Why Are Manic Pixie Dream Girls Still A Thing?
With the release of the screen adaptation of 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, I was reminded of the person I was when I first read that book as a teen. Depressed, suicidal, and angsty as all get-out, it felt like the book was written just for me. I really liked it. I recommended it to my partner when we first started dating.
Now, though, I’m older and better educated and I know that if I read the book again I’d react entirely differently to the messages being delivered. There’s a lot of problematic shit going on in 13 Reasons Why. The biggest being that the central message of the story is effectively “If you kill yourself, people will recognize how wrong they were about you and they will see how special you truly were.”
Or more succinctly, “you will have more value in suicide than in life”.
That’s a big claim to make, I know. But it’s definitely why I resonated so much with that book as a teen. It spoke to worst parts of me, the parts that told me exactly that- that I don’t matter, but if I died I could.
There’s big problems with messaging like this in young adult-oriented media. 13 Reasons Why has a bucketful, but large among them is the reiteration of yet another Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Except this one ‘got away’, in the most permanent possible way.
Film critic and novelist Nathan Rabin first introduced the label of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) trope in a 2007 article for The AV Club titled The Bataan Death March of Whimsy: Case File 1, Elizabethtown where he used it to describe Claire Colburn, the leading lady portrayed by Kirsten Dunst in the film Eliabethtown.
Rabin described the MPDG as a character who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures”. Effectively, this means that MPDGs are bubbly, one-dimensional whimsical semi-heroines who exist more often than not for the sole purpose of creating an arc for the male protagonist of the story.
Examples of this trope extend far beyond just Elizabethtown — MPDGs can be seen in Garden State, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 500 Days of Summer, and Almost Famous — and those are just films from the last 20 years.
Since Rabin’s 2007 article, the term has gained massive amounts of traction and debate, so much so that Rabin wrote a new article in an attempt to retract the label.
The reason behind this move was because of the proliferation and over-saturation of media using the MPDG label and trope — Rabin said that it began to make him see labeling concepts like these as reductive.
This argument is an important one. By labeling this archetypal pattern that has a long history in Hollywood (Elizabethtown was far from the first instance of this trope) something is taken away from the conversation, and it becomes easier to ignore the social relevance of reinforcing a trope this way, particularly a trope that specifically diminishes and objectifies women into special categories.
Though the label has reached this level of popularity in filmic pop culture, there is a distinct lack of focus on the examples of MPDGs that are prevalent in contemporary Young Adult (YA) literature. With what is probably the most exemplary instance of a writer riding his way to the top on a single literary concept, John Green has become YA lit’s poster child with his novels about boys and their manic pixie dream girl counterparts.
John Green’s first novel Looking for Alaska was published in 2005 and won the Printz award in 2006. Since then, Green has published three other YA novels on his own; Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, and The Fault in Our Stars, the last of which debuted at no. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List in 2012 and was later adapted into a feature film.
John Green has seen wild levels of success in a considerably short amount of time, and I believe that his reliance on the MPDG has played at least a small part in his popularity. Published in 2005, Looking for Alaska was around before the official labeling of the MPDG trope, though the fundamental signifiers were certainly at work in the novel.
Though the book is named for Alaska, it is not her story. It is actually the story of Pudge and his obsession with Alaska- her mysterious aloofness and the impact she has on his life. It’s a story where a young girl with her own traumas and problems is used as a plot device to give depth to the character arc of the protagonist.
She is quirky, with a habit of rule-breaking for pleasure and a muddied history that presents in evident trauma that is never properly addressed by Pudge. Though the story revolves around Pudge’s infatuation with Alaska, and though he spends so much time thinking, talking, and pining after her, the narrative is all Pudge’s, and Alaska’s relevance comes only in terms of his story.
John Green also published an essay on his website titled “The Destruction of The Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. Truly, it’s a monument to his talent that he was able to write that article with no hands, being as he was simultaneously patting himself on the back and jerking off to one of his own signed headshots.
In the essay, he responds to allegations about Margo, the heroine of Paper Towns, being another example of a MPDG. Green’s defense is that there is a separation between narrator and author, and that the reliability of the narrator is often a tenuous thing. He proposes that Margo is seen as a MPDG because that is the way that Q views her to be- it is Q’s perspective, not authorial insertion that makes Margo into this trope.
With this, he’s saying that Q, and solely Q, is under the impression that Margo can be, must be the one to save him, the one who will show him the magical parts of life. As Green himself says it, Q’s perception of Margo as a MPDG “only acknowledges that some boys believe in Manic Pixie Dream Girls; it doesn’t argue that MPDGs actually exist, or that Margo is one”.
The thing is, though, that is absolutely does show that MPDGs exist, at least as a trope — otherwise there would be no conversation about this novel. Green doesn’t hold himself accountable for perpetuating the trope, as being a big part of why Q would believe in MPDGs. Q would’ve absolutely been a fan of Looking For Alaska were he able to read it.
If it’s possible for someone to believe in the trope so earnestly as Q does, it‘s because writers like Green have allowed it to be possible.
This is not to say that John Green alone is responsible for the trope’s existence in YA literature. To call upon another example, there’s arguments to be made that Leslie Burke from Bridge to Terabithia can be counted amongst the ranks of the MPDGs.
Jess Aarons, the protagonist, is a depressed and withdrawn child who is often bullied until he meets Leslie, whose friendship draws him out more, encouraging his burgeoning artistic nature. Leslie is tomboyish and athletic and becomes Jess’s closest friend. She shows him the power of imagination. There’s a bridge.
However, demonstrating again that this character trope exists only to serve the development of the protagonist, Leslie dies tragically once she’s alone. Specifically, once Jess makes a conscious decision to spend the day with his teacher-crush rather than Terabithia-ing with Leslie.
