V\Illwms College. Selecting This Option Will Assign Copyright to the College

Home , 500 Days of Summer, Bringing Up Baby, Butterflies Are Free, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Melanie Griffith, Nathan Rabin

\VILLIAMS COLLEGE LIBRARIES

Your unpublished thesis, submitted for a degree at Williams College and administered b:;.• the vVillimns College Libraries. will be made available for research use. You may. through thts form, provide instructions regarding copyrigl1L access, dissemination ami reproduction of your thesis. The College has the right in all cases to maintain and preserve theses both in hardcopy and electronic format. 8nd to make such copws as the Libraries require for their research and archival functions.

-~- .. The faculty advisor/s to the student writing the thesis claims joint ahip in this \vork.

].\ve have included in this thesis copyrighted material 1<•r which I/we have not rec'''1ved permission from the copyright holden's. lf you c.o 11ot ~;t:c<:re copyright penni~sions by the time your thesis is submitted. you \vi!\ stiil be allowed to subu:it. However. if the necessary copyright periuissions are not r<:ceived. <:-posti11g of your the~is may be affected. Copyrighted material may inch!.·:le images (tables. drawings. photographs, figures. maps, graphs. etc.). sound files. video L'1aterial. data sets and large portioHs of text.

I. _CQf.YRI CiHI An mnhor by hw O'>VH:> the copyright to hi.s/her work. whether or not <1 copyright symbol ancl cbte are placed on th: ptece Please choose one of the options below with re~pect to the copyright in your thesis.

___ l \w choose not to retain the copyright to the thesis, nnd hereby assign the copyright t() v\illwms College. Selecting this option will assign copyright to the College. Ii' the anthor/s wishes later to publish the work. he/she/they will need to obtain permission to do so ii·om the Likaries. which will be granted except in Hmtsnal circumst

__!. I.\ve choose to retain the copyright to the thesis for a period of _lQ_Q_ years. or until my/om death/s. \Vhichever is the eariier, at 1vhich 1ime lh~ copyright shall he assigned 1c:• Wtlliams College '.Vithout need of further action by me/u<.; ur by my/our heirs, successors, or re1.lresenta1i:vos of myiour estate/s ~:>electing lhi'; opTion nllo\vs the author/s the Hexibility ofre.:1ining bts.,11er/their copyng.ht for a perio(! of yea:·s or for !ifS AND CQPYINQ If ym: have chosen in section I. above. to retain the copyright in your thesis for some period of time. please choose one of the following options with respect to access to. and c0pying of. the thesis.

~/we grant permission to Williams College to provide access to (and therefore copying of) the thesis in electronic format via the Internei or other means of electronic tn1nsmission, in addition to permitting access to and copying of the thesis in hardcopy format. Selecting this option allow~ the Libraries to transmit the thesi~ in electronic format via the Intemet. This option will therefore permit worlchvicle access to the thesis and, because the Libraries cannot control the uses of an electronic version once it has been transmitted. this option also pennits copying of the electronic version.

____ L\ve grant permission to Williams College to maintain and provide access to the thesis m hardc')PY format. In addition, I/we grant permi::.sion to Williams College to prov1de access to (and therefore copyiug oJ) the thesis in electronic fonnat via the Internet or other means of electronic transmission after a period of ____ years. Seiecring this option allo\vs the Libraries to transmit the thesi·; in electronic format via the Intemet after a peri·Jd of years. Once the restriction period has ended, rhis option permits worlchvide access to the thesis, and copying of the electronic and harc!r.opy versions.

J/\ve grant permission to vVilliams College to maintai!<, provide access ro, and provide copies of the thesis in hardcopy fonnat only, for af; long as I/we retain copyright. Selecting thi-; option allows access to your vvork only from ih·~ hardcopy you submit fo1· as long as you 1 eta in ,copyright in the \York. Such access pertains to the: entirety of your work. incluclin!,! at!V media tbat it incorporates. Selecting this option al!ow5 th<:! L ibrarie•> to provide c:opies of the th.:s1o, to rese<~rcher~ in hardcopy form only. not in electronic fon11.:1t

i'\v0 grant permission to vVilliams College to maintain and to provide access to the thcst> m hardcopy fonna1 only, for as long as 1/we retaiu copyright. Selecting this optiou :tllows access to your work only ti·om the hardcopy you submit for as long as yo<.! n:t

Signed (student author)

Signed (faculty advisorJ

Signed (2d advisor, if applicable)

Thesis titie -~-~--~0\V\~c fi xit ·-D~ia-~---~-"-\ ______Da1 e -- .2/ Lr__ f-_t_3_. ------

[Lil~-1~1~; Use·------r------n-

1 J Accepted By: ~---·------·------THE MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL:

A QUESTION OF AGENCY

BRYN DUNBAR

Amy Holzapfel, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the

Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors

in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williamstown, Massachusetts

April 21, 2013

To Kyle Pfahler

Thank you for being my friend all these years, and for reading my little monster.

i Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iv

Introduction: Can the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Be Given Agency? 1

Chapter 1: Psychoanalysis and Elevating the Spectator 8

Defining the Manic Pixie Dream Girl 9

Feminist Psychoanalytic Film Theory 14

The Limits of Feminist Psychoanalytic Film Theory 18

Ways of Elevating the Spectator 22

Considering Cultural Context 27

Hook Up Culture and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl 32

How to Proceed 36

Chapter 2: A Manic Pixie Dream Girl with Unstoppable Force 39

Susan Vance as Manic Pixie Dream Girl 40

A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of Susan Vance 42

Disruption of the Voyeuristic Experience in Bringing Up Baby (1938) 50

Katharine Hepburn’s Image as an Actress 53

Susan Vance’s Gender 56

Cultural Context 61

Conclusion 64

Chapter 3: A Sexually Active Manic Pixie Dream Girl 66

Summer Finn as Manic Pixie Dream Girl 67

A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of Summer Finn 70

Disruption of the Voyeuristic Experience in (500) Days of Summer (2009) 74

ii Zooey Deschanel’s Image as an Actress 83

Summer Finn’s Gender 88

Cultural Context 93

Conclusion 95

Conclusion: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Agency 96

Bibliography 99

iii Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Amy Holzapfel, for helping me make this thesis project a reality. I appreciate that you gave me this opportunity to learn and grow. Thank you for putting up with my antics and for keeping me from going down too many rabbit holes.

I would also like to thank my second and third readers, Professor Anna Fishzon and Professor Maria Elena Cepeda. I appreciate all that you did to make this project possible. I am incredibly grateful for how you encouraged me to explore new ways of thinking and for providing feedback along the way. Thank you to Emery Shriver for advising me about research. This thesis was my attempt to try to learn how to do the kind of work that I am interested in doing. I greatly appreciate the fact that the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department gave me this chance to explore my interests. Thank you to all of the professors who encouraged me throughout my time at Williams.

Thank you to my focus group participants. I could not have done it without you.

Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, brother, and incredible friends who were always there to support me, listen to me vent, and bring me treats and a Manic Pixie Dream Octopus.

iv Introduction:

Can the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Be Given Agency?

I stumbled across the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) quite by accident one day on the Internet. I thought the term was so strange and outlandish that I had to find out more. A quick Google search easily reveals the origins of the term. The phrase Manic

Pixie Dream Girl was first coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in the 2007 Onion A.V.

Club article “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File # 1: Elizabethtown.” In the article, Rabin describes the MPDG:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl 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. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or- nothing proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family. 1

The term has since been appropriated by much of the media and has even entered the language of popular film critics. 2 It is used to describe female characters whose

1 Nathan Rabin, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File # 1: Elizabethtown,” The Onion A.V. Club, January 25, 2007, http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-bataan- death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-eliza,15577/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

2 For example see:

Aisha Harris, “Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?” Slate’s Culture Blog, December 5, 2012, http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/12/05/manic_pixie_ prostitute_video_is_the_latest_critique_of_the_manic_pixie_dream.html (accessed March 10, 2013).

Doree Shafrir, “Indie Dream Girls,” The Daily Beast, July 20, 2009, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/07/20/indie-dream-girls.html (accessed March 10, 2013).

1 personalities are based on being outlandish, chipper, and kooky. The character often appears to play a supporting role for the male lead by teaching him to appreciate the small wonders of life and feel as if he has been truly awakened to how wonderful life is.

A great number of these characters have been identified both in past and present films.

Lists include: Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938), Shirley MacLaine in The

Apartment (1960), Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Leigh Taylor-

Young in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968), Barbra Streisand in What’s Up, Doc?

(1972), Goldie Hawn in Butterflies Are Free (1972), Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (1977),

Melanie Griffith in Something Wild (1986), Meg Ryan in Joe Versus The Volcano (1990),

Kate Hudson in Almost Famous (2000), Winonna Ryder in Autumn in New York (2000),

Charlize Theron in Sweet November (2001), Natalie Portman in Garden State (2004),

Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), Rachel Bilson in The Last Kiss (2006), and Elisha

Cuthbert in My Sassy Girl (2008).3 This list is not exhaustive.

The archetype of the MPDG seems to negate all of the other ways that a character can be interpreted. It is hard to believe that so many characters, created by different writers, and for the most part, portrayed by different actresses could really all be limited

Ethan Alter, “New Girl: Zooey Deschanel Talks Music, Motivation and Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” The Telefile, September 19, 2011, http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/telefile/2011/09/new-girl-zooey-deschanel- talks.php (accessed March 10, 2013).

Neda Ulaby, “Manic Pixie Dream Girls: A Cinematic Scourge?” NPR, October 9, 2008, http://www.npr.org/2008/10/09/95507953/manic-pixie-dream-girls-a-cinematic-scourge (accessed March 10, 2013).

3 Donna Bowman, Amelie Gillette, Steven Hyden, Noel Murray, Leonard Pierce, and Nathan Rabin, “Wild Things: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” The A.V. Club, August 4, 2008, http://www.avclub.com/articles/wild-things-16-films-featuring- manic-pixie-dream-g,2407/ (accessed March 5, 2013).

2 to a list of distinct traits. Furthermore, I share the feelings that Kimberly Springer expresses here:

As feminist, critical race, and queer critics the prospect that we will find ourselves only able to articulate everything that is wrong with popular culture and unable to give credit to those aspects that create a pathway to transformative visions is worrisome.4

It was my hope that I would find ways in which MPDG characters allowed for positive evaluations of representations of women, specifically in the ways that the characters demonstrated agency5. To accomplish this, I evaluate two films that have been labeled as featuring MPDGs by Nathan Rabin of The Onion A.V. Club6 and Allison Becker of

Bullet7: Bringing Up Baby (1938) and (500) Days of Summer (2009). I chose Bringing

Up Baby because it was one of the oldest films that people said featured a MPDG. My second choice was (500) Days of Summer because Zooey Deschanel, an actress who has come to stand for everything that it means to be an MPDG in the American popular imagination, portrays its main female character.

4 Kimberly Springer, “Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women: African American Women in Postfeminist and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture,” in Feminist Television Criticism, ed. Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D’Acci and Lynn Spigel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 89.

5 Agency, as I use it, is the ability to act in the world.

6 Donna Bowman, Amelie Gillette, Steven Hyden, Noel Murray, Leonard Pierce, and Nathan Rabin, “Wild Things: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” The A.V. Club, August 4, 2008, http://www.avclub.com/articles/wild-things-16-films-featuring- manic-pixie-dream-g,2407/ (accessed March 5, 2013).

7 Allison Becker, “15 Moments in Manic Pixie Dream Girl History,” Bullett, November 30, 2012, http://bullettmedia.com/editorial/manic-pixie-dream-girl/ (accessed April 17, 2013).

3 My examination of the MPDG is divided into three chapters. The first chapter establishes a critical framework in which to analyze the MPDG. I begin by examining the meaning of the term itself and the individual words and phrase that make up the term:

“manic,” “pixie,” “dream,” and “girl.” A consideration of how these words are defined lead me to decide that a feminist psychoanalytic reading is appropriate for the MPDG, based on Laura Mulvey’s important work “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”

Mulvey’s interpretation of psychoanalysis places importance on the male gaze. It is assumed that spectators will identify with the male lead and through this identification objectify the female love interest.8 Such assumptions ignore individual differences like race, class, sexuality and gender identity. In addition, ways in which viewers are able to actively interact with the film in the theatre and in spaces like the Internet are ignored if analyses are limited to feminist psychoanalytic film theory. To explore ways in which spectators can be active, I examine the works of bell hooks9, Jacque Rancière, Richard

Dyer, and Lauren Berlant. I also consider gender and Judith Butler’s work on performativity and how it relates to the MPDG’s embodiment of hyper-feminine and masculine traits.

My interest in the activeness of the viewer also led to me to conduct several focus groups to explore how women on the Williams College campus interact with films.10 I

8 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975),” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 440-441.

9 [sic]

10 I am grateful to Professor Maria Elena Cepeda for providing me with a model of how to conduct these studies.

4 was interested in speaking to women specifically because I wondered if they would automatically feel a disconnect with films intended for the male gaze. I recruited people to come to these focus groups by creating a Facebook event and inviting people to attend, circulating information about the focus groups through word of mouth, mentioning it to teammates, and having others in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department spread information about the event.

Four women in total attended. They are all women that I would consider friends and thus had some vague knowledge of my thesis topic though no knowledge of what would actually take place during the focus groups. They were all twenty-one years of age at the time the study took place and members of the Williams College 2013 senior class.

They self-identified on a demographic worksheet I had them fill out as Asian American

(Korean), African American, White, and Caucasian. A wide range of majors was also represented: Biology, Anthropology, Psychology, Environmental Science,Women’s,

Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Neuroscience, and Theatre. The participants appeared to be middle class for the most part based on the education levels of their parents with one participant perhaps being slightly lower as both parents had received only a high school diploma. The East Coast and the West Coast were well represented. Two participants were from New York and Massachusetts while the other two were from Alaska and

California. It is important for me to acknowledge that all students at Williams have a certain element of privilege that comes from being students here. They are exposed to ideas and have multiple forums in which to discuss these ideas. They are also provided

Maria Elena Cepeda, “Survival Aesthetics: U.S. Latinas and the Negotiation of Popular Media,” in Latina/o Communication Studies Today, ed. Angharad N. Validivia (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

5 with a wide range of services. Though it may not be relevant and the participants were not openly asked such a question, I think it should also be noted that all of these women would probably identify themselves as feminists.

The participants were shown two clips: one from Brining Up Baby and one from

(500) Days of Summer. After the clips were shown, the participants completed a free write to organize their thoughts. They were then asked a series of questions about the two clips regarding their knowledge of the actress, how they would describe the characters, and how they responded to clips in general.

When conducting these focus groups, especially when it came to Bringing Up

Baby, it became very clear that time and relevancy were critical when it came to knowledge of the films and of the actresses who starred in them. All the women who participated in the focus groups had seen (500) Days of Summer before and had a vast knowledge base about Zooey Deschanel. Knowledge about Katharine Hepburn was very vague and often limited to key facts concerning her life and what she symbolized. When the film (500) Days of Summer was discussed participants often referenced other parts of the film. In contrast, when discussing Bringing Up Baby, participants usually only referenced information that they had seen in the clip from the film that was shown, as they were unaware of exactly how it fit into the broader story line.

The opinions expressed in the focus groups offer ways of interpreting the film.

They both reinforce a feminist psychoanalytic interpretation and move beyond it. Their inclusion in this work is meant to acknowledge that the spectator can be more than just a passive voyeur and explore how the MPDG may gain agency from interaction between character and viewer.

6 Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Bringing Up Baby and (500) Days of Summer respectively. These chapters begin with an explanation of why these characters can be labeled as MPDGs, they move on to an examination of the characters through a psychoanalytic feminist lens to see examine how these characters cater to the male gaze.

In an attempt to move beyond the active/passive binary that is often imposed by psychoanalysis, the chapters analyze ways in which the MPDG characters themselves are active, and how spectators can interact with the films through elements like the construction of the film, humor, and spectator knowledge of actors, and society, in general, to determine if the MPDG has agency.

Feminist psychoanalytic theory leaves little chance for the MPDG to have agency.

She is an objectified figure. By considering the spectator as an active participant in the film rather than a voyeur, new possibilities emerge for examining ways in which the

MPDG demonstrates agency. We as viewers are more powerful than we might think.

7 Chapter 1:

Psychoanalysis and Elevating the Spectator

The term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPGD) conjures up a number of diverse images. One could imagine an individual who is happy to the extreme, tiny fairies, a sleeping form, or a child playing. The list goes on and on ranging from innocence to more serious suggestions of mental illness. An understanding of the words that make up the label using dictionary definitions and descriptions from the Internet and the focus groups lead to a better understanding of how the term should be understood. In combination, the meanings that comprise the MPDG label have strong allusions to psychoanalysis and demonstrate that the MPDG has a mixture of masculine and feminine traits.

An exploration of Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” is most applicable when considering the MPDG’s agency. Using a feminist psychoanalytic approach Mulvey discusses the pleasures that come from watching film through scopophilia and identification. While Mulvey’s argument provides a framework for interpreting how the MPDG comes to be objectified, its passive/active binary excludes the possibility of both an active spectator and an MPDG with agency. Both bell hooks and Jacques Rancière argue that there are ways in which spectators can be seen as powerful. hooks argues that black women are excluded from Mulvey’s argument because, usually, they cannot identify with the subjects of popular films. Rancière argues the spectator should be placed in a position of privilege.

When considering the MPDG and agency, the spectator should be considered in terms of the knowledge he or she possesses about the star portraying the MPDG, and

8 what the actual experience of watching a film today is. The Internet provides new ways to learn about films and stars as well as new platforms for watching films, possibly destroying the voyeurism that is supported by darkened theatre. Cultural events also provided new ways for framing the MPDG to spectators. Many reactions to the MPDG make it seem as if she is being punished or “othered,” suggesting that audiences may be uncomfortable with the mix of masculine and feminine traits that she embodies. Such tensions can result from anxieties about Hook Up Culture1 and white female sexuality.

