The Depth of One-Dimensionality: An Analysis of How Culture Misinterpreted the Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Written by Sarah Grace Stevenson
On July 15th of this year, a film critic named Nathan Rabin published an article titled, “I’m Sorry for Coining the Phrase ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl.’” The opening tagline captures the lamentable premise: “In 2007, I invented the term in a review. Then I watched in queasy disbelief as it seemed to take over pop culture.” After many months of absorbing myself in this A.V. Club[1] writer’s conception, seeing this article was aggravating. Long before the 15th of July, my investigation had quickly led me to conclude that Rabin’s term is valuable, and he should feel no need to say sorry for presenting the idea of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” The analysis to follow will untangle audience responses to this modern linguistic invention, as well as elucidate the inherent complexity of dialogues about one-dimensionality. From the beginning, an underlying goal of this study was to argue why Rabin’s term is profound despite culture’s deficient assessment; my objective has now intensified, as I take issue with Rabin's compulsion to retract his statements and offer an apology.
“Manic Pixie Dream Girl” is a term that originated in a simple film review,[2] but rapidly exploded into a significant cultural topic of the early twenty-first century. Now considered an official character trope in cinema, critics and amateur writers have formed an immense discussion about this “bubbly, shallow cinematic creature” (Rabin).[3] Using the Internet as a medium of mass communication, writers have gradually fashioned a subject that elicits rhetorical and semiotic analysis; thus, culture has given a layer of complexity to a character constantly criticized for her lack of complexity. In my research, I analyze and often problematize Internet writers’ interpretations of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), ascertaining how to augment the dialogue with a new approach. My question is this: How has culture been talking about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and how might we critically derive a deeper psychological meaning from her?
The essential starting point for this study is the original classification of the MPDG character trope, which is found in Nathan Rabin’s review of Cameron Crowe’s 2005 film, Elizabethtown. He writes that the primary female character, played by Kirsten Dunst, is “what I like to call, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” This character type “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.” In order to fulfill her bubbly duties as a supporting character within the narrative, she maintains a simple-mindedness that winsomely helps her love-interest cope with his melancholy. The screenwriters, perhaps unwittingly, create vapid women by emphasizing the male character’s emotional intricacy and granting no depth to the female; she only receives an offbeat, perky personality that inspires progression in the male’s life. If she were to face complexities of her own, perhaps she would fail to maintain the relentless energy needed to uplift the man from his depression.
On July 15th of this year, a film critic named Nathan Rabin published an article titled, “I’m Sorry for Coining the Phrase ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl.’” The opening tagline captures the lamentable premise: “In 2007, I invented the term in a review. Then I watched in queasy disbelief as it seemed to take over pop culture.” After many months of absorbing myself in this A.V. Club[1] writer’s conception, seeing this article was aggravating. Long before the 15th of July, my investigation had quickly led me to conclude that Rabin’s term is valuable, and he should feel no need to say sorry for presenting the idea of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” The analysis to follow will untangle audience responses to this modern linguistic invention, as well as elucidate the inherent complexity of dialogues about one-dimensionality. From the beginning, an underlying goal of this study was to argue why Rabin’s term is profound despite culture’s deficient assessment; my objective has now intensified, as I take issue with Rabin's compulsion to retract his statements and offer an apology.
“Manic Pixie Dream Girl” is a term that originated in a simple film review,[2] but rapidly exploded into a significant cultural topic of the early twenty-first century. Now considered an official character trope in cinema, critics and amateur writers have formed an immense discussion about this “bubbly, shallow cinematic creature” (Rabin).[3] Using the Internet as a medium of mass communication, writers have gradually fashioned a subject that elicits rhetorical and semiotic analysis; thus, culture has given a layer of complexity to a character constantly criticized for her lack of complexity. In my research, I analyze and often problematize Internet writers’ interpretations of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), ascertaining how to augment the dialogue with a new approach. My question is this: How has culture been talking about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and how might we critically derive a deeper psychological meaning from her?
The essential starting point for this study is the original classification of the MPDG character trope, which is found in Nathan Rabin’s review of Cameron Crowe’s 2005 film, Elizabethtown. He writes that the primary female character, played by Kirsten Dunst, is “what I like to call, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” This character type “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.” In order to fulfill her bubbly duties as a supporting character within the narrative, she maintains a simple-mindedness that winsomely helps her love-interest cope with his melancholy. The screenwriters, perhaps unwittingly, create vapid women by emphasizing the male character’s emotional intricacy and granting no depth to the female; she only receives an offbeat, perky personality that inspires progression in the male’s life. If she were to face complexities of her own, perhaps she would fail to maintain the relentless energy needed to uplift the man from his depression.
Nathan Rabin’s illumination of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope[4] sparked many feminist reflections amongst present-day consumers of pop culture. One critic, Meredith Stern, articulates that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s “trajectory is mitigated by the male protagonist’s desire and journey.” By focusing on the male’s desire, writers who employ MPDGs exemplify the oppressiveness of the male gaze.[5] Stern makes a vivid literary comparison that captures how this gaze prevents the childlike Manic Pixie Dream Girl from developing a rich identity: “Much like Alice in Wonderland, she looks at the world with whimsy and naiveté. A glass ceiling hovers darkly above her as she never achieves her own enlightenment or success.[6]” Using a figurative glass ceiling, or gaze, male writers and directors entrap MPDGs in narratives that perpetuate their relational subservience and grossly limit personal growth.
Another helpful glass/gaze comparison is found in Elisabeth Bronfen’s book Over Her Dead Body, which surveys the literary aesthetic of feminine mortality. Grimmer than pure naiveté, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl suffers abstract death. She is dead unto herself, since she has no inner life. She figuratively resembles the poisoned Snow White, whose inanimate body is placed on display in a glass coffin. When the prince arrives to view her embalmed corpse, he “privileges the gaze over all other senses, desires an object that shall never be out of his sight” (100). Snow White's apparent embalmment, which prevents the deterioration of beauty, is what allows the male to fully admire her and relish in his own status as a living being. He is similar to the modern filmmaker who dreams of women with no disenchanting human defects, because “his desire for an unknown beautiful feminine corpse exemplifies to perfection how the object of desire is never real but rather the symptom of the lover’s fantasy” (102). The glassing of this fairytale heroine relates wonderfully to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who is glassed and silenced within a fanciful story-world.
This contemporary term not only adopts literary significance, but it also directs our attention to preexisting feminist film criticism. Recounting an early wave of feminism, essayist Anneke Smelik describes how the “Hollywood dream factory” exclusively showcased "glamourized" females whose appearances and personalities were “created by men” (67). This concept applies to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, for the fevered imaginations generally belong to male writers who enlist the magical touch of an idealized woman to cure their fevers. Smelik reflects, “In cinema a woman signifies something in relation to men; in herself she signifies nothing(ness)” (68-69). By creating Manic Pixie Dream Girls, writers follow the “traditional narrative structure” of motion pictures. The male hero “actively carries both the look and the action,” (69) much like Snow White’s prince.
