Jack in Titanic is a Manic Pixie Dream Boy. I will die on this hill. There’s even an old fan theory that Jack isn’t real, he’s just a figment of Rose’s imagination and that’s why he “can’t fit on the door” and there’s no record of him ever existing. He fits all your criteria for MPDG though: we know nothing about his inner life, he is a poor guy who comes into a rich sad girl’s life and teaches her to have joy, he rescues her from her depression, her creepy fiancé and drowning in the North Atlantic but has no arc of his own. He has no family, his friends are superficial, he is an “artist” who somehow has been bumming around France. But most of all his entire personality is his impact on Rose. We don’t read Jack that way because Titanic is sort of an action movie (ish) and we assume male characters are the lead characters in action movies but Titanic is entirely Rose’s story and is about her needing to grow up and make her own life.
I used to think this was great counter example, but I like Biz’s argument about how characters appropriately represented via their historical class structure negates the trope. Yes, we get the story through Rose’s view and no, we don’t know much of Jack’s inner world. But, each character’s behavior is appropriately rooted in class. Also, they get like, a day or two on a boat?
@@courtneybrock1 I really encourage you to rewatch Titanic if you haven’t seen it recently. They are together for a few days on the boat but the lasting impact on Rose changes the rest of her life. This isn’t just her story about Titanic but about how Jack saved her “in every way it is possible to be saved.” When I try to think of other examples I realized there aren’t many and the ones who are closest are all 90s movies.
@@courtneybrock1 I would say that Jack's behavior is not representative of his class, the same way that the behavior of manic pixie dream girls isn't either. He probably does not have much more then what's in his bag and no apparent plan as to what he wants to do in America, but he seems entirely unconcerned with his financial reality, cheerfully embracing life instead of being brought down by worries.
Money absolutely buys happiness. Do you have a hobby? Well, most of those cost money. Any entertainment aside from walking* around wherever you currently are is going to cost you money. Most importantly, money is a shield that protects you from the misery and trauma that the lack of money brings. *also, if you have a disability, it might be pretty expensive to go for a stroll because american healthcare.
@@Skag_SisyphusIf the way I read it is correct, OP isn't disagreeing. They're saying "sure you might have some points about excessive wealth not correlating with happiness, but a basic level of money can be so life changing that the 'happiness' point is moot."
@@Skag_Sisyphus I think 'how' people get money matters more than the money itself. 'passive income' and living off the unwashed masses sweat and labor can be taken for granted more than someone who struggles everyday and just wants to have some peace. Just getting out of the rat race would be a dream come true, no fancy accoutrements, vacations, luxury life needed
I actually never understood the whole "Money doesn't make you happy"-thing as: "Having money is not important at all, so be content with poverty" but "Don't try to fill the hole in your life with the pursuit of excess riches" You know, not the people who work 60 hours+ a week, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to feed themselves, but all these weird hustle culture types who work 60 hours+ a week because of some almost religious devotion to the concept of hard work. In that case I would say the statement is correct. As we live in a capitalist society, we do need money to cover our basic needs and not having them covered is a big source of anxiety, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs isn't "physiological - safety- Lamborghini" and still way to many people see the accumulation of unnecessary wealth as a solution to their psychological suffering.
@Skag_Sisyphus i am a firm beliver in the fact that the people who preach "money doesnt buy you happiness" has expendable wealth, and has been for a while. People who struggle to make ends meet, put food on the table, etc. Money for them would buy security, which does lead to happiness. If you always had more than enough money and never worried about security youd never think money correlates to happiness, because lack of money causes lack of security, higher stress, more health issues, more risk of a myriad of insecurities, all of which could be solved by just having enough money.
to quote an edith södergren verse. You sought a flower and found a fruit. You sought a well and found an ocean. You sought a woman and found a soul - You are disappointed.
I mean, I love all this, but, like, seawater will kill you if you try to drink it whereas wellwater is supposed to be potable so i think THAT would be ok to feel disappointment over XD meanwhile if i sought a well and found a reservoir lake I'd be thrilled (but obviously that's not as catchy for a poem)
@Stonehawk I think that adds to it. What you found wasn't made for you. It was always its own thing, not designed to fit your needs just because you were looking
@@Stonehawk the poem isn't about finding something useful, but about finding something that doesn't meet your expectations. Searching for a flower and finding a fruit would be finding someone more developed than you want. Finding an ocean instead of a well is finding a body of water that maintains itself, instead it of needing and supporting you. Wells don't keep water unless drawn from, abandoned wells dry up. The sea could swallow you whole and not even notice.
Hearing you talk about the fact that we never get the girl's inner life and thoughts makes me want a classic boy coming of age book. You have him chasing after the manic pixie dream girl but suddenly half way through the book we get a Gone Girl style twist and we go into her POV and see her family, her friends, her life, but also just this guy that never asks about any of it.
Im imagining this and my mind goes house of leaves? ... An "official" biographical text of one of them intervened by journal entries, transcripts, notes? Until the official text feels incomplete & incapable of telling the full story that these "ephemera" can?
the john green comment was so real because i love so much of what he does, and then theres also theres just the mpdg waving from the corner also the quote "the problem with the manic pixie dream girl is that she is not explored as a character, only her impacts are explored as a character" is BARS
Actually, that is a good point. If read heterosexually, he has built his whole life around Daisy, is explicitly some blast from the past with no defined past except cultivating himself for Daisy, and takes himself out when things happens and that becomes impossible. If read homosexually, Jay Gatsby is the only person Nick likes, helps him to appreciate the nuances of people more and once again basically has no past, and still dies at the end, and still chases after Daisy. It may certainly be unusual, but Jay Gatsby is probably the closest to a literary MPDG.
Shit homie, Gatsby is a dude with manic depression watching two Manic Pixie Dream Girls (both Jay and Daisy) not have sex for an entire year and then Jay dies. It's wild.
Stargirl is such a perfect example of the perspective issue. In the first book, Stargirl is very much a MPDG because she's almost treated as this mystical, otherworldly creature that will come in and fix the main character's life. They're clearly bad for each other, but it doesn't matter because the story is entirely from the guy's perspective. In the end, she teaches him his life lesson and disappears from his life forever. He learns not to care what other people think, the end. In the second book - Love, Stargirl - she is not a MPDG because it's from her perspective. She feels the aftermath of the first book's events and still pines over the guy, but she also goes and does other things with her life, forms new relationships, and grows just as much as she helps others grow. And yet, her overall characterization is very much the same as the first book. So the question of "is Stargirl a MPDG" is irrelevant because it's not about the character herself, it's about the framing of the story around her.
I have a turbulent relationship with the manic pixie girl because I felt 'seen' by it as a 'weird, thinker-y, intense girl'. As a teenager, it was very validating to see women who were not hot in a glamorous quote unquote 'shallow' way, be desired and seen as life changing. But I was also highly aware it was a fantasy for me to play into that as my appeal; most importantly because mpdg are played by absolutely stunning actresses and it was not lost on me that their 'niche, but deep' draw was probably largely because of that, and not cause they had bangs or read or made kooky observations or played the ukulele (will never forgive Colleen Ballinger for the bad PR). I wanted to be, and in some ways felt I was, like them. But despite them being 'mental illness coded' they didn't really display it in any real way, mentally ill people generally arent fearless without a caveat or titalingly mysterious enough but not difficult, no person is without real demands in a relationship - it was beyond my grasp despite how well I felt it fit me as a framing device. TLDR is that MPDGs were helpful to my self image as a teenage girl who felt 'different' in a way guys would and did not understand, but it was an oversimplification because they are, it was like trying to fit a Ramona Flowers shaped peg in a me sized hole - it's not that real girls don't measure up, the trope is not made for real girls. (Sorry for the dissertation lol)
No need to apologize for something that is so thoughtfully written and meaningful. I actually paused the video to read your comment with the attention it deserves. It's a good perspective and I somewhat share the same experience. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts
This is exactly what I was thinking watching, but about being undiagnosed neurodivergent as well as the trauma part. It's such unfair PR for that too cause no way trauma survivors behave as perfectly at all times and it's such a bad shock for the people projecting the trope aha
@@fu_bi oh absolutely yes. if i knew that some of their traits could be attributed to neurodivergence and not just vague hand-wavey 'difference' it would have saved me a lot of time lol, as someone who is now being assessed for autism. it was quantifiable difference and not just quirkiness! the whole time!
This is how I feel about MPDGs as well. I lived seeing characters I could relate to, even if they were idealistic/unrealistic. My parents were pretty aggressive about remembering movies/Hollywood/actors aren't real, so thankfully I didn't feel pressure to fit the mold. But I used to love daydream about what these girls did outside the worlds of their movies. Anyway, I think this is also why some people get so defensive about *their* MPDG.
I'm pretty sure we don't have Manic Pixie Dream Boys because those are just a type of Bad Boy (drawing sheltered girls into an exciting new world where they discover different kinds of agency etc etc). The Edward Cullen bit got close to this, but the crucial difference between Bad Boy (Generic) and Bad Boy (Manic Pixie) is whether the story is about the girl fixing/taming him. I submit Christian Slater in Heathers for Manic Pixie Bad Boy. I also submit San Junipero for a lesbian MPDG.
JD in heathers kinda varies by the version. Id agree with the movie version, but the musical actually delves a decent amount into why he thinks the way he does.
I Don't Know Which One Is Love is not only a lesbian MPDG story, bur one where every single one of the five initial love interests are at least Manic Pixie adjacent
Need a Magic Pixie Dream Daddy. A cool carefree baggage-less man with a salt-and-pepper beard. Inexplicably retired early, has his own home. Who teaches you self respect, how to do your taxes, and holds your hand during physical extracurricular activities.
"It's a perspective problem." I think that is an incredibly insightful way of approaching it that I had not considered. I think the reason guys want to defend their favorite is because they think you are saying something is wrong with the woman character that they like or a person they are reminded of. That's not the point, and you put that very eloquently. Clementine is my favorite, but your point about the film's primary framing is well taken. We only see her when she is either with him or when she is breaking down at Elijah Wood.
yeah the problem with MPDG is that they are undeveloped. the minute you develop them, make them the main character, give them their own wants and fears and actual inner thoughts and perspectives its no longer a MPDG, its just a quirky girl who has anxieties like the rest of us.
@@lunasperidot8760…but not in regards to the CHILD, and also - women who refuse to take the caretaking role is always written as being WORSE, morally, than men who refuse
@@phastinemoon Yes in regards to the child. Two cooperative parents will always be superior to one doing most of the legwork. You are 100% correct about women refusing to caretake though. I just wanted to point out that the woman in Anatomy very clearly is very much not faultless. its why the film is so good.
@@lunasperidot8760 I didn't read her as not taking care of the child at all. I got the impression that the dad got into more detail about stuff that he did but it was because he wanted to? And considering men don't have the same level of social pressure to take caretaking roles, I think it's fair to say he actually wanted to take more time with his kid. I think she was definitely cold and in that sense her relationship with her husband wasn't great, so I agree she wasn't faultless, but I don't think she opted out of child care. I do think she very much didn't act as a "therapist" for her husband as many gf/wifes do, but that's another subject (where to draw the line between normal emotional intimacy and "emotion labor" or smth along those lines).
