Meaning of manic pixie dream girl | Babel Free

Definitions

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.

derogatory, sometimes

Examples

“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.”

“[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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level