The Manic Pixie Bi Boys
Currents
Although the term has become a broadly discussed trope, the “manic pixie dream girl” belongs to a definite era. Throughout the 2000s, in films such as Garden State (2004), Elizabethtown (2005), Yes Man (2008), 500 Days of Summer (2009), and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), it seemed like theaters were dominated by whimsical, doe-eyed women who would waltz into a man’s life, fix him, and waltz right back out again. Where did these women come from? Where did they go? Why did they care about the unimpressive guys whose lives they swooped in to remedy in the first place? We will never have these answers or that backstory, because the manic pixie dream girl’s only role was to save a lackluster, depressed male protagonist from himself. While this trope faded away in the 2010s, it’s reemerged in recent years with an interesting twist: the emotionally intelligent bi guy.
Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term “manic pixie dream girl” in a 2007 review of Elizabethtown, later wrote about his own discomfort with the concept. In pointing out a common issue with representations of women in film, Rabin created a term that reduced the role of many female characters to a cutesy and dismissive phrase. He also acknowledged that the intentional ambiguity of the manic pixie dream girl has led it to be broadly applied to many beloved female characters, such as Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938), who are, in fact, much more complex than the term gives them credit for.
I recently rewatched Elizabethtown and Garden State, two of the original examples of the manic pixie dream girl phenomenon. In Garden State, a depressed, struggling actor named Andrew (played by Zach Braff) returns to his hometown in New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. Along the way, he meets Sam (Natalie Portman), a quirky and free-spirited woman who helps him confront his past, embrace his emotions, and take the next step in life. Similarly in Elizabethtown, Drew, a disgraced and suicidal shoe designer (Orlando Bloom), flies home to Kentucky to bury his father, when he meets another quirky and free-spirited woman, Claire (Kirsten Dunst), who helps him navigate his grief and appreciate life’s beauty.
Left: Natalie Portman and Zach Braff in Garden State (2004). Right: Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown (2005). Source: IMDB.
Although I sympathize with Rabin’s dislike of how the manic pixie dream girl label has since been used, his initial analysis wasn’t wrong. Claire and Sam are eerily similar — in fact, watching the two movies back to back inspires a strong sense of déjà vu, and today, both seem painfully dated. Claire and Sam are beautiful, charming, charismatic, and seem oddly and inexplicably dedicated to furthering the growth of two gigantic losers.
I think we’re supposed to be rooting for or identifying with the depressed, dejected, self-pitying protagonists of these films, but I found myself struggling to care. Maybe it’s the spirit of the time (after all, this was the era of emo), maybe it’s that I’m watching these at the age of 39 instead of 20, but I really just wanted to slap both of these guys, turn off the TV, and walk away. It was far beyond my ability to suspend disbelief to imagine any universe in which either of these women could have any interest whatsoever in such insufferable men.
In a 2023 interview with The Independent, Zach Braff, who wrote and directed Garden State, grappled with the manic pixie dream girl fallout:
“‘I was just copying Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude,’ Braff says. ‘Those were my two favorite movies growing up, and I was kind of taking those two female protagonists and melding them into Natalie Portman. Of course I’ve heard and respect the criticism, but…’ He pauses. ‘I was a very depressed young man who had this fantasy of a dream girl coming along and saving me from myself,’ he continues, bluntly. ‘And so I wrote that character.’”
So yes, Sam is a pure fantasy, a woman who exists to save a man who doesn’t seem sympathetic enough to necessarily deserve saving.
Nathan Rabin wasn’t the only one trying to talk about a very real problem in Hollywood. Most women we see in movies are, by definition, men’s fantasies of women — because they are largely written by men. Whether we’re talking about manic pixie dream girls or the Bechdel Test (a method of evaluating female representation in films), there is a real lack of women living their lives in service of something other than male characters. This felt especially true in the 2000s.
Even now, with more women writing and directing Hollywood hits about women, a sense of unease around how female characters are portrayed feels warranted. In an industry where the biggest box office hits are nearly always male-oriented, the pressure on Barbie (2023) to prove the marketability of unapologetically feminine movies was insane. If action flicks were routinely subjected to such scrutiny, the entire genre would implode. The women of Barbie were basically the opposite of the manic pixie dream girl. They start as living dolls who only exist due to exterior forces, and then gain their own interiority and smash the patriarchy. Good for them. Maybe the pixie trope has finally died.
