TODAY ONION A.V. is talking of the “seen-unseen,” (or just largely unnoticed?), movie trend of what they are calling “Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” a phrasing borrowed from their own Nathan Rabin. It is an archetypal character that arose particularly in movies over the last two decades or so of sanguine, free-spirited, flighty, artsy and eclectic ingenues who are used as a vessel in a movie script as an instrument for an uptight, non-observent male’s “awakening to the world,” usually. The most recent and most prominent of such roles being played by Natalie Portman in Garden State.

While the character is not new it has seen a proliferation as a trope in cinema as of late. Why that is may be the result of a deconstruction of traditional masculinity over the past two decades or more where “sensitive guys,” the types in these movies, who are more vulnerable to such plot devices are particularly evident. Characters like Zach Braff’s in Garden State, a struggling actor numb to the world, are seen transformed in a mere one or two scenes into little boys gazing in wonder at their accidentally discovered pixie.

The obviousness of these characters being employed by sensitive writer/director types should not go unmentioned. The female pixie muses in these movies are often more cute and bubbly than overtly sexual, thus tearing down any possible walls of intimidation for non-traditional male story heroes, and even the screenwriters themselves, who are more comfortable being brooding, angsty, introspectives than the hyper-male, All-American, arrogant jocks of dominant society.

The males in these films are more feeling and thoughtful, more Elliot Smith than Fred Durst. (Pardon the dated reference.) This is while they can sometimes still be surrounded by the uni-dimensional, alpha-male type. What is odd is how the pixie role is a male fantasy never fully talked about in male circles. While girls or women like Portman (and their characters) are beloved in a cultish, nerdy, Tiger-Beatish way, it is women who are directly sexual, generally dense and unprobing of feelings other than those that lead to procreation, that prevailing male culture touts as objects of desire. Here is a quick look at Onion A.V.’s list:

1. Elizabethtown (Kirsten Dunst)

Ah, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, that sentient ray of sunshine sent from heaven to warm the heart and readjust the attitude of even the broodiest, most uptight male protagonist. In his My Year Of Flops entry on Elizabethtown, Nathan Rabin coined the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” to describe that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that “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.” In Elizabethtown, Kirsten Dunst plays the archetypal Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a flirty, flighty chatterbox stewardess who razzles and dazzles brooding sensitive guy Orlando Bloom. Coked up, or merely high on life? You be the judge. Though Dunst in Elizabethtown and Natalie Portman in Garden State epitomize the contemporary Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the strangely resilient archetype has its roots in the nutty dames of screwball comedy. For every era, there’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl perfectly suited to the times.

2. I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (Leigh Taylor-Young)

Like the Magical Negro, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She’s on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, MPDGs often took the comely form of spacey hippie chicks burdened with getting grim establishment types to kick back and smell the flowers. In that respect, they mirrored mainstream culture’s simultaneous suspicion and fascination with the open sexuality of the emergent counterculture. With the help of pot-laced brownies, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas‘ groovy free spirit Leigh Taylor-Young helps transform uptight Jew Peter Sellers from a stone-cold square to a swinging proponent of free love and sense derangement. But what does Taylor-Young ultimately want? As is usual with Manic Pixie Dream Girls, the filmmakers don’t seem to have given the matter much thought.

3. Garden State (Natalie Portman)

Pharmaceutical companies have made billions peddling antidepressants to twentysomething white people who are, like, totally stressin’ over people not appreciating them enough. Zach Braff did similarly well peddling two unusual but no less popular antidepressants in Garden State: The Shins and Natalie Portman. Braff’s character is completely transformed when the latter introduces him to the former in a doctor’s waiting room, with the plucky, annoying promise, “It’ll change your life, I swear.” Of course, anything sounds profound coming from such a dreamy woman. Oh, Natalie, your unconventional ways are so inspiring, and your beauty is surprisingly non-threatening! In Garden State, she’s a loveably eccentric little angel in the body of a smokin’-hot goddess, spreading good cheer and tuneful indie rock to depressed boys everywhere.

Read the rest and view the corresponding media at Onion A.V. [Here]