The cost of being a pink butterfly
The cost of being a pink butterfly
Deconstructing the destructive trope of 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.”
- Nathan Rabin
A couple of years ago when I was new in Bangalore, I made a few interesting friends. But one, in particular, was distinctively etched in my memory. She reminded me of an interesting pop culture cliche - The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. As a teenager, if you have read young adult novels or watched enough rom-com movies then you must have already encountered this trope more than just once. The term is devised by critic Nathan Rabin while analyzing the painfully sexist rendition of one particular female character from a movie. As per Rabin, Clair Colburn played by Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown was an example of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype. According to his definition this woman, "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful…