Hi, everybody. It's Wednesday. I came upon an article 
celebrating the 10th, which is actually now the 11th
anniversary of one of my favorite movies: 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Eternal Sunshine is a movie following the relationship 
between two people that bring each other to life
and then they don't. I don't want to spoil anything
 but this movie involves these two people
electing to have a surgery that will allow them to 
forget one another. The movie deals with love
and loneliness, self-esteem, memories, the fight to make 
something work, the loss of the battle to do that, and
more specifically for this video the Manic Pixie Dream 
Girl trope. The term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) was
coined by film Critic Nathan Rabin in 2007 and he says
 that, "A MPDG exists to help the protagonist achieve
happiness without ever seeking any independent
 goals herself." In most cases the story line,
much like the male protagonist, rarely 
focuses on the MPDG as an actual person,
instead choosing to romanticize her while ignoring 
any sort of unpleasantly human traits she might have.
He sees her in a way that makes him 
hopeful of her saving him, when in reality
she's just a girl, not a superhero. In Eternal Sunshine,
 Clementine fits this description to a tee -
except that she practically tears the trope into and
 chucks it across the room. Clementine makes
the male character, Joel, feel alive. She makes him smile, 
she takes him out to Montauk to go on some crazy trip
just to lay in the middle of a frozen lake, and ultimately,
 she stretches the boundaries of his personality.
And that right there pretty much sums up the 
MPDG, even down to Clementine coloring her hair
a different color very frequently.
 At one point, Joel says of Clem,"
It's that last sentence that makes Clem different. 
MPDGs, as well as Dream Boys, often lack
meaningful character development. We only 
ever see them when the romanticizing protagonist
sees them, which makes their character flat and 
underdeveloped. Even though Joel is the main character
of this movie and the movie really surrounds his brain
 damage, we see plenty of Clementine without him.
We see Clem coping with feeling forgotten and lost,
 and not knowing why those things are happening.
We get details of her childhood, about the curiosity of 
her character, and most importantly, this little bit:
[Moive] Clem: Too many guys think I'm a concept, 
or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive.
Clem: I'm just a f***ed up girl who's looking for 
my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.
Right there, in that moment, Clementine admits to Joel, 
and to the audience that, yeah she's got orange hair
and she works at [a book store], but she's not a toy. She's 
not strong enough to carry someone else's problems
because she's not supernatural. She won't be the 
one to fix Joel's problems. She's got her own baggage
that she has to deal with. This admittance 
separates Clem from the likes of Summer Finn
from 500 Days of Summer and Alaska Young from 
John Green's Looking for Alaska because Clem is
admitting to being human, rather than letting 
Joel continue to think that she is some ethereal
magical being that will lift him into the light and 
be a segue for his character development.
That's why Clementine and characters like her are 
so important. She doesn't take crap from anyone.
She knows who she is and she's not prepared to be
 a vessel for anyone else to figure out who they are.
She takes what she wants and she complexly 
breaks what she gets. She's unapologetically herself.
She's a well-rounded, interesting female character who
 shows women that you don't have to be flawless
or put on a pedestal in order to be interesting. 
Because this is one of my favorite movies,
I'm gonna suggest you check it out if you haven't already. 
And the Scrivener and I will see you next week!
