More on Manic Pixie Dream Girls: Can't Kill the Father In The Mind

By K.M. Zwick

Being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl may be about an inability to psychologically “kill the father," in my opinion.

"Lemme splain. No, there is too much. Lemme sum up."

The wish to kill the father was an idea first laid out in literature (I believe) by Sophocles in Oedipus Rex and later - famously - theorized as an essential conflict in early childhood by Sigmund Freud, a conflict embedded in the phallic stage of psychosexual development.

While this theory - a young child's wish to kill the same-sex parent and be joined with the opposite-sex parent - has been hotly contested by behaviorists and feminist theorists alike (the latter decrying phallocentrism), and misunderstood as perverse by people who don't really read the material, there is also a plethora of feminist psychoanalysts (Nancy Chodorow and Irene Fast chief among them) who propose that the Oedipal complex certainly pertains to girls as much as it pertains to boys (and women and men).

While a girl's "conflict" has been called the Electra complex by some - positing she wants to kill mom and join with dad - I'm going to go ahead and assert that a girl - especially in Western society, if not everywhere - also deals with a wish to kill the father. And a great fear of doing just that.

And why am I talking about killing daddies? Thank you for asking.

I'm not talking about literal, real killing, first of all. And neither was Freud, at root.

While a concrete, non-neofrontal-cortexed 3 year-old may have the kind of scary fantasies of actually destroying the same-sex parent that Freud-haters love to abhor, a more matoor brain can psychically handle the idea of an internal conflict associated with killing the father in the mind. Killing the internalized father-parts (aspects of who dad is and the messages about yourself you receive from him, whether he intended them or not) that hold the Self back from becoming its own separate Self. THAT can present a whole hot mess of conflicts for a developing personality, depending on the father in question.  And I'm assuming, essentially, that it does. And that the MPDG is a manifestation of that conflict.

The word "separate" is essential here. In a more nuanced understanding of the Oedipal complex, there is a desire to separate from the same-sex parent (individuate, pull away from) and a desire to be closer to the opposite-sex parent (become more like, merge with). Freud always used coarse, sexual and aggressive language to describe such processes, but it's fairly simple.

Dig: I'm reminded of my brother around the age of 3 really being excited about dressing up like a mermaid and playing with Barbies. He was merging with the feminine in his life - offered by his mother and his sister. Similarly, when I was 3, I occupied the brief height of my tomboyishness, wanting very much to be like my father and wearing almost exclusively corduroy bell bottoms and a Batman long-sleeved shirt and adopting two boys at school as my best buddies.

While it may be taboo to discuss merger fantasies as sexual, because concrete thinking positions "sexual" as meaning intercourse or something involving genitalia, think rather of "sexual" here to mean pleasurable joining. In order to move closer to the opposite-sex parent, to find pleasure in the opposite-sex parents' attributes, a small child must move away from the same sex parent, as the primitive mind does not yet understand integration. A small child tends to exist in a world of "either/or" rather than "both/and," so it makes sense that a child would feel a pull to split the feminine and masculine, to psychically, if only temporarily, kill off one (in the Self) in order to merge with the other (in the Self).

While there are aspects of this that are arguably terrifying for a child - a fear of hurting the same sex parent, perhaps, while also desiring to push that parent away; an ambivalence about giving up wholesale on one set of traits in favor of another - it is also a time of playing. With identity, with sexuality, with what is pleasurable. It's a time of playing with choices and options and agency.

That freedom to play is something Freud argued (and other analysts after him, like Irene Fast argued) as an essential phase to be able to move through.

"Issues" associated with this stage of development, Freud, Fast, Chodorow (etc.) theorized, may plague individuals throughout adolescence and adulthood. What "issues" may arise during the Oedipal phase that would prevent playing, temporary psychical killing off, experimenting with differing gendered norms?

Well, here are a few: What if a child (in the stereotypical Oediapal complex, the child is a boy and the parent is dad) perceives, however unconsciously, that to kill off dad in the mind and sense of Self might threaten dad's exalted place in the home? What if the internalized concept of dad paints dad as both all-powerful and extremely fragile, in terms of ego, as if separating from him would impossibly and forever hurt him (consider the Narcissist, consider the addicted parent, consider other types of arguable 'impairment')? What if the idea of hurting dad feels dangerous because the child depends upon dad for survival (in a literal sense)? What if attempts to separate from dad, by playing with becoming a Self differing from him, are met with real or perceived punishments, neglect, or dad pulling away approval and affection?

