I Want To Be A Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Mom recently reminded me of a time long past, when youthful Linda was sure she would never want children. (It’s funny, how one gets amnesia regarding opinions long discarded.) That same day, I read Lynn’s latest post, which happens to be about feminism.
The combination of these two things awoke the memory of what a feminist I used to be.
That got me thinking: what are the feminists up to, now that we are all equal and stuff? (The ones that aren’t regretting their liberated past, at any rate.) So I googled, and randomly chose among the results.
In a sea of search engine results, marketing is key. And who can pass up a charmingly named website?
Not me. Thus, onto Bitch Magazine I clicked to discover a video about Tropes v. Women.
Admittedly, the website and video are much less, well, bitchy than the name implies. Still, the video is astonishingly serious about a very silly topic: “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”
The what? Apparently, this is a coined term for a common trope: a “bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life.”
Oh, okay: Who’s That Girl.
So?
Well. That is offensive.
“Women are not here for your inspiration, celebration, or to coax you out of your troubles. You might not know this, but we are full and complete human beings with our own troubles, interests, and creative endeavors.”
Uh, okay. The idea that us LAY-dees have our own troubles and interests is fair enough. Why we cannot also inspire men is beyond me, though.
“The Manic Pixie perpetuates the myth of women as caregivers at our very core: that we can go fix these lonely sad men so that they can go fix the world.”
I dunno. Sounds like a pretty good arrangement, if you ask me. I devote myself to a man, and he does all the hard sh*t. Sign me up!
Wait a minute, I already signed up.
It might not be such a myth, this notion of women as caregivers at their core. Not that it matters. The whole “feminism” subject is irrelevant. These films are not targeted toward the male audience. They are chick flicks. Emotional porn. For women.
The female character is shallow because the movie is aimed toward female viewers. The “Manic Pixie” is nothing more than a bare framework that the female viewer can use to insert herself into the fantasy of Saving The Hot and Muscular Tortured Soul.
I shouldn’t need to point out this fact: tortured souls are awesome. Gals love danger, but need security. The tortured soul provides both!
So . . . it’s comical, really, to watch a feminist complain about a subset of the chick flick genre, because of its shallow portrayal of women. The women are shallow because they aren’t the reason you’re watching, Ms. Silly.
And if you aren’t interested in watching, then welcome to my club: Chicks Who Hate Chick Flicks.
Personally, I blame Steven Spielberg for this aversion. When your first crush, at the tender age of ten, is a guy with a whip, how can these wimpy chick flick heroes compete?
“The women are shallow because they aren’t the reason you’re watching, Ms. Silly.”
Absolutely!
As a husband and father of two chicks who love chick-flicks, I am most envious of your husband.
I like chick flicks.
You know what I find irritating? The guyzzzz who carry on about Star Wars and Star Trek and collect old comic books and dress up like a Star Wars Trooper and THEN sneeer at chick flicks.
I collect them. Like SoapDish, French Kiss, Legally Blonde, State and Main, and a bunch more. Soap Dish is the best movie of the last half of the 1900s. Except maybe for A Fish Called Wanda.
Thx, roxy.
Fleecy! I’ve missed that cute lit sheep icon. The thing is. Sometimes, when a chick flick is on TV, and it’s a really bad one, I’ll try to watch it b/c it’s funny. I’ve found that generally, if you watch the first and last 20 minutes of these films, you haven’t missed anything but some boredom. So he still gets tortured from time to time, my husband.
LOL Heather that is a good point. And yikes! You’ve made me realize there is a chick flick I enjoy: Legally Blonde! And I love a Fish Called Wanda: it’s kkkkkkkken, cccccccccoming to kkkkkkkkkkill me! That is so not a chick flick. Is it?