@@altertopias I mean, he pretty explicitly asks her for more help when caring for their child and she just kind of shuts him down and says "you asked for this, just work it out to make it less stressful for you, that's what I do."
I'm a naturally hyperactive and cheerful individual. And every guy I've been romantically involved, even though they didn’t use the word "manic pixie dream girl", they viewed me as one. With the first guy i was ever involved with being diagnosed with bipolar. In my experience it's depressing because when i went through seasons of depression and declining mental health it felt like they weren't there for me like i was for them. They became disgusted at my sadness, and would look at me with an irritated face when I would seek comfort from talking about what made me sad. I was always supposed to be happy. With one guy explicitly saying that he doesn't like being around depressed people, because they ruin hes vibe.
i feel you. I'm also diagnosed with bipolar. One ex leaved me because in a depressive episode I confide with her that I wanted to "quit the videogame". Immediately she said she couldn't be with me. I understand is hard, but at the same time I found that all that was cruel. Being perceived as this greater than life person to a little pathetic thing is sad. Obviously I understand that me being perceived as male makes things different (mostly in my favour I guess), but at the same time having this disorder made me be seen less than an human, a phantasy for some or a terrible being. Rose tainted glasses in the highs, blindness and desperation in the lows.
"With one guy explicitly saying that he doesn't like being around depressed people, because they ruin hes vibe." Motherfucker _who died and made YOU God?!??!_
I have the exact same story. I hated that the guys I was with always saw me as more of an idea than an actual person, it's been exhausting feeling like I have to keep up the image after all these years. It's why I prefer being alone now.
As an ADHDer myself, I agree with your point about it SO much. I come across as a manic pixie so many times, men are intrigued and engage in the pursuit. But they never care to take care of the consequences of a neurodivergence like that: the emotional disregulstion, the troubled living conditions it comes from, etc.
Eh, while I'd tend to agree with the majority of the video; I'd argue (perhaps not with full conviction, but nevertheless) that Joel didn't _need_ the fantasy of Clementine to grow as a person, but rather he needed to _let go_ of it. That it's not until he _discards_ the fantasy and actually sees her as a real person, with all her real faults and virtues, that he would be capable of growing up and forming a healthy relationship. I think that's where the subversion/deconstruction really takes place. And, of course, one cannot subvert or deconstruct a trope without referencing the trope, not unless there's something to subvert/deconstruct.
That wasn't my takeaway from it. It seems many people took the ending to mean that they had learned from thier mistakes and got a second chance to do it over. The film talks about philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche whose idea was the Eternal Return. He says, "If you had to live your life over again, endlessly repeating for eternity, with not one single thing changed, would you consider it the greatest blessing or the greatest curse?" I think that is the point of the movie, there is no happy ending for them, but that's ok.
As a lesbian, I've been MPDGed in a relationship, and it was fundamentally shocking to me. She didn't know me, just had this idea of me that she assumed was right. Just assumed that because I was incredibly depressed I'd be SO happy to talk about her suicidal urges, assumed because I loved music that I MUST have super obscure taste, assumed that because I had been a nerd I couldn't also have had a punk and anime and cringe youtuber phase. She also, interestingly enough, used me to learn a lesson about standing up for herself. Still one of the worst relationships I've ever had.
I made a post about this on the Dimension 20 reddit but in the third season of Fantasy High (a dnd actual play show) they had a bit that I believe actually perfectly deconstructed the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope by having her be an actual trap for one of the male villains who was the definition of "brooding". She was a constructed identity that was literally built for him, not to save him but to spy on him and manipulate him. It was the perfect way to see this trope, where the girl is actually fake and is used as a psychological weapon. It's also absolutely hilarious. Wanda Childa will live forever. Edit: Now I'm thinking i want to see someone take it further. Write an actual horror story or psychological thriller where the manic pixie dream girl is a trap for some "soulful" guy who thinks women exist to validate his existence.
Honestly, every character Emily Axford plays in D&D has a little bit of MPDG energy (minus Sofia Lee), like the perfect outside perspective MPDG, and inside perspective she's actually very well developed just a little odd, but getting to the full version of a very manic, pixie sized, literal dream, girl in Wanda Childa created this premise of the anxiety about MPDGs which is the fact that they can't be real, and no matter which way you spin it, in real life they will be showing you a lie or you will perceive them in a lie they are not telling, and either way the person on the other end will get hurt when they see the truth, and I'd like to see people explore the ending effects of that sort of thinking even further
That's just a twist, not a deconstruction. What is it saying about the MBDG? That she's a "trap" for us, the audience to manipulate our emotions in the story? If it's not saying anything about the phenomenon, then it's not a deconstruction. That was like the whole point of this video, just pointing out that a character is a MBDG in the text doesn't change anything.
With 500 Days, I feel like we get an equal understanding of both Tom and Summer's lives, which is pretty shallow and basic outside what needs to be developed in the context of their relationship. We don't know anything about Tom except that he wants to be an architect and is a hopeless romantic, and Summer is predictably avoidant and non-committal because she witnessed a troubling divorce of her parents at a young age. The whole story just seems like two young naive people in their 20's without too much life direction who end up hooking up and dating for a few months but break up because they aren't right for each other and one is way more attached than the other. The movie was a pretty good story about the tragic nature of "situationships" and it was obviously very effective in polarizing an audience that quickly divides up between relating to/empathizing with either Tom or Summer (to be clear: they were both troubled and emotionally immature).
I watched the whole video and didn't hear you mention Manic Pixie Dream Wife, my favorite MPDG media and one I think you'd find worth a watch. It's a short scripted series on UA-cam about a man who married his MPDG and can't handle living with her antics. The part that makes it subversive is also a major spoiler, but I feel like it's not too much of a spoiler to say that the last episode is her telling the story from her own POV, and it really highlights that POV problem. It's an interesting take on the genre.
My best friend (both femme presenting) and I were friends with a man for about a year before he told us that we were real people. That he used to think of us as characters, but we were real people. I think about it all the time.
I was friends with a man on and off for over 10 years. We grew up together from teens to adults. During year 9 he acknowledged that I’m real and that it’s okay that I do unexpected things that don’t line up with his vision of me because I’m my own person 😐 before that, it was always a giant fight where he’d tell me who I am supposed to be and try to shut down any discussion to the contrary.
love referring to it as a perspective problem. I think the reason people feel the need to so staunchly defend their fave mpdg and give reasons why she’s supposedly a subversion is a lack of nuance in a lot of the conversations around the trope. a lot of the time it gets boiled down to mpdg = all bad all the time, but just because the perspective of the main male character is lacking and tends to only see her as a concept, doesn’t mean we as an audience aren’t allowed to relate to the some of the parts of her that we get to see. I know lots of neurodivergent folk in particular see the “kooky” stuff and relate to that and also admire the mpdg’s supposed fearlessness and confidence that allows her to be as weird as she wants in literally every situation. like the mpdg does not have to mask…ever. but you can appreciate those things about the character while still acknowledging that they are in fact a manic pixie dream girl. you don’t have to throw everything out in the trash. ideally we would get some female characters written to be weirdos but also get to see their rich inner worlds and see them as people, but then they wouldn’t be manic pixie dream girls anymore, because the trope fundamentally boils down to the main male characters shitty point of view
I would guess that the MPDG doesn't care about working, class, or her job as an easy answer to the fear that men have around their status as breadwinners in relationships. If she cared about her work/success/money, then what role would he have to take on in their relationship? Just...a loving and supportive partner? 👀 no way!!
i think my fav manic pixie dream girl is Stargirl. the book not the movie. the total disconnect from the male pov, to the girl herself. its like the perfect example of why he should never be with her, because they are so different. not that he needs to learn all the stuff to get the girl, he needs to learn at leas some of the stuff to grow as a person sure. but to me, its blatantly obvious that the two should not be together for the happiness of both. a bird and fish basically. you cannot shed what you fundamentally are to become something else and be with someone. but that does not mean you cannot learn something from someone so different from you. a nice lesson i thought. anyway is there a movie or a book that tells people be your own manic pixie dream girl for when you need it. also see people as people not ideas conveniently placed in your path for your benefit. they can be a person and hey you can still learn about life ether from them or with that. isn't that just humanity anyway?
I think you totally nailed it on the head when you pointed out these “subversions” aren’t subversions but just an acknowledgement of being there, some sort of self awareness of what’s happening, but no actual subversion. This isn’t abt MPDG, but I was reading this book called The Southern Bookclubs Guide to Slaying Vampires, and I encountered the same thing. It had a bunch of surface level, female characters who are simply exaggerated archetypes of women in media (of the time), black character stereotypes, and it’s “messaging” didn’t go beyond “misogyny = bad” or “racism = bad” lmao. It all made sense when I realized it was written by a white man. So often I see people talk about subverting tropes when all they’re doing is writing them the same, with a wink and a nod like hehe I know what I’m doing here
MPDGs are very neurodivergent coded. Which yeah. As a neurodivergent person, I have to not care about money because I'm disabled enough that I can't really work.
A lot of MPDG are ND coded, I agree. I was also typecast into that role by a couple of my exes though because they didn't reciprocate what I gave to the relationship (when they both actually needed therapy and working on themselves instead of wearing me down with all the emotional labor).
biz: these workin' boys are tired. me: haha funny, workin' boys, that's like in the musi-- a whole clip of robert manion: WORKIN' BOYS WE'RE UP TO OUR ASS IN SHIT!
The classic screwball comedies from the 30s actually feature some really excellent female characters. Myrna Loy in the Thin Man is one of the great comedy performances in American film history and I'll die on that hill. A lot of them obviously aren't, but it was the 1930s. Women in France still couldn't vote. She performs a somewhat similar role to the MPDG, she's an heiress and her husband is a former NYPD(?) detective. He just wants to drink and enjoy her money, but she craves adventure and is also a moral center. Watching especially the first couple films, or in the book, she's just as fleshed out as her husband. It's a comedic murder mystery, not a drama, these aren't tortured Tarkovsky characters, but they're fun, well-rounded, and mutually respectful.
I really enjoyed this video, BUT, ngl, the part about MPDG not translating to queer stories because queerness requires a level of introspection is batshit to me. Granted, I live in a bit of a bubble where noticing, knowing, or caring about cis/hets is usually optional for me… but I could not agree less with this one point. I think getting MPDG’d by a queer person in real life is just another example of the queer stories that have not yet been represented in mass media. I know so many queer people who feel completely free to 100% dehumanize anyone they met once and feel attracted to (as an expression of some twisted version of romance, no less), that I’ve mostly been traumatized out of dating by the phenomenon. So no, I’d say it’s far from unrealistic.
when you mentioned manic pixie dream boy as a possibility i tried to think of what could be a contender for the title and what came to mind for me was heath ledger in 10 things i hate about you. haven’t watched it in a while but i think he’s also lower economic class than julia stiles character, does kooky things with her like the paint fight or whatever, then eventually helps her grow to getting over her man hating persona and showing vulnerability again with the final poem, all without ever really revealing much of his inner world. is this anything ?? you mentioned it would generally not work with a woman lead and a male MPDG bc the woman is already expected to know how to care about someone else’s perspective, but she’s basically explicitly said to hate men which we learn is a result of being hurt in the past so this is the challenge for her character to overcome in order to find love and happiness
I feel like the sapphic version of this is a protagonist who previously thought she was straight meets what we'll call the Manic Pixie Dream Lesbian who is already out, has been out for a long time, and is the protag's entrée into this new wonderful magical world, and the whole narrative revolves around the protag's feelings about her own sexuality, etc., and the MPDL's inner world is irrelevant and not explored or only explored as a counterpoint to the protag's; she exists primarily for what she can teach the protag about herself. Of course I'm not sure I can actually name examples of this although it feels like a real dynamic that happens in fiction and irl but, citation needed. What's coming to mind is Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" and Willow/Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, particularly in S4, where Tara is more of a cipher. It's been a very long time since I watched it but I feel like Jenny's female love interests in the first couple of seasons of the original L Word also have this tendency. (Shane, otoh, I think *is* the MPDL for lots of women, but since we're in her pov, it's not really this trope, as you, I think successfully, argue.)