Women never fully recovered from the feminine idealization that developed out of fairy tales and the Hollywood Dream Factory, and films continue to create glass coffins by placing “persistent emphasis on appearance and display” (Ferris 42). The gaze has been privileged over all other senses, and feminist writer Suzanne Ferris[7] notes the “connection between fashion and identity” (42) in our superficial culture. This connection is where audience perceptions of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl are corrupted. In “Deciphering the Manic Pixie Mythos,” Julianna Joyce applies the conversation about fashioning cinematic femininity to this newly defined trope. Despite its irrelevance to Rabin’s definition, the topic of fashion and style is significant within Joyce’s analysis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She summarizes the cultural essence of the MPDG, which is often times construed as, “Unnaturally colored hair,[8] alternative style,[9] an affinity for the Smiths,[10] and just socially awkward enough to be lovable.” The MPDG’s bold stylistic and behavioral attributes, assigned to her by either culture or filmmakers, set her apart from other females; however, they represent a hollow attempt to make her interesting.
The stereotyped image largely originated with Zooey Deschanel’s portrayal of Summer Finn in (500) Days of Summer, in which she plays a picturesque woman who ultimately breaks the heart of the enamored Tom Hansen. Joyce writes that Deschanel’s portrayal of Summer “embodies the MPDG trope, particularly in aesthetic qualifications.” My stance is that these aesthetic qualifications have been ascribed to MPDGs by culture rather than by Rabin’s original definition, largely because of Deschanel’s current spot in the limelight. Joyce lists that the character showcases a vintage style, wears bows in her hair, is a consumer of alternative music, and generally forms “an image embraced in hipster and alternative circles.” Joyce is apt to observe, “Summer’s personality is not completely representational of the MPDG trope. In fact, the original definition contains no list of physical attributes or notes about musical taste.” By focusing on “an image,” culture’s perceptions stray from Rabin’s initial criticism and trivialize the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s implicit issues.
Another helpful glass/gaze comparison is found in Elisabeth Bronfen’s book Over Her Dead Body, which surveys the literary aesthetic of feminine mortality. Grimmer than pure naiveté, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl suffers abstract death. She is dead unto herself, since she has no inner life. She figuratively resembles the poisoned Snow White, whose inanimate body is placed on display in a glass coffin. When the prince arrives to view her embalmed corpse, he “privileges the gaze over all other senses, desires an object that shall never be out of his sight” (100). Snow White's apparent embalmment, which prevents the deterioration of beauty, is what allows the male to fully admire her and relish in his own status as a living being. He is similar to the modern filmmaker who dreams of women with no disenchanting human defects, because “his desire for an unknown beautiful feminine corpse exemplifies to perfection how the object of desire is never real but rather the symptom of the lover’s fantasy” (102). The glassing of this fairytale heroine relates wonderfully to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who is glassed and silenced within a fanciful story-world.
This contemporary term not only adopts literary significance, but it also directs our attention to preexisting feminist film criticism. Recounting an early wave of feminism, essayist Anneke Smelik describes how the “Hollywood dream factory” exclusively showcased "glamourized" females whose appearances and personalities were “created by men” (67). This concept applies to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, for the fevered imaginations generally belong to male writers who enlist the magical touch of an idealized woman to cure their fevers. Smelik reflects, “In cinema a woman signifies something in relation to men; in herself she signifies nothing(ness)” (68-69). By creating Manic Pixie Dream Girls, writers follow the “traditional narrative structure” of motion pictures. The male hero “actively carries both the look and the action,” (69) much like Snow White’s prince.
Women never fully recovered from the feminine idealization that developed out of fairy tales and the Hollywood Dream Factory, and films continue to create glass coffins by placing “persistent emphasis on appearance and display” (Ferris 42). The gaze has been privileged over all other senses, and feminist writer Suzanne Ferris[7] notes the “connection between fashion and identity” (42) in our superficial culture. This connection is where audience perceptions of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl are corrupted. In “Deciphering the Manic Pixie Mythos,” Julianna Joyce applies the conversation about fashioning cinematic femininity to this newly defined trope. Despite its irrelevance to Rabin’s definition, the topic of fashion and style is significant within Joyce’s analysis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She summarizes the cultural essence of the MPDG, which is often times construed as, “Unnaturally colored hair,[8] alternative style,[9] an affinity for the Smiths,[10] and just socially awkward enough to be lovable.” The MPDG’s bold stylistic and behavioral attributes, assigned to her by either culture or filmmakers, set her apart from other females; however, they represent a hollow attempt to make her interesting.
The stereotyped image largely originated with Zooey Deschanel’s portrayal of Summer Finn in (500) Days of Summer, in which she plays a picturesque woman who ultimately breaks the heart of the enamored Tom Hansen. Joyce writes that Deschanel’s portrayal of Summer “embodies the MPDG trope, particularly in aesthetic qualifications.” My stance is that these aesthetic qualifications have been ascribed to MPDGs by culture rather than by Rabin’s original definition, largely because of Deschanel’s current spot in the limelight. Joyce lists that the character showcases a vintage style, wears bows in her hair, is a consumer of alternative music, and generally forms “an image embraced in hipster and alternative circles.” Joyce is apt to observe, “Summer’s personality is not completely representational of the MPDG trope. In fact, the original definition contains no list of physical attributes or notes about musical taste.” By focusing on “an image,” culture’s perceptions stray from Rabin’s initial criticism and trivialize the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s implicit issues.
Audiences chose to emphasize Deschanel’s physique and persona even though Rabin introduced the MPDG concept when describing Kirsten Dunst’s portrayal of Claire in Elizabethtown. Claire does not exhibit a quirky fashion sense or obscure interests; yet Rabin describes her as the “archetypal Manic Pixie Dream Girl." In the film, Dunst portrays an overly-friendly flight stewardess, or as Rabin calls her, a “psychotically chipper waitress in the sky.” His use of the word “psychotically” refers to her hypomanic[11]
interactions with the glum main character, and it denotes a sense of twistedness that is unexplored in the film. Rabin asks, is the character “coked up, or merely high on life?” Claire is literally high, because she is elevated in an airplane just as she is elevated in her attitude. Her job is to provide care to those who actually have a destination, and she is particularly drawn to a man who feels he is destined for doom. Rabin recognizes that audiences have given his label to a large variety of characters, but his 2014 article states that “Claire was an unusually pure example of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl — a fancifully if thinly conceived flibbertigibbet who has no reason to exist except to cheer up one miserable guy.” Claire is not an MPDG due to her clothes or hair, but because Cameron Crowe places her up in the air, both physically and mentally, and refuses to give her a life of her own. Consequently, the male protagonist ignores her most divulging moments. When Claire makes comments such as “I think I’ve been asleep my whole life,” the male is only prompted to reflect upon his own state of dormancy. The pace of the editing in the film constantly cuts away from Claire’s brief instances of emotional disclosure and leaves no time for the male to question why this girl feels she has been asleep her whole life despite acting wholly awake and energized. Unfortunately, most audiences have followed suit by avoiding the semiotics of this character and discarding Rabin’s mention of her implied psychosis.
The critic developed a concept, but culture developed a list. Many lists. An overwhelming quantity of female spectators have ignored this “unusually pure example” of the MPDG by forming a definition based on superficial attributes. Subsequently, the viewers identify themselves as real-life MPDGs; venturing into complete arbitrariness, they eventually stretched beyond Deschanel’s iconized image. Feminist film scholar Gillian Swanson discusses how female spectators play a part in “Building the Feminine” through “‘over-identification with the image.” This observation, which Swanson applies to pre-MPDG cinema, also applies to women who over-identify with the fashioned MPDG stereotypes. We have transitioned from the male gaze to the female gaze, which, according to Swanson, has led to “narcissistic identification.” Just like Snow White’s aesthetically pleasing corpse, “the feminine is primarily signified through the image.” Without realizing it, female viewers have been exercising a gaze that places the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in a glass display case.