When considering the many aspects of privileging the spectator, responses collected in focus groups are analyzed in an attempt to include the spectator in the dialogue as an active participant. Exploring the various factors that allow spectators to be active provides a map for analyzing the MPDG’s agency in the next two chapters.

Defining the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

In order to determine how to analyze the MPDG and her agency, a clear understanding of the term itself must first be established using established definitions for the words that comprise the term and cultural interpretations of the term gathered from the Internet and focus groups. This understanding will allow an appropriate method of analysis to be selected. The term MPDG is made up of four very specific words: “manic,” “pixie,”

“dream,” and “girl.” An exploration of the meanings of the different words that make up the term MPDG will reveal more about what concepts are suggested by the term itself and the impact it has when it is used as a label for female film characters.

1 In this paper, I understand hook up as a term referring a casual sexual encounter. A hook up culture is used to describe cultures in which these kinds of encounters occur often, like for example that of college campuses.

9 The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary provides the following meaning for

“manic”: “affected with, relating to, characterized by, or resulting from mania.”2 “Mania” is defined as:

1: excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood; specifically: the manic phase of bipolar disorder 2 a: excessive or unreasonable enthusiasm—often used in combination b: the object of such enthusiasm.3

MPDG characters have an appreciation for life and living it to the fullest and moreover just generally being happy, but when these feelings are classified as manic, it is clear that they are too extreme. This classification of the MPDG’s feelings shows that they need to be controlled.

“Manic” associates the character with mental illness, an association which recalls historical connections between femininity and mental illnesses like that of hysteria.

Hysteria came to be linked to femininity: to be hysterical was to be feminine.4 In other words, by being mentally ill, women were in fact being feminine. With this historical context in mind, the mania of the MPDG becomes a type of exaggerated femininity.

“Pixie,” the next word in the MPDG label is defined by Merriam-Webster as: “1

Fairy: specifically: a cheerful mischievous sprite 2: a usually petite vivacious woman or girl.”5 The ways in which this word is defined carry associations with magic and the

2 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “manic,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manic (accessed April 16, 2013).

3 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “mania,” http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/mania?show=0&t=1366157463 (accessed April 16, 2013).

4 Patricia Gherovici, Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism (New York: Routledge, 2010), 48.

5 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “pixie,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pixie

10 otherworldly, mania because of the emotion, and femininity The definitions of the word

“pixie” demonstrate that the words which make up the term MPDG are more related than they first appear and in some cases, like that of pixie and girl, can even be quasi- synonyms.

Merriam Webster defines “dream” as:

1: a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep 2: an experience of waking life having the characteristics of a dream: as a: a visionary creation of the imagination b: a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality c: an object seen in a dreamlike state 3: something notable for its beauty, excellence, or enjoyable quality 4 a: a strongly desired goal or purpose b: something that fully satisfies a wish.6

Dreams, like pixies, are otherworldly. Their association with the imagination and the mind suggests an unreal quality about the MPDG. They are also strongly associated with status as an object that is beautiful, excellent, or enjoyable, or as something that is desired. This word introduces the idea that the MPDG is an object of desire, one that is otherworldly. Dreams are also part of the symbolic, which again references psychoanalysis.

Finally, “girl” is defined as: “1: a: a female child from birth to adulthood b: daughter c: a young unmarried woman d: sometimes offensive: a single or married woman of any age.”7 This term emphasizes the MPDG’s sex, marital status, and age. She must be feminine because she is a girl. She may also not be expected to act like a mature adult woman because she has not reached the stage of adulthood and probably never will.

(accessed April 16, 2013). 6 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “dream,” http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/dream?show=0&t=1366158157 (accessed April 16, 2013).

7 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “girl,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/girl (accessed April 16, 2013).

11 She is the playful pan who, like Peter, will stay young forever and spirit the men she charms to Neverland where they too can enjoy the wonders of childhood.

Finally, when considering the meaning associated with the term MPDG, it is appropriate to examine how the term itself is understood culturally. The term MPDG is not featured in Merriam-Webster so a definition from Urban Dictionary is used. While

Urban Dictionary may not at first seem like the most reputable source, the definition it provides reflects the term’s meaning in popular culture. According to Urban Dictionary,

The MPDG is defined as:

A term coined by film critic Nathan Rabin after seeing Elizabethtown. It refers to “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-director types to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” A pretty, outgoing, whacky female romantic lead whose sole purpose is to help broody male characters8 lighten up and enjoy their lives.9

Essentially, MPDGs are muses that inspire men by having distinctive personalities. As a muse, the MPDG is second to the male lead and through objectifying her, the male lead can enjoy a complete life. Despite her secondary status, the MPDG still has power when it comes to the male lead’s happiness. He is happy because of her. If she were not in his life and acting this way then he would not be happy. The MPDG continues to hold power over the male lead because there is always the threat that she could abandon him, giving her masculine traits.

8 Another interesting line of inquiry could examine why men are being portrayed as depressed and dissatisfied with life.

9 Urban Dictionary, s.v. “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Manic%20Pixie%20Dream%20Girl& defid =3418205 (accessed April 16, 2013).

12 College-age women on the Williams College campus associated a wide variety of meanings with the term, demonstrating ways in which the term has come to be interpreted in today’s culture. When asked what words or concepts they associated with the MPDG, the focus group response ranged from knowledge of the existence of the term to descriptions of the character and feelings of annoyance. One responder, Elizabeth said,

“I guess I’m actually just struck by a sense of familiarity because the term sounds very familiar.”10 Kimberly expressed a general sense that these characters were “untouchable” and did not have a human side to them due to the use of the words: manic, pixie, and dream.11 Rose listed words like: “Ethereal/dreamlike, insubstantial, sexy/virgin type, quirky, needs to be ‘saved’ emotionally unstable, captivating, addictive.” 12 Ellis expressed her feelings: “Entertaining… but so annoying, pointless and not real. Grrrrrr.

I’ve slowly become less of a fan.”13 Their answers demonstrate how the term MPDG has become part of everyday language, how it is seen as something unattainable and inhuman with dangerous powers, and the strong reactions that the characters can illicit from viewers. As spectators, they become active as they make their own interpretations of the term and how it might be applied to film characters.

With a better understanding of the term MPDG, it is easier to establish a plan of analysis. Many of the traits associated with the MPDG, like mental illness, the symbolic, and her status as a girl and an object of desire and inspiration, invite a psychoanalytic

10 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

11 Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

12 Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

13 Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

13 analysis. Since the MPDG is a female film character, Laura Mulvey’s work “Visual

Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” can provide insights to examine how the MPDG is objectified as part of a male fantasy. In addition, the MPDG is a character with exaggerated feminine and masculine traits. A better understanding of the strengths and limitations of an analysis based on Mulvey’s work will provide ways in which to consider the MPDG’s conflicting gendered traits.

Feminist Psychoanalytic Film Theory

Mania and its relation to hysteria have strong associations with the work of Sigmund

Freud. As Patricia Gherovici notes in Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of

Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism: “Hysteria must be given pride of place above all because it was with hysterics that Freud reached a new understanding of the human psyche.”14 The term “pixie’s” connection of fairies places it in the realm of the symbolic, which further supports a psychoanalytic reading of the character. Dreams are strongly associated with the symbolic, also inviting a psychoanalytic reading. Finally, there is the MPDG’s already established status as a male fantasy.

A large body of feminist work written about film is from a psychoanalytic perspective15. A feminist psychoanalytic critique of films featuring MPDG could lead to

14Gherovici, Please Select Your Gender, 53.

15 E. Ann Kaplan ed. Feminism and Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

E. Ann Kaplan ed. Psychoanalysis & Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1990).

E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen,

1983).

14 insights about the relationship between the MPDG and the male gaze both on and off screen. Perhaps one of the most well known analyses of women in film and the pleasure that is derived from their presence on screen is Laura Mulvey’s work “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey focuses on the male gaze and identifies two pleasures of watching film. The first is scopophilia or the pleasure of looking at objects. Freud identified scopophilia and defined it with “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze.”16 The gazer is active because he or she is the one who is choosing to look at the object at which he or she is gazing. The object can do nothing to stop him or her, and can only be passively admired. These traits are part of its status as an object. When a woman is objectified within a film she is both “looked at and displayed.”17 Mulvey describes this quality of being displayed as spectacle.18

Mulvey notes that at first it may seem odd to say that the audience can gain the pleasure of scopophilia through watching films. Films are made for the explicit purpose of being watched. She, however, identifies traits associated with films that automatically make the experience of looking at a film one of voyeurism. She writes:

But the mass of mainstream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds

Teresa De Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987).

16 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975),” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 440.

17 Ibid., 442.

18 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 443.

15 magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy.19

The audience cannot impact the film onscreen at all because the audience cannot change or influence the way in which the events on screen play out. Since the audience cannot directly influence the film, they are separated from it and through this separation they are able to take on the voyeuristic role associated with scopophilia. Mulvey also notes that the contrast of light and dark between the film on screen and the darkness of the theatre further divides the audience from the film, stressing the idea that the audience is in the role of voyeur. The audience, however, can impact the experience of watching the film and how it is perceived.

The second pleasure of watching film as identified by Mulvey is based on the ideas of Jacques Lacan. One of the stages of child development, which Lacan identified, is known as the mirror phase. During the mirror phase, children become able to recognize themselves in a mirror. The child experiences joy at this recognition of a more perfect version of himself or herself reflected in the mirror. This idea that the image in the mirror is superior is known as misrecognition. Thus, the child recognizes that the image in the mirror is he or she, but also misrecognizes the image because he or she believes it to be better than his or her real corporeal self.20 Viewers of films can recognize figures like them on screen and thus experience pleasure. This experience is further enhanced by the

19 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 440.

20 Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in Écrits, transl. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 75-81.

16 idea that most movie stars look better than the average person.21 Viewers are able to identify with the characters on screen and live out a fantasy in which they are a better version of themselves.

The pleasures, which Mulvey identifies, are composed of system of binary opposites. Active is to passive as male is to female; if a white male heterosexual is the ideal spectator then women become the object of his gaze as he watches the film. The women on screen become sexual objects for the characters in the story and at the same time are also subject to the gaze of the audience for whom they are also sexual objects.22

Women in traditional films can only ever be described as passive because of the presence of the ideal spectator, which places them in the role of erotic object. The ideal spectator gains scopophilic pleasure by regarding the passive woman on screen.

In Mulvey’s opinion, the male characters in films are always active. The spectator wants to actively control the fantasy of regarding the woman on screen, and his activeness and sense of control are reinforced by the actions of the male lead. By identifying with the male lead, the spectator is able to experience the sense of control that the male lead experiences. In this way his pleasure becomes one of identification and not one that uses the male lead as an erotic object.23

After the spectator has claimed the woman as a sexual object and begun to live vicariously through his likeness on screen, he can then claim the woman on screen. In most traditional stories, the woman who has been denoted the sexual object of the movie

21 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 441.

22 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 442.

23 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 443.

17 will fall in love with the male lead. The male lead is then able to possess her and the spectator is able to experience this feeling of possession because of his connection to the male lead.

When considering the agency of the MPDG, in terms of Mulvey’s argument, there are two important concepts to focus on. The first is how the MPGD becomes the object of the gaze as a spectacle. The second is how spectators are able to identify with the male lead and experience the vicarious pleasure of objectifying the MPDG. However,

Mulvey’s argument relies heavily on an active/passive binary. In order to form a more complete analysis for the MPDG, two questions must be answered: Can the audience’s experiences of watching films always be described as passive and voyeuristic? What is the MPDG’s relationship to the passive/active binary that Mulvey discusses? An exploration of these questions will determine how to interpret the question of the

MPDG’s agency in a broader context.

The Limits of Feminist Psychoanalytic Film Theory

While a psychoanalytic reading is certainly necessary to understanding the MPDG, there are many characteristics of psychoanalytic feminist film theory that limit it from providing a complete picture of the MPDG. Mulvey’s theory assumes an active/passive binary between the film and the spectators. Spectators are supposed to easily identify with the characters in the film, an assumption that does not take factors like race, class, sexuality, and gender identification into account. bell hook’s work Black Looks demonstrates this problem by exploring how black female spectators interact with films made for the ideal white male spectator. She writes, “As critical spectators, black women

18 participate in a broad range of looking relations, contest, resist, revision, interrogate, and invent on multiple levels.”24 Jacques Rancière also argues that spectators should not be viewed as passive but engage with films more actively.

There are many ways of privileging the position of the spectator. The knowledge the audience possesses should always be kept in mind. The audience can interpret stars’ images from what they learn on the Internet. The modern day experience of watching a film is another vital factor to consider when attempting the gain a broader understanding of the spectator. Today, there are multiple media for watching films that seem to disrupt the voyeuristic experience. In general, it is also important to consider the body when examining a spectator’s engagement with the film. Laughter and other bodily reactions can disrupt the process of becoming absorbed in a film. A cultural context is also important because it suggests a framework in which the audience may analyze films.

Focus group responses are analyzed throughout this exploration in an attempt to privilege the spectator.

bell hooks’ work on the subject of the black female spectator provides ideas that challenge the idea that spectators are passive and the idea that visual pleasure is gained from identification and scopophilia, as Mulvey proposed in her work “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” hooks directly critiques Mulvey saying, “Placing ourselves outside that pleasure in looking, Mulvey argues, was determined by a ‘split between active/male and passive/female.’ Black female spectators actively chose not to identify

24 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992),

128.

19 with the film’s imaginary subject because such identification was disenabling.”25 Black female spectators recognize that by identifying with their like on screen they would not be able to have pleasure in looking, Thus they actively choose not to feel a kinship with this like. They are active viewers and perhaps, like hooks, they have taken on an oppositional gaze, which allows them to examine other aspects of film. “Black female spectators, who refused to identify with white womanhood, who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession, created a critical space where the binary opposition Mulvey posits of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look” was continually deconstructed.’”26 Viewers do not fit into two categories as Mulvey has proposed. hooks’ own experiences with film can prove this. The viewer should be seen as an active agent that does not fit into a binary system. Viewers are individuals.

Early on in her work, hooks states that “There is power in looking.”27 With this phrase in mind one can examine the idea of whether the spectator in the movie theatre is a passive object taking in the film as it is projected on the screen and moves from clip to clip. The spectator reacts to the images on screen and forms an opinion about them. They laugh, gasp, and respond to the film in hundreds if not thousands of other ways, which shape the way that the audience (in the movie theatre) as a whole receives this film and these characters. Even trivial things like people talking or throwing popcorn during the film can change how a movie is received.

25 Ibid., 122.

26 hooks, Black Looks, 122-123.

27hooks, Black Looks, 115.

20 hooks examines nontraditional ways that many black women can enjoy traditional films. “Every black woman I spoke with who was/is an ardent movie goer, a lover of

Hollywood film, testified that to experience fully the pleasure of cinema they had to close down critique, analysis; they had to forget racism, And mostly they did not think about sexism.”28 This shows one way in which viewers can still enjoy films that have elements that they find offensive or inaccurate or do not like. Rather than completely turning away from the films, they chose to ignore the parts that they find problematic. If one forgets about issues like racism and sexism that he or she finds offensive, he or she can just become engrossed in the storyline or some other element of the film without finding every little thing about the work that is wrong. To ignore certain aspects of the film and choose to enjoy it is to become an active spectator.

hooks explicitly defines another pleasure that black female spectators can gain from looking. She writes, “Identifying with neither the phallocentric gaze nor the construction of white womanhood as lack, critical black female spectators construct a theory of looking relations where cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation.” 29 Her statement shows that some viewers can gain pleasure from examining films and trying to identify their flaws. They can examine what is wrong with the presence of these flaws and how they affect them. They demand to know more about this film and its motivations.

Jacques Rancière believes that the position of the spectator needs to be elevated.

He outlines his solution: “What is required is a theatre without spectators, where those in

28 hooks, Black Looks, 120.

29 hooks, Black Looks, 126.

21 attendance learn from as opposed to being seduced by images; where they become active participants as opposed to passive voyeurs.”30 He believes that spectators must identify with characters on stage but that this identification is one that is more experiential rather than identification with a “like,” as proposed by Mulvey. They should identify with the characters’ story and the events that are unfolding such as a mystery or a dilemma.31 The spectator can become part of the story and work their way through it like an “investigator or experimenter.”32 Viewers experience the story rather than just taking it in. As stated above, viewers are already actively engaged in movies and there is not necessarily a need for a shift in the way in which viewers view movies.

Ways of Elevating the Spectator

The Internet has created multiple opportunities for people to directly share their opinions about films, actors, and characters in a public forum. In turn, it also provides spaces for people to gather information about films, actors, and characters. The women interviewed in the focus groups discussed how they used Wikipedia profiles, IMDB, gossip sites, interviews, Google, and conversations with others to learn about actresses.33 Their

30 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator (London: Verso, 2009), 4.

31 Ibid., 4.

32 See note 31 above.

33Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012. Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

22 descriptions of their search for information reveal just how much information is available to the audience today about actresses. Richard Dyer identifies the powerful effect that the audience can have on a star’s image with their access to information: “Moreover, the agencies of fan magazines and clubs, as well as box office receipts and audience research, mean that the audience’s idea about a star can act back on the media producers of the star’s image.”34 He clarifies the status of the relationship between the audience and the media saying, “This is not an equal to-and-fro—the audience is more disparate and fragmented, and does not itself produce centralized, massively available media images; but the audience is not wholly controlled by Hollywood either.”35 Dyer’s statements show how the audience themselves can shape the image of the star, suggesting that when the audience sees a certain actor or actress on screen they interpret him or her in certain manner that is based on the knowledge they have acquired about the star. The advent and usage of the term MPDG is one example of how the audience has changed the image that is associated with certain stars. The image of the star also reinforces or deflects the label of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Dyer’s observation about the inequality inherent in this relationship is not as applicable today. While not all YouTube videos, tweets, Facebook statuses and blog posts gain popularity, most of the content shared on these forums is available to anyone with an Internet connection and there is always the chance that content on the Internet will go viral. Thus, the audience has more power when it comes to influencing Hollywood and the media today.

34 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 5.