I submit that the closest you can get to a manic pixie dream boy is Christian Bale in the Newsies, or Niel Perry from Dead Poet Society. The sort of "Dreamer," type who helps the boring normie live an adventure!
Well I feel like Kal ho naa ho had a manic pixie dream boy who fulfilled all the criteria. He shows up with no job, fixes all of the main girl’s problems, we never really learn anything about his inner world and then he spoiler alert dies. I think he is less quirky than a regular manic pixie dream girl but he is still very strange. I guess the girl Naina is still the one with the trauma because she’s still healing from her father’s suicide. But Naina fits the depressed boy mold perfectly. I would say she is one of the most well written women from early 2000s bollywood. Aman the manic pixie dream boy is fun to watch but we never really learn anything about him.
Omg I'm so glad someone mentioned it! Kal Ho Naa Ho is one of my favorite movies and its the perfect 'flip' of the trope. I've been obsessed with SRK ever since 🤞
Raj in DDLJ isn’t quite a MPDB but he’s MPDB-adjacent. We do know his background and meet his father but we have the class differences, the teaching Simran to experience life, the standing in the mustard flowers with a mandolin.
The only way a guy won't go incel from finding out he can't love his idea of you is by figuring it out himself. Once again proving that it's not your job to fix him!
as someone who has moved well past my john green days, even i remember when he was like paper towns is supposed to subvert the mpdg trope in LFA, and i was like, did it?? she’s even less of a character in this book. at least alaska existed as a messy character. margot or whatever brought what’s his face on a exciting trip and only shows up at the end to kiss him??
What properly ripped down the trope for me was Addison Grace's song "Manic Pixie Dream Girl", describing his shitty boyfriend shoving him into the MPDG role as an impressionable teenager to make the boyfriend's life more interesting, and how much better life is out of that role and away from him. Once you've seen things from that perspective, there's no turning back. Note: Addison is transmasc, the song was written before he hatched.
for about 5 years after the scott pilgrim movie came out, too many people in my life called me their "ramona" (actual exes or ex-friends or acquaintances alike) like it's not actually really gross and without any self-awareness of what that actually implies about them than me. it made me so fucking angry.
Even those of us who were diagnosed and treated for our adhd much younger were still made into MPDG until we could figure out how a healthy relationship would work for us and find someone who would reciprocate that and see us as whole people instead of NPCs in their lives
There is a version of Manic Pixie Dream Boy who exists, but in sort of the opposite way, like they exist to be changed and loved by a girl. Think of like Edward from Twilight or any evil dude idolized on tumbler or serial killers people find hot, basically any boy with a lot a trauma, the fantasy is that they'd only change for you and they've never loved/been loved by anyone else enough to bother changing, this trope is sort of deconstructed as well in Dimension 20: Misfits and Magic with a character named Evan Kelmp who has lived through a lot of real tragedy and meets this very emo girl who falls in love with his "darkness" which he hates about himself and he has to literally explain "I am not a character" to get her to back off, in the end she is the one that changes and they fall in love with each other for who they really are once this perspective is gone
You're hitting the nail on the head with this one, especially the point of how manic pixie dream girls aren't written to be characters onto themselves, but as a force of teaching the protagonist a lesson. They recently made a Scott Pilgrim anime which was supposed to be a sorta alternative retelling of the movie and the comic. In it, Scott is missing for most of the show and we follow Ramona instead. Let me tell you, I was so incredibly frustrated that even without Scott in the picture, every action Ramona does is motivated by finding him. She goes through her own character arc and grows as a person, but in the end it's still for Scott. I feel like script writers heard the complaints on how much of a MPDG Ramona is, but they still refused to give her depth. If they did, she'd realize how useless Scott is and there'd be no story to tell lol. You're right, MPDG is just not able to be subverted, because the subversion is just cold sad reality. And while a story about a useless man learning that he doesn't need a dream girl to grow up would be personally interesting to me as a woman, I doubt men who consume MPDG media would enjoy that. They did it in the Barbie movie and look what kinda reaction that got out of them lol.
I disagree. Yes, she does it "for scott", but anime itself acknowledges multiple times it's weird shes doing it for the guy she just met and it's very much an implication reason she does this is not for this guy, its to get to live out her own columbo dream. Not seeing this is just seeing Ramona as what you expect her to be. It's not scott that matters, its the fact that her life is in shambles, and picking up this thread of investigation that fell into her hands allows her to finally feel like she takes on control and not just floating around. You can actually see her get in touch with herself through the anime, her problem is not growing up, it's needing to stop running away and ground herself. She just picked up a random opportunity to be something she always wanted, plus specifics of genre being low key comedy makes a lot of stuff around her non sensical anyways.
The part about men not learning the 'she's a real person lesson's in real life is so real. It also puts into perspective how manic pixie dream girl media present a situation where a male main hero of said media achieves success by learning this quite basic fact. Men be literally singing their own praises and writing books for the most basic knowledge and self growth they manage to achieve and acquire
the Graphic novel of Blue is the warmest is very much worth it. it's a more linear story, where it's the blue colored hair girl reading the "main character"'s diary
When you initially brought up Clementine as a manic pixie dream girl, I was like, ahhh hell no, you didn't just go there. All the markings are present, the colored hair, the, dare I say, *manic* spontaneity, her bizarre (quirky) art. But it is clear that all of this pixie girl energy is coming from a broken, fully-developed person that is grasping out at everything and anything to subvert the pain. She's reaching out to Joel in an attempt to heal herself, gets nothing in return (Joel can be quite the selfish prick), lashes out and finally leaves in every sense of the word. But you are correct that the majority of what we see of Clementine is coming only from Joel's (highly distorted) memories. In the one of the first scenes, we hear Joel's inner monologue *"Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?"* Because you're trying to find something (or someone) to fix you. Clementine is Joel's MPDG, a point made crystal clear when he conjures an image of her apologizing for erasing him from her memory. As more and more of his memory is erased, Joel gets a glimpse of just how ugly he was at times. It isn't until he has had the majority of Clementine (his perceptions of Clementine) scrubbed from his memory that she tells him *“I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive'…but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.”* Which is exactly what he ended up doing. Seeing less of who she was and more of what he wanted her to be. Yes, we ended up spending most of the film watching this relationship exclusively through Joel's perspective. But I can picture another movie where we would have seen it all through Clementine's eyes. No excuses, Joel comes off as a complete shitheel many times, but real relationships are about both people growing. Clementine undergoes what I'd imagine to be a similar experience as Joel, albeit offscreen. Yes, Joel's Clementine is a total MPDG, but Clementine is not. I'd die on this hill. There is a complexity to these characters, their relationship, the very nature of all relationships, portrayed in such a way that I can't characterize this as a screwball, manic pixie dream girl film.
First time here, great video. I would argue that the only media I know of that actually uses the manic pixie dream girl trope and manages to successfully subvert it is Gone Girl. But I haven't thought about it that hard so don't sue me if I'm wrong.
I can't think of any media that use it, but I think your queer section not touching on transition at all is a bit of a shame because like. You know who do choose to live a more socially and economically precarious life to be more fulfilled, and then have someone else, coasting through in an emotionless blur of what they were expected to do, see that and realize it's the life they should be on? Trans women.
in fact, it's an entire point of discussion in the community. It's very natural to be drawn to the person who lit up your life, but it's equally natural for that to become obsessive, or to give the girl who cracked your egg power over you that she never asked for and probably isn't prepared to deal with. I don't think this is a subversion, at least as you're defining it (I think the manic pixie dream girl as a culturally understood trope and as as a figure of feminist criticism are categories that diverge, but that's beside the point) but saying that the MPDG is inherently not gonna happen to queer people feels like it's missing a pretty large lens of analysis.
@@agnessofiacastrocarvalho774 that the way manic pixie dream girls are portrayed can touch on a lot of themes that are very relevant in the lives of trans women. I think not touching on that in section that is about if the trope can be queer is a miss 1/2
@@agnessofiacastrocarvalho774 that doesn't mean that doing so would change the video's ultimate point though. MPDG, in the video's view, isn't really a trope, but a phenomenon articulated *to be criticized*. Being unworthy of such criticism makes something tautologically not a MPDG.
Like the entire movie Cpt Willard is mooning over him to an obsessive degree, going on and on about wanting to know what's going on in his head, etc., and never being able to figure it out. And finally we find him and all he does is sit in the bath and write poetry and torture prisoners all day, so Willard kills him (completing the mission of self-discovery in the process) and leaves, having found himself.
Ow ow ow! This last part needs to be a video all on its own! Your conclusions... ❤ I can't believe the number of times I, as a woman, have had to explain to boyfriends that 'Umm, no, it does not make me happy that you bought a gift for me by asking the store clerk what X-year old women usually like and/or buy from that store.' And then spell out the word 'individual' to him.
Your cat being gorgeously difficult throughout the entire video is absolutely hilarious. Love your work, now binging all your videos AGAIN after the Flowers in the Attic one. It was your Midnight Mass one that hooked me first. You're the best!
There's a current discussion about the manic pixie dream girl being high masking autistic representation. I think it's important to bring into the discussion.
4:59 I swear both of the protagonists of Bringing Up Baby were autistic. Hepburn's character doesn’t mask (because "rich heir with fewer expectations," eccentric aristocrat, really sheltered, etc). Grant's character does mask, and it lasts until he comes down those stairs early in the morning. The surprise, new faces, new bullshit that the girl is doing, all that noise. He rapidly has a meltdown, right on the stairs, and doesn’t even realize that's what's happening (it was the 30s, after all). His distress increases when the girl doesn’t understand that he is as upset as he is. She didn’t react to the way he was shouting, and as a result he didn’t think to stop. They match each other's energy, too. He's squawking, she's cheering. It wasn't until a 3rd person entered and commented that he started putting himself back together to try and salvage the situation. I could be misremembering because it's been a long time, but that scene really stood out to me. I was like "OH. He's autistic, too!" I love how some movies in the 30s and 40s would have autism-coded lead characters. _It's a Wonderful Life_ is another one. Jimmy Stewart I think was ND himself, but the character definitely was. Even when he was a little kid. Anyways, it would seem the answer to the "question" is that Manic Pixie Dream Girls cease to exist the moment they become an actual character. ...I also made it to the conclusion without posting this comment, and yeah.
