The Manic Pixie Dream Girl has become a stock character we’re able to spot from a mile away, but what about her male equivalent, the Manic Pixie Dream Boy? The MPDB is a paradox—he’s youthful and innocent but also holds sage-like wisdom. While the MPDB can be more or less a simplified fantasy of a perfect boyfriend, at his best he’s a mentor and therapist to us all. Here’s our Take on the manic pixie dream boy - the man who’ll swoop in when you least expect it, but when you need him the most.

TRANSCRIPT

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl has become a stock character we’re able to spot from a mile away, but what about her male equivalent, the Manic Pixie Dream Boy? The MPDB is a paradox — he’s youthful and innocent but also holds sage-like wisdom. He’s got it all figured out — the manic pixie dream boy has a deeper insight into how the universe works. Thanks to his unique outlook, he often takes on the role of a life coach, helping to reorient someone who’s at a crossroads — often a female protagonist, but it can also be a friend, family member, or larger groups. He is non-threatening, upbeat, and possesses an innocence that puts him at odds with the more cut-throat supposedly “realistic,” adult world. And he’s temporary. For one reason or another, he tends to be gone by the end of the story, leaving only his lessons behind. And he can even feel like a magical spirit or figment of someone’s imagination. Some have argued that the MPDB is just as toxic as his female equivalent and that if you object to one you should reject both. But it’s important to consider societal context when the genders are reversed in a trope like this. While the manic pixie dream girl reinforces a lot of things women are already pushed to be — always agreeable and fun, focused on her man’s happiness and only there to support him — the manic pixie dream boy challenges the gender status quo by representing a desire for men to be things they’re traditionally not: openly communicative, sacrificing and supportive of a woman’s independent fulfillment.

While the MPDB can be more or less a simplified fantasy of a perfect boyfriend, at his best he’s a mentor and therapist to us all — offering timeless insight into dealing with the crushing pressures of adulthood and the so-called real world. Here’s our take on the manic pixie dream boy — the man who’ll swoop in when you least expect it, but when you need him the most.

The Inner Child

One common denominator of the manic pixie dream boy is youth — even when the character himself isn’t young, he’s young at heart. The manic pixie dream boy is essentially a modern-day Peter Pan — the only child who never grows up. Just as Peter teaches Wendy and her brothers to fly, the goal of the manic pixie dream boy is to inspire those around him to harness their inner child. As a line in J.M.Barrie’s novel puts it about flying, “When people grow up they forget the way.” Like Peter, the MPDB abhors the upside-down values of “grown-ups” who don’t understand the importance of play, or who spend their lives feeling they have to outrun a ticking clock. In fact, accessing your inner child has real-life benefits; Dr. Stephen Diamond writes that a, “lack of conscious relatedness to our own inner child is precisely where so many behavioral, emotional, and relationship difficulties stem from.”

In Elf, Buddy shows how embracing your inner child and finding joy in life are important parts of self-actualizing and connecting with people. When he first meets his love-interest, Jovie, she is a holiday cynic and loner. However, Buddy’s genuine enthusiasm and exuberance cracks her rough exterior until she’s willing to overcome her stage fright to spread Christmas cheer. Buddy also influences his father, Walter, to recalibrate his life and transform from an emotionally distant workaholic to a man who will risk his career for his family.

This leads us to a key difference between the manic pixie dream girl and boy. The whole problem with the manic pixie dream girl is that she’s always a love interest, a character who’s just there to support the male protagonist with whom she has romantic chemistry. However the manic pixie dream boy can be the protagonist, or he can influence all kinds of people — fathers, friends, students, and patients — basically anyone around him who needs to rediscover the magic of being alive. A great example of this is John Keating in Dead Poets Society who, despite being much older than his students, can see that these serious pupils in their high-pressure environment are desperately lacking in youthful rebellion.

The manic pixie dream boy as an embodiment of youth and rebellion is also sometimes placed in opposition to other children. In Scottish indie film Beats, Spanner takes on the role of the manic pixie dream boy to the meek, anxious Johnno. Despite Spanner’s reckless behavior leading to trouble, Johnno envies his friend’s wild qualities and ultimately learns from his carefree attitude. Ferris Bueller fulfills a similar role with Cameron, pushing his mopey best friend to go on a series of fun, rebellious adventures that,the movie reminds us, are what life is really all about.

Ferris Buller: “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” - Ferris Buller’s Day Off

By the end of the film, Ferris has helped Cameron move past his fear of breaking the rules, which allows Cameron to be honest with himself and those around him for the first time. In examples like Ferris and Spanner, we can interpret the manic pixie dream boy as representing an inner self that characters who are stuck need to let take the wheel.

This concept of the inner self relates to psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of the anima and animus. This (admittedly binaried and heteronormative) theory asserts that the anima is the unconscious feminine side of men and the animus is the unconscious masculine side of women, and in order to be whole we must tap into these hidden aspects of our personalities. We can view the manic pixie dream boy trope through this lens when it comes to female characters who grow after absorbing the lessons of manic pixie dream boys.

So you have a character like Tom in Last Christmas, who swoops in to encourage Kate to be more present, more family-oriented, and to live a more charitable life, or you have Jack in Titanic who encourages Rose to be assertive, independent, and to make decisions for herself. Kate and Rose are pushed in very different directions by Tom and Jack — one toward independence, the other toward family — but both manic pixie dream boys embody something that was already inside these heroines, and that just needed to come out. This inner animus theory becomes literal in the case of Last Christmas when it is revealed that — spoiler alert — Tom is an illusion, he died the year before, and Kate received his heart in a transplant. There’s even a potential reading of Titanic that posits Jack’s not real. Like Peter Pan, the MPDB sometimes feels almost supernatural, a character made of magic or a piece of the psyche who inspires characters to rediscover their zest for life and stand up for their individuality, but can’t permanently survive in the real world. Once that agency is unlocked in the person he’s helping, the manic pixie dream boy tends to disappear.

