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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Film critic Nathan Raban coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl to denote "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that 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." It might be productive to imagine the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a classed (upper) and raced (white) model of femininity--despite her breaks from feminine decorum, her "breeding" is never in doubt, and her anarchic exuberance never loses its edge of stubborn innocence.
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3 comments:
I'm a bit disturbed by this article. First, the user comments are troubling because they are using this as an excuse to make-fun of the female actresses, when ultimately this seems to be more of a problem with the use of woman as narrative device (instead of character). I'm not too keen on the use of the word "manic," but the main problem is that some critic created a word to describe how white/upper class women are used without acknowledging that non-white upper class women can easily fill this role.
I definitely echo your feelings of concern here Kate. I found myself surprisingly angered over this article and its little embedded video clip. This is precisely the problem with under-informed film criticism that articulates their personal problems with certain depictions of femininity without looking to the larger structures that condition not only the depictions of said femininity but also our responses to them. They definitely skip over an analysis of how narrative conventions ( usually promoted by these "brooding young men" or whatever) position these female characters and go right to a critique of representation (which is often laced with overly subjective aversions to actresses and styles of performance and lacking in any real substantive critique)
Also, by not accounting for the manic pixie as a narrative trope they never account for the ways in which male characters are utilized in similar ways. (this happens in almost every rom-com and teenpic through the "opposites attract" premise) Can we not see Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh (ELizabeth II), Kevin Bacon as Ren McCormick (Footloose), Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow (Bonnie and Clyde), and Heath Ledger as Patrick Verona (Ten Things I Hate About You) as our darling Manic Pixie Dream Boys?
Either way, these critics seem to be fundamentally antagonizing the wrong figure, why not attack the brooding male writer or the conventions of the often self-indulgent "artsy" indie film (Garden State).
it's interesting how much I cathect onto this figure in film. I wish sometimes that I could be that figure in somebody's life.
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