35 See note 33 above.

23 These opportunities the Internet provides for audience interaction allow for a breaking of the boundary between spectator and film. Though they may not actually be able to be part of the film, which is imaginary after all, viewers of films can now post what they thought about the film in forums that other people will see like Facebook,

Twitter, and blogs.36 They can write on fan sites and even the official movie site. They can rank the film on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and thus encourage or discourage others from seeing the film. It is entirely possible that the writers, directors, and actors of the film will see these opinions due to the nature of the Internet.

The women in the focus group use a wide range of social media when interacting with films. It is no longer just the film critic or the academic that can have a privileged opinion regarding film. Ellis37 uses social media to check everything from actors to plot.38 Kimberly uses Wikipedia in a similar manner.39 Elizabeth sometimes tweets during movies, providing commentary as she watches. 40 Rose writes reviews on

Facebook and posts status updates with strong opinions concerning the film in the hopes that these opinions will get responses.41 It is impossible to know how seriously the

36 This is not to suggest that audiences did not interact with the film before the advent of the Internet. My use of Dyer’s quote clearly demonstrates that they had many avenues available to them before the Internet. The Internet, however, does provide new and exciting possibilities for the audience to assert themselves.

37 All participants are identified by aliases. Participants were given the opportunity to specify an alias.

38 Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

39 Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

40 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

41 Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

24 opinions on the Internet are taken, but the opportunities that are now available to film viewers are extremely important to consider when analyzing the status of the spectator and its power dynamic.

The actual experience of going to a movie theatre is also something that is worth considering. Spectators are certainly not watching the movie without reaction when they are in the theatre. There are the normal reactions like laughter and such, but the movie theatre is also a place where people may already be offering critiques of the movie no matter how rude some might consider it. The Internet also provides other ways of viewing films that alter the way in which people view films. If a person has Internet access they can view films as soon as they come into theatres if not before. Netflix and

Hulu also offer easy access to large online film libraries. For example, the women interviewed in the focus groups generally watched movies on the Internet through legal sites like Netflix or illegal sites.42 This access has most likely expanded viewership and probably changed the way in which people view films. If it is easy to view films on laptops or other Internet-enabled devices, movies can really be viewed anywhere which means that they can be criticized in multiple ways but also that the viewing of movies may have evolved into a more distracted viewership with people running multiple programs on their computer while viewing the movie or being in distracting environments. Movies are no longer just viewed in a darkened theatre. The Internet is

42 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

25 changing the boundary between what is happening on and off screen. If someone is watching a movie on their laptop while in an airport there is direct contrast between the actions of real life and those in the movie, which has the power to disrupt the voyeuristic experience of watching a film. In a darkened theatre it is easier to forget the boundaries between the story of the film and reality. New ways of watching films provide ways for the spectator to be active because they remain aware of reality.

The responses from the focus group suggested a wide range of ways that the women engaged with the movie on screen. Kimberly says: “I feel rather removed, I don’t like getting completely immersed but prefer to watch from the other side of an acknowledged 4th wall. I like to multitask and maybe give myself a massage/drink tea.”43

Her response is characterized by a general disengagement with the film. She is aware of what is happening on screen, but she is also disconnected from the film because she is having bodily experiences like drinking tea or massaging her back. For Kimberly, it appears as if she is both aware of the film and reality simultaneously. Rose and Elizabeth both described talking during the film. Rose said that whether she would comment usually depends on how seriously she takes the film She also described other forms of engagement like laughter, crying, and applause.44 Elizabeth said that she would usually comment on the characters’ decisions and speculate what she would do if she was in similar circumstances.45 Their responses demonstrate a critical engagement with the film.

They are aware of what is occurring on screen and they react to it. Ellis highlighted the

43 Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

44 Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

45 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

26 dilemma of how to engage with films as a Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities Studies major:

…it’s fraught since lots of elements of race, gender, sexuality, and classism bother me. I also get annoyed by bad editing and production. I most enjoy movies that do fun and exciting so well I don’t have to think about bad representation.”46

Ellis faces the choice of critiquing the film or becoming so absorbed in the film that she is distracted from its problems. Overall, the responses show that viewing a film is a complex experience that differs from individual to individual. The experience of watching a film cannot be simplified. There are many ways in which these viewers are actively aware of reality and the world they inhabit as they watch the film, suggesting that viewers are not always as fully absorbed in films as Mulvey proposes.

Considering Cultural Context

Cultural context is important when considering how active spectators respond to media.

Film theorist Frank Krutnik writes: “Films never spring magically from their cultural context, but they represent instead much more complex activities of negotiation, addressing cultural transformations in a highly compromised and displayed manner.”47

Films can respond to and address how culture is changing, but they are a medium that is controlled by Hollywood and made to appeal to a very broad audience. Thus, they reflect culture changes in very specific ways and do not just directly mirror the changes for what they really are. People are uncomfortable with change and films must carefully negotiate how to represent changes as they occur in order to maintain a broad appeal. How films

46 Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012. 47 Frank Kurtnik qtd. in Kelly Oliver, Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Films (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 7.

27 choose to approach certain subjects reveals information about cultural anxieties at a certain time. The actions of people in response to films bring information about these anxieties to light as well.

In order to understand how people might react to films it is important to identify situations. Lauren Berlant defines a situation as: “a state of things in which something that will perhaps matter is unfolding amid the usual activity of life.”48 It is these

“somethings” that may be important that cause cultural anxiety. If something will matter, then it is probably going to cause some sort of change. Berlant, too, sees change as crucial to the situation. She writes, “The situation is therefore a genre of social time and practice in which a relation of person and worlds is sensed to be changing but the rules for habitation and the genres of storytelling about it are unstable, in chaos.”49 If the world is changing, then people must make sense of the changes. Until these changes are understood, it is hard to understand exactly how to navigate the world or how to represent what is happening because it is in motion. Storytelling, such as film, tries to normalize the changes in order to allow them to be understood, thus stalling their progress.

One aspect of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) that may cause discomfort is her gender, which is a mix of masculine and feminine traits. One the one hand, MPDGs are extremely feminine. When MPDG characters perform manic actions, they are performing an exaggerated femininity. Historically, mental illness has been linked to femininity and the label of manic highlights this association. It stresses the characters’ femininity and perhaps the associations of extreme feeling that are the part of the mania

48 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 5.

49 Ibid., 6.

28 suggest a sort of hyper-femininity. Pixie’s meaning of girl adds another dimension of femininity to the MPDG character. In this case, it is that of lively female, either a girl or woman. These combined femininities give the MPDG a sort of hyper-femininity.

Conversely, the MPDG also holds power over the male protagonist’s happiness.

Without her presence he would be sad and lonely again. The MPDG is a walking contradiction of the masculine/feminine binary. One the one hand, she embodies hyper- feminine aspects like mental illness, emotion, liveliness, status as an object, and childlike characteristics, but on the other hand she also has more stereotypically masculine characteristics like aggression and sexual proclivity. The MPDG can be seen as a woman who figuratively wears the pants, a status that causes discomfort because it disrupts popular perceptions of how masculine and feminine genders are performed.

Women who embody masculine traits have long been a source of uneasiness.

There is a long history of actresses playing “breeches roles” in the theatre. These actresses portrayed men and dressed as them. Yet, despite the fact that the actresses were clearly acting, there was some discomfort about their gender. For example, Laurence

Senelick writes that one man, Leigh Hunt, “feared that breeches roles injured Mrs.

Jordan’s gender identity, for ‘if [an actress] succeeds in her study of making representations she will never entirely get rid of her manhood with its attire.’”50 Senelick elaborates the extent to which this belief was a common assumption saying, “Hunt’s atavistic belief in sartorial magic was widely shared, along with the persistent idea that

50 Laurence Senelick, The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre (London: Routledge, 2000), 260.

29 cross-dressing contaminates femininity.”51 Women who acted the part of men were seen as absorbing elements of masculinity. These traits did not vanish when the play ended and the actress had taken off her costume. Seeing how convincingly women could play men was probably very disconcerting because masculine and feminine traits are supposed to be at odds. Women should not be able to demonstrate them so easily. The MPDG as a woman who wears the pants creates similar feelings of anxiety.

Judith Butler’s work in Gender Trouble provides an explanation for the unease that surrounds women who embody combinations of masculinity and femininity. She writes, “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.”52 In other words, there is no true gender. Instead gender expression is based on ideas about how one should act because he or she is a man or a woman. Butler elaborates: “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.”53 According to Butler’s ideas, the way that men and women act is based on conceptions of how men and women should act. There is no true masculine or feminine identity. Rather, formations of what defines these identities is based on how gender is expressed through the actions people perform based on their gender. People act in a certain way because they believe this is how men and women are supposed to act. This

51 See note 50 above.

52 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge Classics, 2006), 34.

53 Ibid., 45.

30 idea of the existence of a way that people are obligated to act based on their gender is created by the repetition of actions that society approves. If someone acts in a way that does not fit with popular conceptions of how men and women are supposed to act, he or she will be punished for this transgression. Butler argues: “Discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture; indeed we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right.”54 Women who have both masculine and feminine traits would not be perceived as “doing their gender right.” 55 Women are often dehumanized when they act in ways that do not conform to popular ideas of gender.

The MPDG is often described in ways that categorize her as an “other.” This

“othering” reflects a long tradition of women being “othered” for defying categories of gender. For example, Marianne Hester proposes in Lewd Women and Wicked Witches:

“…the witch-hunts provided one means of controlling women socially within a male supremacist society, using violence or threat of violence, and relying on a particular construct of female sexuality.”56 Witch-hunts allowed women who acted in ways that did not conform to popular ideas of gender to be labeled as supernatural and unthreatening.

Once they were labeled in this way, they could be controlled. In the preface of Spiders &

Spinsters: Women and Mythology, Marta Weigle writes: “By the same token, women can inspire, impart mysteries, and enlighten men, but in Western culture at least, they become suspect when they take too active a role in this process or themselves seek inspiration and

54 Butler, Gender Trouble, 190.

55 See note 54 above.

56 Marianne Hester, Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male Domination (London: Routledge, 1992), 108.

31 spiritual enlightenment.” 57 The MPDG fulfills this role for the male protagonist.

However, the fact that people seek to label her suggests that perhaps the MPDG is taking too active a role in the process because she becomes the giver of happiness. She is immediately viewed as inhuman or unreal as suggested by the terms “pixie” and “dream.”

Even the term “manic” suggests a person who embodies the extreme when it comes to emotion. The fact that MPDGs are able to change the male protagonists’ lives just by being themselves also hints at a supernatural power. Now it is possible to link anxieties concerning the MPDG to unease about “situations” that are occurring society.

Hook Up Culture and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

One “situation”58 that could be applicable to that of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that of changing perceptions about white female sexuality, specifically that of young college educated white females. Today women are perceived as being more in charge of their sexuality and in relations with men in general. Women are seen as using the Hook Up

Culture to their advantage. In her book, The End of Men, Hanna Rosin suggests: “To a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind.”59 In other words, Rosin believes that women use the no commitments, one-night-stand, world of Hook Up Culture to enjoy themselves sexually without the risk

57Marta Weigle, Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), viii. 58 Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 5.

59 Hanna Rosin, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (New York: River Head Books, 2012), 21.

32 of having to be in a relationship that would make demands on their time and distract them from their studies. Women are seen as becoming more “masculine” and casually enjoying sex or just that they can be the more active participant in male/female relationships. One prominent example of a college-age woman who was able to enjoy casual sex is the Duke graduate who made a Fuck List that went viral in 2010.60 This trend is present in film, as well. Movies like No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits both tell the story of heterosexual couples involved in friend with benefits relationships.61 In these types of relationships, the two people involved can enjoy having sex with each other without the obligations and emotions of being in a relationship. Again, films like these reinforce the idea that women are able to enjoy sex for fun without emotional obligations.

Women who engage in the Hook Up Culture do not “do their gender right”62 according to popular notions of what it means to be masculine and feminine. As Rosin’s comment above suggests, it is usually assumed that men like to take advantage of the

Hook Up Culture. Enjoying sex is seen as belong to the masculine realm. Furthermore, women are not thought to be capable of being sexual aggressors. Anderson and

Struckman-Johnson explored ideas about sexually aggressive women focusing on women who used violence and physical force to procure sex. They reference popular ideas that

60Irin Carmon, “College Girl’s Power Point ‘Fuck List’ Goes Viral,” Jezebel, September 30, 2010, http://jezebel.com/5652114/college-girls-power-point-fuck-list-goes-viral- gallery (accessed April 16, 2013).

61 No Strings Attached, directed by Ivan Reitman (Los Angeles, CA: Spyglass Entertainment, 2011).

Friends with Benefits, directed by Will Gluck (Culver City, CA: Screen Gems, 2011).

62 Butler, Gender Trouble, 190.

33 women are usually not assertive at all when it comes to sex: “…some people do not think that women—especially ‘nice’ women—would ask their dating partner for sex, let alone exert pressure or force to obtain it.”63 Sexual assertiveness is not believed to correspond with femininity.

This perceived change creates cultural anxiety because women are subverting the way that the feminine gender is supposed to be performed. Labels that are given to women who participate in the Hook Up Culture reflect the larger cultural anxiety about the more active role women are seen to be taking in their relationships with men. Rosin observes: “Women who sleep with too many men are called ‘houserats’ or ‘lacrosstitutes’

(a term derived from women who sleep with several guys on the lacrosse team) or are deemed ‘HFH,’ meaning ‘hot for a hook-up’ but definitely not for anything more.”64

These labels punish women who are perceived as being too assertive in regards to their sexuality. Lynn Peril notes that college age women often believe that they must conform to certain roles if they want to enjoy casual sex and avoid that punishing labels associated with it. She writes “To avoid being labeled a slut, women have to make sex look like it is unplanned. Getting drunk first is key, and then it’s best not to carry condoms.”65 Women who want to enjoy sex feel that they cannot do it free of punishment unless they make

63 Peter B. Anderson and Cindy Struckman-Johnson, ed. Sexually Aggressive Women: Current Perspectives and Controversies (New York: The Guilford Press, 1998), 11.

64Rosin, The End of Men, 20.

65 Lynn Peril, College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 353.

Based on casual conversations with friends, it is clear that this idea is prevalent on the Williams College campus.

34 their desires extremely subtle. These evasion tactics could have extremely dangerous consequences.

The idea that college educated white women are not interested in settling down also emerges from anxieties surrounding the Hook Up Culture. In her analysis of recent representations of the pregnant body in Hollywood films, Knock Me Up, Knock Me

Down, Kelly Oliver refers to cultural anxiety that white women are not conforming to traditional conceptions of female sexuality. She writes, “So, idealizing the white pregnant female body as cute or sexy in the service of conventional family values makes having babies attractive in new ways that might lure white college educated women back into the fold, so to speak.”66 If white college educated women need to be lured back into the fold of marriage and babies, the idea that they are not conforming certainly exists within the realm of popular perceptions.

The presence of characters in Hollywood films possessing traits that allow them to be classified as MPDGs, as well as the classification of characters as MPDGs by critics, writers, and the average person, reflects a discomfort with individuals who transgress the boundaries of the gender binary. Classifying movie characters as MPDGs becomes a type of witch-hunt. It seeks to label and control these characters because of their power. The need to label female characters that cannot easily be defined as masculine or feminine reflects a larger anxiety about the sexual agency of women as demonstrated by reactions to women’s participation in the Hook Up Culture. To impose a theory about American society as a whole is to generalize, which seems problematic.

66Kelly Oliver, Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Films (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 13.

35 Obviously everyone is an individual and may respond to certain situations differently. On the subject of generalization, Berlant writes: “I am extremely interested in generalization: how the singular becomes delaminated from its location in someone’s story or some locale’s irreducibly local history and circulated as evidence of something shared.”67 The

MPDG phenomenon is one example of the singular. Nathan Rabin coined the term and it circulated around the Internet. More and more critics began using the term, until the understanding of the MPDG as a character became something shared. Responses like these to the MPDG, which are based on larger cultural situations show that spectators are extremely active when it comes to evaluating female characters in films. To completely understand if the MPDG can have agency the spectator must be privileged as active.

How to Proceed

An examination of the MPDG’s nature reveals that a feminist psychoanalytic reading seems most appropriate for evaluating the MPDG and understanding how she is objectified as a male fantasy. However, if the reading of the MPDG is limited to psychoanalysis, discrepancies concerning the status of the spectator and the power of the

MPDG emerge. It is important to interrogate the position the spectator occupies and determine if he or she should always be viewed as interacting with film on a voyeuristic level only. Analysis of arguments made by hooks and Rancière show that the position of the spectator should be elevated. The spectator should be seen as a participant who engages with a film on multiple levels. The spectator’s knowledge of the actresses, the opportunities that the Internet provides for alternative experiences with film, and how

67 Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 12.

36 viewers read films within a cultural context should all be take into account. How viewers respond to the MPDG is important when examining whether the power she demonstrates in films can be labeled as agency. One example of how active viewers interact with the

MPDG is the critique of her non-traditional gender traits, which reflects a greater discomfort about white female sexuality today. Critiques such as these demonstrate that an analysis with the goal of determining the agency of the MPDG must take the active spectator into account.

Based on the insights of this chapter, a strategy for reading the films chosen for analysis, Bringing Up Baby (1938) and (500) Days of Summer (2009), emerges. First, the chapters will establish why the main female character can be labeled an MPDG, a status that seems to deprive her of agency. Next, the chapters explore the ways in which

Mulvey’s theories can be used to analyze the film and the characters to understand how the MPDG is objectified. The reading then turns to strategies that acknowledge the idea of the active spectator. This reading begins with an investigation of how the films themselves discourage a voyeuristic experience for the viewer. An examination of the how the images of the actresses who portray the MPDGs, Katharine Hepburn and Zooey

Deschanel respectively, are culturally understood follows to establish whether or not the identity of the actress influences the agency of the MPDG. Then, ways in which the

MPDG can be seen as active are examined to decide the question of whether or not she is

“doing her gender right”68 in the eyes of the viewer. Finally, cultural context is taken into account to establish how the viewers actively critique the MPDG of the film. Throughout the chapters, viewer responses collected in focus groups are analyzed to privilege the

68 Butler, Gender Trouble, 190.

37 status of the spectator. The analysis of each film concludes with a stance on the MPDG’s agency within the film.

