My Green Romance

The Sorrow of Young Werther

Over at The Onion, someone coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), defined as the kind who “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”.  But even before Elizabethtown, MPDGs existed and have a long history as this Amazing Girl post shows.  MPDG’s are sometimes attainable (film representations of Pocohantas suggest this type) but something of the term conjures up the kind of whimsical, flighty girl with artistic pretensions who is quite unattainable and quite casually and deliciously shatters a sensitive boy’s heart.  Think Anna Karina in all those Godard movies for example. The apogee of the type is possibly (500) Days of Summer, a film that is a bittersweet ode to manic pixie dream girls everywhere and is aimed at a certain kind of male audience.  Less commonly, manic pixie dream girls sometimes pop up in women’s films too, as the ditzy kind of girl lent weight by a partner with more nous and gravitas, e.g. Confessions of a Shopaholic.   Bridget Jones was - well at least a MP - with significantly more poundage and a great deal more clumsiness. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is therefore an enduring type. As long as young, dreamy women with long hair and poetic affectations exist, so shall the MPDG.

Imprisoned on long flights awhile back and quite completely brain dead, I sampled some of the recent romantic films on offer.  And my extremely random yet completely true survey of recent romantic films indicates that for the moment the MPDG is lying very low indeed, at least in films aimed at women. Instead the recent movies are full of perfectionist careerists with lonely, sad sack lives. The ring, the wedding, the perfect man are secret desires sublimated under an air of confidence and a career in good shape, though keeping true to the type mind numbing and detailed wedding plans are covertly drawn up.  All these women wear sharp designer power suits, impossibly high heels and have everything terrifyingly and worryingly in order. It is possible the type exists though I have never met one, maybe they have arrived as an antidote to the Bridget Jones era.  It is another kind of enduring stereotype after all, the prim miss literally letting down her hair.  But the type has mutated (or is the word transmogrified) into a harridan for our times so that Ms. Super Efficient is often humourless and uptight and must face all the loneliness and angst traditionally ascribed to the successful man before finding true love.  These women in fact are like a rash all over the guy movies too. In a movie like Knocked Up their appearance can be put down to residual misogyny or more charitably as a catalyst for the maturation of the protagonist but their appearance in women’s films is a bit puzzling, if not a mild exercise in self-flagellation. But women apparently want this if the success of these films is to be believed.

The Farmer Wants a Wife

So who is cast opposite these women? It turns out that this century’s idea of the hot, desirable man one can jump into bed and matrimony with is Green Earth Man. If he is not actually growing tender plants in moist fertile mud and generally communing with nature, he is at least doing something related that requires him to be gruff, vaguely hirsute, attractively dishevelled and having some kind of organic matter up his fingernails. He is often younger and quite possibly earning much less than Ms. Super Efficient.  In The Back-up Plan he is running a cheese farm (truly!), in Leap Year he owns a picturesque, rustic pub and at one point does some gardening, in Valentine’s Day one of the leads is a florist and in Something New he is landscaping in picturesque, autumnal surroundings.  The new Australian film, Summer Coda, appears to have an orange farmer. Once in  awhile - and this is the most regrettable part of the films - he also dishes out Petruchio-esque humiliation. By the end of these films the heroine, if still in her Louboutins and Prada (for we also live in an age of unbridled consumerism), has managed to sufficiently unwind and find true love in the arms of Green Earth Man.  In fact these men seem to be popping up with alarming regularity outside of the typical romantic film. In the super lush art-house flick, I Am Love, Green Earth Man manages to tick an astonishing number of boxes. He is much younger, has a veggie patch, cooks and runs his own restaurant - though here I note that he is cast opposite Tilda Swinton who looks less like a harridan and more like an extraterrestrial beamed down onto the streets of Italy (and I also note that I adore ze Swinton). In the lesbian arthouse drama, The Kids are all Right, he is more a disruptive romantic  - and a organic restaurateur.

The appearance of the type is not altogether surprising.  Everything “eco” is suddenly fashionable.  Broodingly soulful young men are as likely to fall prey to the romanticism inherent in Green Earth Man as to Manic Pixie Dream Girls. In fact in real life MPDGs are all over the internet writing for a female audience where they blog their fashions, their essential whimsicality, their prettiness, their artiness and are often accessorised by a cute Green Earth Man who puts in an appearance once in awhile on the blog.  So why are they cast opposite shrill harridans with kind hearts in the movies? Is it because these films are aimed at older women who jumped onto the career merry-go-round and the wealth of the last decade and are now wanting to step off a little, if at least by way of a chilled out partner?  And as part of the new zeitgeist, are the men also younger and more relaxed and happier to leave the controls in the hands of a woman? Not long back Mills & Boon celebrated its anniversary with a film, Consuming Passion: 100 Years of Mills and Boon.  In the film Emilia Fox’s character matches up the type of M&B hero with the social milieu of the time. For example, in a Post WWI world of few men,  the heroes were much younger. The 60s counterrevolution resulted in romances set in foreign locales with swarthy Sheiks and Counts. So are the new films aimed at a particular generation of women tired of their own pool of suitors (many of these films also have a negative male lead who is an insensitive corporate sort) and is the modern career woman still secretly marking time before settling down to marriage with Green Earth Man? Films aimed at an older generation for e.g. are different, as a whole slew of Meryl Streep films like Mamma Mia, Julie &Julia and Its Complicated show the post 50 woman looking for romance is an earth mother who can bake a great cake.  Whatever be the case, Bitchface Harridan with a tender heart is not in the least bit interesting and I for one will not be mourning her hopefully imminent passing.

So will Green Earth Man himself persist in our cinemas ? As a protagonist there is something to be said for him for he is a lot better than the creepy benefactor of a movie like Pretty Woman but I won't hold out for his longevity.  Also given the rumoured allure of MPDGs it is likely he will next mutate into whatever it is that the MPDG wants and her sisters will merely follow.

As a postscript, I note that the tart literary girl rarely ever appears in romantic films. The only one I can recall is Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral (who was properly tart and not cutely tart) and she unfortunately was left holding a torch for a supposedly unattainable Mr. Grant.  But their absence in the chick flick is fortunate.  For if my assiduous study of subtitled movies on SBS is any indication, the tart  literary girl is having a very good time indeed and can often be found in these films right in the midst of a supremely decadent ménage à trois.