What does the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ trope say about women’s place in Hollywood?
Feminist film theory flourished in the 1970s, with writers such as Laura Mulvey, Molly Haskell and Marjorie Rosen exploring the portrayal of women on screen. Mulvey’s landmark essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ took John Berger’s term ‘the male gaze’ and used it as a framework to understand the way in which female characters are positioned on screen, existing for the pleasure of male viewers. Although this concept has many flaws, with bell hooks arguing that black women are largely excluded from the male gaze in cinema, the overall concept of female characters existing for the benefit of men is still prevalent. Nothing demonstrates this better than the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope.
The term was coined by film critic Nathan Rabin, who referred to Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown as an MPDG. He wrote: “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl 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”. The character trope is most popular in romantic comedies, with the female lead often providing comic relief through her own offbeat sense of humour and interests. Throughout the course of the film, the MPDG will, in all her quirky glory, exist solely to aid the male protagonist through a tough time, enthralling him with her unusual taste in music (i.e. possessing alternative rock/indie leanings), distinctive fashion sense, and atypical mannerisms. The hard-luck male, in turn, embraces the full spice of life. His arc is complete, while the female’s sole role is to initiate that curve.
A great example of an MPDG is Natalie Portman’s Samantha in Garden State. Depicted as ‘not like other girls’, Samantha loves The Shins, is effortlessly beautiful, and acts unpredictably, which draws the attention of Zach Braff’s Andrew, a struggling actor. Over the course of the movie, Samantha’s mysterious yet exciting nature serves as the catalyst for Andrew’s development and rediscovery of purpose. Yet we never learn much about Samantha’s character, and her one-dimensional appearance in the movie only serves to move the narrative of Andrew’s life forward.
When an MPDG appears on screen, it becomes abundantly clear that a man has clumsily written her, forgetting that women are actually multi-faceted beings who exist for themselves. Writer Laurie Penny articulated the dangers of the MPDG trope in an essay for the New Statesman. She wrote, “Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story,” whereas “women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else’s”. Cinema acts as a mirror to society. By stereotyping female characters as aids to men rather than as their own autonomous beings, these ideas are perpetuated in real life, which is subsequently reflected back onto the screen.
However, many quirky characters have been mislabelled as MPDGs, which can often do more harm than good. Notably, Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) from the 1977 film of the same name often receives the MPDG label, perhaps due to the dominance of Alvy’s (Woody Allen) perception of her within the film, her quirky dress sense and general eccentricities. Yet, it can be argued that her character defies the trope. Not only does she leave Alvy, deciding that their relationship isn’t working, but she consistently expresses her own ambitions and interests, which she pursues regardless of her partner.
Therefore, the overuse of the term MPDG often becomes misogynistic, signalling a failure to recognise that a woman can (really!) take an interest in rock music or unusual clothing. Actor and writer Zoe Kazan once suggested (via Vulture), “to lump together all individual, original, quirky women under that rubric is to erase all difference”. This is symbolic of not only how women are written within cinema but just how difficult it is to shift the male gaze from a viewing perspective.
To address this, Kazan wrote Ruby Sparks in 2012, a film that directly attacks the notion of the MPDG. She plays the eponymous character, the fictional creation of Calvin (Paul Dano), an author who realises he can write his dream woman, and she’ll appear in front of him. Over the course of the film, Calvin becomes more and more controlling, making Ruby do anything he pleases, which eventually backfires. Ruby is purposefully one-dimensional – at least at the start. Thus, the movie rehashes the fact that women are not there for men to use for their benefit, despite the MPDG trope trying to prove otherwise.
Luckily, since the trope has been called out in the media, its prevalence in cinema has lessened, although it has not been completely eradicated. Most recently, Margot Robbie’s Valerie in 2022’s Amsterdam has been labelled a 1930s MPDG. So, what’s the answer to eradicating the trope and replacing her with fleshed-out, complex female characters? More diversity. If more women were given the chance to create films (in 2020, only 29.6% of screenwriters were women), then female characters would undoubtedly avoid the cliches that so many male writers fall into.
