Manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream girl or MPDG is a name given to a type of stock character in films.

Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the phrase after seeing Kirsten Dunst in "Elizabethtown", describes the MPDG as "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." [http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/wild_things_16_films_featuring/1] MPDG's are usually static characters with unabashedly girlish and eccentric personality quirks. They invariably serve as romantic interest to a leading male protagonist.

MPDG's are also called 'Amazing Girls' by Sadie of Jezebel.com, describing the type as "ideal muses whose beauty, sweetness and gentle, studied eccentricity renders them entirely docile." [http://jezebel.com/5033744/manic-pixie-dream-girls-are-the-scourge-of-modern-cinema]

The MPDG is, as defined so far, a distinctly American film character type, and Rabin and others do not offer any European or Asian cinematic equivalent. Though the MPDB is a relatively recent phenomenon, Rabin points to Katherine Hepburn's character in "Bringing Up Baby" as one of the earliest examples. [http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/wild_things_16_films_featuring/1]


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