I know you said to wait until some unspecified time in the future to write a comment or a defense, but 27:54 I figured that now is a good of time as any. You're absolutely right when you say that the MPDG isn't a character problem, it's a perspective problem, and that they're absolutely are people like that who exist in the world, who are brave and adventurous and kooky, who are broke but somehow still happy, who love to take folks on adventures and absolutely meet people where they're at, giving them the room that they need to grow into the people that they would like to become. I'm one of those people, and I know several, and every single one of us are a, trauma survivors, and B, neurodivergent - diagnosedly so. Everybody likes to shit on the MPDG, but nobody ever asks her how she became who she is, nobody ever wonders about her interiority, about what it is that motivates her to do the selfless and wild things she does. But that's the thing, in the film, she's a fantasy, existing only to teach the man the lessons that he needs and nothing more, but the reality of us is that many of us have survived horrific things and are still damn happy to be here, and happened to have a quirk of neural pathing that does indeed give us a different way of presenting and being in life. To be honest, I see so many MPDGs in media, or girls labeled as such, and every single one of them just about I look at them and I think wow, she's clearly just autistically coded. But I honestly think that internalized ableism and the default notion of autistic people being either nonverbal or some doctor house style brilliant jerk and nothing in between really erases those of us who do live in exist in the world just out of plain live in exist in the world just out here in plain sight. Just like anything, if you would just ask us how we got like this, why we are the way we are, folks would know but they just don't ask.
Maybe Girl Interrupted? I feel like that one is two women, both of whom have been MPDGs at some point, ending up in a mental institution and learning from each other.
I'm at the part where you just told us to not comment until later but I'm already convinced you're probably right because John Green wrote Looking for Alaska as a critique of the manic pixie dream girl and people didn't get it so years later he wrote Paper Towns to try to express that critique more clearly and people still didn't get it and call Alaska and Margot MPDGs.
if it’s a matter of perspective, then why is subversion impossible? say we spend half (or less) screentime constructing that damn fantasy, only to drop the man as the main character and his perspective and plot altogether, and to reveal that manic pixie dream girl is not in fact that, but a person, who’s the main character now
I do wonder if we could successfully subvert the Manic Pixie Dream Girl using a Meta textual lens. Maybe that's just deconstruction, but still, it could be interesting. I keep thinking about Teruhashi from The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. She's not a deconstruction of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but of a Mary Sue. I think the comparison still works, because both are storytelling constructs built around a lack of understanding of these women that doesn't allow for them to have an identity outside of their impacts on other characters. Teruhashi is not a Mary Sue, but she tries very hard to maintain the illusion of being one. Saiki (titular character) can read minds (it's a gag anime), so he is very aware of her thoughts whenever she's around. Because of this, he (and we) knows she looks down on people and only wants their adoration and subservience (one might say worship). She's very aware of the effect she has on people, but acts oblivious to it, and she works very hard to seem effortlessly perfect. Because we are aware of her thoughts, the show can: 1. Highlight the toll it takes on a person to try and live up to this impossible standard 2. Highlight the warped priorities laid out by seeking external validation 3. Highlight how content every bystander is to be totally oblivious of who Teruhashi is as a person 4. Explore what perfection even means 5. Explore the merits of effort vs. natural talent 6. Explore the importance of impact vs intent Some of these are criticisms often levied against the Mary Sue archetype, some seem like more of a deep dive into potential problems that could arise from viewing the Mary Sue as an ideal way of being, and point 3 could be seen a criticism of the audience who lashes out at the character and not the writer, or maybe a criticism of the writers themselves. All of these points are explored in a meaningful way (in a freaking gag anime/manga) because the writer understands that the Mary Sue is a perspective problem, not a character problem. So, they write in characters who have this perspective, or who are impacted by this perspective, then challenge the perspective. I don't see why this couldn't be done with a manic pixie dream girl. Maybe this exists already, and if it does, please tell me ☺️ Btw, I love Teruhashi, and I know that her character changes a lot over the course of the show. I oversimplified because it didn't seem relevant
Throwing this out there: Does Vienne Rocher from Chocolat count as MPDG? Because, yes - she’s got all the plot relevance of bringing joy and life and liberation to the small repressed Christian French town, but she’s not very “kooky” or quirky, she’s a single mother, and she OWNS the chocolate shop that drives the plot. So, where does she fit in on the spectrum of MPDG?
This is such a late reply, but it's a good question. She *was* kooky and quirky (a travelling, wilfully single mother who starts a choc biz right before Lent, and hangs out with the local undesirables) and she did get everyone to lighten up and live a little. OTOH it's her and her daughters' story being told and she settles down happily in the end so I don't think it exactly fits the narrative
2:21 i think even when they have the "brazen" reveal of trauma, it's just another way to avoid actually exploring it because she's already done all the work of cutting to the "end goal" of the emotional labor to know something so vulnerable. then it's never brought up again, it doesn't & never actually mattered to her dimensionality. it was just cheating the time, sensitivity, & work necessary to get to that deep of a level, just to then be immediately discarded. the potential of dimensionality with nothing holding it up, a shadow puppet of meaning.
How about the movie Allure (2017) with Evan Rachel Wood? ERW is kind of like your typical MPDG, and she falls in love with this girl who has a stifling, perfectionist mother, and convinces her to run away. It's kind of like a MPDG from the otherside...Except ERW is a 30 year old and she kidnaps an actual kid and gr00ms her. She doesn't learn any lesson or improve, just spirals farther into self destruction. It's about the cycle of abuse and all that, except you don't really feel that bad for her because she sucks so much. I think the point of the movie was to have a tragic protagonist that we don't feel any empathy towards. It's a great movie.
I think The Other Two (highly underrated show IMO) presents an interesting idea of a manic pixie dream boy in a queer relationship. One of the main characters, Carey, is a struggling actor whose career journey leads him to really pathetic places in life. For a while in season 3 he dates a man who’s a weird method actor and therefore is constantly in character for his next role. For the first period of their relationship, Carey’s boyfriend is in character as a gay Disney teen who engages in stupid rom-com tropes but can’t have sex because the movie is PG-13. Carey’s selfishness means that he doesn’t realize for a while that he’s dating someone who’s completely in character the whole time and just uses him to advance himself emotionally and ultimately to advance his career. You literally never get a glimpse into the boyfriend’s inner life because he doesn’t have one. He’s constantly playing a character with his entire life and personality. Probably the point of this video was not to try and come up with exceptions to your arguments because I actually agree with you wholeheartedly that there’s no way to subvert the trope effectively etc., i was just inspired to try and think of media that makes a decent attempt to challenge or reinvent the trope and that was one example that came to mind.
This actually made me want to try writing a manic pixie dream boy with a comparably emotionally unavailable female love interest. It will be jarring but I’ll make it an intentional characterization of her.
So, is Barbie a "proper subversion" of the MPDG? It's entirely from her perspective and Ken's b-plot is all about how he sees his entire identity as an "accessory" to her and feels incomplete without her approval/love the way a male protag. would view a MPDG. Meanwhile her entire story is about discovering her "soul" essentially and becoming full realized as a being instead of a "concept."
I like how Wilfred subverts this by having the main character realize he's shallow and projecting all his fantasies and desires onto a woman who actually has no chemistry with him.
I didn't last until you give permission but... The mpdg is an error of category. It isnt the character but the beholder. Like a story that subverts the mpdg as a character is a tragedy where one sees the struggle of seeming carefree & shit... which needs a fundamental change in perspective such that one centers her & her interiority as opposed to the protagonist's. As to manic pixie dream (gay) boy ... i think it might be interview with a vampire? Which is to say TOXIC
Jack in Titanic is a Manic Pixie Dream Boy. I will die on this hill.
There’s even an old fan theory that Jack isn’t real, he’s just a figment of Rose’s imagination and that’s why he “can’t fit on the door” and there’s no record of him ever existing.
He fits all your criteria for MPDG though: we know nothing about his inner life, he is a poor guy who comes into a rich sad girl’s life and teaches her to have joy, he rescues her from her depression, her creepy fiancé and drowning in the North Atlantic but has no arc of his own. He has no family, his friends are superficial, he is an “artist” who somehow has been bumming around France. But most of all his entire personality is his impact on Rose.
We don’t read Jack that way because Titanic is sort of an action movie (ish) and we assume male characters are the lead characters in action movies but Titanic is entirely Rose’s story and is about her needing to grow up and make her own life.
I remember a fan theory that Jack is a ftm trans man.
I used to think this was great counter example, but I like Biz’s argument about how characters appropriately represented via their historical class structure negates the trope. Yes, we get the story through Rose’s view and no, we don’t know much of Jack’s inner world.
But, each character’s behavior is appropriately rooted in class. Also, they get like, a day or two on a boat?
@@courtneybrock1 I really encourage you to rewatch Titanic if you haven’t seen it recently. They are together for a few days on the boat but the lasting impact on Rose changes the rest of her life. This isn’t just her story about Titanic but about how Jack saved her “in every way it is possible to be saved.”
When I try to think of other examples I realized there aren’t many and the ones who are closest are all 90s movies.
@@courtneybrock1 I would say that Jack's behavior is not representative of his class, the same way that the behavior of manic pixie dream girls isn't either. He probably does not have much more then what's in his bag and no apparent plan as to what he wants to do in America, but he seems entirely unconcerned with his financial reality, cheerfully embracing life instead of being brought down by worries.
Last Christmas is also a Manic Pixie Dream Boy movie
Money didn't make Scrooge happy, but it did save Tiny Tim's fucking life.
Money absolutely buys happiness. Do you have a hobby? Well, most of those cost money. Any entertainment aside from walking* around wherever you currently are is going to cost you money. Most importantly, money is a shield that protects you from the misery and trauma that the lack of money brings.
*also, if you have a disability, it might be pretty expensive to go for a stroll because american healthcare.
@@Skag_SisyphusIf the way I read it is correct, OP isn't disagreeing. They're saying "sure you might have some points about excessive wealth not correlating with happiness, but a basic level of money can be so life changing that the 'happiness' point is moot."
@@Skag_Sisyphus I think 'how' people get money matters more than the money itself. 'passive income' and living off the unwashed masses sweat and labor can be taken for granted more than someone who struggles everyday and just wants to have some peace. Just getting out of the rat race would be a dream come true, no fancy accoutrements, vacations, luxury life needed
I actually never understood the whole "Money doesn't make you happy"-thing as: "Having money is not important at all, so be content with poverty" but "Don't try to fill the hole in your life with the pursuit of excess riches" You know, not the people who work 60 hours+ a week, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to feed themselves, but all these weird hustle culture types who work 60 hours+ a week because of some almost religious devotion to the concept of hard work.
In that case I would say the statement is correct. As we live in a capitalist society, we do need money to cover our basic needs and not having them covered is a big source of anxiety, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs isn't "physiological - safety- Lamborghini" and still way to many people see the accumulation of unnecessary wealth as a solution to their psychological suffering.
@Skag_Sisyphus i am a firm beliver in the fact that the people who preach "money doesnt buy you happiness" has expendable wealth, and has been for a while.