This plot point shapes the final developments of Jess’s character arc, as he suffers deep denial before finding the personal strength to press on, going back to Terabithia with his younger sister as an act of acceptance.
Though these characters are children, the parallels between this story and Looking For Alaska are clear as day. Pudge and Alaska’s relationship may have more levels, like the sexual tensions of hormonal teens, but the basic elements remain.
The reader knows why Terabithia is so important to Jess, who lives simply on his family’s farm and suffers from a nervous disposition. We barely get a glimpse of Leslie’s reasons for needing the escape of the imaginary world, even though there must be equally valid ones. Instead, she lives and dies in the narrative defined by her relationship to the hero of the story.
Because of the proliferation of the MPDG trope and the widespread attention it’s garnered since Rabin’s first article, the term has lost some of its impact. The original intention of the phrase has been lost by repeated iterations and multiple interpretations.
In thinking about the initial concept, a checklist of requirements for a character to be a “true” Manic Pixie Dream Girl should include that she be quirky, ubiquitously effervescent, pretty (conventionally or not), and she must have significant problems of her own that she deals with either in silence or with vague musings presented to the protagonist.
In Rabin’s Salon article where he tries to recant the term, he explains that he “coined the phrase to call out cultural sexism and to make it harder for male writers to posit reductive, condescending male fantasies of ideal women as realistic characters”. Though Rabin had intended to label this phenomenon in the attempt to classify and identify a staple of sexist representation in Hollywood, the term grew popularity beyond his control and became a cheap denomination, almost a genre unto itself.
He admits regret about having coined the term after writer/actress Zoe Kazan describes it as misogynist, for reducing a person to the idea of a person. The repeated overuse of the term made it possible for critics to label nearly any female character as a MPDG and dismiss her altogether- even to the point where actresses have been labeled as MPDGs in real life.
I think that Kazan was backing away from the MPDG stigma when asked this question. She makes a good point about the misogyny at play with the trope but I think Rabin’s original concept was more about how the existence of this trope is inherently misogynistic, in that it portrays women as a conduit for male development.
I think the pop culture proliferation of the term needs to be scaled back so that the necessary serious conversations can happen.
An interview with Zoe Kazan leads me to believe that she is adamantly against the label, but for the wrong reasons. Her film has a line that says that these girls with appealing problems don’t exist, but then her personal ethos attacks more the enveloping label than the proliferation of the type.
According to her statements, she seems more concerned with the labeling aspect than the actual label. Her argument is that it is sexist to imply that women can be reduced to a caricature, and that women who might possess the characteristics of a MPDG will be unfairly pigeonholed by the connotations of the label.
This is a valid complaint, but I believe that the more important issue with this specific label is the way it infantilizes women and glorifies mental illnesses as quirky, desirable traits. She’s angry at the insinuation that these kinds of women exist, but that’s the whole point, and the reason to be angry; MPDGs do not exist as real people, only as these idealized characters in fiction.
There is no girl who can fit the MPDG trope naturally, as it is a shadow of a person, composed of bits and pieces with no real depth. The problem is the way these fictions make this the desirable image for many young teens. It creates a new brand of unattainable qualities, alongside the hypermasculine males and barbie dolls of the world.
Another issue with the popularity of the trope is the way it glorifies mental illness and co-dependency. As I’ve said already, a trait of the MPDG is to be flawed, broken in some way. This ‘humanizes’ her and provides a way for the protagonist to be made more sympathetic. He will make an attempt to ‘understand’ her, but only because of his infatuation, not out of genuine care for her well-being.
In Ned Vizzini’s novel It’s Kind of a Funny Story, protagonist Craig winds up in the psych ward of a hospital following a near suicide attempt. Inside the hospital, he meets a variety of people who suffer from various mental illnesses.
Among them is Noelle, a girl with self-inflicted cuts on her face, a coping mechanism in face of sexual assault she has suffered. The two start a friendship in the ward, which helps Craig build confidence in himself, a feeling he had lacked. He is carefully respectful of her space, because Noelle is at first almost inaccessible.
So while Noelle gets a better deal than other MPDGs in terms of romantic pursuance, she is just as much a plot device. The message that the text sends is that Craig was able to identify and relate with Noelle because of her perceived broken-ness.
He suffers from depression, and she is the survivor of abuse. The fact that they meet in a psych ward while both in recovery is the first red flag. The narrative glorifies co-dependency more than anything, something that is a core concept at work with MPDG stories. It’s Kind of a Funny Story makes this relationship the focus of the story, though again, only in relevance to the male protagonist.
More important than the controversy about the use of the moniker is the fact that this label is a new name for an old, enduring trope that has existed unchecked in Hollywood for years. It certainly existed in literature before John Green, but his works came at just the right time for the pop culture wave that is MPDG.
This article has aimed to better educate people about the prevalence of the trope in YA lit and the harmful messages of it. It perpetuates a sexist social mentality, it urges co-dependency, and it glorifies mental illness as quirky.
Labels reduce everything they’re applied to in ways that cut important realities. Still, there is power in a name, and being able to label the phenomenon is important. Audiences need to better educate themselves to be aware of the pitfalls of the term.
Not every female character is a MPDG, but it is important to acknowledge the real instances in order to put the trope to bed. Women aren’t props to be used to further a man’s sense of ennui or insecurity. Mental health issues aren’t fun personality quirks. Co-dependency isn’t a healthy way to begin a relationship.
Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was one of the few characters who fell into the MPDG ‘aesthetic’ but was adamant about Joel not being just the next guy to see her that way.
She said it best: Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.
Yeah.