38 Chapter 2:

A Manic Pixie Dream Girl with Unstoppable Force

In the film, Bringing Up Baby (1938), Susan Vance, portrayed by Katharine Hepburn, changes David Huxley’s life. With relentless determination that often results in wild antics, she keeps him from entering into a sexless marriage with Alice Swallow and wins him for herself.1 Her ability to upset Huxley’s life fits with Nathan Rabin’s definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) as being able to teach men how to fully enjoy and appreciate life.2 However, while Susan’s role as an MPDG could just be limited to that of sexual object and muse, her role also has hints of power because she is the arbiter of

David’s happiness. A feminist psychoanalytic reading, based on arguments made by

Laura Mulvey, shows that Susan can be read as an object that both the audience and

David can objectify. This reading devalues the place of the spectator. To elevate the spectator when considering Susan’s agency in Bringing Up Baby, examinations of how the humor in the film disrupts voyeuristic immersion, Katharine Hepburn’s image as an actress, Susan Vance’s gender, cultural context, and focus group responses are considered. When the spectator is elevated, more avenues for agency become clear for the character of Susan Vance.

1 Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks (New York: RKO Radio Pictures, 1938).

2 Nathan Rabin, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File # 1: Elizabethtown,” The Onion A.V. Club, January 25, 2007, http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-bataan- death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-eliza,15577/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

39 Susan Vance as Manic Pixie Dream Girl

When lists of MPDGs are complied, Hepburn’s character Susan Vance is almost always included on the list. A November 2012 Bullett slide show featuring “15 Moments in

Manic Pixie Dream Girl History,” begins with a still of the jail scene in Bringing Up

Baby (1938). Hepburn, as Susan Vance, casually leans against the bars of a cell smoking a cigarette. She glances at David Huxley, her love interest, portrayed by Cary Grant, who regards her with a somewhat imploring, somewhat incredulous look. The image is captioned “Katharine Hepburn as ‘a flutter brained victim with love in her heart’ in the

1938 film Bringing Up Baby.”3 When compiling a list of films featuring Manic Pixie

Dream Girls (MPDG), Nathan Rabin, the man who first coined the term, and his co- collaborators included Katharine Hepburn’s character in Bringing Up Baby as number eight.4 Lists such as these demonstrate that Katharine Hepburn’s character of Susan

Vance and the film have become linked to the MPDG in culture.

Hepburn’s character Susan does indeed fulfill the essential requirement for being an MPDG. Nathan Rabin, the creator of the term, defines MPDGs as being able to “teach

3 Allison Becker, “15 Moments in Manic Pixie Dream Girl History,” Bullett, November 30, 2012, http://bullettmedia.com/editorial/manic-pixie-dream-girl/ (accessed April 16, 2013).

4 Donna Bowman, Amelie Gillette, Steven Hyden, Noel Murray, Leonard Pierce, and Nathan Rabin, “Wild Things: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” The A.V. Club, August 4, 2008, http://www.avclub.com/articles/wild-things-16-films-featuring- manic-pixie-dream-g,2407/ (accessed March 5, 2013).

For another critic’s opinion of Katharine Hepburn as MPDG see : Bruce Handy, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The Worst Movie of its Generation,” The Hollywood Blog, June 22, 2012, http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2012/06/seeking-a-friend- for-the-end-of-the-world-movie-review (accessed March 10, 2013).

40 broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”5

As the playful pan, Susan spirits David away from the museum, his fiancée, and everything else that he knows to her house in Connecticut, so that he can help her care for her pet leopard Baby.6 David later admits that the day he spent with Susan was the best day of his life and tells her that he loves her and wants to be with her.7 David’s opinions show that he has come to appreciate how Susan, as a MPDG, has changed his life for the better.

The change that Susan causes in David’s life is one centered on a regression to childhood and sex. Susan, the pan, takes to David to her house in Connecticut, which is something of a fantasyland, like Neverland8, because Susan’s family is portrayed as being extremely wealthy.9 By taking David to Connecticut, Susan removes him from the responsibilities of the adult world like marriage to Alice. She also liberates him from his boring work of constructing the Brontosaurus skeleton by destroying it.10 Susan embodies both the pan by spiriting David away and the girl because she removes him from the adult world, stressing both the pixie and girl elements of her label as MPDG. Her relentless pursuit of David despite his constant resistance, in turn, shows her mania.

5 Nathan Rabin, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File # 1: Elizabethtown,” The Onion A.V. Club, January 25, 2007, http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-bataan- death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-eliza,15577/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

6 Bringing Up Baby, 00:28:30.

7 Ibid., 01:39:00-01:40:13.

8 J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy (London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.: 1921).

9 Bringing Up Baby, 01:39:14.

10 Bringing Up Baby, 01:40:49.

41 Susan also rejuvenates David’s life because she is sexually available. In the opening scene of the film, Alice Swallow, David’s fiancée, makes it clear that their marriage will be a partnership and that they will focus entirely on his work. She says that they will have no “domestic entanglements” and that the Brontosaurus that David is constructing will be their child.11 Alice is denying David the opportunity for sexual relations and his manhood. Susan presents an opportunity for restoring David’s masculinity. By admitting that he is in love with Susan at the end, David is able to reclaim his manhood and the possibility to affirm it through sex.

An understanding of Susan as an MPDG leaves little room for agency. She changes David’s life by encouraging him towards a path of childish regression and by becoming a sexual object. However, Susan’s control over David’s happiness suggests that there may be other ways of interpreting this character.

A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of Susan Vance

If the MPDG is only a male fantasy, then it is important to examine how the male gaze would interpret the character of Susan Vance. Laura Mulvey identifies two pleasures that come from watching films: that of identification and scopophilia. The term scopophilia refers to “using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight.12

Identification refers to the viewer recognizing his like on the screen and identifying with the experiences of their like. When Mulvey uses these terms she does so with a white

11 Bringing Up Baby, 00:02:30.

12 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975),” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn Warhol-Down and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 440.

42 male spectator in mind or an ideal spectator. The films are set up so that this ideal spectator can receive the most pleasure out of viewing them. In this case, Mulvey shows that men are the active gazers both in the film and the audience while women are the passive objects of the gaze.13 Mulvey expands the notion of identification saying that films are structured “around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify.”14 Interestingly, the main character with whom the ideal spectator can identify in the 1938 film is often powerless to the character of Susan Vance, who drives all of the action in the plot. Therefore, it is worth investigating the ways in which the film supplies the pleasures that Mulvey has explored.

Katharine Hepburn is front and center in the film. She makes a spectacle of herself with outrageous behaviors and outfits. There are many instances in which the gaze of the viewer is focused on Hepburn. Sometimes it is as if the viewer is Grant and other times the shot is just filled with Hepburn’s face almost as if the viewer is able to gaze on her without even having to identify with Grant. She becomes the sexual object for just the viewer. Identification with Grant allows the viewer to vicariously experience being the object of Susan’s affections and flattery throughout the film, as well as the attentions of other beautiful women in the film. Grant himself is an attractive man portraying a character that could be categorized as somewhat nerdy and awkward. Male viewers who identify with other aspects of the character can then also feel the vicarious thrill of identifying with someone as good looking and famous as Cary Grant. Grant’s character

David Huxley also has moments where he shows his ability to dominate the situation or

13 Ibid., 441.

14 See note 13 above.

43 be the hero. Viewers are able to experience the masculine power of these scenes as well.

In summary, three aspects of how the film provides the pleasures: Katharine

Hepburn/Susan Vance as a sexual object (this category could be further split into spectacle and gaze), identification with Cary Grant/ David Huxley and the pleasure of being able to enjoy the attentions of Hepburn’s character as well, and identification with

Grant and the experience of masculine power.

Hepburn brings an energy to the character of Susan Vance in every scene of the film. Vance seems like an unstoppable force; someone who is able to just keep going and going. Mulvey writes that the woman on screen is both “looked at and displayed.”15 This state of being displayed makes the woman a spectacle.16 Based on Mulvey’s assertions,

Vance’s energy often leads to her creating situations or spectacles about herself, which attract the attention of both the viewer and the other characters in the film. One cannot help but look at Susan; she is the center of attention. By being the center of attention,

Susan’s sexuality is also on full display and the viewer is invited to look at her because of her actions, but also experience the added benefit of being able to enjoy her body and thus sexuality as they gaze at her.

Susan’s first scene of the film sets a chaotic tone that sweeps up the audience. She accidently takes David’s golf ball and uses it to finish her own game of golf, all the while cracking jokes and not seeming to care that she may have disrupted another player’s game.17 Susan’s refusals to even listen to David’s seemingly rational arguments like

15 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 442.

16 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 443.

17 Bringing Up Baby, 00:05:14.

44 using the markings on the ball to settle the dispute are fascinating to the viewer. Her behavior defies the norm, especially her cavalier masculine attitude. It is the behavior that draws the spectator in, but they also notice Susan’s put together appearance and beautiful slim physique. Susan is both a spectacle and a sexual object from her first entrance into the storyline of the film.

Minutes later Susan is drawing attention to herself again by getting behind the wheel of David’s car and damaging it multiple times.18 Susan’s explanation is that she is trying to move David’s car so that she can drive her own car away. Again her behavior goes against what viewers might consider normal. She could just drive her own using extra caution, or find David and ask him to move his car. Instead, she chooses to drive

David’s car herself. In the beginning of this scene, the camera focuses on Susan driving the car. This scene is obviously what David is seeing because he has just turned to look at what is happening involving his car, but the viewer is also able to gaze at Hepburn unencumbered by the connection with David. Susan is displayed as a sexual object as again she calls attention to her body with her actions.

In the restaurant scene, the spectator focuses on Susan for multiple reasons. Her outfit is very eye catching and somewhat unusual. She wears a veil with gold trim and a dress that matches the trim. Her outfit is just different enough from those of the other women in the restaurant that it stands out, but does not make her seem too outlandish.

This choice of outfit invites those around her and those watching the film to focus on

Susan (something that is continued throughout the film). Secondly, Susan is learning how to do a cute trick in which she bounces olives off her hand and catches them in her

18 Bring Up Baby, 00:06:46.

45 mouth.19 Every time Susan does this trick she is performing and inviting others to watch her. Susan is meant to be observed and becomes an object of scopophlic pleasure through this observation.

An event later on in the restaurant scene stresses Susan’s status as a sexual object further. David accidentally steps on Susan’s dress, causing it to rip and exposing her underwear. Susan remains unaware of the situation as David struggles to keep her decent because they are standing next to a dining room filled with people eating.20 There are multiple Mulvey pleasures in this scene. First of all, the lower half of Susan’s body is on full display, something that the audience or most of the characters in the film do not usually see. Susan is usually dressed in dresses with skirts that do not cling to the body or wide leg trousers. In this scene, her underwear and her legs covered by stockings are visible. It is possible to assume that these garments are usually only visible during the process of dressing, which occur both as a daily routine and as a prelude to sex. When the viewer glimpses these garments on Susan, they are placed either in the role of voyeur observing a woman at her toilette or sexual partner undressing the object of their desire.

The fact that the garments are visible in public a setting in which they should never be glimpsed creates the spectacle of the scene. No matter what role the spectator plays, they are invited to look and will derive some sort of scopophilic pleasure out of gazing at

Susan.

Identification with David also brings further pleasure in this scene. David is struggling to help Susan maintain her dignity even when she is unaware that she is fully

19 Bringing Up Baby, 00:09:38.

20 Bringing Up Baby, 00:15:28.

46 exposed to the other diners. David uses his hat to cover Susan’s bottom. He does it so quickly that he effectively spanks Susan causing her to cry out indignantly. His action is sexual in nature and usually forbidden, but justified by the fact that he is only trying to help Susan. The spectator can thus feel the pleasure of the forbidden and the liberties that

David is now able to take with Susan due to her predicament. He also gets very close to

Susan who the spectator has come to identify as a sexual object. Seeing their likeness so close the sexual object will allow the spectator a vicarious pleasure, as they imagine themselves being just as close to Susan. When Susan actually realizes that her dress has ripped she instantly panics and demands that David help her. She forces him to stand directly behind her to cover her back and they waddle out of the restaurant together. In this case, David’s front is flush against Susan’s back effectively simulating sex. The spectator is able to view this and imagine that they too can touch Susan in a way and have her actually forcibly demand such contact.

There are many scenes that imply that Susan should be looked at because of the focus of the camera. In scenes such as this, Susan will be the only character on screen or her face will fill the screen. These scenes could be interpreted as being what the characters are observing when they look at Susan, but there is also no middleman in these scenes; the spectator can look directly at what is on the screen. In some scenes, there are two gazes implied when Susan is shown: that of David or other characters looking at

Susan and that of the ideal spectator looking at Susan. In others, she is on display for the ideal spectator only. There also scenes in which other characters are looking at Susan.

These scenes are interesting because they imply that Susan should be looked at, perhaps even as a sexual object. Take for example a scene depicting Susan and David having a

47 conversation at her country house. In this scene, David is off the side of the frame and all that the viewer sees is the back of his head. Susan’s face takes up most of the screen and is well lit.21 It is as if the spectator and David are one. The spectator knows that they should be looking at Susan because David is. On screen Susan is the object of the male gaze that implies that she should also be the object of the gaze for those watching the film.

By identifying with Grant’s character David, the ideal spectator is able to feel the effect of Susan’s affections as well. Susan’s regard for David is clear especially when she demonstrates that he is the only man for her. The scene where this becomes obvious takes place at Susan’s country house, just after David has met her Aunt Elizabeth. Susan is sitting on the floor playing a he loves me, he loves me not game. The outcome of the game is that he loves her. Susan then exclaims, “If he gets some clothes, he’ll go away and he’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”22 In this scene Susan appears very childlike. She uses a game to decide whether or not David loves her instead of just asking him or making her own conclusions based on his actions. She then demonstrates how hard she is working to make David love her and keep her with him by the fact that she wants to deprive him of clothing so that he cannot leave. He is also, according to Susan, “the only man I’ve ever loved.” 23 This exclamation is quite dramatic, especially when one considers that Susan has really only known David for a couple of days. The fact that she loves David already could demonstrate just how strong her feelings for him are. Her

21 Bringing Up Baby, 00:43:12.

22 Bringing Up Baby, 00:40:54.

23 See note 22 above.

48 devotion to him is powerful both because of how quickly her feelings for him set in and because it is childlike. Childlike devotion is usually thought of as innocent and unquestioning. By identifying with David, spectators are able to feel the pleasure of being the object of devotion, as well. Throughout the film David receives the attention of other women as well. In the restaurant two attractive coat check attendants fuss over him and offer to take his hat,24 and even his fiancée Alice Swallow is a beautiful attractive woman. David is clearly a man who attracts female attention and by identifying with him, the spectator is able to feel the benefits of this attention as well.

Identification with David is also a way for the spectator to feel the pleasure of power and masculinity especially as it relates to women. Cary Grant is an attractive man and in this film his character David is an academic, a profession that could be considered nerdy or make him seem a little less powerful. The fact that he is attractive gives pleasure to those men who might identify more with his profession while men who don’t necessarily identify with the character want to identify with Cary Grant. Interestingly,

Susan even comments on how handsome David looks without his glasses.25 The glasses are part of David’s character so the fact that he looks handsomer without them perhaps is a nod to how handsome the actor Cary Grant is.

David is also given multiple opportunities to demonstrate his masculine power and domination. After the car accident involving the poultry truck and Susan’s pet leopard Baby, David makes the comment, “When a man is wrestling a leopard in the

24 Bringing Up Baby, 00:09:22.

25 Bringing Up Baby, 00:43:40.

49 middle of a pond he’s in no position to run.”26 This comment shows that mild-mannered

Professor Huxley is very manly indeed. He is able to wrestle a wild animal in water, something that would require a great deal of strength and bravery. David also shows his aggressive nature later at Susan’s country house. He suggests going in and getting her while she is showering, and later on orders Aunt Elizabeth, the maid, and Susan to be quiet so he can find some clothes. He emphasizes this to Susan by stomping on her foot, distracting her, and causing her to be silent for once. In both scenes, David is aggressive, perhaps even sexually aggressive in the case of the shower suggestion. He clearly demonstrates himself to be a dominant masculine man in these instances. The ideal spectator would certainly gain pleasure from identifying with a man who embodies these traits.

A feminist psychoanalytic reading of the film demonstrates that Susan is clearly a sexual object that can be enjoyed by the viewer from a scopophilic perspective and through identification with David. This reading does not allow Susan to have agency.

This interpretation, however, does not consider the spectator to be active. By elevating the position of the spectator, it may be possible to find other ways of giving agency to the character of Susan Vance.

Disruption of the Voyeuristic Experience in Bringing Up Baby (1938)

The character of Susan lends herself well to a psychoanalytic reading as suggested by

Mulvey to explore how the audience relates to her as an eroticized object. It is, however, her ability to make the audience laugh that is a form of resistance to this model. Bringing

26 Bringing Up Baby, 00:30:45.

50 Up Baby is a type of comedy known as a screwball comedy, which is characterized as featuring “a warring couple” that is “responsible for the madcap escapes, chaos, slapstick and witty, fast-paced dialogue that marks the progress of their explosive relationship.”27

These types of films are meant to entertain the audience. In consequence, the audience is not made up of the passive pleasure seekers as Mulvey suggests. When it comes to comedy, the audience is always being surprised. This surprise allows for a situation like that proposed by Rancière: “…a theatre without spectators, where those in attendance learn from as opposed to being seduced by images; where they become active participants as opposed to passive voyeurs.”28 They engage with the film as Rancière suggests by identifying with the events that the characters are experiencing on screen as they unfold. 29 The spectator can participate in the story and examine it like an

“investigator or experimenter.” 30 Laughter is perhaps the most tangible way that spectators become engaged with the film. It is a bodily experience that forces viewers to be confronted with the fact that they are embodied beings. They are no longer voyeurs engrossed with the images on screen, but people who are engaged with the story and responding to it. They realize that the acts on screen are being constructed in a certain way and by choosing to laugh at them the spectators are providing critique for how effective the comedy is. This engagement is not one of identification and objectification but rather one of critical engagement. The audience, through laughter, becomes aware

27 Claire Mortimer, Romantic Comedy (London: Routledge, 2010), 11.

28Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator (London: Verso, 2009), 4.

