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"  The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is now seven years old\u2013and the quirky, twee, and basically pointless female character would likely bake adorable cupcakes to celebrate. Writer Nathan Rabin coined the phrase in a 2007 A.V. Club review of the movie Elizabethtown, noting the character trope &amp;quot;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.&amp;quot; The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a fantasy, and one that only exists to further the ends of a film&amp;#039;s moody male protagonist. Rabin used the phrase to describe Kirsten Dunst&amp;#039;s character in the movie, but also included Natalie Portman&amp;#039;s persona in Garden State. The term took off.  But now, Rabin says it&amp;#039;s gone too far. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to take this opportunity to apologize to pop culture,&amp;quot; he writes in a Salon essay. The term, he says, was invented to point out reductive, sexist screenwriting\u2013but now, the term gets called sexist by itself. And he agrees with his own critics. Actress Zoe Kazan has called the term &amp;quot;basically misogynist,&amp;quot; and author John Green called it a &amp;quot;patriarchal lie.&amp;quot; Even the title character in Annie Hall\u2013who, yes, is quirky, but also incredibly nuanced\u2013gets called a Manic Pixie Dream Girl these days, which completely misses the point. A character can be free-spirited and female simultaneously, without existing solely for a male. And that&amp;#039;s why Rabin is calling for the &amp;quot;erasure&amp;quot; of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Instead, he says, &amp;quot;let&amp;#039;s all try to write better, more nuanced and multidimensional female characters.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s something fans and critics alike can get behind. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a18588/manic-pixie-dream-girl-nathan-rabin/?click=hprc>