In 2007, Nathan Rabin wrote a review to the 2005 Cameron Crowe film Elizabethtown. He destroyed it, calling it “just what a bona fide fiasco looks and feels like.” In his analysis of Kirsten Dunst’s character, he coined the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” a phrase that has since been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. He defines the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (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.” She is mysterious, she is intriguing, but most of all, wow, is she beautiful (why doesn’t she have a committed partner already?). 

Still unsure of who/what the MPDG is? 

In Almost Famous (2000), Kate Hudson plays Penny Lane, a free-spirited, way-too-young-to-be-on-her-own fairy dream girl. She has perfectly-tousled hair and wears big furs and tiny blue glasses, and she is cool. The viewer knows nothing about her; she conveniently changes the subject when asked by Will (Patrick Fugit) what her real name is, saying it’s not important. Of course it’s not, to him. What does her name matter to him? It won’t change how he feels about her. Penny Lane suits her: it perpetuates that she is mystical and oh-so-different. Her life story is only learned when she is saved from overdosing. When she has real problems. When she is a real person. When she is real. 

Sam, played by Natalie Portman, in Garden State (2004) is another great example. She is quirky and loves The Shins and is always around to listen to Andrew’s (Zach Braff) problems while we learn nothing about her; he never does the same for her. She tells him a record will change his life with such enthusiasm he starts to believe that this, this, is the girl. 

“That’s when he begins a journey to find himself through Sam’s patience and quirks.” 

Anne Donohue, Refinery29

In (500) Days of Summer (2009), Zooey Deschanel is Summer, a breezy beam of spontaneity and indecisiveness, and also plays the springboard for Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to project his life and relationship expectations upon. She is kooky and seems to care about him until she quite nonchalantly ends things with him over breakfast. The focus shifts to Tom, where he is seen as upset until he realizes that the idea of Summer was more intriguing than the actual person, he only loved the idea of her.

We don’t blame him for this; the MPDG isn’t trustworthy, she’s not someone you can count on. She is a backboard, a trampoline, a ping-pong paddle; she is someone to bounce off of. She is an oven, a tape recorder, a plot of fertile soil; put something of yourself in, get something better out. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl always stays the same.

“It's an archetype, I realized, that taps into a particular male fantasy: of being saved from depression and ennui by a fantasy woman who sweeps in like a glittery breeze to save you from yourself, then disappears once her work is done.”

Nathan Rabin

Alright, so where are you going with this? 

Well, take Miriam of The Marble Faun, for starters. She is mysterious. Hawthorne writes, “There was an ambiguity about this young lady...The truth was, nobody knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil...She had made her appearance without introduction” (18). She is talented; she seemed to set up shop to showcase her art and was immediately popular and successful. Miriam is this whimsical beauty who arrives suddenly, and leaves without much warning. She has a mysterious past and a figure that follows her around, and this intrigues the others. In true MPDG fashion, details of her past are not important, are not relevant, until they come in the form of a man (in this case, her model who follows her around). Miriam is an eighteenth-century version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She is as much of an MPDG as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s time and society would allow, in terms of how much her character controls the plot without learning much about her in return That is, of course, until a man acts as the catalyst.

The MPDG of Hawthorne’s time does not have to be there for the advancement of the male character, but she encompasses the qualities of the MPDG of today: she’s just a little off, and, as much as I hate this phrase in that it perpetuates the idea that womanhood is problematic and being like other women is something to avoid, Miriam is truly “not like other girls.” We don’t have any backstory on Miriam until she tells us at the very end. We don’t know why an MPDG is the way she is, we don’t know why she dyes her hair or only listens to that album on Tuesdays, we just know that she is intriguing and, when we eventually find out why, she isn’t so interesting anymore. She dares men to fall in love with her and can’t handle relationships. Like I said, the MPDG of Hawthorne’s writing is not completely the same; Miriam and Donatello end up together. 

Their relationship is worthy of some discussion. We get many lines from Donatello professing his love and how beautiful she is, and then, after he kills her model, she confesses she has feelings for him, too. Quite a complicated relationship, founded on mystery and crime. When Hawthorne describes Miriam, he says

“Miriam, fair as she looked, was plucked out of a mystery, and had its roots still clinging to her. She was a beautiful and attractive woman, but based, as it were, upon a cloud, and all surrounded with misty substance, so that the result was to render her sprite-like in her most ordinary manifestations” (20). 

Donatello doesn’t know Miriam, but claims he’s in love with her. This is problematic because he is only in love with his idea of her; he knows no more about her than she arrived suddenly and is a gifted artist. This is classic MPDG attraction. When Miriam arrives at Donatello’s house in the countryside, he envisions what she will look like before he sees her. Donatello “anticipated Miriam’s entrance, arrayed in queenly robes, and beaming with even more than the singular beauty that he had heretofore distinguished her” (218). However, when he sees her, he sees that, “She was very pale, and dressed in deep mourning...the feebleness of her step was so apparent that he made haste to meet her, apprehending that she might sink down on the marble floor, without the instant support of his arm” (218). 

 This is the pivotal moment when Donatello realizes that Miriam is not the dream girl he thought of her to be, but a real human with faults and issues and a past with baggage. This is when he sees her as a person. The image in his mind of the woman he loved was a concoction of his unrealistic expectations founded on her mystery and beauty.

“Manic pixie dream girl says I’m going to save you. 
Says, don’t worry, you are still the lead role. 
This is your love story about the way I teach you to live.”

Olivia Gatwood, Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Infatuation is the name of the game here. Infatuation can be defined as “the state of being inspired with a foolish or extravagant love or admiration.” In other words, Donatello’s naive love for Miriam; foolish, childish, based on superficial feelings of intrigue and confusion.

The MPDG trope is problematic. It perpetuates the idea that an ideal girl is one without baggage, one who appears to solve her male counterpart’s problems, help him see the world in a new light, help him overcome whatever trivial obstacle for which he has returned to his hometown or run away from home. At the beginning he is broken, and she helps him become whole. She has virtually no personality or drive outside of making the life of someone else more interesting. 

“The trope of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a fundamentally sexist one, since it makes women seem less like autonomous, independent entities than appealing props to help mopey,
sad white men self-actualize.”

Nathan Rabin

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a hoax; a cutesy rom-com crutch used by writers to avoid actual character development of more than the main male protagonist. Writers need to write more multidimensional female characters who, as Rabin himself states, “might strum ukuleles or dance in the rain even when there are no men around to marvel at their free-spiritedness.” The MPDG is used as an tool of intrigue, someone that keeps the audience engaged throughout what would probably be a boring story of a man learning:

1. “I’m not actually that great.”

2. “I should grow up.”