29 See note 28 above

30 See note 28 above.

51 that most of the actions in the film are being put on for their benefit to garner a certain reaction.

Comedy usually results from discrepancies and deviations from the norm. Gender norms are one arena in which subversion results in humor. According to Judith Butler,

“Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.”31 In other words there are specific conceptions of how men and women should act based on their status as men and women. These ways of acting are reinforced by regulations until it appears that the genders of masculine and feminine are natural ways for men and women to act.

In Bringing Up Baby, it becomes clear that many of Susan’s behaviors are actually “acts” that she is consciously putting on. Take for example the scene when Susan calls David about Baby, the leopard, because she thinks that David is a zoologist. Susan tricks David into coming to her apartment by pretending to be in distress as if she is being mauled by Baby, thus manipulating popular conceptions of gender roles. She moans, screams, and scrapes the phone across the fireplace grate.32 From David’s point of view there is a commotion occurring at Susan’s apartment, one that most logically is being caused by the leopard that is in her apartment. As a gentleman, it is his obligation to rescue Susan. Because the audience can also see Susan they know what she is really doing. Instead of being the damsel in distress, Susan is acting the damsel in distress.

31 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), 45.

32Bringing Up Baby, 00:23:40-00:24:20.

52 Following this logic it becomes clear that many of the traits that define Susan as an

MPDG are acts as well.

Laughter is one way in which active spectators can interact with Susan as an

MPDG characters. Once the audience realizes they are in a position of power to read her acts, they will do so. There are, as stated, many instances in which the audience becomes aware that Susan is acting or deceivingly manipulating the situations. By acknowledging that Susan is acting and that the result of her performance is funny, the audience gives

Susan agency; they recognize that she is capable of controlling her own actions. Thus,

Susan is capable of agency, but it all depends on how the audience chooses to interpret the humor of her actions. The audience provides a possibility of agency for Susan.

Katharine Hepburn’s Image as an Actress

The audience can interpret the image of the star on screen in multiple ways. Richard Dyer writes, “the audience’s idea about a star can act back on the media producers of the star’s image.”33 When it comes to interpreting stars’ images, the audience is active and can form their own conceptions, suggesting that when audiences watch films they use the images that they have constructed to analyze the stars on screen. Katharine Hepburn has a very distinct star image that is often understood as that of the powerful, independent woman. This image contradicts the understanding of the MPDG as simply a male inspiration. However, based on the focus group responses, Katharine Hepburn is understood differently by younger generations. Thus, her image as a star may influence

33 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 5.

53 the agency of the MPDG, but this interpretation depends entirely on the viewer who is watching the film.

After Katharine Hepburn’s death, many writers remembered her as strong, independent woman. An entry from The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives describes her as “Well-born, well educated, and dressed in pants long before they became fashionable, Hepburn projected an image of confident and uncompromising individuality that was the embodiment of the independent woman.”34 Hepburn’s image as understood by this author is of a woman who was a distinct individual; one who never came second to anyone. She was her own woman. Similar sentiments are expressed in a New Yorker article, written in honor of Hepburn, Claudia Roth Pierpont writes:

“Now that Hepburn’s own story has ended…we may be able to learn how such a woman actually lived out an uncensored and unedited freedom, since we have always known that, despite four Academy Awards and a dramatic range from Louisa May Alcott to Eugene O’Neill for half a century Katharine Hepburn was really playing herself.35

This article reiterates the idea that Katharine Hepburn was a free woman who was able to do what she liked. It also pays tribute to her acting abilities, but argues that despite her great talents, there was always a sense that deep down Hepburn was always being herself when she was acting. If Hepburn is seen as being a woman of strong will and, at some level, always herself even when she was acting, then it stands to reason that some viewers may interpret her characters as embodying her own personality traits. Thus, her

34 “Katharine Hepburn,” The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, 2007, Biography in Context.

35 Claudia Roth Pierpont, “Born for the Part: Roles the Katharine Hepburn played,” The New Yorker, July 14, 2003, 53.

54 characters can be seen as sharing her traits like independence. This understanding of her image suggests that Hepburn’s characters share her own personal agency.

Zoe Kazan makes a similar argument when discussing interpretations of Hepburn as an MPDG. She says:

I think that to lump all individual, original quirky women under that rubric is to erase all difference. Like I’ve read pieces that describe Annie Hall as a manic pixie dream girl. Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. To me, those are fully fledged characters that are being played by really smart actresses.36

Kazan sees the fact that Katharine Hepburn portrayed Susan Vance as point on which to build an argument against the character being an MPDG. Her image of Hepburn is one of an intelligent actress, which completely cancels out the label of the character as an

MPDG. Such an interpretation implies that at least one MPDG character, Susan, can have agency because of the actress who portrays her.

It is important to remember that star images and audience interpretations of them are influenced by time. When Bringing Up Baby was released, it was considered “a flop, confirming Hollywood’s judgment that she [Hepburn] was the kiss of death at the box office.”37 In 1938, Katharine Hepburn did not have a star image that was redeeming to

Bringing Up Baby. Instead, her image was one of a failed actress who brought disaster to films.

Responses from college-age women also suggest that for some younger viewers,

Hepburn’s image of strong, independent woman is not as poignant. When asked, “What

36 Patti Greco, “Zoe Kazan on Writing Ruby Sparks and Why You Should Never Call Her a ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl,’” Vulture, July 23, 2012, www.vulture.com/2012.07/zoe- kazan-ruby-sparks-interview.html (accessed March 5, 2013).

37 David Ansen, “A Very Independent Woman: Patrician heartbreaker KATHARINE HEPBURN, 96, challenged our assumptions,” July 14, 2003, 59, Biography in Context.

55 do you know about Katharine Hepburn?” answers tended to be very vague suggesting that time and age plays an important factor in knowledge of films and movie stars. One participant, Kimberly simply listed “nothing”38 in response to this question. Another participant Ellis responded, “Much less [in relation to Zooey Deschanel], since she’s not in any current news. I confuse her with Audrey Hepburn, but I’m sure I’ve seen her in something.”39 Rose’s response was similar to Ellis though just as broad: “Actress, big in the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, had a lot of more independent female roles.”40 Their responses show that younger generation have a less clear understanding of who Katharine

Hepburn is. Some of them understood her image as that of an independent woman, but there was no clear sense that this image influences their interpretation of her characters.

Hepburn’s image of an actress is certainly one of a woman who claimed her own agency. Different viewers have different interpretations of this role depending on their age and knowledge of Hepburn. Certain viewers feel very strongly when they suggest that Katharine Hepburn could never play an MPDG. Thus, viewer interpretations of

Katharine Hepburn’s image can lend agency to Susan Vance; it all depends on the viewer as an active spectator.

Susan Vance’s Gender

While examining Bringing Up Baby through Mulvey’s lens of pleasure does reveal some interesting insights, there are many aspects of the film and of audiences who watch films

38 Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

39 Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

40 Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

56 that do not seem to correspond well with theories based on psychoanalysis. For example, the character of Susan Vance is very active and drives many of the events within the plot, making it hard to classify her only as a passive sexual object. These acts demonstrate the

Susan Vance is a character with both masculine and feminine traits.

Katherine Hepburn’s character Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby is always active on the screen, manipulating situations to her needs in a manner that eventually allows her to claim the ultimate prize: a life with Cary Grant’s character Professor David Huxley.

Susan’s active behavior is characterized by acts of thievery. There are many instances in the film in which Susan steals things from others. These actions make her the active thief, turning most of the characters in the film into passive bystanders, who are acted upon by

Susan, the central character; Susan shapes the events of the film.

Susan steals many things throughout the course of the film. The first is her theft of

David’s golf ball that leads to their meeting. David notices that his ball has disappeared and realizes that Susan is using it to finish her game. Susan is completely oblivious to the fact that she has taken David’s ball and continues to play as if everything is normal.

When David asks her to return the ball, Susan replies, “You shouldn’t talk when someone’s shooting,”41 stressing her oblivious mindset when it comes to the acts of thievery she performs throughout the entire film. This attitude shows that for Susan, stealing is part of her nature. It is not an act that she has to consciously think about. Susan is naturally active and everyone else in the film must react to her. Thus, David meeting her is a reaction to Susan, something that only took place because of a decision that

41 Bringing Up Baby, 00:05:19.

57 Susan made. When Susan finally acknowledges the fact that she may have in fact taken

David’s ball she is still very nonchalant.

In almost the very next scene, Susan is shown driving David’s car, something that she has not been given permission to do. Indeed, Susan is again completely oblivious that she is even doing anything wrong. She demands of David, “This is your car?”42 Her tone making it pointedly clear that in her mind no one would ever own such a “wreck.”

Susan’s unawareness of the fact that she is even doing something wrong ,suggests that she is only focused on herself and her end goal that of moving her car. The end of the scene is obviously symbolic. Susan drives off while David is standing on the running board of his car. As they whiz by Mr. Peabody, David yells, “I’ll be with you in a minute

Mr. Peabody.”43 Again Susan’s power is emphasized. She is the one driving the car and transporting David away from his goal of talking to Mr. Peabody. David is helpless to stop her from taking his car or from carrying himself away from the scene.

Through acts of thievery Susan drives the action in scenes. This fact is stressed in the restaurant scene. The scene opens with David entering the restaurant and then cuts to

Susan sitting at the bar. When the restaurant is first shown the audience has no idea that

Susan will be there, but they become aware of her presence before David does, allowing the audience to assume that Susan and David will meet, causing antics to ensue. There is also a chance element to the whole scene. So far in the film David has only encountered

Susan accidently, but when he does, it is Susan who instigates the action. Susan is deep in conversation with the bartender, attempting to learn an olive trick, which consists of

42 Bringing Up Baby, 00:06:46-00:08:30.

43Bringing Up Baby,00:08:47.

58 bouncing an olive off her hand and catching it in her mouth. This trick makes Susan seem childlike and engaged in games. However, it is because of Susan’s antics with the olive that she and David come into contact with each other once again. Susan accidently drops the olive, causing David to slip and fall on his hat. In these early scenes it is the actions of

Susan and not David that are bringing them together. Susan, the woman, is in control.

Susan’s ultimate act of thievery is the theft of David. In the beginning of the film the audience learns that David is engaged to Alice Swallow.44 Susan does everything in her power to prevent this marriage from taking place. In one scene she says, “If he gets some clothes, he’ll go away and he’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”45 Susan is going to extreme lengths to keep David from marrying Alice, even going so far as to deprive him of clothing, again an act of thievery. Susan is actively trying to manipulate David, so she can claim him as her own. In the end, she is successful. David expresses feelings of love for Susan and tells her that he wants to be with her.46 Through her manipulation and control of situations, Susan has managed to steal the man that she wants.

Susan’s dominance throughout the film as demonstrated through acts of thievery and her control of situations is a distinctly masculine trait. Susan’s embodiment of this trait suggests that she is not “doing her gender right.”47 Susan’s failure to perfectly to conform to a feminine gender was also expressed in the focus group responses.

44 Bringing Up Baby, 00:02:30.

45 Bringing Up Baby, 00:40:54.

46 Bringing Up Baby, 01:39:00-01:40:13.

47 Butler, Gender Trouble, 190.

59 Some focus group responses also expressed the idea that Susan Vance has forceful traits. Ellis says, “Hepburn’s character is assertive to the point of obnoxious as she confronts a man who has been following her.”48 Rose elaborates on this position saying:

In Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn’s character is a manic runaway train, and anyone who doesn’t get out of her way is run over. She is basically hyperactive, and you can’t help but be captivated by her, like she is an alien creature. The psychiatrist eventually adopts her traits while the (I assume) love interest keeps trying to oppose her force. When she loses control of the situation, she is helpless.49

Both answers identify domineering traits that Vance expresses and both also point out ways that these traits seem extreme or threatening. Hepburn is forceful, but to the point where it is almost too much to bear. Her energy is depicted as entrancing and powerful, so much so that she is able to influence those around her. In this way, the responders

“other” Susan’s more masculine traits, suggesting that she is threatening for not conforming to gender stereotypes.

The question that must now be determined is whether the embodiment of both masculine and feminine traits is enough to claim that Susan has agency. On the one hand,

Susan is able to get what she wants, David. On the other hand, even though Susan has obtained her goal, it is assumed that she and David will get married, which constrains her to the typically feminine domain of marriage. A postfeminist evaluation of Susan’s decision would focus on the fact that she was able to make a choice.50 Yet as Yvonne

48 Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

49 Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

50 Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 67.

60 Tasker points out in her essay featured in Feminism at the Movies, “While postfeminism insists on female strength and the primacy of the self (for which choice stands as the marker), that strength can, it seems only be celebrated when figured in appropriately feminine terms.”51 In this case, Susan’s agency is constrained because it ends with the goal of marriage.

Cultural Context

The audience approaches the film with a wide range of opinions that are shaped by the culture that they live in. When interpreting how the audience approaches a film character it is important to consider events that may influence their opinion and interpretations.

Lauren Berlant writes about the importance of acknowledging what is happening in society. She writes about the importance of identifying situations, which she defines as “a state of things in which something that will matter is perhaps unfolding amid the usual activity of life.”52 In addition, situations are a time when “a relation of persons and worlds is sensed to be changing.”53 Since situations are inherently changes, people within society will have differing feelings about what is occurring and these feelings may influence how they relate to characters that may or may not reflect these changes.

51 Yvonne Tasker, “Enchanted (2007) by Postfeminism: Gender, Irony, and the New Romantic Comedy,” in Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer (New York: Routledge, 2011), 69.

52Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 5.

53 Ibid., 6.

61 Two situations must be taken into account when considering Bringing Up Baby and Susan Vance’s gender, one from 1938 when the film was released and one from the

2000s when the term MPDG was coined. The first is the Great Depression and the second is the Hook Up Culture. The screwball comedy became popular during the Great

Depression, a time when many families in the United States were suffering as people around the country struggled to find work. Screwball comedies offered an escape from the daily hardships that defined this period, allowing the audience to escape into “a world where chaos reigned supreme and resulted in happiness and hope for its hero and heroine.”54 In this time, one reading of Hepburn’s character is that she is in control of her own happiness and audiences can live vicariously through her to experience it, but in this particular case it is more important to consider how modern viewers interpret Vance’s gender based on current situations.

The label of the MPDG has emerged during a time when women’s approach to sexual relationships is perceived to be changing. Women are seen to enjoy casual sex as much as men by taking advantage of the one-night-stand, “no strings attached world” of the Hook Up Culture.55 There is a general discomfort with women who are seen to assert their sexuality in this more masculine form as demonstrated by the derogatory terms that are often used to describe young women who participate in this culture like “houserat” or

“lacrosstitue.”56 Lynn Peril also describes how some women to feel the need to act in

54 Mortimer, Romantic Comedy, 11.

55 Hanna Rosin, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (New York: River Head Books, 2012), 21.

56 Ibid., 20.

62 ways that make it seem like they do not actively want to engage in casual sex.57The use of these derogatory terms results from a need to punish women for acting in ways that do not conform to typical notions of femininity. Judith Butler writes, “Discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture; indeed we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right.”58 Women who participate in the Hook Up

Culture are perceived as “not doing their gender right”59 because they demonstrate masculine characteristics like assertiveness regarding sexuality. As has been discussed in the previous section, Susan Vance also fails to “do her gender right”60 by being sexually assertive. Vance is asserting herself sexually just like women who choose to participate in the Hook Up Culture. By labeling Susan Vance a MPDG, viewers seek to dehumanize and punish her for acting against gender norms.

When cultural context, as influenced by situations, is taken into account, opportunities for agency emerge. Reactions to the Vance in different times show that she could be interpreted as having agency because the viewers are giving it to her. Vance’s own agency when it comes to her more assertive masculine traits may be constrained by marriage as discussed above, but viewers’ interpretations of her based on their cultural

57Lynn Peril, College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 353

58 Butler, Gender Trouble, 190.

59 See note 58 above.

I would also like to take the chance to point out that there are other ways for women to assert themselves sexually that actually have nothing to do with having sex. Choosing to remain celibate is one example of how a woman can also assert herself sexually. Many people who make the choice of celibacy are “othered” for their assertiveness.

60 See note 51 above.

63 context can give her agency. In the case of labeling her as an MPDG, modern viewers

“other” Vance’s forceful masculine traits showing that they view her as powerful and threatening. Alfred Gell argues that even “things have agency because they produce effects, they cause use to feel happy, angry, fearful or lustful.”61 Susan can cause the audience to feel, and therefore has agency.

Conclusion

Moving beyond a feminist psychoanalytic reading and taking the active spectator into account opens up multiple ways of interpreting the agency of Susan Vance as an MPDG in Bringing Up Baby like the nature of the film, knowledge of Katharine Hepburn, and

Susan Vance’s gender and how it is interpreted based on social situations today. The film’s comedic nature disrupts the voyeuristic experience that viewers can experience while watching films. In scenes like the one in which Susan tricks David into coming to save her, viewers can tell that Susan is acting and find humor in this irony. In this case, the fact that the audience recognizes her power to act through their laughter gives her agency. Interpretations of Katharine Hepburn’s image as an actress show that many people see her as an independent woman. In some cases, they even see her image as being transferred to her characters. Depending on viewers’ understandings of Katharine

Hepburn’s image, agency can be lent to Susan Vance. Susan’s gender is comprised of distinctly masculine traits like being assertive. When considered alone these traits do not give her agency even though they allow her to get the guy because it is implied that they will be constrained by the traditional femininity of marriage. When her gender is

61 Alfred Gell qtd in Janet Hoskins, “Agency, Biography, and Objects in Handbook of Material Culture ed. Christ Tilley et al. (London: Sage Publishing, 2006), 76.

