Throwback Thursday: Elizabethtown Rewatch and the Problem of MPDGs

“I think I’ve been asleep most of my life.”

-Claire Colburn, Elizabethtown

Spoiler Alert if it was 2005 and not 2013.

Elizabethtown starring Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom premiered in 2005. I remember absolutely loving it; I cried when Susan Sarandon tap danced, and laughed over “peaking” on the phone. But this movie is often cited as being the movie began the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. This Wikipedia page (which I’m attaching to allow those of you who don’t know the term already to get caught up), even states as such.

I’ve been coming to hate the term a little. Female characters I love have suddenly been called that, even though I don’t find them to fit the description. So although I originally agreed with Claire Colburn (Dunst) being deemed this term, I decided to rewatch Elizabethtown and decide how much I agree. 

Well… I agree. I hate that I agree but I agree. But I’m not sure how much it bothers me that she is this way. If there was a sequel to Elizabethtown, I hope it would be about Claire and whatever makes her this way. And Drew would help her through it. But this Elizabethtown is about Drew Baylor’s (Bloom) father dying. As much as it is romance, I would have hated if we learned Claire’s life story and listened to her cry over mommy-issues, or how her boss is mean, or anything at all. She meets a cute guy, finds out his dad is dead, and wants to help. And she does. She gets him to grieve, which he needed to do.

Let me ask you this. When you first meet someone, do you lay everything out on the table? Or do you date them and get to know them first? Most people slowly allow for someone to discover their secrets, their flaws. OF COURSE, Claire is cute and dreamlike. She wants to impress him. AND HIS DAD DIED. I cannot stress my feelings about that enough. If I met someone I liked, at my parent’s funeral, barely knew them, and they cried to me about their life story, I would be say, “Seriously? My dad died. I can’t handle any else’s shit right now.” And they should get that or I would no longer like them.

In conclusion, Claire is a MPDG but I find her to be that way for a reason. In other words, if this movie was only a love story (and not about a man’s career falling apart and his dad dying at the same time), I would have hated it. And in other, other words, I bet if Elizabethtown was gender swapped, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.