This brings me to my own research. As my data will show, narcissistic identification manifests itself in lengthy lists of attributes that individuals arbitrarily associate with the silenced MPDG. Women have built a whole new level of objectifying fantasy by overlooking the “‘whole character/image” of the character and instead forming "a network of fantasy relations across various positions inscribed within the flow of images and narrative” (Swanson). Spectators may perceive “fragments” of themselves in the MPDG, but those fragments are often unsupported and ignorant of the character’s essence. My discovery of identification patterns was the impetus for my research; it led me to further investigate differing audience approaches to the trope and to form my own opinions. Filmmakers have degraded women for the past century, but audiences degrade the Manic Pixie Dream Girl further by not recognizing her elements of profundity. Because people insist on applying the MPDG to real life, we ought to think about her in a complex way that goes beyond fashionable quirks and aesthetics.
Rhetorical analysis is my primary research method, although semiotic analysis unavoidably occurred alongside the study of rhetoric. My data consists of eleven texts that I found on the Internet. Using simple Google searches, I located a plethora of articles and blogs about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I most strongly apply rhetorical analysis to the pieces written by young women who believe that they are, or have been, real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Using Arthur Berger’s “focal points of communication,” (86) I observed that the artist is the writer, the work of art is the article or blog, the medium is the Internet, and the audience is the unspecified Internet-user who happens to read the article or blog. I investigate the art of persuasion, presenting how the rhetorical devices of comparison and exemplification in texts function to demonstrate the writers’ identification with the MPDG. These texts also have an “emotive function,” (87) because the writers convey the emotions that they experience as a result of this identification. In all sources, I found the use of “Stimulative Definition,” (91) because writers base their arguments on interpretations of Rabin’s original definition or an unofficial cultural definition. Because the writers describe attributes that they believe signify the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, one cannot ignore the semiotics within these article.
My discovery of how women are presenting supposed signs of the MPDG inspired me to do a semiotic analysis on the term itself, focusing on the deeper meanings of “Manic,” “Pixie,” and “Dream Girl.” In honor of Rabin’s use of the word “psychotically,” my concluding discussion places the cinematic term in dialogue with the psychology of mental illness. Berger writes, “Semiotics helps us interpret the meaning of forms and kinds of communication whose meaning, or in some cases whose most significant meaning, is not evident” (63). In my research, I decode culture's decoding of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and then explain my own process of interpreting the character.
This brings me to my own research. As my data will show, narcissistic identification manifests itself in lengthy lists of attributes that individuals arbitrarily associate with the silenced MPDG. Women have built a whole new level of objectifying fantasy by overlooking the “‘whole character/image” of the character and instead forming "a network of fantasy relations across various positions inscribed within the flow of images and narrative” (Swanson). Spectators may perceive “fragments” of themselves in the MPDG, but those fragments are often unsupported and ignorant of the character’s essence. My discovery of identification patterns was the impetus for my research; it led me to further investigate differing audience approaches to the trope and to form my own opinions. Filmmakers have degraded women for the past century, but audiences degrade the Manic Pixie Dream Girl further by not recognizing her elements of profundity. Because people insist on applying the MPDG to real life, we ought to think about her in a complex way that goes beyond fashionable quirks and aesthetics.
Rhetorical analysis is my primary research method, although semiotic analysis unavoidably occurred alongside the study of rhetoric. My data consists of eleven texts that I found on the Internet. Using simple Google searches, I located a plethora of articles and blogs about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I most strongly apply rhetorical analysis to the pieces written by young women who believe that they are, or have been, real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Using Arthur Berger’s “focal points of communication,” (86) I observed that the artist is the writer, the work of art is the article or blog, the medium is the Internet, and the audience is the unspecified Internet-user who happens to read the article or blog. I investigate the art of persuasion, presenting how the rhetorical devices of comparison and exemplification in texts function to demonstrate the writers’ identification with the MPDG. These texts also have an “emotive function,” (87) because the writers convey the emotions that they experience as a result of this identification. In all sources, I found the use of “Stimulative Definition,” (91) because writers base their arguments on interpretations of Rabin’s original definition or an unofficial cultural definition. Because the writers describe attributes that they believe signify the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, one cannot ignore the semiotics within these article.
My discovery of how women are presenting supposed signs of the MPDG inspired me to do a semiotic analysis on the term itself, focusing on the deeper meanings of “Manic,” “Pixie,” and “Dream Girl.” In honor of Rabin’s use of the word “psychotically,” my concluding discussion places the cinematic term in dialogue with the psychology of mental illness. Berger writes, “Semiotics helps us interpret the meaning of forms and kinds of communication whose meaning, or in some cases whose most significant meaning, is not evident” (63). In my research, I decode culture's decoding of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and then explain my own process of interpreting the character.
Returning to the eleven sources I mentioned previously, I noted that each could be placed under one of three interrelated categories of data. The first category consists of five articles or blogs composed by women who believe they are, or have been, real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girls; in their writings, they reveal the traits that they perceive as quintessential to the MPDG trope. The second category consists of three writers who have reacted to the thought processes found in the first category; they assert that people should discontinue applying the term to real life, as the persistent list-making has proven detrimental. The third category consists of three pieces that do not reject the reality of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but choose to discuss the gravity of MPDG embodiment.
Women who believe that the MPDG is real and that they exhibit the qualities of such a person compose their articles or blogs in such a way as to convince the audience of their qualifications. The women of this category give tangible examples of their identification with the MPDG. Their thought processes build upon the exterior-oriented definition that Julianna Joyce discusses. Their rhetoric is emotion-driven as they express their feelings regarding their resemblance to the character. They highlight a huge problem that arose when culture developed the following equation: Rabin classified MPDGs as one-dimensional; then, spectators decided to classify the MPDG as a person with quirky, feminine physical and personality traits; by the transitive property, women with quirky, feminine physical and personality traits concluded that the concept of the MPDG oppresses them by implying that they are one-dimensional. This equation caused a great deal of offense in the minds of the women who enjoy being girlish and idiosyncratic.
In Kate Iselin’s independent blog article, “True Life: I Am a Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” she writes that the character is “a walking singular dimension, a human Pinterest board, a plot device in a sweet crochet dress.” Iselin’s use of the terms “singular dimension” and “plot device” suggests that she understands Rabin’s theory of the MPDG; however, her blog ends up revolving more around the terms “Pinterest board” and “crochet dress.” If a person is a Pinterest board, she is simply a collection of images that convey specific interests; if one is using the concept of a Pinterest board to describe the MPDG, he or she is formulating a definition based on visuals. Iselin’s primary assertion is that she, herself, is unashamedly a real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl for a catalog of reasons. Between two long paragraphs, she isolates the phrase, “I am a fu--ing Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” She claims that the role is “fun,” and says, “I didn’t sculpt my life around the trope, but if the shoe fits (and if it’s covered in sequins) I’ll happily wear it.” She expresses anger that women are being “taken less seriously” in the world, such as in the workplace, if they “desire to live a life that’s aesthetically pleasing.” She misses the point that we are meant to critique the MPDG for being a one-dimensional plot device, not because of anything akin to “a sweet crochet dress.” Rabin commented on Claire’s shallowness and psychotic behaviors, not her clothes. Along with Iselin’s “fluorescent pink hair” and “a fascinator [consisting] of a glittery replica of the Eiffel Tower," the individualist woman lists these special qualities:
1. “I love cupcakes: I have a cupcake tattoo.”
