As a neurotic male writer who mostly lives in a world of his own making, I am naturally interested in Manic Pixie Dream Girls.
This popular-culture trope has gone through a number of evaluations and criticisms since it was coined in 2007 following the 2005 movie “Elizabethtown,” in which Cameron Diaz plays the archetype of the type.
And, if I’m honest, I hadn’t thought about this for a while, until I discovered that one of the clergy at my church is on Twitter as “Manic Pixie Dream Priest.”
Which led me down a little rabbit hole.
This video does a good job explaining MPDGs and the controversy that has risen up around them, but one part of it made me hit the pause button.
That part, of course, was the part about Greek Mythology.
In the section of the video (12:52) called “Manic Pixie Dream Girls? Or Just Heroines?” the narrator explains that
In some ways, the [MPDG] overlaps with a much older spirit, the Muse. In Greek Mythology, the Muses are the goddesses who bring inspiration to literature and art.
The video then cuts to a clip of my favorite onscreen depiction of the Muses, the gospel quintet in the Disney movie “Hercules.” The narrator resumes:
They may serve man in that sense, but they’re far more powerful than mere mortals.
This part is used as an intro to the character of the “ethereal bandaid” Penny Lane from the Movie “Almost Famous.”
But whoa, wait a minute. Let’s rewind to the Muses. Are they the best example of an ancient Greek MPDG?
The Muses are indeed inspirations for poets (both women and men) and so is the MPDG. But the Muses are almost never actual characters in stories. They are invoked, called upon, prayed to, revered, and respected, but they themselves have very little personality beyond one very famous instance in the Theogony by Hesiod.
No, if you want to find an actual MPDG in Greek Mythology, to me there’s no better example than the goddess Aphrodite.
Aphrodite is popularly known as the goddess of love and beauty in Greek Mythology, and most people know her as the one who, in tandem with her son Eros (or Cupid), causes people to fall in love.
That’s a start. But there’s more.
In one of the loveliest poems we have from the ancient world, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the story is told of how Zeus determines to knock Aphrodite down a peg or two in the power department. She is able to make even him fall in love, and that rankles him. So he shows his power by making her fall in love with a human, just as she did with him.
The human is named Anchises, a prince from the city of Troy. Though he is a prince, he is sort of a smelly shepherd type, which is the whole point from Zeus’s point of view. He wants to humiliate her.
But she makes the best of it by putting on her best MPDG persona. Listen to this description of her (as Natalie Portman once said, “It’ll change your life”!):
And Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus stood before [Anchises], being like a pure maiden in height and mien, that he should not be frightened when he took heed of her with his eyes. Now when Anchises saw her, he marked her well and wondered at her mien and height and shining garments. For she was clad in a robe out-shining the brightness of fire, a splendid robe of gold, enriched with all manner of needlework, which shimmered like the moon over her tender breasts, a marvel to see. Also she wore twisted brooches and shining earrings in the form of flowers; and round her soft throat were lovely necklaces.
Beautiful, stylish, well-dressed, young, and above all, unthreatening. Check, check, and check. Note also that she comes up to him, rather than the opposite, a definite characteristic of MPDGs that the video emphasizes.
Like boyfriends of MPDGs, Anchises doesn’t start off thinking he is going to get lucky with this dream girl. Instead, he accurately sees her as a goddess. He says:
I will make you an altar upon a high peak in a far seen place, and will sacrifice rich offerings to you at all seasons. And do you feel kindly towards me and grant that I may become a man very eminent among the Trojans, and give me strong offspring for the time to come.
As the video remarks,
Even if they’re played by supernaturally beautiful actresses, men often react to their seductive whimsey with reluctance, or bafflement.
So Aphrodite has to play the harmless ingenue:
Anchises, most glorious of all men born on earth, know that I am no goddess: why do you liken me to the deathless ones? Nay, I am but a mortal, and a woman was the mother that bare me.
She then goes on to offer herself to him as a bride, and a very advantageous one at that, with a fictional father who will give him “gold aplenty” and other nice bride gifts. There seem to be no strings attached. The MPDG Aphrodite has magically appeared and it is the smelly shepherd’s lucky day.
But the poet makes sure to note that it isn’t the gifts that convince Anchises to go to bed with Aphrodite: it’s her legendary power:
When she had so spoken, the goddess put sweet desire in his heart. And Anchises was seized with love…
And there’s a very nice paragraph, very cinematic in its way, of the beautiful, sexy moment they share in Anchises’ cave as they consummate their desire.
The next morning, of course, it’s back to Aphrodite the powerful goddess, since she has done what Zeus wanted her to do.
But her MPDG duty is not quite finished.
She explains to Anchises what has happened and how this is not really that big a thing, since mortals and immortals have a long history of coupling. She can’t be his wife—it wouldn’t be right—but as consolation she will bear him a son, the demigod Aeneas, who ends up as the founder of the Roman race.
So Anchises doesn’t need to support or love the mother of his child. She goes on her way, not really needing anything from him at all, but giving him a lot in return.
Shades of that supernaturally beautiful woman Charlize Theron in “Sweet November,” where she changes Keanu Reeves’ life and then tragically but magically disappears.
For a Greek myth, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is unusually gentle, emphasizing the power of Aphrodite as a creative rather than destructive force. But the hymn also helps us moderns to understand that the wonderful qualities of some real women to be simultaneously quirky, outgoing, and emotionally resilient is actually quite extraordinary, dare I say even goddess-like.
And what about the Manic Pixie Dream Priest? Odd as it sounds, the moniker makes sense. Go find her account and you’ll see.