This is a response to: http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2013/06/i-was-manic-pixie-dream-girl-now-i%E2%80%99m-busy-casting-spells-myself
Specifically, its in response to the line: “crop up in real life partly because fiction creates real life.”
I was told how great this article. How amazing and self-assertive the article is. How strong of an article, and well written it was. And as I was reading, I got to that line, and I had to stop and send a message to my friend:
“And this article is stupid. I might have to write a blog on that line alone.”
Fiction does not create these characters. These archetypes do not form in the dreamscape of a writer’s mind and are only birthed into reality after the ink soaks into the page. We as humans already fit these archetypes. That guy with the scarf, tight pants, the band t-shirt, and the facial hair that is trying to look unkempt but obviously has product in it? Hipster. Pale girl with black lipstick, nail polish, and clothing? Goth. Old man in the tweed jacket walking with a cane and hunchback? Grumpy old man. Young girl with a backpack? School girl. Just because its in a movie, and you give it a new complex terminology like “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” and calling it “character archetypes,” doesn’t change the fact that its nothing more than a “Stereotype.”
I’m not saying media doesn’t influence our lives. If I thought that, I never would have studied film and video for over a decade of my life. What I am saying is that these characters already existed. They may have been popularized by media, but they were not created. The “Valley Girl” archetype, is like, totally, said to be created by Frank Zappa, but like, he actually was, like, ripping on his daughter. Rude, I know, but like, totally, duh. “Valspeak” exploded after his song “Valley Girl,” and became a larger cultural phenomenon than it was before... but it existed before Frank Zappa attempted to mock it. He just, accidentally, popularized it.
A writing practice many writers are suggested to go through is sitting on a bus and just write what they see. Give someone a life in the passing moment that you see someone on the bus. This is passing judgment on just tiny base details of the person. But its not just writers that do that. We all do that. We judge someone based on momentary glimpses of who they are. I am not meaning to entail that its right to stereotype, but its how we make sense of the world. As long as we’re not using the stereotype to pass negative judgment on the person (e.g. racism), it can be helpful. Seeing me with running shoes, running shorts, and a tank top covered in sweat, and asking if I’m a runner could be a good way to start a conversation with me.
When watching a movie, we’re only looking at a small part of the character’s life. We have 90 minutes to get into the character. That’s just a moment of their life, no more than seeing them as a stranger on the bus. I have before written in defense of using archetypes. By using an archetype, you allow your audience to easily identify and accustom themselves to the character or world quickly. This happens all the time, even in movies and books that are character studies. If the writer wants it to be about the character, they will use that stereotype as a jumping point, and then attempt to shatter our preconceived notions. The hipster is that way because of some tragic life events. The goth? Because of tragic life events. Grumpy old man? Tragic life events. School girl? She’s about to get hit by some tragic life events that make her unable to relate to people on any non-superficial level, and so is now a Valley Girl. But these movies are not about a universal story or idea, they are about a specific person or situation.
But if the movie or book is about a story, and not a character study, than leaving the characters at a base level not only makes it easier to focus on the story, but is actually productive for the story. It’s not a lazy intent, but purposeful to write a vapid character. If you have a detailed character with all these specific events that led him to his / her life ...well you’ve already used your 90 minutes. But if you have extra time, the viewer or reader may no longer be able to identify with the character. Simple primary characters have a purpose; I can fill the character with who I am, and experience the story from the perspective as the protagonist. I can also allow the secondary characters to be my friends, my family, my lovers, my please-be-my-lover, or my dog. These empty characters allow us to fill ourselves into the position. This can change what a story may actually mean to us. A strong outgoing person may find the main character to be strong and outgoing, while a person going through emotional turmoil may also see the protagonist suffering. This allows a writer to touch more people with their story, albeit it suffers from having less in-depth characters.
Part of my problem with this article is that the writer identifies herself as being the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That is the person she is, or wanted to be (which in a way, made her that character). Because of that, she sees herself in other characters. Thus, she also sees many female characters as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Not necessarily because that’s what the character is, but that’s because who the writer of this article is. The writer mentions a multitude of characters, from Doctor Who to (500) Days of Summer. Not a single one of those characters are necessarily the Manic Pixie Dream Girl alone, not unless you put that into the character. My assertive female friends don’t see the Eleventh Doctor’s companions as weak, as characters who are there only to please the doctor (some of the Tenth Doctor’s companions were that). The companions have their own wants and desires, and the Doctor is simply the vessel that allows them to get there. Does the Doctor save Rory and Amy, Clara, and River Song? Yes. But they also save him. In fact, Amy Pond is the narrator of the story, she is the protagonist for a multitude of episodes. If you want to break down the character to a single, negative, archetype, that’s because thats what you want to see, and not necessarily what’s presented in the story.
It’s okay to be a quirky woman. It’s okay to be nerdy, and a romantic whose heads are in the clouds. It’s also okay to want your partner to be happy. It is NOT okay to demonize someone because they look like they could be that person, or even for being that person. The writer ends her article by saying she’s trying not to be that person. And why not? If that is who she is, she should learn to be happy with who she is. Male or female, the large majority of these type of stories are about these characters finding happiness with who they are.
The other part about this article that bothered me was her line about the difference between men and women writing. She says “Men write women, and they re-write us, for revenge.” First, ask yourself what is the purpose of the article? The writer is upset, and is lashing out at this character archetype. Her purpose of writing this is vengeance. That’s what writers do, especially creative writing. It is an outlet for our emotions. Not every female character I write will be about revenge though. In fact, most will not be. Some will be mourning, others celebrations, some anger, and others will be lustful. The sex of the individual doesn’t even matter. I can just as easily write a vengeance story about the bastard who stole my bike as about the woman who broke my heart (in fact, weren’t a pair of Chaucer’s recurring characters two men he hated from his youth, and wanted them to be eternalized as idiots?). If she is implying that men should not write about emotionally powerful moments on their life, or stories without villains, than all I will be writing will be TPS reports.
This article did nothing for me. As opposed to coming off strong, what I read was a series of unproductive complaints. Unproductive complaining is whining. I’ll be honest, I enjoy my simple entertainment. I have both Capote, which is the award winning character study of Truman Capote, and Garden State on my wall of DVDs. The two types of films serve different purposes, and I watch them for different reasons. I don’t watch Capote and see myself as Capote, nor could I even if I wanted to. Vapid characters serve a purpose. They can help push a story to be more universal to touch more people. Being a role-model is not one of those purposes. If the writer of this article needed a strong female role model, they are out there in spades, and not hard to find. There are many more strong male leads, and I believe that needs to change, and is already changing. But the writer isn’t seeing strong characters as strong characters, instead she is putting part of herself in them and seeing characters that are just serving their male companion. She’s passing a negative judgment on characters for being something they aren’t. Furthermore, she’s passing judgement on a type of human, and saying its wrong to be that.
No comments:
Post a Comment