2. “All of my gym gear is hot pink.”
3. “I have been known to participate in spontaneous dance parties.”
4. “Most of what I wear is vintage, and/or rainbow, and/or covered in sequins.”
5. “My business card [is] a see-through Vellum envelope filled with metallic confetti.”
Personally, I do not know whom Iselin was using as a reference point for an image based on cupcakes, pink, and sequins. She fails to provide us with descriptions of actual characters in actual films who match both her specifications and Rabin’s concept. She does not prove that she resembles a Manic Pixie Dream Girl; her rhetorical goal is only to assert her own uniqueness and to criticize the public for not respecting her originality. When she learned about the MPDG trope, she emotionally responded by favorably focusing on herself and deriving a feminist complaint.
Women who believe that the MPDG is real and that they exhibit the qualities of such a person compose their articles or blogs in such a way as to convince the audience of their qualifications. The women of this category give tangible examples of their identification with the MPDG. Their thought processes build upon the exterior-oriented definition that Julianna Joyce discusses. Their rhetoric is emotion-driven as they express their feelings regarding their resemblance to the character. They highlight a huge problem that arose when culture developed the following equation: Rabin classified MPDGs as one-dimensional; then, spectators decided to classify the MPDG as a person with quirky, feminine physical and personality traits; by the transitive property, women with quirky, feminine physical and personality traits concluded that the concept of the MPDG oppresses them by implying that they are one-dimensional. This equation caused a great deal of offense in the minds of the women who enjoy being girlish and idiosyncratic.
In Kate Iselin’s independent blog article, “True Life: I Am a Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” she writes that the character is “a walking singular dimension, a human Pinterest board, a plot device in a sweet crochet dress.” Iselin’s use of the terms “singular dimension” and “plot device” suggests that she understands Rabin’s theory of the MPDG; however, her blog ends up revolving more around the terms “Pinterest board” and “crochet dress.” If a person is a Pinterest board, she is simply a collection of images that convey specific interests; if one is using the concept of a Pinterest board to describe the MPDG, he or she is formulating a definition based on visuals. Iselin’s primary assertion is that she, herself, is unashamedly a real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl for a catalog of reasons. Between two long paragraphs, she isolates the phrase, “I am a fu--ing Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” She claims that the role is “fun,” and says, “I didn’t sculpt my life around the trope, but if the shoe fits (and if it’s covered in sequins) I’ll happily wear it.” She expresses anger that women are being “taken less seriously” in the world, such as in the workplace, if they “desire to live a life that’s aesthetically pleasing.” She misses the point that we are meant to critique the MPDG for being a one-dimensional plot device, not because of anything akin to “a sweet crochet dress.” Rabin commented on Claire’s shallowness and psychotic behaviors, not her clothes. Along with Iselin’s “fluorescent pink hair” and “a fascinator [consisting] of a glittery replica of the Eiffel Tower," the individualist woman lists these special qualities:
1. “I love cupcakes: I have a cupcake tattoo.”
2. “All of my gym gear is hot pink.”
3. “I have been known to participate in spontaneous dance parties.”
4. “Most of what I wear is vintage, and/or rainbow, and/or covered in sequins.”
5. “My business card [is] a see-through Vellum envelope filled with metallic confetti.”
Personally, I do not know whom Iselin was using as a reference point for an image based on cupcakes, pink, and sequins. She fails to provide us with descriptions of actual characters in actual films who match both her specifications and Rabin’s concept. She does not prove that she resembles a Manic Pixie Dream Girl; her rhetorical goal is only to assert her own uniqueness and to criticize the public for not respecting her originality. When she learned about the MPDG trope, she emotionally responded by favorably focusing on herself and deriving a feminist complaint.
A writer who formats her blog piece in the same way as Iselin, Meghan O.,[12] discusses how she resembles an MPDG in “I’m Afraid I’m a Manic Pixie Dream Girl”; this fear, she says, was “a cause for feminist concern.” She asserts that, from an “intellectual standpoint,” they are not real; she then completely contradicts this comment by proceeding to list her personal qualities that supposedly embody the MPDG:
The pattern of exemplification lists that are devoid of proper examples continues in the blog article titled “Being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl” by Kelsey Alpaio. She reiterates Iselin’s and Meghan O.’s concerns, saying, “The truth is, I am a Manic Pixie Dream Girl…I fit all of the notions and descriptors of a MPDG.” Like Iselin especially, she expresses anger that her love of cuteness is condemned as one-dimensional and societally compliant; she wants to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and encourages other feminine, quirky girls to embrace the label. She only relates to what she calls the “tendencies” of an MPDG, such as,
Although Nathan Rabin refers to Kirsten Dunst as the archetypal MPDG, Laurie Penny[13] visually gives that credit to Zooey Deschanel by featuring a photo from (500) Days of Summer in her article, “I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Penny recapitulates the essential idea of the MPDG and insightfully explains that a female might desire to relate to such a character in order to experience a narrative that replicates the romanticism of cinema: “If we want anything interesting at all to happen to us we have to be [in] a story that happens to somebody else.” Despite Penny’s thorough understanding of Rabin’s conception and her ability to analyze flawed film narratives, her reaction is still to emphasize arbitrary superficial qualities that fit her own “basic physical and personality traits”:
- “I own a panda hat”
- “A little boy in Bath & Body Works once told me that I looked like Kirsten Dunst.”
- “[I have] a Hello Kitty credit card” [and a] “kitten-covered day planner.”
- “[I enjoy] Star Wars, The Smiths, comic books, Dungeons and Dragons, obscure musical instruments like ocarinas, cats, Anne of Green Gables,wearing sundresses, dancing like a robot and eating candy.”
The pattern of exemplification lists that are devoid of proper examples continues in the blog article titled “Being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl” by Kelsey Alpaio. She reiterates Iselin’s and Meghan O.’s concerns, saying, “The truth is, I am a Manic Pixie Dream Girl…I fit all of the notions and descriptors of a MPDG.” Like Iselin especially, she expresses anger that her love of cuteness is condemned as one-dimensional and societally compliant; she wants to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and encourages other feminine, quirky girls to embrace the label. She only relates to what she calls the “tendencies” of an MPDG, such as,
- “I am vertically challenged”
- “I play the ukulele.”
- “I love everything that sparkles, glitters and gleams.”
- “I listen to indie rock no one has ever heard of.”
- “I’m a relationship junkie.”
Although Nathan Rabin refers to Kirsten Dunst as the archetypal MPDG, Laurie Penny[13] visually gives that credit to Zooey Deschanel by featuring a photo from (500) Days of Summer in her article, “I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Penny recapitulates the essential idea of the MPDG and insightfully explains that a female might desire to relate to such a character in order to experience a narrative that replicates the romanticism of cinema: “If we want anything interesting at all to happen to us we have to be [in] a story that happens to somebody else.” Despite Penny’s thorough understanding of Rabin’s conception and her ability to analyze flawed film narratives, her reaction is still to emphasize arbitrary superficial qualities that fit her own “basic physical and personality traits”:
- “I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games”
- “I’m five feet nothing, petite, and small featured”
- “[I] retain a somewhat embarrassing belief in the ultimate decency of humanity and the transformative brilliance of music, although I’m ambivalent on the Shins.”
- “I washed all the [hair] dye out last year, partly to stop soulful Zach-Braff-a-likes following me to the shops”
- “I also play the f---ing ukulele.”
