Event overview
Dream Girl, Dream Boy, Dream Gay? The Possibility of ‘Alt Pixies’ in Young Adult
Coined in 2007 by film critic Nathan Rabin, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a quirky, ethereal figure who exists merely as a tool for self-actualisation and has no narrative purpose beyond that of enriching the life of an apathetic, White, male, cisgender, heterosexual, middle-class protagonist. What happens, though, when the Pixie is queer or male?
In this talk, I explore the possibility of what I call ‘Alt Pixies’ – alternative Pixies that go beyond the straight, White, female, middle-class, cisgender trope that typically manifests in literature, media, and popular culture.
In the first half, I explore the potential of a transgender Pixie in Brian Katcher’s Almost Perfect (2009), which tells the story of eighteen-year-old Logan Witherspoon and his relationship with new student, Sage Kendricks, who is revealed to be a transgender girl. I argue that Almost Perfect functions as a site of intersection for the early transgender novel and its related tropes (particularly ‘bury your gays’, the transgender woman as deceiver, and the transgender body as monstrous), the problem novel, and MPDGYA.
In the second half, I continue this exploration of Alt Pixies by examining the Manic Pixie Dream Boy (MPDB). Typically quirky and offbeat, his interest in art, music, or literature indicate his ‘alternative’ masculinity; where the Dream Girl is ‘not like other girls’, seemingly he is ‘not like other boys’.
I argue, though, that this ‘alternative masculinity is not quite so alternative after all: ultimately, the MPDB serves to reinforce (and, indeed, enforce) patriarchal norms. In closing, I will consider what other possibilities for the MPDG are out there. It seems that, although the MPDG may be afforded no future within her own novel, her life in the field of YA studies – and beyond – is very much just beginning.
This seminar is hosted by the Children's and YA Literature Research Forum (CYALRF) within the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths.
Centre for Language, Culture and Learning
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar 2024 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm |
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