This is a post I would normally stay a hundred miles away from, but it reminded me of a quote from Camille Paglia in yesterday’s WSJ regarding Elizabeth Taylor:
There was a long feminist attack on the Hollywood sex symbol as a sex object, a commodified thing, passive to the male gaze, and it’s such a crock! “Butterfield 8″ really shows it. There’s that incredible moment in the bar where she’s [Elizabeth Taylor] wearing a svelte black dress and she and Laurence Harvey are fighting. He grabs her by the arm, and she grinds her stiletto heel into his elegant shoe. It’s male vs. female—a ferocious equal match. He’s strong, but she’s strong too! That scene shows the power and intensity of heterosexuality, with all its tensions and conflicts. It also shows how terrible current Hollywood filmmaking is—how false and manufactured sex has become.
There’s no real eroticism anymore. “Butterfield 8″ sizzles with eroticism, because of the psychological distance and animal attraction between male and female. The businessmen in that film are all in their uniforms, their black suits. They’re like a horde of identical and characterless myrmidons or clones. They have wealth, they have power, but they’re nothing compared to her! The film truly captures the complexities and struggles of sexuality—all of which have been lost in our period of easy gender-bending. Everything’s become so bland and boring now.
Periodic departures from reality are common among many of us.
Those who do not participate in such excursions are probably really boring people.
Anyone who is willing to remain in this situation for an extended period of time should seek the help of a liberal democrat.
The experience of existing in a vapid pool of ignorance could be conducive to the victims recovery.
Later Erma.
When I was pregnant with my first an old college roommate emailed me. He was in town for a few days, and suggested meeting at a restaurant in Berkeley. I said that I can’t meet at a restaurant given how I’m very pregnant, and I work in San Francisco, and it’s just too far away. So I proposed that he comes over to our house, meet my husband, and that I’ll cook dinner. He replied that he can’t imagine me married, pregnant and, most of all, cooking.
I’m still no fan of cooking, but I always knew that I wanted to have children. When I was in my twenties people didn’t believe me. “What you? Changing diapers? In your gloves?” That was in my silly goth days.
…I hate chick flicks.
LOL thanks for the story Missy. Silly goth days, snort. I had an alterno-style in my youth, too. But I bet the standards for goth in middle Tennessee were way different than San Fran.
And I have always suspected there are more chick flick-hating chicks out there than we realize.
You should seek out NCIS on the TV.
The forensic scientist could be your bud.
They are on the USA channel on our TV.
I may start calling you Abby.
Evil is being unleashed upon the world and now there can be no doubt of that. This is going world wide rapidly and even here in the US we are seeing a groundswell of hate, anger and violence. Seems that even the Earth is in a state of rebellion. No one wants to believe the end times could be upon us and yet one has to wonder.
The chick flick/rom-com hate is strong out there in America.
There’s a reason Jennifer Anniston can’t buy herself a hit movie.
Could it be that she’s not a serious actress?
Mike
There are very successful chick flicks around but they are rare: eg, The Twilight series. The first one made half a BILLION dollars. For every dollar invested in that movie, it brought in some $14 (Avatar, on the other hand, bought in less than $2 for every $1 invested.) Summit a small production company is now a large company, solely because of Catherine Hardwicke and that movie. Romance! Beauty! High school love and angst! As one of the people involved noticed, it seems to have accidentally fed a huge appetite for Romance which has been un-met!
The theory has been that the most avid movie goers are young men, thus all those Transformer movies, the Star Wars, and etc etc. Twilight stumbled onto a whole demographic that will go to movies too. It will be interesting to see if there are more movies of this ilk made. I would be surprised if that were so. Altho I have great hopes for India. Now, that country understands Romance!
Ya know why ladies like the tortured soul?
Because they haven’t had the bad, interesting,negative, male type feelings guilted out of them by the feminist movement. These guys actually feel something deeply and finding a man that is willing to feel something deeply, besides who makes the best latte flavour, or should we use real cedar planks or the environmentally correct faux cedar planks made from recycled free trade coffee grounds to cook the salmon shaped slab of tofu, is hard to find these days.
“now that we are all equal and stuff”
Maybe you should go and get a basic understanding of feminist concepts before you write this drivel. If you really think we are equal, you should not be blogging about feminism. Don’t talk about things you know NOTHING about.
Ha ha! Looks like my opinion is annoying to somebody. You know, every time a feminist is annoyed, an angel gets his wings.
HIS wings.
Ha!