Gabby, a writer for Rookie Magazine, is the final member of this category. She also contemplates her relation to the term with arbitrary attributes:
Due to the one-dimensional way in which so many women identify with this profoundly one-dimensional character, critics who exist outside the identification group criticize the term and insist that real-life identification is invalid and destructive. In “The Male Gaze and the Manic Pixie,” Somersault Magazine writer Torie DeGhett asserts that the trope is “culturally bound to that vague yet damning term: quirky.” While screenwriters like Cameron Crowe and Zach Braff are at fault for placing females in identity-devoid roles, women who identify with the “quirky” cultural definition are just as much “attempting to assign these characters their own rigid places in [their] minds” (DeGhett). Many of the women acknowledge that the MPDG exemplifies the oppression of the male gaze; yet they elaborate more on the act of being quirky. This word implies a stylized collection of idiosyncrasies that apparently encompasses panda hats, cupcake tattoos, ukuleles, etc.: in other words, a Pinterest board. The focus on quirkiness places the MPDG in a role that satisfies the cultural gaze and eschews character analysis.
Other critics agree strongly with DeGhett’s statements, proclaiming that viewers have distorted the definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the point where the term is detrimentally misused. Their general argument is that, because of this distortion, we should altogether eliminate the term from conversation. In “Why It’s Time to Retire the Term Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” Monika Bartyzel[14] writes, "MPDG is now a catch-all term for unusual interests and style," and she laments that characters such as “Pulp Fiction’s[15] Mia Wallace [were] thrown into the mix for being impulsive and having bangs.” Bartyzel’s grievance is that audiences have diminished the term’s impact by dismissing an excessive number of female characters as MPDGs for reasons that fail to analyze the person in the context of the film. I believe that Bartyzel goes wrong when she writes, “Rabin’s oft-quoted definition doesn’t actually describe the girl; it describes the audience’s experience watching her.” Although the latter half of this statement pinpoints the issue, her criticism of Rabin is erroneous; he used the term to analyze a character and is not responsible for the audience’s experience. Independent blogger Koryn Malius also disservices Rabin by going as far as to say that the term “should be banned from our vocabulary.” Furthermore, she writes that the MPDG is a “lazy, trendy concept” that “distracts us from the real problems of superficial characters” and has not led to “fruitful analyses.” Malius suggests that fruitful analyses are possible, but only if we “restrict the use of the phrase to when we are criticizing one-dimensional characters in fiction.” However, she believes that hope for worthwhile discussions has already been lost due to the mess of misusage and the resulting transitive equation that offends many women.
Despite condemnations of futility and emptiness, I found several articles and blogs that signify the depth found in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. This third category features viewers who recognize the truth in Bartyzel’s observation that the MPDG is “part of a much bigger problem that has nothing to do with the music a character listens to or the clothing a character wears.” These writers do not restrict their identification process to those elements, and they answer critics’ requests for a more serious dialogue by delving into pop psychology. Because they explore mental and emotional complexity rather than only seeing the characters on the surface, they transfer the term to real life more intelligently. They relate their own experiences to the trope to delineate how the possession of true MPDG traits powerfully affects one’s life and one’s view of oneself.
A story about a young Italian woman named Bettina epitomizes the approach that this third group takes to the MPDG. Hugo Schwyzer[16] explains that, as a boy, he once focused his romantic gaze on a winsome girl who displayed no personal depth and whose elevated mood implied a magical, carefree existence. His article, titled “The Real World Consequences of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” explains his discovery that this elevated mood is only a mask for mental illness: “Just 20, Bettina had committed suicide by jumping out a fifth-floor window. I later learned from my grandmother that Bettina had suffered from depression for years, something she never told me.” Schwyzer makes no note of Bettina’s fashion sense or haircut, but rather, he divulges his shock that his dream girl hid her psychological turmoil by creating an aura of perfect, whimsical euphoria; eventually, her mental illness overpowered her attempt to transcend depression.
In “Manic Pixie Dream Girls: Not So Fun Actually,” Reluctant Femme blog author Cassie Goodwin emphasizes how the mania implied by “Manic” connects her to the trope. She explains that she once embodied the vacantly blissful essence of the MPDG for the sake of her male lovers due to deep insecurity; she writes, “I didn’t believe anyone could love me unless I was squeezed into that box.” Goodwin’s glass coffin experience mirrors Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown, because Claire requires a bubbly mood to gain significance in the male protagonist’s journey; without her hypomanic perkiness, the male would never have accepted her presence in his life. Goodwin acknowledges that audiences have overlooked the chemical imbalance implied by Rabin’s term by “sanitizing and romanticizing erratic behavior.” Rather than observing that many women relate to the MPDG on a superficial level, she cares about how a mentally unbalanced woman may strive to attain the trope’s unhealthy behaviors. Using her own experiences with insecurity, she writes, “[T]he absolute LAST thing someone with an undiagnosed mental illness needs is an excuse to keep going exactly how they have been.” Her personal mental illness narrative proves that people can place the MPDG within a serious discourse. Reflecting upon the concept helped Goodwin articulate her own struggles.
The final person in my data, Hannah Pupkewitz,[17] describes experiences that match Goodwin’s. She writes that the behavior she witnessed in films featuring these characters influenced the lens through which she saw her own self-worth. She became convinced that if she became “a childish woman who floats through life, ethereal and fairy like, always loved,” then “life would be infinitely easier.” Pupkewitz explains that the MPDG is loved in films because her “instability is fetishized” and “her vulnerability is revered.” As a woman who grew up watching this character, Pupkewitz felt that this self-destructive behavior, veiled behind the bubbly romanticism, was necessary to being “someone who mattered.” Due to people’s ability to “project an endless list of impossible perfections onto the MPDG,” mentally insecure viewers may fall under the influence of this “hollow flat façade.” Since women like Pupkewitz find little worth in themselves, they attempt to take on the worth they see in the MPDG, only to lose their identities. If a person attempts to experience the “emotional depth of a teaspoon,” she can temporarily avoid the pain of facing herself.
Pop culture never deserved an apology from Nathan Rabin, but it received one, nonetheless. Not only did the critic express regret for creating a term that offends so many, but he also professes, “I feel deeply weird, if not downright ashamed” for creating “an unstoppable monster.” Rabin takes full responsibility for the “cliché that has been trotted out again and again in an infinite Internet feedback loop,” but that blame clearly belongs to the perpetuators of that Internet loop. The audience is the force that disfigured the term’s ingenuity and impact through misguided overuse. The critic once felt proud for identifying an issue in cinema and giving it a “catchy, descriptive name,” but culture has pressured him to develop a hatred for his brilliant idea. I say that his idea is brilliant because, if it were not indisputably “sticky,” such a crazed controversy would never have developed.
An angry mob is demanding that we burn the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a witch, because she apparently cast a spell on far too many female bloggers. This devilish enchantment no doubt compelled them to envision the MPDG as a curse that brings condemnation upon their quirky, feminine ways. I wish that this mob would calm down long enough to acknowledge the minority who are non-flamboyantly reflecting upon the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a way to therapeutically reflect upon their own motivations for unhealthy behavior. When I observed this degree of thoughtfulness, I realized the value in expanding upon the psychological application. Rabin did not intend for us to apply the MPDG to real life, but since we insist upon doing so, we should reframe the problem. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s problem does not relate to physical or behavioral descriptors; it relates to a special kind of one-dimensionality that allows her to sacrifice her identity. We should not be asking, “Why would a woman want to get a cupcake tattoo and play the ukulele?” We should be asking, “Why would a woman want to be one-dimensional?” By virtue of being human, no real person is naturally one-dimensional, but a certain kind of person would strive to achieve that status. What would a true MPDG look like if she were to exist? I believe that we can paint a more poignant picture of a hypothetical real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl by dissecting the term that incited all of this frenzy.
