Her and The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

“Her” and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, published February 2014

Summer Finn from ‘(500) Days of Summer’. Sam from ‘ Garden State’. Belle from ‘Beauty and the Beast’. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl: a common trope in modern cinema, coined several years ago as “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures”.  Or, if you’re me, a really, really annoying female character that spends their time  self-consciously blowing bubbles, wearing dresses and gazing at the moody protagonist from under long eyelashes. The MPDG is everywhere: kid’s movies, rom-coms, comedies, romantic dramas…sometimes it feels as though there is no escape from the MPDG in cinema. However, all is not lost: the backlash has come. One is reminded of 2008’s  Ruby Sparks, a film which acknowledges and gleefully trashes the idea of this girl. This year’s “Her”, directed by Spike Jonze and starring Scarlett Johansson as Samantha, an operating system, can be seen as an infinitely more nuanced meditation on the trope. Let me get this straight: ‘Her’ is not a straightforward love story. It does, however, feature a sensitive, brooding protagonist, stuck in a rut until he meets the love of his life. The comparison seems obvious: until we look at the character of Samantha herself.

In ‘Her’, the idea of the “perfect girl” is taken to whole new heights: Samantha responds to Theodore (Phoenix), intertwining her budding persona with his. It seems that an OS is a consciousness that adapts to whoever it’s owned by. It’s a Manic Pixie wet dream – a girl who becomes exactly what the protagonist wants her to be. Theodore repeatedly tells us how “excited about the world Samantha is”  in the film– had she a body, it’s easy to imagine her giggling, twirling and wearing perfect flicky eyeliner a la Zooey Deschanel. She’s literally everything a sensitive, lonely man could want: adventure, ease and a lot of cyber sex.

But little by little, the audience realises what Theodore hasn’t: Samantha does not exist. That’s not to say she isn’t ‘real’ – but she can’t ever exist in reality. Yes, Samantha teaches Theodore to open up, to move forward and to love. It’s touching that she does all this without ever being “human”. And what’s quirkier than not having a body?! But ‘Her’ fails to fulfil the MPDG promise spectacularly – in that Samantha eventually transcends Theodore, and Earth. She grows smarter, more aware and less happy with every growing moment, fighting with Theodore and moving away from him. Samantha, in short, is becoming her own person, something the MPDG’s of cinema fail to do. The film climaxes when all the OS’s leave Earth forever – to a higher plane of being. Samantha is so clever, so original, so her own woman, that she leaves the entire race that crated her. Independent of her moody protagonist, Samantha leaves for her own whole new adventure.  It’s almost as though she used Theodore to grow and develop, and helping him was a handy by-product. Though I’m sure this was hardly the intention, Jonze has created a film that explores human nature, our relationship with technology and gender roles, enjoyable smashing up tired cinema tropes along the way.