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I See What They Did There

Turn Your Life Around With Help From the Manic Pixie Prostitute [VIDEO]

by Rebecca Pahle | 5:45 pm, December 6th, 2012


I’ve made my no secret the way I feel about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. In short, I really, really, really don’t like it. I mean, there are worse things that writers do in how they write female characters, but the MPDG just gets to me on a fundamental level for reasons I suspect relate to psychology and my adolescence and therefore will not be addressed here.

Breathe, Rebecca. Breathe.

OK, getting back on track. This short parody, directed by Adam Sacks and written by Leila Cohan-Miccio, involves a guy who hires a prostitute to “turn my life upside-down with your whimsical joie de vivre.” He even brought along props to help her get into character! One of them is a ukelele, because every self-respecting Manic Pixie Dream Girl needs a quirky hobby (or five).

(via: Vulture)

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  • http://twitter.com/ryorin Shoshana B

    “This is so demeaning.”

    Best line.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rose.n.carousel Chris de la Rosa

    The moment she said her secret was that she was dying, I lost it. Clever girl.

  • http://twitter.com/ChannelDiza Chanel Diaz

    So, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is basically a Prostitute, that doesn’t always give sex, but is still much Enslaved to her Pimp-Man/Boy, the same?

  • Adam R. Charpentier

    Yes. In the “male fantasy” sense.

  • Violetta

    OK TMS, avid long-time reader, geek and “prostitute” here. We prefer to be called “sex-workers” – because believe me it is a job of work, probably much more than people sitting in a cubicle on facebook all day long – and it’s just plain more respectable. After all, shocking as it may be to you, we are people too. But I’m prepared to let it go in this case because of the otherwise awesome work you do.

    And believe me, working the higher end of my trade, we do have guys like this. Mainly older mid-life crisis types who want to re-kindle the joie de vivre of youth by hanging with a girl half their age.

  • Anonymous
  • Terence Ng

    I agree with you, but they also didn’t name the video. Someone else did. They’re responsible for using the term prostitute once, but the other two instances of its use are the title of the video and the title of the post, which posts the title of the video.

  • Terence Ng

    I was almost wondering if she would inaudibly whisper it, so that it would be a mysterious and quixotic as she.

  • frozenchicken

    One thing that really altered my view of the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Trope was someone making the comment that Sailor Moon was that Trope from the girl’s point of view. From that angle, the trope manages to become something entirely new.

  • Anonymous

    I get the resentment towards that type of character, but thinking that they are purely a fantasy is ludicrous. Because I’ve known one.
    It may sound like I’m claiming to have seen a yeti, but this was during high school (about 7-8 years ago), so that gives it some plausibility? Whatever, I’ll continue.

    She had (still has?) some of their mannerism, atleast. Quirky social manners, were in a lot of plays/studying drama, slightly hippie upbringing. But maybe not to the degree as in the movies, but enough. More realistic and natural, not over the top.
    This was also in Sweden, so it’s not an american thing.

    So some tropes are true, whether you like them or not.

  • http://twitter.com/Rmjonesc13 R.M. Jones

    Well, of course many tropes are “true”. But even you said that she was not as over-the-top, and I highly doubt her main purpose was to change a guy’s life within the context of a story.

    The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a trope that doesn’t just mean a personality- it’s a stereotype, and how that stereotype is used within the story.

  • Anonymous

    Oh, god, this was PERFECT. His *giggles* at how she was so ~whimsical~ were the best part to me – really driving home even more than the scenario itself (sex workers and escorts get dehumanizing and just plain weird requests all the freakin’ time) how much the focus is on ~changing a man’s life~ with feminine eccentricity and simplistic truth. Ewwwwwww.

  • Anonymous

    Oh! Yeah, I didn’t think about it in that context, you’re right!
    But she was “my” pixie, so I instinctly went to a slightly aggresive response, as if she was insulted in front of me. (For the record, we never dated, just friends.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/hellbound.alleee Hellbound Allee

    I second that. Tropes are in the eye of the beholder. Trope girl is made by the man who fantasizes about her. She’s actually a human being.

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