A pixie haircut, or perhaps petite stature, might come to mind if someone is conceptualizing the MPDG in terms of physicality; however, Rabin already did a piece of my semiotic task when he noted that “Pixie” is meant to evoke the image of a “magical, otherworldly realm” from which a tirelessly perky woman must surely hail. His use of the word “otherworldly” conveys that the MPDG does not mentally or emotionally exist in reality. The male who benefits from her presence indeed perceives her as a magical being, since she seemingly arrives in a pink bubble to color the gray mise-en-scène of his life. By studying the other words of which the term is composed, we can determine why a true Manic Pixie Dream Girl is such a fairylike creature.
While the image of a pixie places the MPDG in an ethereal sphere, the word “manic” gives her a more human dimension; therefore, she possesses a complex duality. Due to this word, the connection between the MPDG and manic-depressive mood disorder is quite evident. Jennifer Radden discusses the effects of bipolar disorder in her article, “The Self and Its Moods in Depression and Mania;” she outlines how the conflicting moods that are suffered by bipolar patients disrupt the unity of the self. Manic-depressive conditions interfere with an individual’s sense of harmony due to the confusing vacillation between elation and gloom. The contending moods rupture the individual’s grasp of identity and can result in a sense of incompleteness and an “impediment to self-knowledge and integrity” (83). While the world appears “bleak, meaningless, and without consolation” in depressive states, “the manic mood contains a sense of vitality and excitement matched by an external world that seems to brim with promise and possibility” (84). Abnormal euphoria accelerates mental activity in a way that drastically diverges from the cerebral lethargy experienced in depression, resulting in the fast-paced speech exhibited by Claire in Elizabethtown. A person who experiences debilitating fatigue at the low end of the disorder will greet the high end’s energy with enthused appreciation. Radden notes that, due to the refreshing elation, “Manic moods are agreeable and compelling, reducing motivation to change” (99). Although hypomania is euphoric to an unhealthy magnitude, an individual eager to escape a bleak world in favor of a colored one will desire to break apart from the less pleasant side of her identity.
How would this particular mental illness contribute to a MPDG lifestyle? A young woman who suffers from bipolar disorder, in an effort to mute her depressive moods, may strive to remain in a dangerously transcendent state of mind. We see in Elizabethtown that Claire remains in a hypomanic[18] state throughout all of her interactions with the male protagonist; furthermore, she insistently initiated the relationship once she recognized his need for a savior. To forget about her own depressive tendencies, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl will pursue a man who embraces his melancholy. She identifies a subject who will gratefully soak up the sunshine of her cheerful personality, and her ability to cure this blueness will negate the darker effects of her mental illness. To avoid evaluation of her own complexity, she emphasizes someone else’s complexity and simplifies herself in the process.
After noting Rabin’s interpretation of “Pixie” and analyzing the word “Manic,” I lastly probe the meaning of “Dream Girl.” Most people seem to interpret this section of the term in an objectifying manner. Both the protagonist and the audience view the woman as a “Dream Girl” because of the perfections projected upon her by the gazers. However, I argue that an MPDG is a dream girl to herself; namely, she is a girl who experiences a dissociative[19] disorder called depersonalization. Indeed, “Dream Girl” is an internally cultivated identity, not just an externally imposed one. A person with depersonalization disorder is literally living life as though in a dream; she feels that she has lost her personal identity, that she is “different, strange, or unreal” (Campbell 269). Because a Manic Pixie Dream Girl opts to accentuate the manic side of her bipolar disorder, the depersonalization is pleasant rather than alarming. Radden writes, “If my moods are unwarrantedly optimistic, they will colour my attempts at a more realistic assessment of myself and the world around me. Inasmuch as my agency is thus reduced then so is the integrity and wholeness of my self” (98). The manic-depressive disturbance of self-unity causes the subject to figuratively break in half, thus releasing herself into a state of depersonalization. In terms of a real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s narrative, depersonalization is what reduces her agency.
In “Phenomenal Depth,” Michael Gaebler et al. explore a phenomenological dimension of depersonalization disorder. The researchers explain that phenomenal depth is “not about the intensity of (deep) feelings, but about the feeling of depth” (271). As Pupkewitz articulated, the MPDG demonstrates the “emotional depth of a teaspoon,” thus exhibiting a sign of depersonalization. Gaebler et al. write that depersonalization patients “report alterations in their sensory, self-referential, and emotional processing that can be described as a lack of relatedness in combination with reduced experiential richness” (270). Someone living an unreal life in her own mind is the truest form of a Dream Girl. She maintains a pleasant disconnectedness from the world to escape the constant threat of emotional heaviness. The one-dimensionality that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl achieves by divorcing herself from emotional involvement enables her to be high on life and numb to reality.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl Disorder is a psychological diagnosis that I derived from the precise comorbidity[20] embedded in the term. If this disorder were real, it would represent the unique concept of medicating mental illness with a mental illness. As a cure for an unstable state of mind, a young woman will imagine herself as a mere concept rather than a flawed human being with a limited amount of energy and optimism. In films, Manic Pixie Dream Girls do not have full-formed identities; in life, Manic Pixie Dream Girls do not want full-formed identities. Although a specific person has yet to exemplify this condition, I hopefully demonstrate a thought-provoking method of meaning-attainment. This study contributes to future research of the MPDG by showing that, when analyzing a cinematic concept, one should search for patterns within the cultural conversation and then think beyond them. As a storyteller who is interested in psychologically deep material, I wanted insightfully to connect the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to real life; to do so, I explored sicknesses that severely affect the lives of real people. The scope of this study alone proves that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is vastly complex; otherwise, she would not face such flagrant condemnation. Even if she only exists in cinema, the depth of her one-dimensionality deserves a level of consideration that penetrates the glass coffin.
[1] Entertainment website based in Chicago
[2] “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case Film #1: Elizabethtown”
[3] Global note: quotations without page number citations are from online texts with no page numbers.
[4] For Rabin’s list of other MPDGs, read the A.V. Club article “Wild Things: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls.”
[5] Second-wave feminist concept about gender power imbalance in film
[6] Alice is ultimately led to speculate whether she was simply a figment of a male’s (the Red King’s) imagination; her adventure was only part of someone else’s dream.
[7] Ferris’ essay focuses on films in which a female is the center of the plot, yet her life is dependent on physical transformation.
[8] In reference to the character Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Charlie Kauffman, 2004)
[9] In reference to Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, 2010)
[10] In reference to Summer from (500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009)
[11] Milder state of mania characterized by optimism and euphoria
[12] Writer for xojane.com
[13] Writer for newstatesman.com
[14] Writer for The Week
[15] 1994 Quentin Tarantino crime film
[16] Writer for The Atlantic
[17] Writer for thegonzo.co.uk
[18] The hypomania implies Bipolar II rather than the more severe Bipolar I (Campbell 133).
[19] Psychological dissociation refers to a disconnection between consciousness and identity (Campbell 804).
[20] Campbell defines comorbidity as an occurrence or existence of more than one disease at the same time in the same subject (209).
- “I like Hey Arnold! and clothing emblazoned with baby animals.”
- “I wear adorable vintage glasses and enjoy baking.”
