Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Manic. Pixie. Dream. Girl. MPDG. The term was originally coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in response to Kirsten Dunst's character from Elizabethtown, circa 2005. The MPDG is "a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist."

Of course, the notorious MPDG significantly predates 2005. Indeed, the first nigh-universally agreed upon MPDG is Katharine Hepburn's Susan Vance from the 1938 comedy Bringing Up Baby. Subsequent MPDG's include notables such as Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower, her daughter Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, Zooey Deschanel in... basically every character she plays, Rachel Bilson in Last Kiss, Audrey Tautou in Amelie, Ramona V. Flowers of the Scott Pilgrim comics, and (my personal favorite), Natalie Portman in Garden State.

Key characteristics of the MPDG include: eccentricity, quirkiness, idiosyncrasies, fullness of energy, an unusual beauty, an inexplicable obsession with a titular protagonist, heterosexuality, presenting as (more or less) cisgender, and being (almost always) a White person.

When I was teenager, and pretty much through my early twenties, I always imagined that I would go through some sort of existential crisis and run into my own very MPDG. Hell, I purposefully went out of my way to find the most random assortment of adventures and experiences and people. A lot of the time, all I ever actually found was dangerous situations, questionable decisions, and a lot of lonely feelings full of this agonizing emptiness that languished out seemingly forever, like some post-apocalyptic horizon of radioactive waste and prelapsarian memories.

I tried to solve all of the pain my life was filled with by trying to fill myself with as much other shit as I possibly could and, somehow, drown it. I wanted someone to save me. I wanted someone to make it all better. I wanted a goddamn renaissance.

Now, as an an adult with a wife, a kid, another kid on the way, and a career so immensely different from my dreams of writing the next Great American Novel, that I look back at myself in that time, in that place, and feel a kind of prescient sorrow. No MPDG was going to come and magically change my life. Indeed, quite the opposite: my attempts to find my own MPDG actually came closer to ending my life than almost anything else. (But that's another story entirely...)

This is a common trope people fall for, from the Magical Negro to the Hyper-Competent Sidekick. There is even a Manic Pixie Dream Boy and, finally, an expansion of the MPDG into other racial backgrounds.

Anyhoo, the point is we're all just looking for someone to help free us from our self-imposed bonds of mediocrity or ignominy. That's why we watch movies, read books, and look at art -- among other activities -- that reflects this deep-seated need to save and be saved.

Ultimately, however, the MPDG trope, entertaining as it has been in film, literature, and other art, is something that needs to be reckoned with in real life. Nobody can save you, not really. You want a hero? You need to be your own hero. Want to overcome that existential crisis? See a counselor, sure, but also don't expect someone else to lift the hefty tons of baggage you're carrying around.

As harsh as it is, when it comes to the arc of your life, the only person who can truly save you is yourself. Other people can help you, they can be a support system, they can even carry you for a little while. But not forever. Not even close. Eventually you will need to get yourself back up, or continue falling for the rest of your life.

Take it from me, I know whereof I speak. This isn't just my own experience; I've seen the results of this on the lives of hundreds of people, primarily young men.

If I could go back in a time-machine and meet my younger self, I'm not sure exactly what would happen (other than be freaked the fuck out, because, of course), how I would teach myself these lessons before I learned them the hard way. However, I do know that I would tell myself these things:

1. It's not your fault. It. Is. Not. Your. Fault.
2. You need to take ownership of your life.
3. Don't use anything that happened to you in your life as an excuse to be shitty towards another person.

Also, I might recommend reading more Kierkegaard and less Bukowski, to avoid the MPDG trap. But I digress...

Like the man Freddie Mercury said, you just need to find somebody to love. Somebody who's not a fucking decades old story-telling trope. Somebody real.