64 examined in terms of today’s cultural context, Susan Vance’s gender traits give her agency because viewers are uncomfortable with them. When they label her an MPDG viewers acknowledge Vance’s power and the fact that they find it threatening. In 1938, the character of Susan Vance gained agency by making viewers who were experiencing the Great Depression feel more optimistic. Susan Vance can have agency, but it all depends on how the active spectator reacts to her.

65 Chapter 3:

A Sexually Active Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The film (500) Days of Summer (2009) features a more modern version of the Manic

Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG). The young male protagonist Tom is going about his banal life as a greeting card writer when he meets Summer, who he believes is “the one.” Summer fulfills her role as an MPDG by making Tom feel as if his life is complete through her childish antics and humor. Ultimately, Tom is able to realize his dream of becoming an architect due to Summer’s presence in his life, cementing her status as an MPDG.

Summer can be examined as the object of Tom’s male gaze in the film and also the gaze of the audience who identify with Tom and derive scopophilic pleasure from objectifying

Summer. However, to limit the film’s examination of male fantasy to this reading is to ignore the other ways in which the audience interacts with the film.

The film offers a chance to look at Tom’s love for Summer ironically. Firstly, it makes fun of Tom through the use of familiar tropes from films that explore the theme of love, like romantic comedies and Disney movies. Secondly, the audience’s chance to become absorbed in the story is disrupted through use of techniques like an omniscient narrator and nonlinear storyline. These techniques allow for the audience to break out of the role of passive voyeur. The film, however, is not an explicit critique of male fantasy.

Such a critique would have to feature a moment where it is clear that Tom’s view of

Summer as an MPDG is false. Such a moment could be a glimpse of the real Summer or a moment when it is clear that what Tom sees is not what the audience or the other

66 characters see. While the film elevates the place of the spectator, this elevation does not give Summer agency.

When active audiences evaluate Summer with knowledge of Zooey Deschanel’s image, Summer’s status as an MPDG without agency can be reinforced. Summer is played by the actress Zooey Deschanel, a fact that stresses her status as an MPDG.

Deschanel’s image as an actress has become synonymous with that of the MPDG as demonstrated by the focus group responses. Unlike Hepburn, she does not lend Summer any agency.

In terms of gender, Summer is an active character, who is fully in control of her sexuality and desires; she is not only depicted as a passive object suggesting that she may in fact have agency. Despite Summer’s activeness, the film does not push any boundaries.

Summer’s choice to become a wife instead of continuing to enjoy casual relationships confines her agency firmly within the bonds of marriage. The ending of the film is meant to relieve cultural anxieties surrounding a perceived devaluation of serious relationships.

The fact that some viewers interpret Summer as threatening is what gives her agency.

Summer Finn as Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Summer’s purpose in the film is to make Tom feel better about his life because he is in love with her. She is the object of Tom’s love, rather than a fully developed character.

What the audience actually knows about Summer is very limited. Most of her character is based on how she relates to and serves Tom. Like Susan, she is the mischievous pan who encourages him to play childlike games in public places. She is a willing and adventurous

67 sexual partner. Most importantly, she, as with all MPDGs, changes Tom’s life for the better by inspiring him to follow his dream of becoming an architect.

Summer’s character traits are very simplistic. One critique of the Manic Pixie

Dream Girl is that her character traits often tend to be limited to quirky musical tastes.

For example, in a review of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, critic Bruce

Handy writes: Keira Knightly plays a Manic Pixie End-of-Days Girl in Converse sneakers and skirts with odd hemlines, ever clutching an armful of vinyl records to her breast.”1 The character of Summer also has distinct musical preferences. One of the first intriguing facts that Tom learns about Summer is that she is a fan of the band The Smiths.

She enters the elevator with Tom who is wearing his headphones. His music is loud enough that Summer can hear it, causing her to remark: “I love The Smiths.”2 When Tom finally becomes aware of what Summer has said, he stares at her dumbfounded as she exits the elevator. Tom’s response shows that he feels a connection with Summer, but it does not reveal anything about her as a person. In a similar vein, Summer later reveals that Ringo Starr is her favorite Beatle3 ,further cementing her off-beat musical tastes.

These small bits of information become enough for Tom to decide that he loves Summer.

Tom’s status as the main character and Summer’s as an MPDG with limited character traits is further reinforced by their first real conversation. Summer states that

1 Bruce Handy, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The Worst Movie of its Generation,” The Hollywood Blog, June 22, 2012, http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2012/06/seeking-a-friend-for-the-end-of-the- world-movie-review (accessed March 10, 2013).

2 (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb (Los Angeles, CA: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2009), 00:10:20.

3 Ibid., 00:34:54.

68 she moved to Los Angeles because she was bored.4 While one reason for moving is as good as any other, Summer is portrayed as a character with no goals. All the audience learns about her is that she has the capacity to get bored. Contrastingly, a large amount of information about Tom’s background is revealed. Tom tells Summer that he is unsatisfied with his job at the greeting card company and she responds by asking why he does not do something else. Tom reveals that he studied architecture but does not know how to make this dream a reality.5 This conversation stresses the fact that Tom has dreams. He becomes a full-fledged character with hopes and goals while Summer is placed in the role of muse, solidifying her status as an MPDG.

One of the observations from the focus groups classified Summer’s role as that of muse as well. Elizabeth says, “She’s supposed to be enchanting and fun and JGL is portrayed as I don’t know being really average and not want to go outside of the boundaries of his own life and she like helps him along the way, try new things and achieve his dream of being an architect and looking beyond himself.”6 Her comment shows that viewers may not interpret Summer as a fully developed character, one of the reasons that she comes to be labeled as an MPDG. In this way, the process of labeling characters as MPDGs results from viewers’ active engagement with the film.

Tom and Summer’s dates can often be described as childlike regression. One such example is when they go shopping at Ikea and enact the childhood game of playing house. The store tries to present lifestyles and ideas of how someone might want to live

4 (500) Days of Summer, 00:11:29.

5 (500) Days of Summer, 00:11:39-00:11:53.

6 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

69 his or her life with their home furnishings in their store, but none of it is really meant to be functional; it is for display only. Tom and Summer actually pretend that they live in these little fantasy worlds by pretending they are married and doing everyday activities like watching TV and making dinner. They remain in this fantasy world until they enter the bedroom and begin to kiss, only to realize that there is a family in the bathroom. They are in a store and there are other people trying to look at the furniture too.7 Tom is caught up in the fantasy of playing house with Summer in the Ikea Store. Summer’s actions in the scene are reminiscent of Susan taking David to Connecticut. Summer is the one that initiates the fantasy making her the playful pan who whisks Tom off to Neverland.8 In this way, both the pixie and girl elements of her MPDG label are fully evident. Her happiness at running around the store illustrates her mania. Summer has the qualifications of an MPDG.

To limit a description of the character Summer to that of MPDG denies her agency. It establishes her roles as a muse who endorses living life to the fullest through fantasy. Feminist psychoanalysis allows for an examination of the complexities of how she is objectified, but privileging the spectator as active allows for a broader explanation of her character.

A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of Summer Finn

The pleasure that viewers can experience when watching (500) Days of Summer is twofold as explained by Laura Mulvey in her article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative

7 (500) Days of Summer, 00:27:23-00:30:39.

8 J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy (London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.: 1921).

70 Cinema.” Mulvey identifies two pleasures that come from watching film. The first is the pleasure of scopophilia, that of the audience objectifying the woman on screen as a sexual object9, in this case Summer. The second is by identifying with the male lead,

Tom and gaining vicarious pleasure as he pursues Summer.10 The objectification of

Summer is twofold as well. Mulvey writes, “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”11 Mulvey refers to this “to-be-looked-at-ness” as spectacle.12 Summer becomes a spectacle through the blatant sexual references she makes. She surprises at random intervals and draws the male gaze to her. Her status as something to be looked at is often emphasized throughout the film through focus on Tom’s gaze. In turn, by identifying with Tom, portrayed by the handsome Joseph Gordon Levitt, viewers are able to enjoy the sexual attentions that

Summer bestows on Tom vicariously.

Summer often draws attention to herself through sexual references. During her first conversation with Tom, Summer discusses her college nickname. She says, “They used to call me Anal Girl.”13 This comment is delivered with a classic Deschanel

Deadpan, making it is hard to determine whether Summer is joking. Tom is clearly

9 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975),” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn Warhol-Down and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 440.

10 Ibid., 441.

11 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 442.

12Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 443.

13 (500) Days of Summer, 00:12:28-00:12:32.

71 surprised by the comment and chokes on his champagne as he stares at Summer in disbelief.14 Summer then puts her previous comment in context, revealing that she was

“very neat and organized.”15 The word “anal” has double meaning, and thus Summer’s college nickname could imply that she has had anal sex or that she is as she said, someone who pays careful attention to order and cleanliness. The sexual implications of the word are startling and draw attention to Summer. The viewer wonders if she has had anal sex, solidifying Summer as a sexual being. Tom is clearly affected by the comment.

He directs his male gaze to Summer showing his interest in her as a potential partner who might be interested in sex that deviates from the norm.

In a similar scene, Summer suggests that she and Tom play the penis game while in a public park. Summer and Tom take turns saying “penis” aloud getting increasing their volume each time. During the course of the game, Summer also makes a reference to a previous boyfriend named the Puma, saying, “We barely left the room.”16 By yelling about sexual organs in public, Summer draws attention to herself and emphasizes her sexual knowingness. The audience wants to look at her and is encouraged to think about sex because Summer keeps screaming “penis.” She further emphasizes her status as a sexual object with the comment about her sexual activities with a previous boyfriend. The connection between Summer and sex is clear for the audience.

Summer’s status as an objectified being is stressed by the emphasis on Tom’s gaze when he meets her as well. Tom first sees Summer when she walks into the meeting

14 (500) Days of Summer, 00:12:36.

15 (500) Days of Summer, 00:12:38.

16 (500) Days of Summer, 00:51:14-00:52:17.

72 room at his work place to deliver his boss a message. Tom blatantly stares at Summer as the camera zooms in on his face to emphasize this fact. In this moment, Summer has become the object of Tom’s gaze. Tom becomes the main character who is fantasizing about Summer while Summer is demoted to the one who is fantasized about. The audience understands that Summer is meant to be looked at.

By identifying with Tom, viewers are able to live vicariously through him and enjoy Summer as a sexual object just as Tom does. This is quite clear in a scene during which Summer and Tom become intimate. Tom and Summer are shown making out on

Tom’s bed. Tom then leaves to go to the bathroom and to compose himself. When he returns to the room, Summer is waiting naked for him on the bed. She faces towards Tom and the only part of her body the audience sees is her bare shoulder. Tom’s face is in the center of screen as he stares at Summer.17 In the first part of the scene, the audience can identify with Tom and imagine that they too are becoming physically intimate with

Summer. In latter part of the scene, the audience can imagine what Summer looks like naked. When they associate themselves with Tom, they can create an image of what Tom is able to see, thus enjoying the sight of Summer’s naked body vicariously.

A feminist psychoanalysis based on Mulvey’s arguments about pleasure shows how Summer can be seen as a sexual object for three reasons. The first is that she draws attention to herself through sexual references, making a spectacle of herself and emphasizing her capacity to be looked at to the audience. Secondly, Tom’s gaze towards

Summer is often highlighted, solidifying the idea that she is a passive object to be examined and enjoyed. Thirdly, the audience can identify with Tom and enjoy the sexual

17 (500) Days of Summer, 00:30:42-00:31:33.

73 pleasure he derives from gazing at Summer and being intimate with her. Summer’s status as a passive sexual object strongly limits her capacity for agency.

Disruption of the Voyeuristic Experience in (500) Days of Summer (2009)

While (500) Days of Summer can be analyzed using feminist psychoanalysis, it also has aspects that encourage the audience to critically engage with the film. Rancière argues that the position of the spectator should be changed from voyeur to “that of scientific investigator or experimenter, who observes phenomena and searches for their causes.”18

The film encourages viewers to observe the male gaze and male fantasy. The movie is told from a man’s point of view, making viewers aware that it is the main character Tom whose thought process is being explored. The movie becomes an ironic inspection of the male gaze and how women are objectified, as described in the previous section, since for the most part, the audience sees Summer as Tom sees her. (500) Days of Summer features several ways in which the processes defined by Mulvey are interrupted. In the film, many of the situations in which Tom objectifies Summer take on an ironic tone, which highlights how Tom’s fantasy is being constructed. Tom’s male gaze and Summer’s status as an object to be looked at are emphasized, allowing viewers to examine the way in which Summer is objectified and how Tom contributes to it. Furthermore, the audience’s process of identification is interrupted by the use of a nonlinear story line, an omniscient narrator, the breaking of the fourth wall, and split screen.

A response from the focus groups provides an example of how fantasy in the film is observed. Elizabeth interprets Summer’s character as a reflection of Tom’s fantasy

18 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator (London: Verso, 2009), 4.

74 even if she does not explicitly say it. She believes the film is more about Tom’s perception of Summer rather than about Summer herself. “She’s got a quiet charm but then you know as the movie goes on I think that they deconstruct that sort of image of her and then maybe you discover that’s more how Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character sees her in the beginning rather than who she is. She’s just a normal average sort of woman whose life goals are not as fantastical as JGL’s are.”19 Her observations show that Tom may in fact be projecting many of Summer’s character traits and propose the idea that there may be another Summer. Her analysis also demonstrates the idea that she may not fully be immersed in Tom’s fantasy because she is able to make note of it. This ability shows that in some cases a viewer will not completely identify with the main character.

The first information the audience learns about Tom is on the subject of his conceptions of romantic live. The narrator tells the audience that Tom is on a quest to find “the one.” His belief in true love originated from listening to too much sad British pop music and a “total misreading of The Graduate.” 20 Tom has developed a belief in true love based on his understanding of culture, making his belief seem comical. The fact that it is based on a misreading of culture implies that Tom’s ideas maybe be based on an unsound foundation. Tom is set up to embody a way that love can be misinterpreted and corrupted by culture, so there is the possibility that the audience might not take his feelings seriously.

Tom’s snarky, all knowing little sister Rachel also mocks his notions of love.

Tom gleefully tells Rachel about all of the things that he and Summer have in common as

19 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

20 (500) Days of Summer, 00:01:15-00:02:10.

75 they play video games. Rachel responds, “Just because some cute girl likes the same bizarro crap you do doesn’t make her your soul mate Tom.”21 Again it is implied that

Tom’s ideas of love are not valid. He does not know a lot about what it means to be in love. He thinks that commonalities such as liking the same things are enough to build a relationship on. Rachel, on the other hand, thinks that no matter how quirky those commonalities are there still needs to be more to a relationship. Rachel criticizes Tom’s fantasy, saying that Summer cannot be his soul mate because their only connections are things they like. They have not built anything on top of those connections. Tom does not seem to care about Summer’s hopes and dreams. Rachel’s comment illustrates that Tom’s feelings about Summer are a problematic fantasy built on an unsound foundation.

Later in the film, Tom’s fantasy is mocked with clear cultural symbols of fantasy.

Following a scene that ends with the implication that Tom and Summer had sex, the audience is shown a Disney-like montage with Tom swaggering down the street on his way to work as the song “You Make My Dreams Come True” begins to play. Everyone smiles at him and when he stops to check his reflection, it is not his own face that he sees but Harrison Ford’s as Han Solo winking back at him. Tom arrives in the park where all of the other people are dressed in a blue color scheme. Tom starts dancing and the other people in the park join in. A marching band arrives and a little cartoon blue bird lands on

Tom’s figure. The scene ends abruptly as Tom realizes that he needs to arrive to work on time. 22 This scene features clear elements of fantasy like Tom as Han Solo, people all spontaneously joining in a dance with Tom, a marching band arriving at an opportune

21 (500) Days of Summer, 00:14:41.

22 (500) Days of Summer, 00:31:33- 00:33:25.

76 moment, and the cartoon blue bird. These elements tell the audience that the scene should be viewed as a metaphor for how Tom is feeling at this present moment. The scene is reminiscent of Disney scenes like that of the village scene in Beauty and the Beast (1991) when Belle sings “Little Town” all the villagers stop what they are doing and begin to sing as well.23 The presence of the cartoon blue bird, which actually looks like it escaped from a Disney Movie, further stresses the connections between this scene and Disney

Movies. Ironically, Tom becomes a Disney Princess who has found the One. Of course in this case, he has not met his true love in the woods, he has had sex with her. The ironic use of Disney and fantasy symbols stresses the fact that Tom version of being in love with Summer is based on a fantasy.

In another scene of the film, many of the male characters speak to the camera about love and the women they love. One of Tom’s friends speaks directly to the camera about how he would define his dream girl. He says: “The girl of my dreams would have a really bodacious rack, maybe different hair, she’d probably be a little more into sports, but um truthfully Robin’s better than the girl of my dreams. She’s real.”24 Tom appears in front of the camera after his friend has finished speaking. He just stares at the camera.25

The opinion of Tom’s friend demonstrates that reality is more important than fantasy when it comes to love. His use of the phrase “girl of my dreams” is particularly telling.

Real women are better than MPDGs. Tom is being mocked for having unrealistic

23 Beauty and the Beast, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Pictures, 1991).

24 (500) Days of Summer, Webb, 1:06:26-1:07:25.

25 (500) Days of Summer, Webb, 1:07:25-1:07:32.

77 expectations. His experience with Summer has shown that he really does not understand love at all. This scene is directly followed by the Expectations/Reality scene, which further illustrates just how much Tom’s fantasies are failing when it comes to Summer.

In Expectations/Reality scene, the screen is split. One is labeled expectations and the other reality. On the expectations side, Tom is depicted as going to the party at

Summer’s apartment and ultimately getting back together with her. On the reality side,

Summer is kind to Tom, but does not give any indication of wanting to be more than friends as Tom consumes drink after drink. The two screens offer an interesting insight into Tom’s mind, especially when they merge back into one screen as Tom becomes shocked when he sees Summer showing her engagement ring to another woman at the party. Now Tom knows there is absolutely no hope left for him and his optimistic expectations can no longer exist. He flees the party and pauses on the street in utter misery. The shot now becomes like a drawing which is slowly erased till all the viewer can see is Tom’s silhouette and even that eventually fades, showing just how much Tom has been affected but what he has just learned.26 This scene makes it clear that Tom has been constructing fantasies in his head when it comes to Summer. The film derides

Tom’s fantasies by showing just how far removed from reality they really are. This scene almost makes one question the validity of anything that has been shown through Tom’s eyes.