There are many ways in which it may feel difficult or impossible for a young child to freely play with gendered norms, traits and desires to move toward the opposite-sex parent, in the Oedipal conflict.

If there is a notion in the child's mind that killing off dad (in the mind) is dangerous in various ways - either physically or emotionally - it is far less likely a child will go through with experimenting with psychically killing dad off. For children (or adults) you may perceive as full-out rebelling against the dad in the mind ("She/he is NOTHING like dad. She/he has gone in the complete opposite direction, intentionally") I might posit that that individual is also still joined with the dad in the mind - oppositional acting out in relation to the dad may be another way to reify his power. That is still referential to a very alive dad-in-the-mind.

So what? Well, yeah, so what. Except that it is argued generally that children who suffer dire consequences - real or perceived - in response to normative developmental urges have some neuroses of various types to contend with later in life. Believe that or not, it's important to the rest of this article to get hip to the idea that an inability to kill the father in the mind can shape personalities in ways that may be detrimental to the individual.

The idea I'm laying out here in talking very briefly about a much-written about psychological process in early childhood is that there is, at least in psychodynamic/analytic theory, a necessity to "kill off" (aka separate from) parts of our introjected (internalized) authority figures as we grow up in order that we may discover who we are without the authority figures' identities pressing down upon us or without a sense of fear of or anger toward those authority figures informing everything that we do. It may be necessary to go through the process of separation (killing off) in order to make a conscious choice to take back in those things we distanced ourselves from.

Agency. Choice. Kind of a big deal.

Connected to this idea - not mine, but belonging to countless feminist psychoanalytic theorists - is the notion that because we live in a patriarchal society, there is always a "Father"(1) that is being interalized psychically for women, far far beyond the Oedipal complex in early childhood; there is an ongoing male gaze/form/desire authority to whom women are referential, in terms of our own identity. Similar to the way a child is referential, in early childhood, to his/her parental authority figures, at a very basic level, women may be contending with a wish to and a fear to kill the Father in the mind long into adulthood.

Are you with me thus far? Awesome. Let's move on.

*****

I was thinking about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl again today, because this article by Laurie Penny is circulating. She's primarily looking at the MPDG in literature and TV and film and making a compelling, dare I say, Simone-de-Beauvoir-ian argument that this MPDG trope is clearly born of the conditioned feminine desire to be for the man, whereas the masculine desire is to be of the man. The man has visions of being a hero; the woman has visions of being the hero's ladyfriend, sex kitten, and housewife. The supporting role, essentially.

It's about: For someone (else) versus of someone (the self). There's an entire book on this. It's called The Second Sex. Sartre also had, you know, some things to say about this.

The MPDG character, Penny points out, is an uninterrogated scrim of a woman - someone who is a mysterious, endlessly entertaining ray of childish sunshine in the desolate, sad, philosophical desert that is The Man Unto Himself. She's like a five year-old hopped up on pixie sticks and Mountain Dew, but she exists in a grown woman's body and every once in awhile she says grown woman things.

People are being very hard on Zooey Deschanel for her starry-eyed cuteness, her rompers and big glasses and impish good looks, her love of all things squee, and her characters' ironic self-effacement dressed up as feminism. I, personally, adore Deschanel, and I believe she is much more complex and human than the characters she plays on-screen. Additionally, the MPDG trope is not one she invented - she's merely the most recent poster girl for a timeless tradition of daddy issues. Hashtag daddy issues, y'all.

PS. You know how white people -and I am one of those- have to admit that they're racists simply because they were born into this messed up racist world - regardless of their personal or political beliefs or how many people of color they know and love or how well-educated they may be about racism? Well, I'm going to go ahead and say that because I'm a HUMAN, I'm also sexist. Regardless of what a loud-mouthed open-minded female feminist I am and have been for a long time now. I'm sexist. So I cannot say for sure that the reason I enjoy everything ZD does - I love New Girl, I like her website HelloGiggles, and I dig her voice - is not at least somewhat informed by having my own occipital lobe shaped by the male gaze since vision one. (This is a way in which I have not successfully and totally killed off the Father in my own mind, 'haps.)