People who struggle to make ends meet, put food on the table, etc. Money for them would buy security, which does lead to happiness.
If you always had more than enough money and never worried about security youd never think money correlates to happiness, because lack of money causes lack of security, higher stress, more health issues, more risk of a myriad of insecurities, all of which could be solved by just having enough money.
to quote an edith södergren verse.
You sought a flower
and found a fruit.
You sought a well
and found an ocean.
You sought a woman
and found a soul -
You are disappointed.
I mean, I love all this, but, like, seawater will kill you if you try to drink it whereas wellwater is supposed to be potable so i think THAT would be ok to feel disappointment over XD
meanwhile if i sought a well and found a reservoir lake I'd be thrilled (but obviously that's not as catchy for a poem)
@Stonehawk I think that adds to it. What you found wasn't made for you. It was always its own thing, not designed to fit your needs just because you were looking
@@Stonehawk the poem isn't about finding something useful, but about finding something that doesn't meet your expectations.
Searching for a flower and finding a fruit would be finding someone more developed than you want. Finding an ocean instead of a well is finding a body of water that maintains itself, instead it of needing and supporting you. Wells don't keep water unless drawn from, abandoned wells dry up. The sea could swallow you whole and not even notice.
@@msjkrameynow THAT was a helluvah take !! 🙌🏽👏🏽👏🏽
@@rabbit__ Very nice analysis.
Hearing you talk about the fact that we never get the girl's inner life and thoughts makes me want a classic boy coming of age book. You have him chasing after the manic pixie dream girl but suddenly half way through the book we get a Gone Girl style twist and we go into her POV and see her family, her friends, her life, but also just this guy that never asks about any of it.
Definitely not coming of age, but the novel The Collector does this exact halfway point POV switching. I recommend if you like thrillers
Looking for Alaska maybe?
Paper Towns?
Im imagining this and my mind goes house of leaves? ... An "official" biographical text of one of them intervened by journal entries, transcripts, notes? Until the official text feels incomplete & incapable of telling the full story that these "ephemera" can?
flipped almost
Looking for Alaska was my Catcher in the Rye and I mean that as a slur against my teenage self
Lmao I felt this in my soul, except for me it was Paper Towns.
Same
Big mood
You did not have to fucking scalp me like that
Facts same 😂
the john green comment was so real because i love so much of what he does, and then theres also theres just the mpdg waving from the corner
also the quote "the problem with the manic pixie dream girl is that she is not explored as a character, only her impacts are explored as a character" is BARS
Jay Gatsby is a manic pixie dream girl
Actually, that is a good point. If read heterosexually, he has built his whole life around Daisy, is explicitly some blast from the past with no defined past except cultivating himself for Daisy, and takes himself out when things happens and that becomes impossible. If read homosexually, Jay Gatsby is the only person Nick likes, helps him to appreciate the nuances of people more and once again basically has no past, and still dies at the end, and still chases after Daisy. It may certainly be unusual, but Jay Gatsby is probably the closest to a literary MPDG.
I can see that, but for Nick, not Daisy.
@@angelad230yea
@@angelad230 ...thats the point of OP comment...
Shit homie, Gatsby is a dude with manic depression watching two Manic Pixie Dream Girls (both Jay and Daisy) not have sex for an entire year and then Jay dies. It's wild.
Maybe the manic pixie dream girl was me all along.
And you would’ve gotten away with it; if it wasn’t for those measly kids!!
Maybe the manic pixie dream girl was the friends we made along the way.
Stargirl is such a perfect example of the perspective issue. In the first book, Stargirl is very much a MPDG because she's almost treated as this mystical, otherworldly creature that will come in and fix the main character's life. They're clearly bad for each other, but it doesn't matter because the story is entirely from the guy's perspective. In the end, she teaches him his life lesson and disappears from his life forever. He learns not to care what other people think, the end. In the second book - Love, Stargirl - she is not a MPDG because it's from her perspective. She feels the aftermath of the first book's events and still pines over the guy, but she also goes and does other things with her life, forms new relationships, and grows just as much as she helps others grow. And yet, her overall characterization is very much the same as the first book. So the question of "is Stargirl a MPDG" is irrelevant because it's not about the character herself, it's about the framing of the story around her.
When I read stargirl as a 10 year old I definitely didn't think my 23 year old self would be analyzing her as a MPDG but here we are xD
Oh my god Stargirl I forgot about that
@@clarkrothman7104 When I first learned about the MPDG trope my first thought was Stargirl, I read the book when I was nine.
I have a turbulent relationship with the manic pixie girl because I felt 'seen' by it as a 'weird, thinker-y, intense girl'. As a teenager, it was very validating to see women who were not hot in a glamorous quote unquote 'shallow' way, be desired and seen as life changing. But I was also highly aware it was a fantasy for me to play into that as my appeal; most importantly because mpdg are played by absolutely stunning actresses and it was not lost on me that their 'niche, but deep' draw was probably largely because of that, and not cause they had bangs or read or made kooky observations or played the ukulele (will never forgive Colleen Ballinger for the bad PR). I wanted to be, and in some ways felt I was, like them. But despite them being 'mental illness coded' they didn't really display it in any real way, mentally ill people generally arent fearless without a caveat or titalingly mysterious enough but not difficult, no person is without real demands in a relationship - it was beyond my grasp despite how well I felt it fit me as a framing device.
TLDR is that MPDGs were helpful to my self image as a teenage girl who felt 'different' in a way guys would and did not understand, but it was an oversimplification because they are, it was like trying to fit a Ramona Flowers shaped peg in a me sized hole - it's not that real girls don't measure up, the trope is not made for real girls. (Sorry for the dissertation lol)
No need to apologize for something that is so thoughtfully written and meaningful. I actually paused the video to read your comment with the attention it deserves. It's a good perspective and I somewhat share the same experience. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts
This is exactly what I was thinking watching, but about being undiagnosed neurodivergent as well as the trauma part. It's such unfair PR for that too cause no way trauma survivors behave as perfectly at all times and it's such a bad shock for the people projecting the trope aha
@@fu_bi oh absolutely yes. if i knew that some of their traits could be attributed to neurodivergence and not just vague hand-wavey 'difference' it would have saved me a lot of time lol, as someone who is now being assessed for autism. it was quantifiable difference and not just quirkiness! the whole time!
@@TheImaginaryCat this was so lovely to hear, thank you :)
This is how I feel about MPDGs as well. I lived seeing characters I could relate to, even if they were idealistic/unrealistic. My parents were pretty aggressive about remembering movies/Hollywood/actors aren't real, so thankfully I didn't feel pressure to fit the mold. But I used to love daydream about what these girls did outside the worlds of their movies.
Anyway, I think this is also why some people get so defensive about *their* MPDG.
I'm pretty sure we don't have Manic Pixie Dream Boys because those are just a type of Bad Boy (drawing sheltered girls into an exciting new world where they discover different kinds of agency etc etc). The Edward Cullen bit got close to this, but the crucial difference between Bad Boy (Generic) and Bad Boy (Manic Pixie) is whether the story is about the girl fixing/taming him. I submit Christian Slater in Heathers for Manic Pixie Bad Boy.
I also submit San Junipero for a lesbian MPDG.
JD in heathers kinda varies by the version. Id agree with the movie version, but the musical actually delves a decent amount into why he thinks the way he does.
Who in San junipero is the manic pixie dream girl?
I Don't Know Which One Is Love is not only a lesbian MPDG story, bur one where every single one of the five initial love interests are at least Manic Pixie adjacent
Closest I can think of is Buddy the Elf but he very much has an inner life called Christmas Spirit.
@@jennytargaryen Gugu's character! (It's been a while so I don't remember their names)
Need a Magic Pixie Dream Daddy. A cool carefree baggage-less man with a salt-and-pepper beard. Inexplicably retired early, has his own home. Who teaches you self respect, how to do your taxes, and holds your hand during physical extracurricular activities.
thats weird.
Isn't that just Hallmark movie male character's
Isn't this just Age-Gap romances?
"Extracurricular activites" 💀
A big handed himbo🤤
"It's a perspective problem." I think that is an incredibly insightful way of approaching it that I had not considered. I think the reason guys want to defend their favorite is because they think you are saying something is wrong with the woman character that they like or a person they are reminded of. That's not the point, and you put that very eloquently. Clementine is my favorite, but your point about the film's primary framing is well taken. We only see her when she is either with him or when she is breaking down at Elijah Wood.
yeah the problem with MPDG is that they are undeveloped. the minute you develop them, make them the main character, give them their own wants and fears and actual inner thoughts and perspectives its no longer a MPDG, its just a quirky girl who has anxieties like the rest of us.
Re: a film where a woman refuses to take on a caretaking role, "Anatomy of a Fall" is a grim take on how she would be treated
To be fair, one parent not taking on a caretaking role IS bad.
@@lunasperidot8760…but not in regards to the CHILD, and also - women who refuse to take the caretaking role is always written as being WORSE, morally, than men who refuse
@@phastinemoon Yes in regards to the child. Two cooperative parents will always be superior to one doing most of the legwork. You are 100% correct about women refusing to caretake though. I just wanted to point out that the woman in Anatomy very clearly is very much not faultless. its why the film is so good.
@@lunasperidot8760 I didn't read her as not taking care of the child at all. I got the impression that the dad got into more detail about stuff that he did but it was because he wanted to? And considering men don't have the same level of social pressure to take caretaking roles, I think it's fair to say he actually wanted to take more time with his kid.
I think she was definitely cold and in that sense her relationship with her husband wasn't great, so I agree she wasn't faultless, but I don't think she opted out of child care. I do think she very much didn't act as a "therapist" for her husband as many gf/wifes do, but that's another subject (where to draw the line between normal emotional intimacy and "emotion labor" or smth along those lines).
@@altertopias I mean, he pretty explicitly asks her for more help when caring for their child and she just kind of shuts him down and says "you asked for this, just work it out to make it less stressful for you, that's what I do."
I'm a naturally hyperactive and cheerful individual. And every guy I've been romantically involved, even though they didn’t use the word "manic pixie dream girl", they viewed me as one. With the first guy i was ever involved with being diagnosed with bipolar. In my experience it's depressing because when i went through seasons of depression and declining mental health it felt like they weren't there for me like i was for them. They became disgusted at my sadness, and would look at me with an irritated face when I would seek comfort from talking about what made me sad. I was always supposed to be happy. With one guy explicitly saying that he doesn't like being around depressed people, because they ruin hes vibe.
I'm so sorry to hear. Everyone deserves a reciprocating supportive relationship. I hope you're doing better now!
@@mintkit1064 thanks
i feel you. I'm also diagnosed with bipolar. One ex leaved me because in a depressive episode I confide with her that I wanted to "quit the videogame". Immediately she said she couldn't be with me. I understand is hard, but at the same time I found that all that was cruel. Being perceived as this greater than life person to a little pathetic thing is sad. Obviously I understand that me being perceived as male makes things different (mostly in my favour I guess), but at the same time having this disorder made me be seen less than an human, a phantasy for some or a terrible being. Rose tainted glasses in the highs, blindness and desperation in the lows.
"With one guy explicitly saying that he doesn't like being around depressed people, because they ruin hes vibe."
