The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It’s
a common Hollywood trope, though I’ve got to admit I’ve never met one of these
women in real life. A man is trudging along in his
boring/routine/depressed/dead end life, and Poof! There she is, dropping
accidentally into his lap, and for no apparent reason deciding he’s the man she
wants. Promptly she sets about dragging him into fun, shaking up his routine, pulling
him up from depression, and showing him a brand new way to live. This trope
wasn’t given a name until recently, but it’s been around a long time. Example: Bringing Up Baby, 1938, starring Cary
Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It’s one of my favorite rom-coms. (Baby isn’t a
human, it’s a leopard.)
Others include Elizabethtown, I
love you, Alice B. Toklas, The Garden State, Butterflies are Free, Almost
Famous, and many, many more. The main characteristics include joie de vivre,
flakieness, a bit elfin, quirky to a fault. Sadly, this is all there is to
these characters. They have no goals, no depth, nothing else to them. They're bubbly, cute, and impulsive. Nothing else.
So where’s the male equivalent?
It is actually out there. Sadly, they aren’t as wonderful as the dream girls.
The qualities just don’t seem to transfer well, because the Manic Pixie Dream
Man is basically Peter Pan. He never grows up. As shallow a character as the
Girl, he has no goals and no depth. He’s childish instead of childlike,
charming but shallow, and for absolutely no apparent reason is devoted to this
woman who frequently doesn’t want him. She may even be committed to someone
else. Looks good in a rom-com, but in real life it’s a disaster. In real life,
women want more. Shallow wears thin fast. We want men, not perpetual boys. Someone to be a true partner, not one more child to take care of.
But hey, right when your life is
boring and routine and seems like a dead end, when you’re depressed and feel
hopeless, wouldn’t it be great to have a Sean Spencer (Psych), a Lloyd Dobler (Say
Anything) or a Benny (Benny and Joon)
come and fill your life up with quirkiness and drag you out to make you have
fun, even if it’s just for a while?