- “On a purely superficial level, I guess you could say I match the description. My haircut is very similar to Zooey Deschanel, an actress who is often blasted as the MPDG poster girl.”
Due to the one-dimensional way in which so many women identify with this profoundly one-dimensional character, critics who exist outside the identification group criticize the term and insist that real-life identification is invalid and destructive. In “The Male Gaze and the Manic Pixie,” Somersault Magazine writer Torie DeGhett asserts that the trope is “culturally bound to that vague yet damning term: quirky.” While screenwriters like Cameron Crowe and Zach Braff are at fault for placing females in identity-devoid roles, women who identify with the “quirky” cultural definition are just as much “attempting to assign these characters their own rigid places in [their] minds” (DeGhett). Many of the women acknowledge that the MPDG exemplifies the oppression of the male gaze; yet they elaborate more on the act of being quirky. This word implies a stylized collection of idiosyncrasies that apparently encompasses panda hats, cupcake tattoos, ukuleles, etc.: in other words, a Pinterest board. The focus on quirkiness places the MPDG in a role that satisfies the cultural gaze and eschews character analysis.
Other critics agree strongly with DeGhett’s statements, proclaiming that viewers have distorted the definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the point where the term is detrimentally misused. Their general argument is that, because of this distortion, we should altogether eliminate the term from conversation. In “Why It’s Time to Retire the Term Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” Monika Bartyzel[14] writes, "MPDG is now a catch-all term for unusual interests and style," and she laments that characters such as “Pulp Fiction’s[15] Mia Wallace [were] thrown into the mix for being impulsive and having bangs.” Bartyzel’s grievance is that audiences have diminished the term’s impact by dismissing an excessive number of female characters as MPDGs for reasons that fail to analyze the person in the context of the film. I believe that Bartyzel goes wrong when she writes, “Rabin’s oft-quoted definition doesn’t actually describe the girl; it describes the audience’s experience watching her.” Although the latter half of this statement pinpoints the issue, her criticism of Rabin is erroneous; he used the term to analyze a character and is not responsible for the audience’s experience. Independent blogger Koryn Malius also disservices Rabin by going as far as to say that the term “should be banned from our vocabulary.” Furthermore, she writes that the MPDG is a “lazy, trendy concept” that “distracts us from the real problems of superficial characters” and has not led to “fruitful analyses.” Malius suggests that fruitful analyses are possible, but only if we “restrict the use of the phrase to when we are criticizing one-dimensional characters in fiction.” However, she believes that hope for worthwhile discussions has already been lost due to the mess of misusage and the resulting transitive equation that offends many women.
Despite condemnations of futility and emptiness, I found several articles and blogs that signify the depth found in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. This third category features viewers who recognize the truth in Bartyzel’s observation that the MPDG is “part of a much bigger problem that has nothing to do with the music a character listens to or the clothing a character wears.” These writers do not restrict their identification process to those elements, and they answer critics’ requests for a more serious dialogue by delving into pop psychology. Because they explore mental and emotional complexity rather than only seeing the characters on the surface, they transfer the term to real life more intelligently. They relate their own experiences to the trope to delineate how the possession of true MPDG traits powerfully affects one’s life and one’s view of oneself.
A story about a young Italian woman named Bettina epitomizes the approach that this third group takes to the MPDG. Hugo Schwyzer[16] explains that, as a boy, he once focused his romantic gaze on a winsome girl who displayed no personal depth and whose elevated mood implied a magical, carefree existence. His article, titled “The Real World Consequences of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” explains his discovery that this elevated mood is only a mask for mental illness: “Just 20, Bettina had committed suicide by jumping out a fifth-floor window. I later learned from my grandmother that Bettina had suffered from depression for years, something she never told me.” Schwyzer makes no note of Bettina’s fashion sense or haircut, but rather, he divulges his shock that his dream girl hid her psychological turmoil by creating an aura of perfect, whimsical euphoria; eventually, her mental illness overpowered her attempt to transcend depression.
In “Manic Pixie Dream Girls: Not So Fun Actually,” Reluctant Femme blog author Cassie Goodwin emphasizes how the mania implied by “Manic” connects her to the trope. She explains that she once embodied the vacantly blissful essence of the MPDG for the sake of her male lovers due to deep insecurity; she writes, “I didn’t believe anyone could love me unless I was squeezed into that box.” Goodwin’s glass coffin experience mirrors Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown, because Claire requires a bubbly mood to gain significance in the male protagonist’s journey; without her hypomanic perkiness, the male would never have accepted her presence in his life. Goodwin acknowledges that audiences have overlooked the chemical imbalance implied by Rabin’s term by “sanitizing and romanticizing erratic behavior.” Rather than observing that many women relate to the MPDG on a superficial level, she cares about how a mentally unbalanced woman may strive to attain the trope’s unhealthy behaviors. Using her own experiences with insecurity, she writes, “[T]he absolute LAST thing someone with an undiagnosed mental illness needs is an excuse to keep going exactly how they have been.” Her personal mental illness narrative proves that people can place the MPDG within a serious discourse. Reflecting upon the concept helped Goodwin articulate her own struggles.
The final person in my data, Hannah Pupkewitz,[17] describes experiences that match Goodwin’s. She writes that the behavior she witnessed in films featuring these characters influenced the lens through which she saw her own self-worth. She became convinced that if she became “a childish woman who floats through life, ethereal and fairy like, always loved,” then “life would be infinitely easier.” Pupkewitz explains that the MPDG is loved in films because her “instability is fetishized” and “her vulnerability is revered.” As a woman who grew up watching this character, Pupkewitz felt that this self-destructive behavior, veiled behind the bubbly romanticism, was necessary to being “someone who mattered.” Due to people’s ability to “project an endless list of impossible perfections onto the MPDG,” mentally insecure viewers may fall under the influence of this “hollow flat façade.” Since women like Pupkewitz find little worth in themselves, they attempt to take on the worth they see in the MPDG, only to lose their identities. If a person attempts to experience the “emotional depth of a teaspoon,” she can temporarily avoid the pain of facing herself.
Pop culture never deserved an apology from Nathan Rabin, but it received one, nonetheless. Not only did the critic express regret for creating a term that offends so many, but he also professes, “I feel deeply weird, if not downright ashamed” for creating “an unstoppable monster.” Rabin takes full responsibility for the “cliché that has been trotted out again and again in an infinite Internet feedback loop,” but that blame clearly belongs to the perpetuators of that Internet loop. The audience is the force that disfigured the term’s ingenuity and impact through misguided overuse. The critic once felt proud for identifying an issue in cinema and giving it a “catchy, descriptive name,” but culture has pressured him to develop a hatred for his brilliant idea. I say that his idea is brilliant because, if it were not indisputably “sticky,” such a crazed controversy would never have developed.
An angry mob is demanding that we burn the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a witch, because she apparently cast a spell on far too many female bloggers. This devilish enchantment no doubt compelled them to envision the MPDG as a curse that brings condemnation upon their quirky, feminine ways. I wish that this mob would calm down long enough to acknowledge the minority who are non-flamboyantly reflecting upon the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a way to therapeutically reflect upon their own motivations for unhealthy behavior. When I observed this degree of thoughtfulness, I realized the value in expanding upon the psychological application. Rabin did not intend for us to apply the MPDG to real life, but since we insist upon doing so, we should reframe the problem. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s problem does not relate to physical or behavioral descriptors; it relates to a special kind of one-dimensionality that allows her to sacrifice her identity. We should not be asking, “Why would a woman want to get a cupcake tattoo and play the ukulele?” We should be asking, “Why would a woman want to be one-dimensional?” By virtue of being human, no real person is naturally one-dimensional, but a certain kind of person would strive to achieve that status. What would a true MPDG look like if she were to exist? I believe that we can paint a more poignant picture of a hypothetical real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl by dissecting the term that incited all of this frenzy.
