| March 25th, 2011 |
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On Feminist Frequency (link goes to page with video + transcript), there's a video up on the theme of "Tropes vs Women #1: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl".
And ooh, I have issues with it.
Firstly, there's the personal, which will generally hit first before wider considerations of social justice come in to play, I can't deny it. The issue being that while I wouldn't describe myself as anyone's dream girl, the manic pixie thing? That would be me.
To the extent that my very close friend Chas will actually laughingly say, "Such a pixie!" when I am being silly sometimes.
So when the woman presenting the piece approvingly quotes some dude called Nathan Rabin as follows:
Rabin writes, “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.”
... that's kind of angering, because I'm sorry, but I exist in the real world, too, and what we're dealing with here is the much wider problem of female characters existing in works of fiction solely to catalyse the personal growth/journey/whatever of the usually-white male hero, which is in itself a subset of everyone who isn't a white male Hero existing in works of fiction solely to catalyse et cetera et cetera et cetera. There are a lot more Magic Negroes and characters of colour with no independent conceptual existence than Manic Pixie Dream Girls out there.
And given that this is also done to other female characters, suggesting that the only ones who are really terrible are "Manic Pixie Dream Girls" is somewhere in between really infuriatingly insulting to people like me, and offensively dismissive of everyone else who gets treated like they're only there to further the hero's personal journey.
(Bonus offensiveness: Spot the nasty ablism contained in one of the movie scenes played as an example of how hilarious Manic Pixie Dream Girls are.)
To Bitch and Feminist Frequency: Hollywood isn't the one telling me I don't exist here. You are.
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