Manic Pixie Dream Girls

[moon_custafer]

Full disclosure: I suspect that if my life were a movie, critics would be dismissing my character as just another Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Which sometimes leads me to ponder the trope -- one conclusion I've come to is that the MPDG tends to be identified based on her appearance rather than her story function -- which IMO means there's a lot of mis-identification going on.

If we agree that the MPDG's classic role is to get the uptight hero to relax and appreciate life -- then Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the *opposite* of a MPDG -- her role is to make Scott grow up (for certain values of "grow up"). Also, she's dour rather than manic. But she's cute and "indie"-looking (related question which I don't currently feel qualified to get into -- are there any PoC MPDGs?), and therefore she gets held up as an example of the trope.

You know who I think is a prime example of the trope? Maude, in Harold and Maude. But she's seventy-nine. It might also be that it's an older movie; no one ever seems to cite all the heroines of 'thirties screwball comedy either (Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby? Now *there's* a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.) There might, however, be another reason why Maude doesn't necessarily ping as an MPDG, and it still has to do with her age. Having lived to seventy-nine -- and a quick, wordless moment also establishes her as a Holocaust survivor -- her love of Life can be read as read as the hard-won wisdom of someone who's gone through hell and come out the other side. Or as some form of PTSD. Either way, it's not naiveté. Basically, she's Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.)

Which leads me to wonder about the male version of this trope, which I guess is The Wise Fool? Is he ok because he has no romantic entanglements and therefore can't be dismissed as just an adjunct to another character? Would a quirky female character be ok as long as the story revolved around her Fighting Crime or something, or would she then just get tossed into the drawer marked Mary Sue?

Comments

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I think maybe the difference is that the MPDG doesn't have a back story; she's entirely define by her manic dreaminess, here and now, whereas the Wise Fool is the Wise Fool because of Reasons, and the exploration of those reasons is generally a large part of his plot, as in The Fisher King (the Gilliam movie, rather than the legend); Williams' character is there to help Bridges' character evolve, but we also learn about his own story, and there is as much redemption for the Wise Fool as there is for the cynic learning from him.

So I think if the MPDG had a back-story an a journey of her own, rather than being a plot device with no past and no future, it would be rather different.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I suppose -- but a number of the characters that I, at least, count as Wise Fools (Elwood P. Dowd, frex) don't have explicit backstories either.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

It's a long time since I've watched Harvey (I'm not sure I've seen it all the way through) but doesn't Elwood explain how he met Harvey? In any case, he has a journey, he's not stuck in the moment, as MPDGs seem to be.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

There's an occasional wistfulness to Elwood ("My mother once told me to succeed in this world you must be oh so clever, or oh so pleasant. I've been clever; I recommend pleasant") that to me hints that at some point in the past he went through something catalyzing; and that Harvey wasn't necessarily what pulled him through, but his reward for making it through.

But again, none of this is particularly explicit in the text, so I wonder what we might be overlooking in the average MPDG character that could be uncovered by a closer reading.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I guess I think of the typical MPDG as totally lacking in introspection; she's not there as a character, but as a tool, so we don't try to get to know her better, we don't talk about her thoughts or feelings or motivations, only about the way she acts on the man she's there to enlighten.
Admittedly, MPDGs annoy me enough that I don't generally watch the movies/read the books, so this may not be an entirely accurate impression; I have a book currently sitting on my nightstand until I decide what to do with it, having given up reading it because the MPDG element so so strong, it felt like being beaten around the head with a penis, and I just couldn't.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The MPDG drifts over into the fay-creature territory if she's unknowable as a human person (i.e., all we know about her are her exteriorities and her behavior without any sense of what motivates her, where she comes from, what she wants, etc.). That has problems, but not really gender ones: the problem with this type of character is that for them to maintain mysteriousness and Otherness, we can't really get to know them . . . which means they can't be as complete as other types of characters. They can be observed, but we can't really get inside them--or rather, it takes a real virtuoso performance to get us inside one and *not* sacrifice the wonder.

I think Maude doesn't fall into that category because you have a sense of her with her own life and wants and internal life quite apart from Harold. The [male focused] movie focuses on her catalyzing effect on Harold, but I don't think she's the mere cipher that a lot of MPDGs are.