A short film featuring Summer follows the emphasis on Tom’s male gaze. The narrator says, “There’s only two kinds of people in the world. There’s women and there’s

26 (500) Days of Summer, Webb, 1:07:32-1:10:48.

78 men.” Summer is described as “average, just another girl.”27 The narrator then details the ways in which Summer is anything but average: People want to be like her, look at her, and her charisma often makes life easier for her. One scene of the little documentary shows Summer as she enters a bus filled with men. As she walks by the men, each of them does a double take to glance at her rear. The narrator labels this desire to glance at

Summer again as “the Summer Effect.”28 The documentary subtly explores Summer’s status as an object of desire detailing how she draws the eye. Summer’s status as something to be looked at is even given a label the “Summer Effect.” The documentary does not critique people for treating Summer this way, but it does stress the fact that she is a sexual object by providing viewers with the opportunity to evaluate Summer’s status rather than just looking at her themselves.

Many elements of the film disrupt the audience’s attempts to immerse themselves in the story and possibly make it harder for certain viewers to completely identify with

Tom. One of the most apparent examples is the film’s nonlinear story line. The film explores the 500 days of Tom and Summer’s relationship, but it does so out of order.

Before the beginning of each scene, a sketch with a tree and a number is shown. The number corresponds to what number day of the relationship is about to be shown. How the tree is depicted is also important. When the tree is shown in bloom, the scene will be from the beginning of Summer and Tom’s relationship. A fully leafed out tree signifies a scene from when they have settled into their relationship, a tree that has begun to lose its leaves corresponds with the disintegration of the relationship and a bare tree shows that it

27 (500) Days of Summer, 00:08:00-00:09:18.

28 See note 27 above.

79 is over and Tom is feeling utterly desolate. 29 The audience is given clear markers for how the scene will play out corresponding to the number system and the audience’s understanding of the seasons. However, the audience still does not know what to expect and each time a new scene begins they are disoriented and have to find their bearings within the film again. Having to perform this process each time a new scene begins certainly makes it harder for the audience to identify with Tom and become immersed in his fantasy.

Other aspects of the film also disrupt the narrative. From the very beginning,

(500) Days of Summer ironically interrupts popular conceptions of how elements of film should be interpreted. The film opens with an author’s note reading: “AUTHOR’S

NOTE: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” This statement is then followed by: “Especially you Jenny

Beckman,” which is then followed by the insult: “Bitch.”30 These words already allow the viewer to make certain assumptions about the film. The first statement is very standard and allows the viewer to believe that the work is fictional. The second statement immediately flips this assumption on its head because it serves to try to dispel any assumptions that Jenny Beckman might have about the events in the film being based on her. The very fact that whoever is addressing the audience with the notes felt the need to

29(500) Days of Summer, 00:09:19.

(500) Days of Summer,00:52:24.

(500) Days of Summer,1:00:26.

(500) Days of Summer, 00:56:45.

30 (500) Days of Summer, 00:00:28.

80 point this out suggests that Jenny Beckman has indeed inspired the film. Whether this is in fact true or not or whether Jenny Beckman is even real is unimportant. What is important is the fact that this statement could make the audience question whether all of the events are fictional. If the events in the film really happened, that changes how the audience will view them. If the events in the film are brushed with reality, then viewers feel more of a connection to them. These events are something that could happen in their lives as well or their friends’ lives. The third statement of “Bitch” adds the element of emotion. Obviously, whatever occurred between Jenny Beckman and the writer of the words was unpleasant if she is now deserving of an insult like “Bitch.” They are clearly not on good terms. For the viewers this is an important clue. They will now view the woman in the story line as a villain or at least associate this term with her unconsciously because there is the implication that the story may really be a true story involving a woman named Jenny Beckman and consequently the female lead must be like her. From the beginning of the film, the viewer is set up to view the story in a more active manner.

Information provided by the omnipresent narrator shows the audience that they will need to further alter their preconceptions about the film. The omnipresent narrator introduces the structure of story to the audience, saying: “This is a story of boy meets girl.”31 Everyone in the audience will know the story of boy meets girl (unless they have never been exposed to any stories) and because they know this story they know how stories like this will end: The boy gets the girl. Already the audience is presented with a conflicting notion. The disclaimer at the beginning has implied that this story will end very badly but the narrator has suggested that it is a familiar story that we all know, a

31 (500) Days of Summer, 00:1:06.

81 story that always has a happy ending. The narrator ends any hope that Tom and Summer will be together by notifying the audience “You should know up front this is not a love story.”32 Now it has been clearly stated to the audience that this story will not follow the format that is implied by its introduction as a story of boy meets girl. This is a disruption that provides an opportunity for audience interaction. The audience will pay attention to the how the film works. Knowing that the film will not play out like a typical boy meets girl story, the audience will watch the film and look for ways in which their ideas of how it should progress are being challenged.

Many audience members, however, could forget that this statement was ever made. They may watch the film as if it were a typical romance with a predictable ending.

Christopher Orr of New Republic writes:

The boy, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), ought to know this, too, because the girl, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), has informed him that she is not interested in having a boyfriend, that she wants to avoid anything “serious,” and that she considers love an illusion. But Tom does not believe Summer and neither do we. Is this because we’ve been conditioned by the romantic tropes of Hollywood? Because love is so much more pleasant to presume than its absence? Because Ms. Deschanel is so unfathomably adorable? Perhaps a bit of each. 33

Orr’s observations show that it is hard for audiences to break out of the tropes that they are so used to observing in films. There is a sense that people like to believe that there are good things in the world like love and that being able to watch movies that reinforce this belief is comforting. His suggestion that it is actually Deschanel’s personality that encourages the audience to hope that true love might prevail despite all that they have

32(500) Days of Summer, Webb, 00:02:10.

33 Christopher Orr, “The Movie Review: ‘(500) Days of Summer,” New Republic, July 14, 2009, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/the-movie-review-500- days-summer# (accessed March 10, 2013).

82 been told is intriguing. It implies that the actress’s image carries weight with the audience. The audience could demonstrate their activeness by refusing to believe what they have been told by the film, choosing instead to interpret the clues on screen for themselves, even if they are wrong in the end.

Despite the fact that the film can be read as an ironic representation of male fantasy, it does not critique this fantasy. There is never really a moment when it is clear that Tom is seeing Summer as an MPDG while the rest of the characters and the audience see her as a real person. There are moments that hint at this discrepancy, but nothing comes close to the juxtaposition of fantasy and reality that occurs in for example Lars and the Real Girl, with the audience and other characters seeing the real girl as a blow up doll.34 There is no moment when the audience clearly sees how mistaken Tom is. The elements of the film that encourage the spectator’s active engagement do not give

Summer agency because of the absence of this critique.

Zooey Deschanel’s Image as an Actress

Summer is played by the actress Zooey Deschanel, a fact that stresses her status as an

MPDG. The audience can interact with the star’s image in powerful ways. Richard Dyer argues that there are many ways, like research, choosing what films to attend, and fan clubs, in which the audience can influence and interpret the image of the star on screen.35

One such example of this process of the audience influencing a star’s image is that the

34 Lars and the Real Girl, directed by Craig Gillespie (Beverly Hills, CA: Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer, 2007).

35 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 5.

83 MPDG character traits have become intimately tied with Zooey Deschanel’s public image. Thus, in the minds of many viewers, every character she plays must be an MPDG, whether or not it is actually possible to argue that each character fits into that mold.36

This idea is demonstrated by writings about Zooey Deschanel and the characters she plays on the Internet and by the responses collected in the focus groups.

The name Zooey Deschanel is synonymous with the term MPDG in popular perception. James Poniewozik writes in “Women Watch TV Like This, But Men Watch

TV Like This,”:

I’ve also been seeing, in much of the commentary about Fox’s New Girl, the notion that was a show made for and catering to guys, because Zooey Deschanel represents a male fantasy know as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. As a matter of fact, New Girl’s audience is about 60% female, and heavily young women…But the (worthwhile) discussion about how she and her characters play into the types of roles available to women has transmuted into the (objectively incorrect) assumption that her show must therefore be for dudes. 37

Poniewozik’s observations imply the strength of the connection between Zooey

Deschanel and the term MPDG. The MPDG is such a part of Deschanel’s image as an actress that people assume every character she plays is an MPDG. Any movie or TV show in which she appears must be meant for men because the MPDG is the object of male fantasy, despite evidence that contradicts this idea. The MPDG could also really be meant for female viewers. The intense criticism the character faces could suggest the ways in which female viewers resist popular culture.

36 This idea shows that further examination of the characters Deschanel plays is merited to see if they really do fit these descriptions.

37 James Poniewozik, “Women Watch TV Like This, But Men Watch TV Like This,” Time, October 6, 2012, http://entertainment.time.com/2011/10/06/women-watch-tv-like- this-but-men-watch-tv-like-this/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

84 Other authors reduce Deschanel to something other than human because of what she represents in popular culture. Katy Kelleher in “Zooey Deschanel and the Appeal of the Girly Girl”:

Apparently, I’m not the only one who sees Zooey as a walking, talking epitome of a pixelated trope. Despite her spot on prime-time television, she’s still being sold to us as a subculture hero, an indie rock MPDG who spreads light and unicorns everywhere she goes—all while retaining a certain amount of geek, dork, insidery appeal. It’s actually quite a feat, when you think about it: the woman manages to walk so many lines—mainstream and subculture, adult and child, pinup girl and physical comedian—that even Johnny Cash would be impressed. 38

In this author’s view, Zooey Deschanel has come to be nothing more than a real life personification of tropes. She is not actually a human being with a personality. The author elaborates on the ways in which Deschanel is a walking contradiction. While one might naturally assume that Deschanel’s ability to embody so many traits is a credit to her acting abilities, Kellehar never suggests that Deschanel is a talented actress. She makes Deschanel out to be untrustworthy because of the way she is being marketed as an actress. It is almost as if Deschanel cannot be trusted because her image as an actress is so complex.

The idea that Zooey Deschanel can only ever play MPDG’s has even permeated the college newspaper. This excerpt shows how someone of college age interprets the

Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Rachel Ellicott writes in The Cornell Daily Sun:

Deschanel is typecast as a fantasy girl every male protagonist dreams about getting in the end, but can never fully obtain, a.k.a. the “manic pixie dream girl’ or MPDG…She’s the free-spirited girl who is just the perfect antidote to the male protagonists doldrums. Despite not having any substance to their actual

38 Katy Kelleher, “Zooey Deschanel and the Appeal of the Girly Girl,” The Busy Signal, September 26, 2011, http://thebusysignal.com/2011/09/26/zooey-deschanel-and-the- appeal-of-the-girly-girl/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

85 characters, these MPDGs are just quirky enough to captivate hot leading men. This is known to laypeople as sorcery. 39

Ellicott reiterates the idea that this role of being a male fantasy is forced onto Deschanel or associated with her. Typecasting would imply that Deschanel does not really have a choice when it comes to playing these characters. These are the parts she is offered because the people who make decisions in media have decided that she plays MPDGs.

Ellicott critiques these characters for having no substance. They are just different enough that the attractive male lead is interested in them can be justified. She labels this ability to be interesting as “sorcery.” This label is very apt considering the pixie element of the

MPDG term. It also highlights the existence of a more sinister reading of the MPDG.

This reading is of the MPDG as a threat. They are cute and innocent, but there is something disconcerting about how these women are able to captivate men (especially hot men) when they do not have much of a personality to speak of. The MPDGs many have a threatening power that allows them to trap men and seduce them.

39 Rachel Ellicott, “Liz Lemon Vs. the Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” The Cornell Daily Sun: Blogs, October 16, 2012, http://cornellsun.com/blog/content/2012/10/16/liz-lemon-vs- manic-pixie-dream-girl (March 10, 2013).

For more on Zooey Deschanel being labeled a Manic Pixie Dream Girl see:

Gry Rustad, “Metamodernism, Quirky and Feminism,*” Notes on Metamodernism, February 29, 2012, http://www.metamodernism.com/2012/02/29/metamodernism-quirky- and-feminism/ (March 10, 2013).

Aisha Harris, “Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?,” Slate, December 5, 2012, http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/12/05/manic_pixie_prostitute_video_is_the_l atest_critique_of_the_manic_pixie_dream.html (accessed March 10, 2013).

Tricia Romano, “OMG! Women’s Sites Need to Grow Up,” The Daily Beast, June 7, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/07/jane-pratt-and-zooey-deschanel- launch-websites-but-are-they-any-good.html (accessed March 10, 2013).

86 The focus group responses also provide examples of how Zooey Deschanel’s image as an actress is perceived as embodying many of the traits that define the MPDG.

When asked: “What words or concepts do you think of when you hear the name Zooey

Deschanel?” most of the responders described her as “clueless,” “quirky,” “unique,”

“retro,” “eccentric,” “eclectic hipster40,” and “emotionally erratic.”41 All of those words suggest someone who is different, special, and does not quite fit into the world of today.

The MPDG’s “otherness” as someone who does not fit the norm and stands out from the crowd is crucial to her status. That many college age women associate the similar traits with Deschanel suggests that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl has been absorbed into

Deschanel’s persona. Elizabeth expands on this concept:

I really like Zooey Deschanel…so I IMDB her and I watch interviews and she’s got her own YouTube channel and stuff like that and the way that she’s often portrayed as this hipsteresque type of person is the way the she behaves in real life. In real life I think she’s vegan. She only shops at co-ops and things like that. She listens to only sort of like Indie bands. Just the activities she does, the film festivals she attends… always suggest that she’s not into mainstream kinds of things and also the way she dresses is in the same vein of retro style. And the fact that she’s always in these movies. I kind of have come to the realization that maybe that is both typecasting and the fact that she is fit with her own personality to be in those roles.42

40 One of the women who used the word hipster to describe Zooey Deschanel defined the word as meaning: “not into mainstream things… translates in to clothing and music choices.” She added that Deschanel was perceived as a symbol for female hipsters.

41 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Ellis, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

42 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

87 Elizabeth’s response shows that the information fans are able to find about Deschanel allows for the interpretation that she really does do many things that would allow for her to be defined as a MPDG. This persona is not being imposed on her, but one that she herself is supporting. Elizabeth’s interpretation even suggests that perhaps the roles are actually being adapted to reflect Deschanel’s actual personality. The existence of this hypothesis allows for the idea that when audiences watch movies featuring Zooey

Deschanel, they believe that on some level she is playing herself. In this case though by playing herself, Deschanel is reinforcing the MPDG label rather than lending agency to the character like Hepburn does. Summer is not given agency by Deschanel’s image as an actress.

Summer Finn’s Gender

There are many instances throughout the film in which Summer states that she wants to be independent and demonstrates her control of her own life, desires, and sexuality. Her actions demonstrate ways in which she is an active character rather than a passive object.

She has a firm stance on love and she enjoys the benefits of the Hook Up Culture and casual relationships.

One night, at the bar, Summer and Tom have a conversation about love. This conversation is one of the instances in which Summer seems to claim her agency. It also hints at the fantasy that Tom has constructed around her. Summer tells Tom and his friends that she does not want a boyfriend because she enjoys her independence. She elaborates saying, “I like being on my own. Relationships are messy and people get

88 hurt.”43 Despite the fact that her objectification is often emphasized in the film, Summer makes it clear in this scene that she is an independent being that can chose whether or not she wants to be with someone. She wants to protect herself from the messiness of life and she has the right to do that.

In the film, Summer is portrayed as a woman who enjoys being able to hook up and have casual sex. She tells Tom that she does not want anything serious, but she still enjoys having sex with him.44 She initiates their relationship by kissing him in the copy room.45 The first time that Tom and Summer have sex, Tom is very nervous and goes to the bathroom to get his head straight. When he returns to the bedroom, Summer is waiting for him naked.46 Her actions show that she knows exactly how she wants the evening to proceed. Later on the film introduces the idea that Summer is sexually adventurous. She drags Tom into the adult video section of a store and they chose a film.

Later on, as they are watching the film, Summer remarks that one of the moves looks

“doable.” They proceed to attempt the move in the shower.47 All of the instances described demonstrate that Summer is in control of her sexuality. She wants to enjoy sex casually. These characteristics are viewed as masculine.

Many of the focus group responses discussed the sexual appeal of Zooey

Deschanel and how Summer’s power over Tom seemed otherworldly or threatening.

43 (500) Days of Summer, 00:35:07-00:35:20.

44 (500) Days of Summer, 00:29:30-00:29:50.

45 (500) Days of Summer, 00:25:00- 00:25:31.

46 (500) Days of Summer, 00:31:22.

47 (500) Days of Summer, 00:35:00-00:35:32.

89 Kimberly suggests that Deschanel is “sexually…desirable and experienced.” 48 This comment shows that while Deschanel is seen to be somewhat cute and non-threatening, she is also in control of her sexuality. She is not a blushing virgin. She knows what she is doing in the bedroom, giving her an image of sexual agency.

The character of Summer is also perceived as having a sexual draw or knowingness. Elizabeth says:

In (500) Days of Summer, Summer, the character is physically arresting, and it’s her beauty that draws the attention. The clip progresses through the stages of a relationship: meeting, dating, becoming friends, and finally falling asleep with her head on his shoulder. Tom can’t help but watch her and let her quirkiness dictate the evening.49

The way that Elizabeth describes Tom’s response to Summer’s beauty can be classified as spellbound. Tom is helpless in the face of Summer’s looks and cannot do anything but enjoy her company. Summer’s beauty becomes otherworldly and threateningly powerful because it completely dictates Tom’s actions. These descriptions reinforce that idea that the MPDG is perceived as possessing a threatening sexual power.