Or maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it’s simply been evolving. In 2012, critic Molly Lambert wrote about the manic pixie dream boy, listing various iterations of wholesome, attractive men who seem to exist to raise up the women in their lives. These fantasy guys range from Liz Lemon’s boyfriend and eventual husband, Criss Chros on 30 Rock (2006–2013), to Leslie Knope’s paramour, Ben Wyatt in Parks and Recreation (2009–2015), to every other Ryan Gosling role and the entire boy band One Direction. Interestingly, Lambert’s fictional examples are all from television, a space where women’s voices have made many more inroads than in film, although occasional movie characters like Jack from Titanic (1997) and Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars (2014) do fit the bill. I take her point — these men do improbably seem to exist only to raise up the women in their lives, give them confidence, and make them better (and in Jack’s case, die afterward). Criss and Ben patiently support the careers and dreams of their partners while being attractive, quirky, and non-threatening. Even so, it feels as though the manic pixie dream boy hasn’t had quite the same cultural impact as his female counterpart.
So where has she gone, that elusive manic pixie dream girl? Well, being a good bi gal who wants to keep her membership to the club active, I recently watched Red, White & Royal Blue (2023). Based on the bestselling novel by Casey McQuiston, the rom-com film follows the relationship of two young men. Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the son of the US president, and Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), a member of the British royal family, fall in love during a staged political friendship. At first, I was thoroughly entertained and charmed (can Zakhar Perez’s eyelashes even be real?). But as the movie progressed, I became increasingly fed up with the whole thing. Why was Alex, a rich, handsome, intelligent, compassionate, self-assured son of the first female President hanging out with a repressed, closeted, self-loathing, emotionally unavailable, rather stuffy Prince of England (and not even an heir)? Was it just the “prince” thing?
Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) in Red, White, and Royal Blue (2023). Source: Prime Video.
Alex agrees to stay in the closet forever, to have a hidden relationship and never celebrate milestones, and to watch Henry being matched with other women by his family. Alex agrees to skip weddings, holidays, a future family, and probably his own political ambitions to love an uninspiring prince and take whatever scraps the man is willing to give him. Of course, Alex’s unwavering devotion and sacrifice pays off. It turns out Alex is able to give Henry exactly what he needs to transform from a depressed, sad sack of a Prince being bullied by his family into being out and proud with a very handsome boyfriend. So I guess all’s well that ends well?
Or is it? Should this total fantasy of a man — written by a woman — really be something we admire? He is given the shadow of a storyline, heading a campaign that magically turns Texas blue via montage. Perhaps that’s the larger fantasy, though it’s one I’m happy to buy into. But really, Alex is a one-dimensional character. How he’s perceived by the people around him changes only slightly. He comes out as bisexual, gets taken seriously in politics, and remains stupidly handsome (some things never change), but he himself doesn’t change. He’s always incredibly wise, aware of, and comfortable with his bisexuality — even though he’s had limited experience, and he’s confident that he can somehow win Texas for his mom. He’s just a glorified plot device to rescue Prince Henry. Perhaps if Zach Braff had been gay fantasizing about his dream boy coming to save him, we would have had Red, White & Garden Blues decades ago.
Alex isn’t alone. There has recently been a flurry of bi boys in the popular media who seem like idealized fever-dream fantasies. The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022–) gave us Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno) — the sunshine boy. Yes, his mother calls him that. Meanwhile, the Internet has taken the phrase and run with it. His fandom.com page reads, “Jeremiah is a sunshine boy with golden retriever energy who’s always been able to make Belly smile.” Throughout the series, there is a love triangle between Jeremiah, his brother Conrad (Christopher Briney), and their childhood friend Belly (Lola Tung).
While Belly wavers and is indecisive, Conrad is both full of rage and messy. Jeremiah is the emotional glue that holds the group together. He helps Belly blossom, is always there when she needs support, willing to be a romantic partner on demand, but also willing to step aside so she can date his messed-up brother. The most moving moments often revolve around Jeremiah, through whom the viewer and many of the characters learn about his mother’s cancer diagnosis. Jeremiah nobly gives Conrad his blessing to date Belly, and even when his brother is being awful, Jeremiah supports him and helps make sure he gets into college. He’s the most emotionally mature teen boy ever dreamt up — selfless, kind, patient, compassionate, and of course charming, flirtatious, handsome, and completely comfortable in his bisexuality.
Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Belly (Lola Tung) in The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-). Source: Prime Video.
Both Red, White & Royal Blue and The Summer I Turned Pretty started their lives as novels written by women and largely marketed to women. These bi men are emotionally sensitive and emotionally generous to an improbable degree while remaining sexually available to the female characters. They marry the gay best friend and manic pixie dream girl tropes of the 2000s into the most dateable man ever. Yes, Alex ends up with a man, but it is very clear that he is also attracted to and has dated plenty of women — in fact, most of his experiences have been with women. For his part, Jeremiah was not explicitly bi in the novels, published from 2009 to 2011, but when author Jenny Han began adapting them for the Amazon Prime series, he became openly bisexual. When discussing the change, Han said:
“It was one of the aspects of freshening it up and feeling like it reflects the world that we live in today and how I would tell the story if I was telling it right now. It has all the same pieces, but I think that Jeremiah being sexually fluid feels really realistic to me, to that character as well.”
She goes on to say, “It does not feel like I changed his character. It just feels like an aspect that I think would come to the fore if the story was in 2022.”
Of the two brothers vying for Belly's affection, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the sensitive, selfless brother is the one who was updated to be bi. It could have been Conrad, but viewers don’t think of bisexual men as moody, sometimes violent alpha males. In many ways, this is a nice swing from the bisexual villains of yesteryear, such as Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Catherine from Basic Instinct (1992), Suzie from Wild Things (1998), Jenny from The L Word (2004–2009), Jennifer from Jennifer’s Body (2009), and Frank Underwood from House of Cards (2013–2018). Now bisexual men are our cheerleader best friends, self-sacrificing saints, and romantic partners all rolled into one perfect savior.
Although we haven’t had a film or television version yet, I’d also like to mention Talia Hibbert’s enormously fun 2023 young adult novel Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute. In it, two overachieving teens have a fairly classic friends-to-enemies-to-lovers arc. The blurb tells us:
“Bradley Graeme is pretty much perfect. He's a star football player, manages his OCD well (enough), and comes out on top in all his classes . . . except the ones he shares with his ex-best friend, Celine.
“Celine Bangura is conspiracy-theory-obsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to holiday overconsumption — yet, she's still not cool enough for the popular kids' table. Which is why Brad abandoned her for the in-crowd years ago. (At least, that's how Celine sees it.)”
Brad is handsome, popular, and charming. He’s a top-tier student, has a supportive group of friends, and he’s bisexual — and completely secure in his sexuality. As the two are thrown together in a wilderness camp, their attraction becomes undeniable. And while they both initially fight the romance that takes blossom, they eventually both give in to it.
Celine brings much more to the table than Zach Braff’s depressed, apathetic, failed actor Andrew in Garden State. She’s cute, curvy, eccentric, and top of her class. She might not be conventionally popular, but she’s going places and she knows it. For his part, Brad isn’t as charmingly quirky or one-dimensionally perfect as flight attendant Claire in Elizabethtown. He has his doubts and insecurities. He’s trying to figure out how to tell his parents he wants to write science fiction novels. He’s managing his OCD (and not in a “neurodivergence makes you more magical and cute” sort of way), and experiences some actual growth. But Brad is unquestionably the one who teaches Celine to let go, lean into her emotions, and become a more actualized person.
The past decade has seen a modest explosion of bi male visibility in popular media. While still underrepresented, there certainly far more depictions of bi men than when I was growing up. And I’d say it’s an improvement that a lot of them are now heartthrobs, as opposed to punchlines or villains. But watching the ways in which these emotionally intelligent bi guys volunteer to give up everything to save mediocre (or at least struggling) protagonists from their own ineptitude isn’t quite the progress it might seem. We may be entering the era of the manic pixie bi boy, but like the manic pixies of the 2000s, they're not real characters. They’re simply a canvas upon which the author’s fantasies are projected — only this time, those fantasizing are female.
Published Apr 26, 2024