Motherfucker _who died and made YOU God?!??!_
I have the exact same story. I hated that the guys I was with always saw me as more of an idea than an actual person, it's been exhausting feeling like I have to keep up the image after all these years. It's why I prefer being alone now.
Peter Pan is the very definition of 'Manic Pixie Dream Boy'. 🧚♂️👦
As an ADHDer myself, I agree with your point about it SO much. I come across as a manic pixie so many times, men are intrigued and engage in the pursuit. But they never care to take care of the consequences of a neurodivergence like that: the emotional disregulstion, the troubled living conditions it comes from, etc.
Eh, while I'd tend to agree with the majority of the video; I'd argue (perhaps not with full conviction, but nevertheless) that Joel didn't _need_ the fantasy of Clementine to grow as a person, but rather he needed to _let go_ of it. That it's not until he _discards_ the fantasy and actually sees her as a real person, with all her real faults and virtues, that he would be capable of growing up and forming a healthy relationship. I think that's where the subversion/deconstruction really takes place. And, of course, one cannot subvert or deconstruct a trope without referencing the trope, not unless there's something to subvert/deconstruct.
That wasn't my takeaway from it. It seems many people took the ending to mean that they had learned from thier mistakes and got a second chance to do it over. The film talks about philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche whose idea was the Eternal Return. He says, "If you had to live your life over again, endlessly repeating for eternity, with not one single thing changed, would you consider it the greatest blessing or the greatest curse?" I think that is the point of the movie, there is no happy ending for them, but that's ok.
As a lesbian, I've been MPDGed in a relationship, and it was fundamentally shocking to me. She didn't know me, just had this idea of me that she assumed was right. Just assumed that because I was incredibly depressed I'd be SO happy to talk about her suicidal urges, assumed because I loved music that I MUST have super obscure taste, assumed that because I had been a nerd I couldn't also have had a punk and anime and cringe youtuber phase. She also, interestingly enough, used me to learn a lesson about standing up for herself. Still one of the worst relationships I've ever had.
He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching manic pixie dream girls right before she died.
Smosh fan? 😂
@@angelnumbersbehindmyeyesit's a Madam Web reference
I made a post about this on the Dimension 20 reddit but in the third season of Fantasy High (a dnd actual play show) they had a bit that I believe actually perfectly deconstructed the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope by having her be an actual trap for one of the male villains who was the definition of "brooding". She was a constructed identity that was literally built for him, not to save him but to spy on him and manipulate him. It was the perfect way to see this trope, where the girl is actually fake and is used as a psychological weapon.
It's also absolutely hilarious. Wanda Childa will live forever.
Edit: Now I'm thinking i want to see someone take it further. Write an actual horror story or psychological thriller where the manic pixie dream girl is a trap for some "soulful" guy who thinks women exist to validate his existence.
Honestly, every character Emily Axford plays in D&D has a little bit of MPDG energy (minus Sofia Lee), like the perfect outside perspective MPDG, and inside perspective she's actually very well developed just a little odd, but getting to the full version of a very manic, pixie sized, literal dream, girl in Wanda Childa created this premise of the anxiety about MPDGs which is the fact that they can't be real, and no matter which way you spin it, in real life they will be showing you a lie or you will perceive them in a lie they are not telling, and either way the person on the other end will get hurt when they see the truth, and I'd like to see people explore the ending effects of that sort of thinking even further
I believe in Wanda Childa supremacy, complicated woman of all time truly
She’s so cute and so tiny! And she’s going to invade your dreams and take advantage of the fact that she’s only a fantasy.
@@ChaoticLuna should I put a spoiler warning in my original post?
That's just a twist, not a deconstruction. What is it saying about the MBDG? That she's a "trap" for us, the audience to manipulate our emotions in the story? If it's not saying anything about the phenomenon, then it's not a deconstruction. That was like the whole point of this video, just pointing out that a character is a MBDG in the text doesn't change anything.
With 500 Days, I feel like we get an equal understanding of both Tom and Summer's lives, which is pretty shallow and basic outside what needs to be developed in the context of their relationship. We don't know anything about Tom except that he wants to be an architect and is a hopeless romantic, and Summer is predictably avoidant and non-committal because she witnessed a troubling divorce of her parents at a young age. The whole story just seems like two young naive people in their 20's without too much life direction who end up hooking up and dating for a few months but break up because they aren't right for each other and one is way more attached than the other. The movie was a pretty good story about the tragic nature of "situationships" and it was obviously very effective in polarizing an audience that quickly divides up between relating to/empathizing with either Tom or Summer (to be clear: they were both troubled and emotionally immature).
As a weirdly isolated religious-homeschool pseudo-alt high schooler, I was very much my own Manic Pixie Dream girl.
I watched the whole video and didn't hear you mention Manic Pixie Dream Wife, my favorite MPDG media and one I think you'd find worth a watch. It's a short scripted series on UA-cam about a man who married his MPDG and can't handle living with her antics. The part that makes it subversive is also a major spoiler, but I feel like it's not too much of a spoiler to say that the last episode is her telling the story from her own POV, and it really highlights that POV problem. It's an interesting take on the genre.
Oh! I think I’ve seen this!
i watched it all this afternoon on your recommendation! thanks!
My best friend (both femme presenting) and I were friends with a man for about a year before he told us that we were real people. That he used to think of us as characters, but we were real people. I think about it all the time.
I was friends with a man on and off for over 10 years. We grew up together from teens to adults. During year 9 he acknowledged that I’m real and that it’s okay that I do unexpected things that don’t line up with his vision of me because I’m my own person 😐 before that, it was always a giant fight where he’d tell me who I am supposed to be and try to shut down any discussion to the contrary.
This is terrifying
Can confirm. I'm literally the best friend. We'll never forget this moment. 😂
@@JoraAustin Congratulations on having your humanity recognized by him. That must have been so validating for you 🤪
@@JoraAustin small world!
I started singing the Working Boys jingle in my head and got jumpscared when the clip came up
love referring to it as a perspective problem. I think the reason people feel the need to so staunchly defend their fave mpdg and give reasons why she’s supposedly a subversion is a lack of nuance in a lot of the conversations around the trope. a lot of the time it gets boiled down to mpdg = all bad all the time, but just because the perspective of the main male character is lacking and tends to only see her as a concept, doesn’t mean we as an audience aren’t allowed to relate to the some of the parts of her that we get to see. I know lots of neurodivergent folk in particular see the “kooky” stuff and relate to that and also admire the mpdg’s supposed fearlessness and confidence that allows her to be as weird as she wants in literally every situation. like the mpdg does not have to mask…ever. but you can appreciate those things about the character while still acknowledging that they are in fact a manic pixie dream girl. you don’t have to throw everything out in the trash. ideally we would get some female characters written to be weirdos but also get to see their rich inner worlds and see them as people, but then they wouldn’t be manic pixie dream girls anymore, because the trope fundamentally boils down to the main male characters shitty point of view
Dr Who is kinda a manic pixie dream boy
Wow I just thought that 2 seconds before scrolling to your comment 🤯
This has such a “best friend rambles at the sleepover” vibe lol I love it.
I would guess that the MPDG doesn't care about working, class, or her job as an easy answer to the fear that men have around their status as breadwinners in relationships. If she cared about her work/success/money, then what role would he have to take on in their relationship? Just...a loving and supportive partner? 👀 no way!!
i think my fav manic pixie dream girl is Stargirl. the book not the movie. the total disconnect from the male pov, to the girl herself. its like the perfect example of why he should never be with her, because they are so different. not that he needs to learn all the stuff to get the girl, he needs to learn at leas some of the stuff to grow as a person sure. but to me, its blatantly obvious that the two should not be together for the happiness of both. a bird and fish basically. you cannot shed what you fundamentally are to become something else and be with someone. but that does not mean you cannot learn something from someone so different from you. a nice lesson i thought. anyway is there a movie or a book that tells people be your own manic pixie dream girl for when you need it. also see people as people not ideas conveniently placed in your path for your benefit. they can be a person and hey you can still learn about life ether from them or with that. isn't that just humanity anyway?
I think you totally nailed it on the head when you pointed out these “subversions” aren’t subversions but just an acknowledgement of being there, some sort of self awareness of what’s happening, but no actual subversion.
This isn’t abt MPDG, but I was reading this book called The Southern Bookclubs Guide to Slaying Vampires, and I encountered the same thing. It had a bunch of surface level, female characters who are simply exaggerated archetypes of women in media (of the time), black character stereotypes, and it’s “messaging” didn’t go beyond “misogyny = bad” or “racism = bad” lmao. It all made sense when I realized it was written by a white man. So often I see people talk about subverting tropes when all they’re doing is writing them the same, with a wink and a nod like hehe I know what I’m doing here
MPDGs are very neurodivergent coded. Which yeah. As a neurodivergent person, I have to not care about money because I'm disabled enough that I can't really work.
A lot of MPDG are ND coded, I agree. I was also typecast into that role by a couple of my exes though because they didn't reciprocate what I gave to the relationship (when they both actually needed therapy and working on themselves instead of wearing me down with all the emotional labor).
biz: these workin' boys are tired.
me: haha funny, workin' boys, that's like in the musi--
a whole clip of robert manion: WORKIN' BOYS WE'RE UP TO OUR ASS IN SHIT!
As a retired manic pixie dream girl, I really appreciate this video. A tier. Thank you for creating.
The classic screwball comedies from the 30s actually feature some really excellent female characters. Myrna Loy in the Thin Man is one of the great comedy performances in American film history and I'll die on that hill. A lot of them obviously aren't, but it was the 1930s. Women in France still couldn't vote.
She performs a somewhat similar role to the MPDG, she's an heiress and her husband is a former NYPD(?) detective. He just wants to drink and enjoy her money, but she craves adventure and is also a moral center. Watching especially the first couple films, or in the book, she's just as fleshed out as her husband. It's a comedic murder mystery, not a drama, these aren't tortured Tarkovsky characters, but they're fun, well-rounded, and mutually respectful.
I really enjoyed this video, BUT, ngl, the part about MPDG not translating to queer stories because queerness requires a level of introspection is batshit to me.
Granted, I live in a bit of a bubble where noticing, knowing, or caring about cis/hets is usually optional for me… but I could not agree less with this one point. I think getting MPDG’d by a queer person in real life is just another example of the queer stories that have not yet been represented in mass media.
I know so many queer people who feel completely free to 100% dehumanize anyone they met once and feel attracted to (as an expression of some twisted version of romance, no less), that I’ve mostly been traumatized out of dating by the phenomenon. So no, I’d say it’s far from unrealistic.
