manic pixie dream girl

See also: manic pixie dreamgirl

English

WOTD – 24 April 2020

Etymology

Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) in the 1953 film Roman Holiday, an early example of a manic pixie dream girl.

Coined by the American film and music critic Nathan Rabin (born 1976) in a 2007 review of Elizabethtown (2005) to describe the character Claire Colburn played by Kirsten Dunst: see the quotation.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmænɪk ˌpɪksi ˈdɹiːm ɡɜːl/
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmænɪk ˌpɪksi ˈdɹim ˌɡɝl/, /-ˈdʒɹim-/
Hyphenation: man‧ic pix‧ie dream girl

Noun

manic pixie dream girl (plural manic pixie dream girls)

(film, sometimes derogatory) A stock female character, typically characterized as a bubbly, quirky free spirit, whose main purpose within a narrative is to teach a young male protagonist to embrace the mysteries and adventures of life. [from 2007]
- 2007 January 25, Nathan Rabin, “My Year Of Flops, Case File 1: Elizabethtown: The Bataan Death March of Whimsy”, in The A.V. Club Blog‎, archived from the original on 5 February 2007:
  Then again, [Susan] Sarandon's character is the very embodiment of gritty neo-realism compared to Kirsten Dunst's stewardess/love interest. Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie Dream Girl 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.
- 2014, Laurie Penny, “Love and Lies”, in Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, New York, N.Y.; London: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, pages 218–219:
  [page 218] For me, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was the story that fit. Of course, I didn't think of it in those terms; all I saw was that in the books and series I loved – mainly science fiction, comics and offbeat literature, not the mainstream films that would later make the MPDG trope famous – [...] [page 219] Most of the classic Manic Pixie Dream Girls claim to be ironic re-imaginings of a character trope that they fail to actually interrogate in any way.
- 2015 May 14, A[nthony] O[liver] Scott, “Review: In ‘The Film Critic,’ a snob is tripped up by his heartstrings”, in The New York Times‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, ISSN 0362-4331, OCLC 971436363, archived from the original on 17 May 2015:
  Looking for a new apartment, he cute-meets Sofia (Dolores Fonzi), a young woman with a pink bicycle helmet, yellow tights, a vaguely exotic background and all the other signs of manic-pixie-dream-girl status.
- 2016 April, Bethenny Frankel; Eve Adamson, “Woman, Know Thyself”, in I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To: 10 Rules for Not Screwing Up Your Happily Ever After, 1st Touchstone paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 34:
  A guy who understands women based on movies or television will never have a chance at understanding a real woman, because we aren't like that. We aren't the "career-focused ice queen" or the "sweet helpless damsel in distress" or the "manic pixie dream girl" [...]. But at times, we might be some of them. Or all of them. And then we'll change again, into something much more complex. You can't pin us down.
- 2017 October, James Patterson; Emily Raymond, chapter 30, in Expelled, New York, N.Y.: Jimmy Patterson Books/Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN; republished as The Injustice, New York, N.Y.: Jimmy Patterson Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2018, →ISBN:
  Your love for her is getting embarrassing. [...] She's gorgeous, she has buckets of charisma she couldn't hide if she tried, and she makes all the boys fall in love with her. That sounds like Manic Pixie Dreamgirl territory, my friend—which, news flash again, is a cliché.
- 2017 September 17, Teo Bugbee, “Review: ‘Thirst Street’ hollows out Hollywood obsession”, in The New York Times‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, ISSN 0362-4331, OCLC 971436363, archived from the original on 12 March 2020:
  But even as Gina's behavior dips past manic pixie dream girl to merely manic, the director never deviates from the detached tone of his prologue.
- 2019 June, Pam Grossman, “The Dark Arts: Magic Makers and Craft Women”, in Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power, New York, N.Y.: Gallery Books, →ISBN, page 179:
  A precursor to the “manic pixie dreamgirl” trope of today, the femme-enfant’s youth was to be mooned over, her naïveté aspired to, her pure countenance captured in poetry and paint.

Alternative forms

manic pixie dreamgirl
MPDG

Translations

stock female character typically characterized as a bubbly, quirky free spirit