Angst Boy vs. La-Di-Da

[rachelmanija]

While watching the indie film Garden State the other night, in which an unnecessarily medicated young man with a dark past romances an aggressively wacky young woman who is a compulsive liar and has a hamster cemetery in her front yard, I realized that they represented two archetypes which I used to often see as a romantic couple in fiction, but haven't come across much lately: the sad, silent, brooding man with the tragic violent past, and the colorfully eccentric motormouth woman who just might actually be insane-- Annie Hall to the nth degree.

They used to be a particular staple of plays and indie films, though Angel's brooding title character set against wacky Fred is another example. But I'm mostly thinking of movies where the crazy woman teaches the depressed hero to Live! and stand in the rain with his arms spread wide and his face tilted up to the sky to indicate that he has finally learned to do so. After which point, depending on just how much indie cred the story has, they either live happily ever after or she goes insane and commits suicide or must be institutionalized, leaving the now-awakened hero with a new appreciation of life.

When I was more involved in theatre, not to mention indie filmmaking, I think I saw about a hundred of those those stories; I recall John Patrick Shanley's Joe vs. the Volcano and about five hundred others by the same author, John Olive's Standing on my Knees, Don Nigro's Seascape with Sharks and Dancer (this one has the lamest dark past I've ever encountered in fiction-- the heroine was traumatized by living by a highway and seeing animals squashed by trucks), David and Lisa, Betty Blue. And I know I saw a lot more of these, but they're now all blending together into a blur of indieness.

I wonder if the wacky woman really does represent some powerful romantic archetype for men, like the angst-ridden man with the dark past seems to for women. And why the two of them matched seemed inescapable in the eighties and early nineties, not to mention the sixties, but then went underground.

I enjoyed Garden State, but I hope it and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind don't herald a resurgence of fictional charmingly strange women who wear eccentric headgear and talk like auctioneers and teach men to experience their emotions and really live. But then, they aren't my fantasy.

Comments

[gastonmonescu.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the wacky woman really does represent some powerful romantic archetype for men

Just us brooding souls who are so in our own heads that we don't really understand the concept of "living" until someone shows us how. And the wacky ones seem to be the only ones optimistic (or reckless) enough to take the plunge.

[tanuki-green.livejournal.com]

In a lot of the 80's movies, there was the main, quirky girl, but there was usually a friend that was quirkier, sometimes older and to be honest, that's the one I always found most intriguing. An example would be Sixteen Candles. The Molly Ringwald character was a bit quirky, but the Annie Pots character was the best.

The wacky girl does appeal to me. I don't know why, but she does. I don't feel that I'm not living life or that I need someone to teach me to live, but there's just something about the girl that isn't into the popular thing, that's perhaps just half a bubble off plumb that will draw me in ever time.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always tended to be the weird chick that the dark, brooding men hung around with. But I've usually not been the romantic lead in that situation, more the best tomboy friend who kicked the guy in the pants and then sent him off to romance the cheerleader.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

After which point, depending on just how much indie cred the story has, they either live happily ever after or she goes insane and commits suicide or must be institutionalized, leaving the now-awakened hero with a new appreciation of life.

Marry me.

I think the archetype of this is Harold and Maude.

[oyceter]

I always find that irritating, because my favorite archetype now is the dark, brooding woman with a tragic past who must be jollied up by a nice, wacky guy.

Ah yes, Arashi and Sorata ^_^.

But this is probably because I like wacky guys myself ;).

[larryhammer]

The wacky girl also appeals to me, but I have problems with the archetype as too often portrayed.

---L.

[naomikritzer]

Oh hey, did you know that going back and reading the archives of a friend's blog is waaaaaaaaaaaay more appealing than calling up Assisted Living facilities? (No dramatic crises in progress, it's just that my grandmother probably has to move and I'm helping my mother with the research legwork.)

ANYWAY

I was blinking at this entry thinking, "how has Rachel not heard the term 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'? Is it really that recent?" So I looked it up and courtesy of Wikipedia: "The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character type in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), describes the MPDG 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".

...I find it fascinating and awesome that you were identifying that archetype, with all its features, a year earlier but without a word for it.