Another divergence from the usual fare during this season, in that we unexpectedly binged through Dash & Lily a teen romcom series from the same people who wrote Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, the book and the movie. In the series, two left-of-centre teens from different walks of life, Dash the cynical, intellectual rich boy who barely likes his friends, and Lily, the poster child for wallflower, manic pixie dream girl, have a meet cute via a (non-brand) Moleskine notebook tucked into a dusty shelf at the Strand bookstore in NYC. Dealing with their own Xmas season complications, while unrealistically pursuing a basically anonymous long-distance relationship, the two eventually come together for the first time.
The Strand, while not as much a part of pop-culture as I would have thought it would be, really is a mystical bookstore. Given, I have only been there once in 2012, but the one in this show looked pretty much the same, which is saying something unto itself. It's 2020 and its a big bricks n mortar bookstore which is an anomaly. I also became rather enamoured with the base premise, as I did something somewhat similar, albeit with no romantic intensions. In my early 20s I became interested in the penpal / penner world, and one such pal turned out to be in the same city, and was frequenting the same locales as I did. It was pretty common for people to leave messages on the walls of the bathroom in a local artsy fartsy coffee shop I loved, so my penpal and I did a bit of back n forth while deciding to meet face to face. It was just a fun bit of alternate communication but I always remembered the synchronicity.
But Lily does kickoff this plan with romantic plans, indeed. It may be setup by her brother, but she goes into it deeply invested. The idea is to test the person who picks up the book, which must be narrowed down to a teenage boy by a Strand staff member in on the game, to see if he and Lily will be compatible. Luckily Dash is instantly enthralled, and for a few episodes, its all about the game of passing the notebook back and forth, while leaving clues as to where it should be placed, and where it will be found next.
The show is easy to binge, being sitcom length, but not sitcom setup, at all. Each of the episodes, initially focused on the scavenger hunt and/or dares they give each other, is cute, poignant and emotional eventually more expanding into what each character is experiencing in the rest of their life. Lily is stuck in NYC without her usual big family Xmas celebration, as her parents seemingly randomly went off to Fiji. Dash's wealthy parents are divorced, and both away for the Holidays, allowing Dash to tell each that he is staying with the other, further allowing Dash to hide out in his Dad's Manhattan penthouse.
Eventually the strain of life gets to both of the kids, who definitely are compatible despite their different economic levels, and confidence levels, and life experiences. The show gives us all the romcom staples, but with just a hint more of emotional baggage. While it was all very well realized, I did find myself remembering how old I am and seeing that, while this whole serendipitous encounter between the two teens was Their Entire World, as it was happening, it would most likely just be a blip on their romantic radars. Yes, while I still consider myself an unabashed romantic (thus these Hallmarky movies), I also have seen real life play out.
Despite my Get Off My Lawn misgivings, I still was rooting for Dash & Lily. Dash is a lovable cynic, with a wry wit and a stack of books in his room. Lily is so naive, so sweet, so uncomfortable, just the sort of girl I would have fallen hard for at their age, but also so cringey in her often refusal to see real life. There is a bit of 16 Candles nostalgia in how the show presents the mains, and that will always draw me in. We know they have to get together, as what is the point of the show, if they don't, and the show does a sweet job in ending at just the right moment, on New Year's Eve.
Lily is *NOT* a manic pixie dream girl.
ReplyDeleteAdj said the same thing at the start of the show, and I quickly pointed out "She's not manic, she has anxiety". That's a big difference. She is a bit of a pixie though, but not overbearingly so, and by the nature of how they are relating to each other (via words in books) she does become a dream girl and both her and Dash worry about her living up to that dream (which really busts the "manic pixie dream girl" trope where the "dream girl" ideal isn't really acknowledged).
So "anxious semi-pixie dream girl", maybe.
LOL, its a label. Labels are rarely perfectly accurate.
ReplyDeleteIt is a label, but a derogatory one. It's not flattering... particularly for the character or the filmmakers who made her. It insinuates some unattainable ideal from the male gaze, a woman who is unknowable, unpredicable but also, somehow, perfect.
ReplyDeleteI object to putting Lily into that category as she is not a character seen from the male gaze. She has her own agency. I love Eternal Sunshine, I fist pump for Scott Pilgrim, I like 500 Days of Summer, but I recognize that those female leads are not wholly conceived as characters, and that yes, the MPDG label/criticism applies. So it's not that I have blinders for Lily ;)
I have never seen the MPDG as a derogatory term, nor attributed it to the male gaze. Maybe I am naïve, but I have personally seen it as the obvious. Without hinging on the words in the term, I always saw it as the independent woman, one who doesn't follow the mainstream path (one that is usually defined by the other lead, male or female) but chooses her own. to our tightly constrained north american standards, choosing anything other that "top 40" can be considered flighty and unpredictable. now given the machine that is Hollywood, even a character with lots of personal agency is not likely to have been created with that in mind, or even if she has, some stupid purple suit is gonna come along and ruin it.
ReplyDeleteobvious=opposite. my brain does its own wrong-auto-correct these days.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so I have been a fan of movie/culture reviewer Nathan Rabin for a long time, so I've been tracking MPDG for a long time. Rabin coined the phrase in his condemnation of Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.avclub.com/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-elizabet-1798210595
"Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie Dream Girl 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. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family."
But, case in point, I once intoned to a female friend that their child would be a MPDG when they grew up, and the immediate recoil and absolute wound that caused has left a lasting impression on me. I have not taken the MPDG label lightly since.