I completely agree with you, I've been the "manic pixie dream gay" to too many guys I've dated not to. 😅
when you mentioned manic pixie dream boy as a possibility i tried to think of what could be a contender for the title and what came to mind for me was heath ledger in 10 things i hate about you. haven’t watched it in a while but i think he’s also lower economic class than julia stiles character, does kooky things with her like the paint fight or whatever, then eventually helps her grow to getting over her man hating persona and showing vulnerability again with the final poem, all without ever really revealing much of his inner world. is this anything ??
you mentioned it would generally not work with a woman lead and a male MPDG bc the woman is already expected to know how to care about someone else’s perspective, but she’s basically explicitly said to hate men which we learn is a result of being hurt in the past so this is the challenge for her character to overcome in order to find love and happiness
I feel like the sapphic version of this is a protagonist who previously thought she was straight meets what we'll call the Manic Pixie Dream Lesbian who is already out, has been out for a long time, and is the protag's entrée into this new wonderful magical world, and the whole narrative revolves around the protag's feelings about her own sexuality, etc., and the MPDL's inner world is irrelevant and not explored or only explored as a counterpoint to the protag's; she exists primarily for what she can teach the protag about herself. Of course I'm not sure I can actually name examples of this although it feels like a real dynamic that happens in fiction and irl but, citation needed. What's coming to mind is Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" and Willow/Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, particularly in S4, where Tara is more of a cipher. It's been a very long time since I watched it but I feel like Jenny's female love interests in the first couple of seasons of the original L Word also have this tendency. (Shane, otoh, I think *is* the MPDL for lots of women, but since we're in her pov, it's not really this trope, as you, I think successfully, argue.)
Bobbi from Conversations with Friends
Both Graham in But I'm a Cheerleader Luce in Imagine Me & You kinda fit this description
I submit that the closest you can get to a manic pixie dream boy is Christian Bale in the Newsies, or Niel Perry from Dead Poet Society. The sort of "Dreamer," type who helps the boring normie live an adventure!
Xavier in The Doom Generation as well.
This banger on a Friday evening even if I was at a club I would be headphones on, locked tf IN
Well I feel like Kal ho naa ho had a manic pixie dream boy who fulfilled all the criteria. He shows up with no job, fixes all of the main girl’s problems, we never really learn anything about his inner world and then he spoiler alert dies. I think he is less quirky than a regular manic pixie dream girl but he is still very strange. I guess the girl Naina is still the one with the trauma because she’s still healing from her father’s suicide. But Naina fits the depressed boy mold perfectly. I would say she is one of the most well written women from early 2000s bollywood. Aman the manic pixie dream boy is fun to watch but we never really learn anything about him.
Omg I'm so glad someone mentioned it! Kal Ho Naa Ho is one of my favorite movies and its the perfect 'flip' of the trope. I've been obsessed with SRK ever since 🤞
you are right, but i had forgotten abt this movie and now am sad for remembering it (thanks though, i should rewatch it)
Raj in DDLJ isn’t quite a MPDB but he’s MPDB-adjacent. We do know his background and meet his father but we have the class differences, the teaching Simran to experience life, the standing in the mustard flowers with a mandolin.
The only way a guy won't go incel from finding out he can't love his idea of you is by figuring it out himself. Once again proving that it's not your job to fix him!
as someone who has moved well past my john green days, even i remember when he was like paper towns is supposed to subvert the mpdg trope in LFA, and i was like, did it?? she’s even less of a character in this book. at least alaska existed as a messy character. margot or whatever brought what’s his face on a exciting trip and only shows up at the end to kiss him??
What properly ripped down the trope for me was Addison Grace's song "Manic Pixie Dream Girl", describing his shitty boyfriend shoving him into the MPDG role as an impressionable teenager to make the boyfriend's life more interesting, and how much better life is out of that role and away from him. Once you've seen things from that perspective, there's no turning back.
Note: Addison is transmasc, the song was written before he hatched.
I feel like The Proposal was an attempt at corporate manic pixie dream boy/cold woman that needed the growth
And Betty White!
Shoutout to biz for uploading at the exact moment to stop me from swiping on my ex’s bumble. Thanks babe! ♥️
this is a fantastic video but i have nothing insightful to add so instead i am going to expresses my appreciation and love for the starkid refrence
for about 5 years after the scott pilgrim movie came out, too many people in my life called me their "ramona" (actual exes or ex-friends or acquaintances alike) like it's not actually really gross and without any self-awareness of what that actually implies about them than me. it made me so fucking angry.
i mean if you wanna talk about splash, you could do a whole video on the unintentional autism-coding found in mermaid movies
Autism-coding in mermaid movies? That's interesting.
31:55 I, as a broke mentally unstable bisexual Sagittarius with ADHD and also red hair, am scared
MPDG is a type that exists because ADHD girlies are walking around undiagnosed and untreated into adulthood.
Autistic ones as well.
wdym by "treated"
@@steamboatwill3.367therapy, meds, school and workplace accommodations, the works?
@@steamboatwill3.367 i assume meds and healthy coping mechanisms?
Even those of us who were diagnosed and treated for our adhd much younger were still made into MPDG until we could figure out how a healthy relationship would work for us and find someone who would reciprocate that and see us as whole people instead of NPCs in their lives
There is a version of Manic Pixie Dream Boy who exists, but in sort of the opposite way, like they exist to be changed and loved by a girl. Think of like Edward from Twilight or any evil dude idolized on tumbler or serial killers people find hot, basically any boy with a lot a trauma, the fantasy is that they'd only change for you and they've never loved/been loved by anyone else enough to bother changing, this trope is sort of deconstructed as well in Dimension 20: Misfits and Magic with a character named Evan Kelmp who has lived through a lot of real tragedy and meets this very emo girl who falls in love with his "darkness" which he hates about himself and he has to literally explain "I am not a character" to get her to back off, in the end she is the one that changes and they fall in love with each other for who they really are once this perspective is gone
You're hitting the nail on the head with this one, especially the point of how manic pixie dream girls aren't written to be characters onto themselves, but as a force of teaching the protagonist a lesson. They recently made a Scott Pilgrim anime which was supposed to be a sorta alternative retelling of the movie and the comic. In it, Scott is missing for most of the show and we follow Ramona instead. Let me tell you, I was so incredibly frustrated that even without Scott in the picture, every action Ramona does is motivated by finding him. She goes through her own character arc and grows as a person, but in the end it's still for Scott. I feel like script writers heard the complaints on how much of a MPDG Ramona is, but they still refused to give her depth. If they did, she'd realize how useless Scott is and there'd be no story to tell lol. You're right, MPDG is just not able to be subverted, because the subversion is just cold sad reality. And while a story about a useless man learning that he doesn't need a dream girl to grow up would be personally interesting to me as a woman, I doubt men who consume MPDG media would enjoy that. They did it in the Barbie movie and look what kinda reaction that got out of them lol.
I disagree. Yes, she does it "for scott", but anime itself acknowledges multiple times it's weird shes doing it for the guy she just met and it's very much an implication reason she does this is not for this guy, its to get to live out her own columbo dream. Not seeing this is just seeing Ramona as what you expect her to be. It's not scott that matters, its the fact that her life is in shambles, and picking up this thread of investigation that fell into her hands allows her to finally feel like she takes on control and not just floating around. You can actually see her get in touch with herself through the anime, her problem is not growing up, it's needing to stop running away and ground herself. She just picked up a random opportunity to be something she always wanted, plus specifics of genre being low key comedy makes a lot of stuff around her non sensical anyways.
The part about men not learning the 'she's a real person lesson's in real life is so real. It also puts into perspective how manic pixie dream girl media present a situation where a male main hero of said media achieves success by learning this quite basic fact.
Men be literally singing their own praises and writing books for the most basic knowledge and self growth they manage to achieve and acquire
OK but the blur effect on the kitties bottom for modesty 👏😆
the Graphic novel of Blue is the warmest is very much worth it. it's a more linear story, where it's the blue colored hair girl reading the "main character"'s diary
When you initially brought up Clementine as a manic pixie dream girl, I was like, ahhh hell no, you didn't just go there. All the markings are present, the colored hair, the, dare I say, *manic* spontaneity, her bizarre (quirky) art. But it is clear that all of this pixie girl energy is coming from a broken, fully-developed person that is grasping out at everything and anything to subvert the pain. She's reaching out to Joel in an attempt to heal herself, gets nothing in return (Joel can be quite the selfish prick), lashes out and finally leaves in every sense of the word.
But you are correct that the majority of what we see of Clementine is coming only from Joel's (highly distorted) memories. In the one of the first scenes, we hear Joel's inner monologue
*"Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?"*
Because you're trying to find something (or someone) to fix you. Clementine is Joel's MPDG, a point made crystal clear when he conjures an image of her apologizing for erasing him from her memory. As more and more of his memory is erased, Joel gets a glimpse of just how ugly he was at times. It isn't until he has had the majority of Clementine (his perceptions of Clementine) scrubbed from his memory that she tells him
*“I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive'…but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.”*
Which is exactly what he ended up doing. Seeing less of who she was and more of what he wanted her to be.
Yes, we ended up spending most of the film watching this relationship exclusively through Joel's perspective. But I can picture another movie where we would have seen it all through Clementine's eyes. No excuses, Joel comes off as a complete shitheel many times, but real relationships are about both people growing. Clementine undergoes what I'd imagine to be a similar experience as Joel, albeit offscreen.
Yes, Joel's Clementine is a total MPDG, but Clementine is not. I'd die on this hill. There is a complexity to these characters, their relationship, the very nature of all relationships, portrayed in such a way that I can't characterize this as a screwball, manic pixie dream girl film.
i was not expecting a starkid clip in here but i very much appreciate it. amazing video as always!
First time here, great video. I would argue that the only media I know of that actually uses the manic pixie dream girl trope and manages to successfully subvert it is Gone Girl. But I haven't thought about it that hard so don't sue me if I'm wrong.
"You can't tear down a fantasy without building it first" is a line worthy of V. C. Andrews
I can't think of any media that use it, but I think your queer section not touching on transition at all is a bit of a shame because like. You know who do choose to live a more socially and economically precarious life to be more fulfilled, and then have someone else, coasting through in an emotionless blur of what they were expected to do, see that and realize it's the life they should be on? Trans women.
in fact, it's an entire point of discussion in the community. It's very natural to be drawn to the person who lit up your life, but it's equally natural for that to become obsessive, or to give the girl who cracked your egg power over you that she never asked for and probably isn't prepared to deal with. I don't think this is a subversion, at least as you're defining it (I think the manic pixie dream girl as a culturally understood trope and as as a figure of feminist criticism are categories that diverge, but that's beside the point) but saying that the MPDG is inherently not gonna happen to queer people feels like it's missing a pretty large lens of analysis.
holy shit, you’re so right. thanks for adding your perspective, i definitely agree that there’s a lot to be said about this
I'm sorry, what? What were you tryna say?
@@agnessofiacastrocarvalho774 that the way manic pixie dream girls are portrayed can touch on a lot of themes that are very relevant in the lives of trans women. I think not touching on that in section that is about if the trope can be queer is a miss 1/2
@@agnessofiacastrocarvalho774 that doesn't mean that doing so would change the video's ultimate point though. MPDG, in the video's view, isn't really a trope, but a phenomenon articulated *to be criticized*. Being unworthy of such criticism makes something tautologically not a MPDG.
I heard “Manic Pixie Dream Boy” and immediately assumed mlm instead of role-reversed mpdg…
24:40 Omg the way she's looking at you with so much love and slow blinking at you. ❤
@@tautologyTwice She is absolutely the love of my life
@@upinurbiz Aw. That made me miss my soulmate cat. Give your girl extra lovins and playtime today! You both deserve it ❤️
I am so relieved to hear that Quinta Brunson is nice
Glad to have my brain's first thought upon you saying the words "working boys" at 9:18 immediately validated at 9:20
My favorite manic pixie dream girl is Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Send tweet.