A pixie haircut, or perhaps petite stature, might come to mind if someone is conceptualizing the MPDG in terms of physicality; however, Rabin already did a piece of my semiotic task when he noted that “Pixie” is meant to evoke the image of a “magical, otherworldly realm” from which a tirelessly perky woman must surely hail. His use of the word “otherworldly” conveys that the MPDG does not mentally or emotionally exist in reality. The male who benefits from her presence indeed perceives her as a magical being, since she seemingly arrives in a pink bubble to color the gray mise-en-scène of his life. By studying the other words of which the term is composed, we can determine why a true Manic Pixie Dream Girl is such a fairylike creature.
While the image of a pixie places the MPDG in an ethereal sphere, the word “manic” gives her a more human dimension; therefore, she possesses a complex duality. Due to this word, the connection between the MPDG and manic-depressive mood disorder is quite evident. Jennifer Radden discusses the effects of bipolar disorder in her article, “The Self and Its Moods in Depression and Mania;” she outlines how the conflicting moods that are suffered by bipolar patients disrupt the unity of the self. Manic-depressive conditions interfere with an individual’s sense of harmony due to the confusing vacillation between elation and gloom. The contending moods rupture the individual’s grasp of identity and can result in a sense of incompleteness and an “impediment to self-knowledge and integrity” (83). While the world appears “bleak, meaningless, and without consolation” in depressive states, “the manic mood contains a sense of vitality and excitement matched by an external world that seems to brim with promise and possibility” (84). Abnormal euphoria accelerates mental activity in a way that drastically diverges from the cerebral lethargy experienced in depression, resulting in the fast-paced speech exhibited by Claire in Elizabethtown. A person who experiences debilitating fatigue at the low end of the disorder will greet the high end’s energy with enthused appreciation. Radden notes that, due to the refreshing elation, “Manic moods are agreeable and compelling, reducing motivation to change” (99). Although hypomania is euphoric to an unhealthy magnitude, an individual eager to escape a bleak world in favor of a colored one will desire to break apart from the less pleasant side of her identity.
How would this particular mental illness contribute to a MPDG lifestyle? A young woman who suffers from bipolar disorder, in an effort to mute her depressive moods, may strive to remain in a dangerously transcendent state of mind. We see in Elizabethtown that Claire remains in a hypomanic[18] state throughout all of her interactions with the male protagonist; furthermore, she insistently initiated the relationship once she recognized his need for a savior. To forget about her own depressive tendencies, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl will pursue a man who embraces his melancholy. She identifies a subject who will gratefully soak up the sunshine of her cheerful personality, and her ability to cure this blueness will negate the darker effects of her mental illness. To avoid evaluation of her own complexity, she emphasizes someone else’s complexity and simplifies herself in the process.
After noting Rabin’s interpretation of “Pixie” and analyzing the word “Manic,” I lastly probe the meaning of “Dream Girl.” Most people seem to interpret this section of the term in an objectifying manner. Both the protagonist and the audience view the woman as a “Dream Girl” because of the perfections projected upon her by the gazers. However, I argue that an MPDG is a dream girl to herself; namely, she is a girl who experiences a dissociative[19] disorder called depersonalization. Indeed, “Dream Girl” is an internally cultivated identity, not just an externally imposed one. A person with depersonalization disorder is literally living life as though in a dream; she feels that she has lost her personal identity, that she is “different, strange, or unreal” (Campbell 269). Because a Manic Pixie Dream Girl opts to accentuate the manic side of her bipolar disorder, the depersonalization is pleasant rather than alarming. Radden writes, “If my moods are unwarrantedly optimistic, they will colour my attempts at a more realistic assessment of myself and the world around me. Inasmuch as my agency is thus reduced then so is the integrity and wholeness of my self” (98). The manic-depressive disturbance of self-unity causes the subject to figuratively break in half, thus releasing herself into a state of depersonalization. In terms of a real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s narrative, depersonalization is what reduces her agency.
In “Phenomenal Depth,” Michael Gaebler et al. explore a phenomenological dimension of depersonalization disorder. The researchers explain that phenomenal depth is “not about the intensity of (deep) feelings, but about the feeling of depth” (271). As Pupkewitz articulated, the MPDG demonstrates the “emotional depth of a teaspoon,” thus exhibiting a sign of depersonalization. Gaebler et al. write that depersonalization patients “report alterations in their sensory, self-referential, and emotional processing that can be described as a lack of relatedness in combination with reduced experiential richness” (270). Someone living an unreal life in her own mind is the truest form of a Dream Girl. She maintains a pleasant disconnectedness from the world to escape the constant threat of emotional heaviness. The one-dimensionality that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl achieves by divorcing herself from emotional involvement enables her to be high on life and numb to reality.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl Disorder is a psychological diagnosis that I derived from the precise comorbidity[20] embedded in the term. If this disorder were real, it would represent the unique concept of medicating mental illness with a mental illness. As a cure for an unstable state of mind, a young woman will imagine herself as a mere concept rather than a flawed human being with a limited amount of energy and optimism. In films, Manic Pixie Dream Girls do not have full-formed identities; in life, Manic Pixie Dream Girls do not want full-formed identities. Although a specific person has yet to exemplify this condition, I hopefully demonstrate a thought-provoking method of meaning-attainment. This study contributes to future research of the MPDG by showing that, when analyzing a cinematic concept, one should search for patterns within the cultural conversation and then think beyond them. As a storyteller who is interested in psychologically deep material, I wanted insightfully to connect the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to real life; to do so, I explored sicknesses that severely affect the lives of real people. The scope of this study alone proves that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is vastly complex; otherwise, she would not face such flagrant condemnation. Even if she only exists in cinema, the depth of her one-dimensionality deserves a level of consideration that penetrates the glass coffin.
[1] Entertainment website based in Chicago
[2] “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case Film #1: Elizabethtown”
[3] Global note: quotations without page number citations are from online texts with no page numbers.
[4] For Rabin’s list of other MPDGs, read the A.V. Club article “Wild Things: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls.”
[5] Second-wave feminist concept about gender power imbalance in film
[6] Alice is ultimately led to speculate whether she was simply a figment of a male’s (the Red King’s) imagination; her adventure was only part of someone else’s dream.
[7] Ferris’ essay focuses on films in which a female is the center of the plot, yet her life is dependent on physical transformation.
[8] In reference to the character Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Charlie Kauffman, 2004)
[9] In reference to Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, 2010)
[10] In reference to Summer from (500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009)
[11] Milder state of mania characterized by optimism and euphoria
[12] Writer for xojane.com
[13] Writer for newstatesman.com
[14] Writer for The Week
[15] 1994 Quentin Tarantino crime film
[16] Writer for The Atlantic
[17] Writer for thegonzo.co.uk
[18] The hypomania implies Bipolar II rather than the more severe Bipolar I (Campbell 133).
[19] Psychological dissociation refers to a disconnection between consciousness and identity (Campbell 804).
[20] Campbell defines comorbidity as an occurrence or existence of more than one disease at the same time in the same subject (209).