Rules to Live By

The manic pixie dream boy often feels like a life coach. As characters learn to view the world the way he sees it, they gain perspective, re-evaluate their priorities, and establish a new set of rules to live by. At the extreme end of this scale, he can veer close to martyrdom. In the most recent iteration of A Star Is Born, Jackson Maine helps his love Ally fulfill her potential as an artist and become a star, but when he can’t escape his own personal problems he decides to make sure he’s not around to hold her back — and by the end of the movie, he lives on only through her. In The Fault In Our Stars, both Gus and Hazel are dealing with life-threatening diseases, but while Hazel is depressed, MPDB Gus confronts his own mortality and doesn’t let his diagnosis hold him back. His influence makes her see that even though life has challenges, there’s a lot to live for. A similar conceit plays out in Five Feet Apart, in which central couple Will and Stella also bond over mutual medical issues, but Will tries not to let this define him. And, underlining the MPDB’s transient nature, he ultimately removes himself from the equation so that she can carry on living. Both Gus and Will illustrate how the manic pixie dream boy supports his love interest’s independence and ability to move on without him.

The effervescent, unbridled positivity of Ted Lasso also puts him in the manic pixie dream boy camp, and what’s interesting is that his philosophies on life and coaching actually come at the expense of his team’s athletic performances. At no point does he seem like a competent soccer coach, instead spending his time encouraging the star striker, Jamie Tartt, to become more of a team player, giving a new sense of purpose to the fading star Roy Kent, and supporting the owner Rebecca even when she’s actively undermining him. He comes in with ideas that are completely anathema to the world of soccer, but eventually, his focus on the bigger picture beyond sporting success wins people over, and so while he fails in the league, it may just be better for the overall team in the long, long game. Still, there can be a naivety to this attitude — and for all of Lasso’s charm on our TV screens, it’s hard to imagine real-life fans who would want him as their team’s manager.

Ted Lasso: “Success is not about the wins or losses, it’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves.” - Ted Lasso 1x3

The dark side of the MPDB’s willful naivety is explored through Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man,

a profile on the late Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 summers camping among grizzly bears in Alaska, before eventually being killed by a grizzly bear. The film utilizes a lot of Treadwell’s own footage, and his own narration, which often shows him as loving, carefree, and child-like in nature, but Herzog’s role in the film undercuts this. He challenges Treadwell’s manic pixie dream boy leanings,and openly disagrees with his view of the world. It’s an interesting inversion of the trope, showing that while in the movies the manic pixie dream boy can be a powerful agent for change, in the real world, his philosophies are hard (and even dangerous) to live by.

The Perfect Guy?

There’s also a version of the manic pixie dream boy who’s just that — a dream of a boyfriend. A perfect man: sweet, supportive, kind, handsome, and most crucially, willing to shape his life around that of his partner. In this aspect, he’s similar to the manic pixie dream girl — an impossibly quirky partner, who’s more than willing to fit into the protagonist’s life and not ask too much of him. Still, there’s something refreshing about the way that the MPDB offers an alternative to the old-school male hero — encouraging female independence and proposing a template for a healthy modern-day relationship, founded not only on equality, but also on men lifting women up.

Maybe the most iconic manic pixie dream boy of the modern age is Peter Kavinsky — and by extension, Noah Centineo’s real-life persona. Peter Kavinsky is the quintessential All American Boy: athletic, handsome, and popular, but historically this archetype has had an iffy, sometimes misogynistic, relationship with women. But Peter appreciates and validates Lara-Jean, and at the end of the series, sacrifices his own desire for them to go to college together to support her dream. This same level of support is offered by two of 2010 sitcoms’ dream boys: Parks and Recreation’s Ben Wyatt and 30 Rock’s Criss Cross. Both Ben and Criss are with ambitious, independent, and career-driven women, and they embrace their partners’ success as well as their world’s progress in making huge strides toward equality. This contrasts with how similar characters have acted in the past — like when Sex and the City’s Steve feels threatened by Miranda’s success.

A clear draw to the manic pixie dream boy is his emotional intelligence and ability to express himself. In romantic situations, the MPDB often challenges typical gender roles by being the pursued, not the pursuer. In The Holiday, MPDB Graham admits to being intimidated by the fact that Amanda owns her own business, but he never feels emasculated by the power imbalance between them, and has no problem showcasing his more feminine and nurturing side. In the end, it’s precisely this part of him that makes him such an ideal match for Amanda.

Conclusion

The manic pixie dream boy is all about gaining perspective. He offers a template for how to live a fulfilling adult life — which depends most of all on staying in touch with your inner child. He reminds us that our time is limited, but that just means we must make the most of it. He also suggests that you maintain a sense of independence within a relationship, and not let yourself become defined by personal challenges or hardship. If the old-fashioned notion of a dream boy was about finding someone to take care of you, then the manic pixie dream boy enables you to take care of yourself.

John Keating: “Seize the day boys”- Dead Poets Society

Sources

Farah, Stephen. “The Archetypes of the Anima and Animus.” Applied Jung, Feb. 4, 2015 https://appliedjung.com/the-archetypes-of-the-anima-and-animus/

Rabin, Nathan. “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown.” AV Club, Jan. 25, 2007 https://film.avclub.com/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-elizabet-1798210595

Diamond, Stephen A. “Essential Secrets of Psychotherapy: The Inner Child.” Psychology Today, Jun. 7, 2008 https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/evil-deeds/200806/essential-secrets-psychotherapy-the-inner-child