Rose’s description of Summer’s sexual agency carries an even more threatening tone. She describes Summer as a:

Sexy virgin type with the big blue eyes and very cute, almost clueless but at the same time, there’s this one scene where he’s trying to psych himself up and she’s just like naked on his bed, so she definitely has that and is hugely emotionally manipulative… she’s not very nice to him it turns out.50

In Rose’s view, Summer possesses the allure of a virgin and has the desire to have casual sex. She is also emotionally manipulative and threatening. Her sexuality becomes

48 Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

49 Elizabeth, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

50 Rose, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

90 threatening, a way for her to manipulate Tom’s emotions and hurt him. In this case, the

Manic Pixie Dream Girl is able to make choices about sex and it is this choice that becomes threatening. Rose’s response also demonstrates a degree of identification with

Tom. She criticizes Summer for not treating him in an appropriate manner. This classification of Summer’s actions show that Rose views Tom as the injured party suggesting that she cares about him and his feelings to a certain degree. This response shows that the opportunity to identify with the characters is always present, even if there are elements of the film that discourage this action.

Kimberly also notes how Summer seems separate or “othered” in film. “She’s untouchable, she’s in her own little world… it’s clear in the movie that she never took their relationship seriously…this was a fun thing for her to do… No one can really influence her as one would like in a mutual relationship.”51 Again Summer is “othered”.

She is something that Tom cannot touch or control. Summer clearly states that she wants a casual relationship and she is criticized for it.

This view of Summer’s masculine characteristics as threatening can be explained by Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity. As discussed in the previous chapters, Butler argues that those who do not conform to specific ideas of how men and women should act are punished for these deviations. When people do not “do their gender right” they are dehumanized.52 These punishments are meant to maintain the idea that there are natural ways that men and women should act.53 The “othering” of Summer

51 Kimberly, interview by author, Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

52 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge Classics, 2006), 190.

53 See note 52 above.

91 based on her masculine traits demonstrates that she is being punished for incorrectly performing gender. The fact that Summer acts in ways that need to be punished suggests that she has an amount of agency.

Summer’s agency is demonstrated in her choices. It is she who initiates the sexual relationship between her and Tom, one that she wants to keep fun and casual. Later in the film, Summer leaves Tom and marries another man despite her earlier insistence that she never wants to be in a relationship. Her ability to choose to leave Tom and choose to be someone’s wife demonstrates agency. It is the apparent choice and the power reflected by it that allow the film to be read as postfeminist. A postfeminist interpretation of the film would argue that Summer’s choice to leave Tom and get married is an example of the success of feminism. Equality and Choice Postfeminism as defined by Sarah Projansky in

Watching Rape “consists of narrative about feminism’s ‘success’ in achieving gender

‘equity’ and having given women ‘choice,’ particularly with regard to labor and family.”54 The fact that women are able to choose any path they want whether that be of wife, mother, stripper, or prostitute emphasizes their freedom that has been achieved by feminism. However, as Yvonne Tasker points out in her essay featured in Feminism at the Movies, “While post-feminism insists on female strength and the primacy of the self

(for which choice stands as the marker), that strength can, it seems, only be celebrated when figured in appropriately feminine terms.” 55 This idea aptly describes how

54 Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 67.

55Yvonne Tasker, “Enchanted (2007) by Postfeminism: Gender, Irony, and the New Romantic Comedy,” in Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in

92 Summer’s own choice can be interpreted. She makes a choice to leave Tom and follow her own happiness by getting married. On one level this choice does demonstrate strength and could be interpreted as Summer exercising her agency by putting herself first. Her choice remains problematic because this is a film. By showing a woman choosing a traditional path like marriage rather than having Summer leave to pursue her dream of becoming a stripper or going to law school, the film makes it clear that women can choose any path they want but that choosing an acceptable feminine path is still highly valued. Summer’s agency becomes constrained with the film’s ending, canceling out its existence within the film.

Cultural Context

When cultural context is taken into account, new ways of thinking about the anxieties surrounding Summer’s sexual agency within the scope of the film emerge. Lauren

Berlant defines a situation as “a state of things in which something that will perhaps matter is unfolding amid the usual activity of life.”56 Change is another important aspect of the situation. Berlant expands on her previous definition saying that the situation is “a genre of social time and practice in which a relation of person and worlds is sensed to be changing, but the rules for habitation and the genres of storytelling about it are unstable.”57 (500) Days of Summer is a story about the situation of the Hook Up Culture

Contemporary Cinema, ed. Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer (New York: Routledge, 2011), 69.

56 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 5.

57 Ibid., 6.

93 within American society today. It is one of many films like Friends With Benefits and No

Strings Attached that explore ways in which people navigate casual relationships today.58

Feelings about the Hook Up Culture are fraught with anxiety since women are perceived as taking advantage of it so they can both enjoy sex and focus on their futures. Desires like these were usually thought to belong in the masculine realm. Women who participate in the Hook Up Culture are often dehumanized with derogatory terms that mock them for being promiscuous. Based on the arguments of Judith Butler, these punishments center around a belief that these women are not performing their gender correctly.59

(500) Days of Summer is one attempt to tell a story about the Hook Up Culture.

Summer is frank with Tom and tells him that she wants to keep their relationship casual.60 Throughout the film, Summer, uses this relationship to enjoy having sex.61 She is the representative of the Hook Up Culture in the movie. Some audience members could thus be troubled by her agency, reflecting wider anxieties about the Hook Up Culture and white female sexuality in general. When Summer is labeled an MPDG, she is “otherized” for being a symbol of female sexual agency. Again Gell’s theory about the agency of

58 No Strings Attached, directed by Ivan Reitman (Los Angeles, CA: Spyglass Entertainment, 2011).

Friends with Benefits, directed by Will Gluck (Culver City, CA: Screen Gems, 2011).

59 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge Classics, 2006), 190.

60(500) Days of Summer, 00:29:30-00:29:50.

61 (500) Days of Summer, 00:31:22.

(500) Days of Summer, 00:35:00-00:35:32.

94 objects applies. Even inanimate objects can have agency if they can produce feelings in others.62 It is what Summer represents in a greater cultural context that gives her agency.

Conclusion

Even when Summer is examined beyond a feminist psychoanalytic reading, it is still hard to see her as having any agency. The film (500) Days of Summer has multiple elements that encourage the audience to be active and explore male fantasy, but the film never critiques Tom’s fantasies about Summer as wrong, thus denying Summer agency in this respect. Zooey Deschanel plays Summer, a fact that in the minds of many viewers only reinforces Summer’s status as an Manic Pixie Dream Girl, again depriving her of agency.

Summer’s gender is made up of many stereotypically masculine traits such as her casual enjoyment of sex with Tom. However, at the end of the film, the traditional feminine path of marriage inhibits Summer’s sexual agency within the scope of the film. If Summer’s sexual agency is considered within cultural context, she becomes a representative of the

Hook Up Culture and anxieties regarding white female sexuality. As a symbol, Summer is given agency because of the discomfort that she represents.

62 Alfred Gell qtd. in Janet Hoskins, “Agency, Biography and Objects,” in Handbook of Material Culture, ed. Chris Tilley et al. (London: Sage Publishing, 2006), 76.

95 Conclusion:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Agency

This project began in an attempt to find out if Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) characters were more complex then their label of MPDG suggested. I began with a feminist psychoanalytic analysis because it seemed like the most appropriate approach considering the multiple allusions to Freud that are contained within the MPDG label and the MPDG’s status as a male muse. In the case of the two films that were analyzed,

Bringing Up Baby (1938) and (500) Days of Summer (2009), the analysis revealed that the characters of Susan Vance and Summer Fin were passive sexual objects from which pleasure could be derived both by the male lead in the films and by the audience. This reading made it impossible to interpret these characters as having any kind of agency.

One of the main problems with feminist psychoanalytic film theory is that it denies the fact that the audience can have anything other than a voyeuristic experience when watching films. bell hooks and Jacques Rancière both argue for an elevation of the spectator from the place of passive voyeur to that of an active spectator1. In an attempt to elevate the spectator, I considered how the film disrupted a voyeuristic experience, how the audience can interact with the star’s image, and the MPDG’s gender within the film and how it could be interpreted through cultural context. Throughout this investigation, I relied on responses collected in focus groups conducted with women on the Williams

College Campus in another attempt to elevate the spectator.

1 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992),115.

Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator (London: Verso, 2009), 4.

96 In the cases of Susan Vance and Summer Finn, the MPDG can be given agency when the position of the spectator is privileged. Susan Vance has agency because there are moments in the film when it is clear that she is acting. Some viewers could find these acts funny and thus acknowledge Susan’s capacity to act with laughter, giving her agency. Some viewers with knowledge of Katharine Hepburn (who portrays Susan

Vance) lend Vance Hepburn’s agency as an independent woman. They believe that on some level Hepburn was always playing herself, despite her great talents as an actress.2

Finally, the act of labeling Vance as an MPDG gives her agency because it shows that audiences are uncomfortable with her masculine traits. By dehumanizing the character of Susan with the MPDG label, audiences reinforce her agency. It was almost impossible to give agency to Summer Finn. The character is able to claim agency by being a representative of the Hook Up Culture. In a manner that is similar to audience interaction with Susan, audiences give Summer agency when they label her an MPDG and thus acknowledge her power to cause discomfort. With respect to these two films the

MPDG is given agency by the active spectator.

Much of Susan and Summer’s agency revolves around the fact that they are able to create certain feelings within audiences. This idea is based on Alfred Gell’s argument that objects can have agency because they are able to create feelings within people.3 In this case Summer and Susan’s agency is dependent on being able to create feelings in

2 Claudia Roth Pierpont, “Born for the Part: Roles the Katharine Hepburn played,” The New Yorker, July 14, 2003, 53.

3Alfred Gell qtd. in Janet Hoskins, “Agency, Biography and Objects,” in Handbook of Material Culture, ed. Chris Tilley et al. (London: Sage Publishing, 2006), 76.

97 viewers. This argument could be expanded with a greater focus on Affect Theory.

Margaret Wetherell writes:

Affect is about sense as well as sensibility. It is practical, communicative and organized. In affective practice, bits of the body get patterned together with feelings and thoughts, interaction patterns and relationships, narratives and interpretative repertories, social relations, personal histories, and way of life.4

Affect Theory takes the complexities of human feelings into account. In further explorations of the MPDG’s agency, more films featuring MPDGs and audiences’ feelings about the characters can be explored to fully understand how the active spectator gives agency to the MPDG.

4 Margaret Wetherell, Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding (Los Angeles: Sage, 2012), 13.

98 Bibliography

(500) Days of Summer. Directed by Marc Webb. Los Angeles, CA: Fox Searchlight

Pictures, 2009.

Alter, Ethan. “New Girl: Zooey Deschanel Talks Music, Motivation and Manic Pixie

Dream Girls.” The Telefile. Last modified September 19, 2011.

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/telefile/2011/09/new-girl-zooey-deschanel-

talks.php (accessed March 10, 2013).

Anderson, Peter B. and Cindy Struckman, ed. Sexually Aggressive Women: Current

Perspectives and Controversies. New York: River Head Books, 2012.

Ansen, David. “A Very Independent Woman: Patrician heartbreaker KATHARINE

HEPBURN, 96, challenged our assumptions.” Last modified July 14, 2003, 59.

Biography in Context.

Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan and Wendy. London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1921.

Beauty and the Beast. Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. Burbank, CA: Walt

Disney Pictures, 1991.

Becker, Allison. “15 Moments in Manic Pixie Dream Girl History.” Bullett. Last

modified November 30, 2012. http://bullettmedia.com/editorial/manic-pixie-

dream-girl/ (accessed April 17, 2013).

Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

Bowman, Donna and Amelie Gillette, Steven Hyden, Noel Murray, Leonard Pierce,

Nathan Rabin. “Wild Things: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls.” The

A.V. Club. Last modified August 4, 2008. http://www.avclub.com/articles/wild-

things-16-films-featuring-manic-pixie-dream-g,2407/ (accessed March 5, 2013).

99 Bringing Up Baby. Directed by Howard Hawks. New York: RKO Radio Pictures, 1938.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:

Routledge Classics, 2006.

Carmon, Irin. “College Girl’s Power Point ‘Fuck List’ Goes Viral.” Jezebel. Last

modified September 30, 2010. http://jezebel.com/5652114/college-girls-power-

point-fuck-list-goes-viral-gallery (accessed April 16, 2013).

Cepeda, Maria Elena. “Survival Aesthetics: U.S. Latinas and the Negotiation of Popular

Media.” In Latina/o Communication Studies Today, edited by Angharad N.

Validivia, 237-255. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

De Lauretis, Teresa. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1986.

Elizabeth. Interview by author. Williamstown, MA, November, 18, 2012.

Ellicott, Rachel. “Liz Lemon Vs. the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” The Cornell Daily Sun:

Blogs. Last modified October 16, 2012. http://cornellsun.com/blog/content/

2012/10/16/liz-lemon-vs-manic-pixie-dream-girl (March 10, 2013).

Ellis. Interview by author. Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Friends with Benefits. Directed by Will Gluck. Culver City, CA: Screen Gems, 2011.

Gell, Alfred. Quoted in Janet Hoskins. “Agency, Biography, and Objects.” In Handbook

of Material Culture, edited by Christ Tilley et al., 74-84. London: Sage

Publishing, 2006.

100 Gherovici, Patricia. Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the

Democratization of Transgenderism. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Greco, Patti. “Zoe Kazan on Writing Ruby Sparks and Why You Should Never Call Her a

‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl.’” Vulture. Last modified July 23, 2012.

www.vulture.com/2012.07/zoe-kazan-ruby-sparks-interview.html

(accessed March 5, 2013).

Handy, Bruce. “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The Worst Movie of its

Generation.” The Hollywood Blog. Last modified June 22, 2012.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2012/06/seeking-a-friend-for-the-end-of-

the-world-movie-review (accessed March 10, 2013).

Harris, Aisha. “Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?” Slate’s Culture Blog. Last

modified December 5, 2012. http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/12/05/

manic_pixie_prostitute_video_is_the_latest_critique_of_the_manic_pixie_dream.

html (accessed March 10, 2013).

Hester, Marianne. Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male

Domination. London: Routledge, 1992. hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Feminism and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

______., ed. Psychoanalysis & Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1990.

______. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1983.

“Katharine Hepburn.” The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives 2007. Biography in

Context.

101 Kelleher, Katy. “Zooey Deschanel and the Appeal of the Girly Girl.” The Busy Signal.

Last modified September 26, 2011. http://thebusysignal.com/2011/09/26/zooey-

deschanel-and-the-appeal-of-the-girly-girl/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

Kimberly. Interview by author. Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

Kurtnik, Frank. Quoted in Kelly Oliver. Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of

Pregnancy in Hollywood Films. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in

Psychoanalytic Experience.” In Écrits, translated by, Bruce Fink, 75-81. New

York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

Lars and the Real Girl. Directed by Craig Gillespie. Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-

Mayer, 2007.

Merriam-Webster. Last modified 2013. http://www.merriam-webster.com/

(accessed April 16, 2013).

Mortimer, Claire. Romantic Comedy. London: Routledge, 2010.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975). In Feminisms: An

Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, edited by Robyn R. Warhol and

Diane Price Herndl, 438-448. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,

1997.

No Strings Attached. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Los Angeles, CA: Spyglass

Entertainment, 2011.

Oliver, Kelly. Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood

Films. New York: Columbia University Press: 2012.

102 Orr, Christopher. “The Movie Review: ‘(500) Days of Summer.” New Republic, July 14,

2009. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/the-movie-review-500-

days-summer# (accessed March 10, 2013).

Peril, Lynn. College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now. New

York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

Pierpont, Claudia Roth. “Born for the Part: Roles the Katharine Hepburn played.” The

New Yorker, July 14, 2003, 52-63.

Poniewozik, James. “Women Watch TV Like This, But Men Watch TV Like This.”

Time, October 6, 2012. http://entertainment.time.com/2011/10/06/women-watch-

tv-like-this-but-men-watch-tv-like-this/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

Projansky, Sarah. Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture. New

York: New York University Press, 2001.

Rabin, Nathan. “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File # 1: Elizabethtown.” The

Onion A.V. Club. Last modified January 25, 2007.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-bataan- death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-

eliza,15577/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso, 2009.

Romano, Tricia. “OMG! Women’s Sites Need to Grow Up.” The Daily Beast. Last

modified June 7, 2011. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/07/jane-

pratt-and-zooey-deschanel-launch-websites-but-are-they-any-good.html

(accessed March 10, 2013).

Rose. Interview by author. Williamstown, MA, November 18, 2012.

103 Rosin, Hanna. The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. New York: River Head Books,

2012.

Rustad, Gry. “Metamodernism, Quirky and Feminism.*” Notes on Metamodernism. Last

modified February 29, 2012.

http://www.metamodernism.com/2012/02/29/metamodernism-quirky-and-

feminism/ (March 10, 2013).

Senelick, Laurence. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theatre. London: Routledge,

2000.

Shafrir, Doree. “Indie Dream Girls.” The Daily Beast. Last modified July 20, 2009.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/07/20/indie-dream-girls.html

(accessed March 10, 2013).

Springer, Kimberly. “Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women: African

American Women in Postfeminist and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture.” In

Feminist Television Criticism, edited by Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D’Acci and

Lynn Spigel, 72-91. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Tasker, Yvonne. “Enchanted (2007) by Postfeminism: Gender, Irony, and the New

Romantic Comedy.” In Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in

Contemporary Cinema, edited by Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer, 67-79.

New York: Routledge, 2011.

Ulaby, Neda. “Manic Pixie Dream Girls: A Cinematic Scourge?” NPR. Last modified

October 9, 2008. http://www.npr.org/2008/10/09/95507953/manic-pixie-dream-

girls-a-cinematic-scourge (accessed March 10, 2013).

Urban Dictionary. Last modified 2013. http://www.urbandictionary.com/

104 (accessed April 16, 2013).

Weigle, Marta. Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology. Albuquerque, NM:

University of New Mexico Press, 1982.

Wetherell, Margaret. Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. Los

Angeles: Sage, 2012.

105