And Man Swooned

I've been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately, and the notion of young heroines using their beguiling manners to make a "conquest" which in those days simply meant a young, eligible bachelor falling madly and deeply, head over heels in love has been around since the Victorian era. Proust makes use of the term as well.

The "marriage plot" made popular by Ms Austin's novels was something that the women's movement was supposed to have retired long ago (hat tip to Jeffrey Eugenides). That the whole purpose of a woman's existence was to marry well was supplanted by feminism. Unfortunately, it's not the women who seem hooked on that notion in today's world, but the men. 

Men who are socially poor, withdrawn, detached and aloof due to depression or their inability to associate with those lacking a heightened form of artistic or intellectual sensibility find their only hope of salvation in the person of the "manic pixie dream girl" (hat tip to Nathan Rabin), who is able to penetrate into their world by her quirkiness and may even share their tastes, but who do so in a more spirited and effervescent way.

That elevator scene from (500) Days of Summer where the girl played by Zooey Deschanel repeats a line from the Smiths track There is a Light That Never Goes Out blaring from the boy's headphones back to him is a classic case in point. Sung from the perspective of the brooding male, it just drips with melancholy, but echoed from the lips of the dream girl, the same morbid and depressing line "to die by your side" is transformed into a romantic hymn.

Game over. From that point on, the boy continually chases after his romantic ideal epitomised by this young lass who is a reflection of himself only to find out that this idealised version of her exists only in his head. It plays out like a greek tragedy. Narcissus and Pygmalion couldn't have done better. What makes him think that he can?

There are only two or maybe three ways the story can end. One is where this thought bubble gets punctured by the girl in one way or another; the boy realises that he has been chasing a mirage and moves on. Two is when he does realise this but still winds up with her (but for how long?). Three is where he actually doesn't come to such a realisation because the girl actually fulfils his fantasy. Of the three, the third is the most unrealistic and the saddest, it has to be said.

The fact that the female protagonists in some of these films gain an advantage from the vulnerabilities of their male counterparts wittingly or unwittingly is the tragic/comic aspect of the whole drama. That men with their romantic sensibilities keep falling for it and can't help but swoon over the Zooey Deschanels of this world makes their fate in real life truly deserved, I believe.

But perhaps the whole point of the sad saga in some of these films, the moral of the story if you will, is precisely to point out to such men that they need to snap out of their stupor before it's too late. Unfortunately, for too many of them, the message simply gets lost in the plot, which is perhaps the reason why it just keeps being reprised. To wit, let me close with this composite film clip that presents 75 years of manic pixie dream girls to show you what I mean. Guys, try not to swoon, okay?