Ok.

Now hear this: Girls with a proclivity towards Manic Pixie DG need to kill the father/Patriarch in the mind lest they forever attempt to undermine their own developing womanhood in a misguided effort not to threaten their fathers/Father. With burgeoning sexuality. With a different set of skills from theirs. Or, God forbid, with the same set of skills. With competence. With brains as big as, or bigger than, their breasts. Maybe it’s not the familial father, always, but it’s certainly at least the Patriarchal one.

I do not think girls are merely in potential competition with other women (aka mother/Mother). I think girls/women are in competition with men/Father - but because of a perceived danger (please don't tell me I have to enumerate the various dangers - physical, emotional, sexual, material, and in communities - that still exist for women in relation to men) regarding such a competition with men (Father), there are these ways in which women minimize their gifts or stunt their own growth so as not to step into that Danger Zone.

The Great Patriarch in the mind must be killed, MPDG, if you are ever to truly inhabit a three-dimensional character arc of your own making. Play, experiment, seek a leading role.

Aside: In case anyone worries I'm actually into patricide - I am not remotely into real life murder or violence of any kind, and I love my real life father. See first section regarding the metaphor - it's about separating a sense of your identity from an oppressive force inside your own head. Killing the Father in the mind is just a quicker way to get this point across. I can be very Freudian in that way.

If we view ourselves through this internalized father or Patriarch - and if that is not useful to our agency as women - we must separate ourselves from this introject. We must move away from shaping our identities around our fear of hurting/provoking/exceeding father/Patriarch.

I'll flesh this out just a tad more regarding the MPDG and the Patriarch in the mind.

Why the HELL is she so manic, anyway? I believe it is referential mania. I believe it is there to serve a specific purpose in relation to the Father in the mind and maybe literal men in the flesh.

I have known too many women over my lifetime who have hidden their lights under a bushel lest they outshine their main squeezes (supporting role to the primary character in the script). Women who don't want to appear too strong, too smart, or too on top of their sh*t standing next to dudes who, in the right light, really do look shockingly like their fathers (if not physically then psychologically/behaviorally). Women who talk to their friends 25 hours a day about the silly/offensive/annoying/sexist/innocuous/insert other stuff their men say or do but who cannot find the voice to say this directly to their men. Women who know what they want but don't believe they can ask for it. Or, worse, women who have no idea what they want and so they plod on, an appendage to another person only to find out some time in middle age, or later or never, that this is not a satisfying way to go through life.

(See Betty Friedan. See Sheryl Sandberg.)

I've known countless women who stay and stay and stay in unfulfilling relationships with very sad, underachieving, not altogether kind individuals hoping and hoping and shining their rays of light and shining and shining (on the men only) only to discover, devastated, that they cannot save these men from their solemnity with MPDG cartwheels and overfunctioning and perfect cooking and endlessly interesting stories, hobbies, musical talents, sci-fi know-how, fill-in-the-blank-of-mad-skillz and brightly colored scarves.

(I also have known and know lots of very happy women in happy relationships and I know a lot of awesome dudes. Obvs, I'm talking about another set of women and dudes in this piece - but I want to make it clear that I don't think all women are MPDG types nor do I think all men are sad hacks.)(Also, the entire thing can play out with same sex couples. Don't get too caught up in genitalia/the literal. We all have Father and Mother and divides between masculine and feminine and the power associated with each in our minds, regardless of the anatomies involved in relationships because of the vastness of these split-up roles and our continual black-and-white thinking in relation to each other at the systemic level culturally, etc etc.)

My argument, essentially, is that all of this is about daddies. The SYMBOLIC Daddy, if not the literal daddy. Pleasing Daddy, the one we carry in our minds. The narcissistic, easily wounded, Needing-To-Be-Powerful-And-Uncontested Daddy. So as not to outshine what is often The Voice and The Power and The Authority in our minds. So as not to threaten him with our own successes, we do not kill him/Him off. So as not to humble Him with our own abilities, which are not contigent upon having a physical phallus to show for it. Staying young and childish so that he gets to continue to be in charge. Of the household. Of us. Staying spritely and coquettish to bring him a smile. Staying young and childish so The Authority out there in the larger world gets to stay in charge, will approve of us, will be entertained by us. Relegating ourselves to ever-smaller roles, and often ever-smaller bodies, to stroke the ego of the leading man, quieting our drive or desire to be anything more. Anything bigger. And in exchange, we are promised something - that we are now not too threatening or too big to be loved.

