are the inspiration for their
great art. And she says, you know, a manic pixie
dream Girls serves a similar thing with fictional characters too.
You know, there are way too um they're a cipher
to allow them to do great things with their lives.
(16:59):
And she takes issue with that because she says, well,
these women should be standing on their own. But at
the same time, I don't know, I think sometimes we
might be making too much of the um high waisted
dresses and cupcakes. Yeah, and also I think people need
to need to tone it down as far as hating
on other women. I mean, yes, would I choose to
(17:20):
associate with some of these women in real life. Maybe not,
like seriously, take your kiddies and go elsewhere, lady. But
I mean that doesn't mean that I think they're less
of a valid persona or personality. No, I think that's
a good point. I think in the in the argument
it's a slippery slow because in a lot of these
arguments that are calling these tropes out for um, you know,
(17:44):
maybe not portraying women as well. It does quickly crumble
into women hating on women. So let's build each other up,
let's eat our cupcakes together. And you know, Manic Pixie
Dream guys you can you can come to craft it
as well. Well. With that, little to Boot said, I
want to hear your stories mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
(18:07):
Let us know what you think about the mpdgs too much,
too little? Uh? I don't know. And and guys too,
do you find these women appealing? Do Manic Pixie Dream
guys exist lots to discuss? Send us your letters. We've
got an email here from Martha and this is a
response to our episode on giving the Sex Talk, and
(18:29):
she writes the other evening, I was listening to the
podcast on giving the Talk to your children, and at
first I thought, well, that sounds really hard, but at
least I have a few years to prepare for it.
My daughter is fifteen months old, so it really is
a bit early. Then I thought again, my daughter has
two moms and we don't know who the father is.
We know other same sex couples with children. One of
(18:50):
these children started asking why he didn't have a dad
before he was two years old, so, in fact, we
are already working on our daughter's sex education now. We
have several books about families with two moms and are
just starting on families with two dads. We also have
a book on how children can be conceived by artificial
extermination that we haven't started reading about reading it at
bedtime yet. I think this is a conversation about sex choices, gender,
(19:12):
etcetera that will be an ongoing process. Could this be
an advantage of growing up in a non standard family?
Think it could be. So Thanks Martha for that insight,
and thanks to everybody who's written in. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send your letters,
and you can also find us on Facebook and follow
us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast, And if you
(19:36):
want to read what we're doing during the week, you
can head over to our website It's how Stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how Stuff works dot com? Brought to you
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(19:57):
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