Like the entire movie Cpt Willard is mooning over him to an obsessive degree, going on and on about wanting to know what's going on in his head, etc., and never being able to figure it out. And finally we find him and all he does is sit in the bath and write poetry and torture prisoners all day, so Willard kills him (completing the mission of self-discovery in the process) and leaves, having found himself.
Himbo is the dude version manic pixie girl that’s what I’m thinking about
Your cat getting all up in the frame of the camera back and forth was so funny. Also great video essay.
The cat is too ironic 😂
Ow ow ow! This last part needs to be a video all on its own! Your conclusions... ❤
I can't believe the number of times I, as a woman, have had to explain to boyfriends that 'Umm, no, it does not make me happy that you bought a gift for me by asking the store clerk what X-year old women usually like and/or buy from that store.'
And then spell out the word 'individual' to him.
Your cat being gorgeously difficult throughout the entire video is absolutely hilarious. Love your work, now binging all your videos AGAIN after the Flowers in the Attic one. It was your Midnight Mass one that hooked me first. You're the best!
There's a current discussion about the manic pixie dream girl being high masking autistic representation. I think it's important to bring into the discussion.
continue to love this set up :D
4:59 I swear both of the protagonists of Bringing Up Baby were autistic. Hepburn's character doesn’t mask (because "rich heir with fewer expectations," eccentric aristocrat, really sheltered, etc). Grant's character does mask, and it lasts until he comes down those stairs early in the morning. The surprise, new faces, new bullshit that the girl is doing, all that noise. He rapidly has a meltdown, right on the stairs, and doesn’t even realize that's what's happening (it was the 30s, after all). His distress increases when the girl doesn’t understand that he is as upset as he is. She didn’t react to the way he was shouting, and as a result he didn’t think to stop. They match each other's energy, too. He's squawking, she's cheering.
It wasn't until a 3rd person entered and commented that he started putting himself back together to try and salvage the situation. I could be misremembering because it's been a long time, but that scene really stood out to me. I was like "OH. He's autistic, too!"
I love how some movies in the 30s and 40s would have autism-coded lead characters. _It's a Wonderful Life_ is another one. Jimmy Stewart I think was ND himself, but the character definitely was. Even when he was a little kid.
Anyways, it would seem the answer to the "question" is that Manic Pixie Dream Girls cease to exist the moment they become an actual character. ...I also made it to the conclusion without posting this comment, and yeah.
Every time the gods not dead clip shows up I can’t get it out of my head for about a week kill me
I know you said to wait until some unspecified time in the future to write a comment or a defense, but 27:54 I figured that now is a good of time as any. You're absolutely right when you say that the MPDG isn't a character problem, it's a perspective problem, and that they're absolutely are people like that who exist in the world, who are brave and adventurous and kooky, who are broke but somehow still happy, who love to take folks on adventures and absolutely meet people where they're at, giving them the room that they need to grow into the people that they would like to become. I'm one of those people, and I know several, and every single one of us are a, trauma survivors, and B, neurodivergent - diagnosedly so. Everybody likes to shit on the MPDG, but nobody ever asks her how she became who she is, nobody ever wonders about her interiority, about what it is that motivates her to do the selfless and wild things she does. But that's the thing, in the film, she's a fantasy, existing only to teach the man the lessons that he needs and nothing more, but the reality of us is that many of us have survived horrific things and are still damn happy to be here, and happened to have a quirk of neural pathing that does indeed give us a different way of presenting and being in life. To be honest, I see so many MPDGs in media, or girls labeled as such, and every single one of them just about I look at them and I think wow, she's clearly just autistically coded. But I honestly think that internalized ableism and the default notion of autistic people being either nonverbal or some doctor house style brilliant jerk and nothing in between really erases those of us who do live in exist in the world just out of plain live in exist in the world just out here in plain sight. Just like anything, if you would just ask us how we got like this, why we are the way we are, folks would know but they just don't ask.
Babe, wake up, new Biz vid just dropped
Gonna manic pixie dream girl my way into both college and hell
😂😂
“a conversation I had with my coworkers at my stupid job” is so real
The way i've been listening to Oedipus and Bad Taste non stop, then you drop casual 50 minute video on my favorite subject ever?
Maybe Girl Interrupted? I feel like that one is two women, both of whom have been MPDGs at some point, ending up in a mental institution and learning from each other.
I think the Scott Pilgrim anime rebootquel(Rebuild?) actually fits the last part of this video
I'm at the part where you just told us to not comment until later but I'm already convinced you're probably right because John Green wrote Looking for Alaska as a critique of the manic pixie dream girl and people didn't get it so years later he wrote Paper Towns to try to express that critique more clearly and people still didn't get it and call Alaska and Margot MPDGs.
"Hahahaha... agency." I snorted at that.
i've never seen/read any of the media you mentioned, and your brief descriptions of scott pilgrim explains so much
if it’s a matter of perspective, then why is subversion impossible? say we spend half (or less) screentime constructing that damn fantasy, only to drop the man as the main character and his perspective and plot altogether, and to reveal that manic pixie dream girl is not in fact that, but a person, who’s the main character now
I do wonder if we could successfully subvert the Manic Pixie Dream Girl using a Meta textual lens. Maybe that's just deconstruction, but still, it could be interesting.
I keep thinking about Teruhashi from The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. She's not a deconstruction of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but of a Mary Sue. I think the comparison still works, because both are storytelling constructs built around a lack of understanding of these women that doesn't allow for them to have an identity outside of their impacts on other characters.
Teruhashi is not a Mary Sue, but she tries very hard to maintain the illusion of being one. Saiki (titular character) can read minds (it's a gag anime), so he is very aware of her thoughts whenever she's around. Because of this, he (and we) knows she looks down on people and only wants their adoration and subservience (one might say worship). She's very aware of the effect she has on people, but acts oblivious to it, and she works very hard to seem effortlessly perfect.
Because we are aware of her thoughts, the show can:
1. Highlight the toll it takes on a person to try and live up to this impossible standard
2. Highlight the warped priorities laid out by seeking external validation
3. Highlight how content every bystander is to be totally oblivious of who Teruhashi is as a person
4. Explore what perfection even means
5. Explore the merits of effort vs. natural talent
6. Explore the importance of impact vs intent
Some of these are criticisms often levied against the Mary Sue archetype, some seem like more of a deep dive into potential problems that could arise from viewing the Mary Sue as an ideal way of being, and point 3 could be seen a criticism of the audience who lashes out at the character and not the writer, or maybe a criticism of the writers themselves. All of these points are explored in a meaningful way (in a freaking gag anime/manga) because the writer understands that the Mary Sue is a perspective problem, not a character problem. So, they write in characters who have this perspective, or who are impacted by this perspective, then challenge the perspective. I don't see why this couldn't be done with a manic pixie dream girl. Maybe this exists already, and if it does, please tell me ☺️
Btw, I love Teruhashi, and I know that her character changes a lot over the course of the show. I oversimplified because it didn't seem relevant
Throwing this out there: Does Vienne Rocher from Chocolat count as MPDG? Because, yes - she’s got all the plot relevance of bringing joy and life and liberation to the small repressed Christian French town, but she’s not very “kooky” or quirky, she’s a single mother, and she OWNS the chocolate shop that drives the plot.
So, where does she fit in on the spectrum of MPDG?
This is such a late reply, but it's a good question. She *was* kooky and quirky (a travelling, wilfully single mother who starts a choc biz right before Lent, and hangs out with the local undesirables) and she did get everyone to lighten up and live a little. OTOH it's her and her daughters' story being told and she settles down happily in the end so I don't think it exactly fits the narrative
White Oleander fits.
Astrid is a total MPDG, but it's herself she's healing.
I was never a fan of this trope but couldn't explain very well why. Thank you for doing it for me.
PS: Your cat is the real star of the video 😂
Wilson from House MD is a mpdg tbh
2:21 i think even when they have the "brazen" reveal of trauma, it's just another way to avoid actually exploring it because she's already done all the work of cutting to the "end goal" of the emotional labor to know something so vulnerable. then it's never brought up again, it doesn't & never actually mattered to her dimensionality. it was just cheating the time, sensitivity, & work necessary to get to that deep of a level, just to then be immediately discarded. the potential of dimensionality with nothing holding it up, a shadow puppet of meaning.
How about the movie Allure (2017) with Evan Rachel Wood? ERW is kind of like your typical MPDG, and she falls in love with this girl who has a stifling, perfectionist mother, and convinces her to run away. It's kind of like a MPDG from the otherside...Except ERW is a 30 year old and she kidnaps an actual kid and gr00ms her. She doesn't learn any lesson or improve, just spirals farther into self destruction. It's about the cycle of abuse and all that, except you don't really feel that bad for her because she sucks so much. I think the point of the movie was to have a tragic protagonist that we don't feel any empathy towards. It's a great movie.
I think The Other Two (highly underrated show IMO) presents an interesting idea of a manic pixie dream boy in a queer relationship. One of the main characters, Carey, is a struggling actor whose career journey leads him to really pathetic places in life. For a while in season 3 he dates a man who’s a weird method actor and therefore is constantly in character for his next role. For the first period of their relationship, Carey’s boyfriend is in character as a gay Disney teen who engages in stupid rom-com tropes but can’t have sex because the movie is PG-13. Carey’s selfishness means that he doesn’t realize for a while that he’s dating someone who’s completely in character the whole time and just uses him to advance himself emotionally and ultimately to advance his career. You literally never get a glimpse into the boyfriend’s inner life because he doesn’t have one. He’s constantly playing a character with his entire life and personality.
Probably the point of this video was not to try and come up with exceptions to your arguments because I actually agree with you wholeheartedly that there’s no way to subvert the trope effectively etc., i was just inspired to try and think of media that makes a decent attempt to challenge or reinvent the trope and that was one example that came to mind.
This actually made me want to try writing a manic pixie dream boy with a comparably emotionally unavailable female love interest. It will be jarring but I’ll make it an intentional characterization of her.
Thats the same trope just flipped
So, is Barbie a "proper subversion" of the MPDG? It's entirely from her perspective and Ken's b-plot is all about how he sees his entire identity as an "accessory" to her and feels incomplete without her approval/love the way a male protag. would view a MPDG. Meanwhile her entire story is about discovering her "soul" essentially and becoming full realized as a being instead of a "concept."
I like how Wilfred subverts this by having the main character realize he's shallow and projecting all his fantasies and desires onto a woman who actually has no chemistry with him.
I didn't last until you give permission but...
The mpdg is an error of category. It isnt the character but the beholder. Like a story that subverts the mpdg as a character is a tragedy where one sees the struggle of seeming carefree & shit... which needs a fundamental change in perspective such that one centers her & her interiority as opposed to the protagonist's.
As to manic pixie dream (gay) boy ... i think it might be interview with a vampire? Which is to say TOXIC
the working boys bit 😂
I for one was not anticipating a GWDLM reference, but I'll be damned if I wasn't thinking about that scene when it came on
Very classy, big apprece