Oh good it's not just me and jethrien

[trinityvixen]

Some way while back, I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and liked it, with the reservation that I'm constantly annoyed by the free-spirit wild-child romantic interest character as played (excellently, don't get me wrong) by Kate Winslet in that movie. I'm sick of near-schizophrenic free-thinkers "saving" people--sorry, not people, men--with their cah-ray-zee antics that would more likely get the fellow on the receiving end fired, arrested, or killed, depending on the severity of the life-saving method.

Well, thank god, the AV Club agrees with me. DOWN WITH THE MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL. (In all of her incarnations!)

An article commenting on the AV Club article over at Salon has this great addition:

I would suggest that women like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl do exist; it's just that, when I've known them, they've mostly been self-obsessed nutballs.

And this is precisely what jethrien and I were griping together about. It's really an insult to the smart, together, fun girls out there that this MPDG archetype is "the dream." Personally, I find that person to be unstable, and while that's fun for the occasional romp and perhaps easy to fall in love with, you don't have a future with this person. Because if they were on the meds they're supposed to be on, they wouldn't be fun. They'd just be self-obsessed instead of being self-obsessed muse-gurus meant to free penises from the chokeholds of dress pants.

Comments

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I realize I'm late to the party, but tangentially, this was one of the things I thought was brilliant about Juno. The classic Hollywood love story is the stodgy businessguy and the manic pixie dream girl, who fall in love and live happily ever after. The adult couple (Vanessa and Marc, I believe) in Juno is a typical Hollywood couple, with the genders swapped--and happily ever after isn't so happily. He resents being forced to settle down. She's grown tired of his flightiness. This is a BIG SHOCK, of course, only if you believe everything Hollywood tells you and ignore reality.

I've seen an awful lot of criticism of Juno from both sides of the political/ideological spectrum, but I think it was a fantastic movie if only for that grounding in reality. That, and the witty banter.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Of course Juno herself is dangerously close to being another MPDG. But it's a fair read on Marc and Vanessa. She's clearly more grounded than he, though his problem seems less mania and more insecurity/immaturity.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I don't think Juno herself is a MPDG. The MPDG is an adult (old enough to know better) and her magical flightiness is presented as a wonderful thing that brings joy into boring lives. Juno gets pregnant by being a dumbass teenager, deals with it, fucks up her relationship through flightiness and gets it back through responsibility, and "grows up" to some degree during the film.

(For the record, my mother hated Juno. She felt Juno got off far too easily and everything ended far too happily given the other events of the film. My mother has some interesting double standards, at times.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I said "close to." She gets the leeway and the escape by virtue of being a teenager. The fact that she's written as 30 year old is what creates the illusion of her being an MPDG. Because, clearly, she is the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, only she's supposed to be a teenager because a comedy about a plucky 30 year old having to deal with the adversity of being unexpectedly pregnant...would have be Knocked Up, I guess.

I actually didn't like Juno, the person. I totally agreed with her little boyfriend when he was all agape at her going, "Wow, you'd be the meanest wife ever." Because she was just too cool for school unless she was demanding sympathy she didn't extend to others. The parts of the movie I liked were the genuinely sweet boyfriend and the awesome parents. God bless her step-mom, she was the most awesome thing that happened to that movie. (The dad was funny, but his "I thought you were smarter than this" talk when he found out his daughter was pregnant? Yeah, way to be a douche when making sure your kid knows her birds and bees is YOUR job.)

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

The fact that she's written as 30 year old is what creates the illusion of her being an MPDG.

I'd say she was written as what a 30-year-old wishes she had been like in high school. Which is not quite the same animal.

I agree, the boyfriend was adorable (and the movie presented his feelings and actions as totally justified! Is that not awesome? Guys with feelings!) and the parents were great. But I also give the father some slack: Any good father (or mother) would be disappointed with their kid, and with themselves, in such a situation. No one wants to deal with being disappointed by themself in the heat of the moment. I thought his reaction was entirely realistic.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'd say she was written as what a 30-year-old wishes she had been like in high school. Which is not quite the same animal.

Read a few of Diablo Cody's "columns" for Entertainment Weekly and you'll soon see that Juno is her. Right down to the gratuitous and egregiously dated pop-culture references. (She wrote an entire column about OMG I AM LIEK SO XCITED THE NEW KIDS ON TEH BLOCK ARE GETTIN BACK TOGETHER!.) She just de-aged herself and wrote a movie about it. The fact that film shoe-horned in the high school parts around that is pretty obvious. Juno goes through exactly one scene of her being pregnant at school with people looking at her funny. Otherwise, the setting is entirely outside of it. It's not even Cody wishing she'd been cooler as a kid. It's just that it made for a better source of dramatic tension.

Michael Cera is brilliant at being vulnerable in a way that is so adorable you can't help but be happy when he is no matter what source of happiness he finds. Being with Juno, for some reason, makes him happy, so you swallow the BS that they'd ever be good for each other. (She'll crush his little soul.) But yes, it was refreshing to see him try to process the idea he got someone pregnant and to work against the narrative to find his place. Unlike the aforementioned Knocked Up where the pregnancy activated a switch that turned a schlub into Dad (and Boyfriend) of the Year.

As for the father, I'd have forgiven the exclamation of disappointment more if they'd done more to resolve it. Yes, they had the scene of him showing affection and care for her later, but he never quite got right onto Juno's side the way the step-mom did. He had at least another scene or two of waffling whereas she ended the scene where they only just found out the situation by making a list of things Juno would need to have/do to have a healthy baby. It's sad that it took her bio-parent so much longer to catch up.