In 2015, we’re finally ready for women, not (Manic Pixie Dream) girls.
Which, obviously, has nothing to do with age. Frankly, this demand for strong, interesting female leads also has nothing to do with bangs, affinity for the Shins, or the giggle-fuelled spontaneity that’s come to define decades of female characters looking to be anchored by a man. (No matter how eternally soul-searching these men may be.) Nope: after a lifetime of movies like The Apartment, Annie Hall, and (500) Days of Summer, we needed women who were willing to find themselves before finding their partner’s self first. We needed Manic Pixie Dream Girls to become women, because that’s what all women deserved.
Thankfully, summer 2015 was ready. And this made sense, considering there was no way we could possibly return to our bleak, MPDG-ridden pasts – especially after 2014 delivered complex women like Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, Maggie Dean in The Skeleton Twins, and Cheryl Strayed (based on the real Cheryl Strayed) in Wild. So instead, this season stepped up its game. Greta Gerwig’s turn as Brooke in Mistress America proved her ability to figure out her own life (or attempt to) without the heroism of a man. Minnie (Bel Powley) electrified audiences in Diary of a Teenage Girl and reaffirmed that young women who are reconciling their relationship with sex aren’t necessarily looking for or even in need of a relationship. Amy (Schumer) in Trainwreck may have embraced the idea of true love, but not after she looked at her own life and chose to rebuild it accordingly. Even Cara Delevingne, as the elusive Margo in Paper Towns, manages to stare down the film’s hero while informing him that he loves the idea of her, not her as a whole.
In fact, regardless of genre, the most talked-about summer movies seemed to channel their inner Margos. Mission Impossible’s Isla proved herself not just a worthy adversary, but a worthier ally whom Tom Cruise’s character understands is his professional equal and not his love interest. Gaby in The Man From UNCLE outsmarts the Russians and Americans at the behest of the British (while opting out of a romantic dalliance with Russian spy Iliya). And we all know Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road only allowed Max to stick around because of his reliability.
But what makes these women multidimensional and compelling is also their willingness to be vulnerable. While Manic Pixie Dream Girls were based around emotion (or the emotions a male lead would project upon them), their writers also failed to let them embrace their flaws – or worse, writers had men over-romanticize said flaws until the MPDG needed rescuing (as in Penny Lane’s overdose in Almost Famous or the case of Sam in Garden State, who’s left crying in a telephone booth). This summer, leading women have been allowed – or more specifically, encouraged – to make mistakes. (Because how else does anybody learn?) Minnie agrees not to repeat the sexual encounter she has in a restroom; Amy realizes she needs to stop drinking so much; Margo refuses to apologize to Quentin for leaving their hometown under the cloak of darkness. Which means that finally, leading women aren’t just being written as women, but as people. And this means that as people, they’re given the universal right to screw up, to learn, to grow, and to repeat accordingly. This summer, a woman’s job isn’t to make a man feel valued. Her role has not been created to validate a guy who feels lost or misunderstood. She’s not armed with headphones, encouraging everyone around her to listen to some band that will for sure “change their lives”. If she’s listening to anything, it’s what’s on her own iPod, and she certainly doesn’t have time to hand it over to you.
This summer, writers have finally let the Manic Pixie Dream Girl evolve into a grown-ass woman. And as we’ve learned through the the past few seasons of movies and TV, these grown-ass women are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves – or, in the case of Mistress America, themselves and younger, wide-eyed stepsisters, too.
