The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), 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." MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up, thus their men never grow up.
The "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" has been compared to another stock character, the "Magical Negro," a black character who seems to exist only to provide spiritual or mystical help to the (white) protagonist. In both cases, the stock character has no discernible inner life, and usually only exists to provide the protagonist some important life lessons.
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Famous quotes containing the words manic, dream and/or girl:
“I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,
and made my manic statement,
telling off the state and president, and then
sat waiting sentence in the bull pen
beside a Negro boy with curlicues
of marijuana in his hair.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven’t lost it.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946.... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)