(See Susan Bordo. See Naomi Wolf. See Mary Pipher.)

I have to say - it's a loving gesture on the part of the MPDG. Super duper loving - how exceedingly caretaker-y of us, really. It's misapplied, but it is loving. I don't mean to shame any of us for falling into this type of behavior. It's not something we have a lot of say in initially, given that the conditioning starts so young, whether it's coming from within the home or from without. I have boundless compassion for it.

But it's not particularly useful for a couple small things like personal growth and equal relationships with men. But just that, really.

There's another book about this kind of misapplied love. Women Who Love Too Much. See it.

And at what cost? At the cost of the development of the self. Of maturing. Of being OF ourselves rather than FOR someone else.


As an important side note, I think this all does men (or any "other" in that role) a terrible disservice, as well. I believe it treats them as fragile, frail, and incapable of being around strong, competent women. This seems like an assumed fragility that is passed down like a gene and colluded with through generations so that everyone is, at the cultural level, at least semi-buying into it, even if it's not conscious. I don't personally believe it that men cannot take it if a woman is successful, competent, adult, and awesome. Or, dowager, as Julie Klausner put it. I don't think we need to treat ourselves as smaller and less awesome than we are; AND I don't believe we need to handle men with kid gloves. I like to have more respect for individual men than that, despite the unfortunate history of women catering to the assumed King Baby. I often consider how constructs of women as powerless victims or compulsive caretakers make implicit certain assumptions about men and what they need and who they are that are equally disrespectful and offensive, so I'm throwing this in here for good measure. The MPDG thing is just bad for everyone involved.

*****

Pre-pubescence - that is the stage of life during which we rarely have an independent voice of our own. The latency stage (think elementary school) is when our sexuality is entirely under wraps (a) or (b) is ridiculously cutesy and fantastical, separate from any real sexual, physical desire (think cooties, the M.A.S.H. game, falling in "love" with teen pop heartthrobs who appear as eunuchs to us at that age, etc.).

We are most likely to be good little boys and girls, to obey, to follow a certain concrete code of moral values, and to wish to please our parents in the latency stage.

Once adolescence hits - forget it. The start of a separate self, sexual, nubile, impulsive, free-thinking, rebellious, is likely to emerge - at least for a few years. It's like being a toddler, but way taller and capable of driving omg. Adolescent behavior and impulses, as a matter of developmental course, veer dangerously close to Leading Roles for teenagers. Center stage. It's another test for parents, another measure of how agency is addressed. And, outside the home, more norms, demands, and expectations for how and who to be fly into the heads of these blossoming teens. There's dad and mom and then there's Dad and Mom.

And what comes after adolescence? More maturing, if we're lucky. More individuating. More self. If we're lucky.*

The MPDG strikes me as an adult straddling puberty, with one foot squarely in an early latency stage - giggly, obedient, silly, plastering her bedroom walls with unicorn decals and not-so-ironic posters of Justin Bieber - and one foot squarely in adolescence approaching adulthood (or, in Freudian terms, the genital stage). She CAN be sexual, impulsive, free-thinking, rebellious, full of agency and independence. But if that grazes too close to being an actual move towards competence, assertiveness, and selfhood that may outshine or threaten the ego of the nearest dude (even if the nearest Dude is in her mind only), she can quickly revert to a fit of giggles and blow some bubbles to make the whole Smart Woman Getting Sh*t Done thing go down more easily. To you. To herself.

The problem with the MPDG is that she makes the very interesting and compelling parts of herself easy to dismiss. She minimizes them. Zooey Deschanel, at least from the outside, strikes me as an incredibly competent, savvy, smart, ambitious, and entrepreneurial young woman. AND - sometimes the birds and ukeleles and romper room dresses seem less cleverly ironic to me than really daddy's girl-esque. And that is why I think I started wondering if MPDGs have some psychical d(D)addy-killing to get on with. There's something awfully 5-to-7 year-old-ish about the whole Manic Pixie asethetic.

And that made me think about where five year-olds are developmentally. In Freud's language? Hopefully completing the Oedipal/Electra complex successfully (oh, in an ideal world). But there's something else to contend with for little girls - it's not just a separation from mom (same-sex) that they need to concern themselves with developmentally, in terms of identity experimentation and play and Self, it's also a separation from dad/Dad. That parental figure in the mind - reified as a figure of absolute force and power because of the POV under which we women invariably grow up (not our own) - doesn't get killed off for the MPDG. That manic pixie daddy's girl stands as a bridge between childhood and adulthood in large part, it seems to me, to continue to be childlike enough to never be a threat to a male/Male. To never compete, to never even play the game of adulthood, of wholeness. Of obtaining her own POV.

Respect: It may not be literally threatening to every actual father for a girl to grow up and be her own person (though I think I could make a compelling argument about those in Gen X and older and their fathers (culturally speaking, in generalities)). But that's not my point. There are some f*cking fantastic fathers in this world, and every time I meet one, I nearly lose my mind with joy and gratitude and love.

But for women to develop the capacity to grow up, to shed the pixie sticks and pony tails - both literally and metaphorically - it may be necessary to kill off years of partiarchal conditioning, that we carry with us in our sexist-against-ourselves minds - the tropes in literature, film, tv, magazines that say "Be FOR him, not OF yourself. Be a supporting role, not a lead. Make this Nick guy (depressed, alcoholic, jobless) happy."** If it's not our personal respective fathers, there's a larger Father we've been trained to please. And we're really afraid of hurting his feelings and being abandoned/alone/unloved. The MPDG's currency is her ability to snuff out her own bright adulthood light.

I don't think I need to own something - like a girlish frock and a penchant for Trapper Keepers, a high-pitched giggle or a humorous dead-pan - that makes it somehow easier for a man to swallow that I'm kick-ass.

I did think that, though. For years and years. And yee-heers. Like Laurie Penny, I was a manic pixie dream girl for a good chunk of time, and not for awesome reasons, despite being a hardcore feminist. It is a slow death, the internal Father killing. It may take as many years to kill that Father in the mind as it took for Him to grab a chair and settle in. And that was decades.

At the age of 34, I'm glad it occurred to me at some point that the only person I'm responsible for making smile more is myself. I'm still bubbly, joyful, exuberant, and passionate, and like Penny, have a tendency in my personality towards the twee - I just get genuinely giddy and over-the-moon about stuff - but now it's all directed at the things that bring me joy. My absolutely amazing job. My endless interest in new music. My passionate loyalty to my friends and family whom I love and who return love to me. My ridiculously prolific opinions about everything that I have no idea if anyone else actually reads. My belief in social justice and my infatuation with humor. My love of quality, wherever it may be found. My need to dance. My excitement about simply being alive on this beautiful goddamn planet. Yeah, I play the guitar and I probably own at least one thing with a bird on it, and I'm not going to stop wearing bright colors any time soon. But that sh*t's for me. That bird is of me, Simone. And nobody's going to freaking die if I kill off some metaphorical Patriarch in my mind. Nobody has, as far as I know, anyway.***

I presume one of these days a man entirely responsible for his own joy - and infinitely capable of tapping into it - will come my way. And we can both be costars of this crazy show called life (oh yes I did). Regardless, I'm nobody's manic pixie dream girl except my own.

(1) My capitalization of "Father" is not to be confused with a reference to God, whom some call Father. I am capitalizing "Father" as shorthand for a mass cultural internal and external referencing to the patriarchal/male gaze/authority that unfortunately shapes how we think about and treat women. Mmkay?

*Note: In a certain light, what I'm saying sounds very individualistic and Western, not taking into account cultures that are more community-based. I'm actually incredibly pro-community and pro-family. I also think that the internalized messages we carry with us do not always serve us and may hold us back, regardless of who taught them to us and how much we love those people. Ok. Moving on.

**Direct reference to New Girl plot point in Season 2.

***How? Well, that might be another post entirely/my life.