The Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in fiction has both captivated and frustrated audiences for the better part of almost two decades. The Oxford Dictionary defines the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as “a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist.”
Popular examples of these stock female characters in films include Kirsten Dunst’s Claire Colburn in Elizabethtown, Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Natalie Portman in Garden State, and Zooey Deschanel’s titular character in (500) Days of Summer, among others (although some argue the latter is a misuse of the trope – but I disagree). The term was coined in 2007 by film critic Nathan Rabin in his review of Elizabethtown for the A.V. Club, where he described Kirsten Dunst’s Claire as a character 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.” The Manic Pixie Dream Girl was conceived as a figure for men to project their fantasies onto, adding intrigue and adventure to their lives at the expense of her own narrative, which is disregarded at best, if not ignored entirely. She’s always seen and never heard.
And this harmful stereotype has real-life consequences for many women outside of fiction, something that New York-based musician and singer/songwriter Brea Fournier of The Dream Ballet knows all too well. Her debut album, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, is a concept album that interrogates and excoriates the trope, drawing on her own personal experiences with men who treated her as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, only to be disappointed when they found out that she was a flawed human being and not some magical, vivacious antidote to their boring lives. The album is painfully self-aware and hyperreal with its world-building, with song titles like “Avant-Garde & Totally Unique,” “The Masochist,” and “Petty Stuff,” which are interspersed with theatrical monologue interludes about revenge, being afraid of stillness, and the crushing realization that the masochistic part of her sometimes secretly enjoys the attention that these men lavish upon her, despite knowing how toxic it is.
Brea Fournier sat down with A Grrrl’s Two Sound Cents over coffee to delve into the complexities of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and discuss her latest single, “What Happens in The End”—a feel-good indie rock track that pays homage to The Strokes and Rilo Kiley with its catchy melodies and angular riffs. As our conversation unfolded, we quickly realized we had a whole lot in common. We both wrote college essays on how Courtney Love has been unfairly maligned by the media, shared a mutual disdain for (500) Days of Summer, and, of course, bonded over our love for The Strokes.
How and when did you start making music?
Well I really can’t remember a time when I didn’t. My mom was a dancer, so she put me in dance lessons when I was three. Very shortly after that I started auditioning for musicals. The director of a show I was in noticed very early on that I was observing the older girls very closely and always imitating their singing. So I was put in classical voice lessons when I was eight, and I did that all the way through high school. I eventually started writing my own songs. I went to an arts high school, so any opportunity I could find to showcase those songs, I would take it.
By the time I reached my senior year I started playing in bands. When it came time to apply to colleges, I ended up choosing the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU. That was where I really developed a lot of my craft, but now I’m starting to bring musical theater vibes back into my songs, which is a big full circle moment.
Why The Dream Ballet?
I wanted something that rhymed with my name, cause a lot of people have no idea how to pronounce it correctly. I started performing under my own name in 2019, but once we got a core group going I needed something to define it as a band and not just me playing my songs with a backup band. My bassist Noah originally suggested we go under Brea Fournier and The Dowry, but once we landed on Dream Ballet it was perfect.
I started having the same experiences with men over and over again where they treated me as if my free-spirited personality only existed to seduce them, and then they were extremely taken aback when they realized that’s just who I am.
Brea Fournier
Your debut album ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ really delves into your personal experience being treated as an MPDG in your dating life. How did the culmination of all those experiences inform the direction you took on the record?
It was all really happening during my college years. The minute I moved to New York from Utah I was instantly thrown into the world of urban dating life, and it was all so foreign to me. As someone who has always known who I am and has never made any sacrifices with regards to my identity, I started having the same experiences with men over and over again where they treated me as if my free-spirited personality only existed to seduce them, and then they were extremely taken aback when they realized that’s just who I am.
I always knew I was gonna make a concept album, because all of my favorite albums are concept albums. It felt like a really nice opportunity to hyperbolize my story, but also to fully personify a trope in the movies that I identified with so closely. It felt like the perfect way to really confront the issue in a self-aware way and also do justice to an experience that a lot of feminine-identified people relate to.
Tell me a little more about “What Happens In The End?” How did the song come about?
It’s funny, because Manic Pixie Dream Girl was such a cerebral feminist manifesto, and after recording that and promoting it for so long, I really felt like I needed to take a beat and just write some feel-good songs for a minute. It’s funny, I had that riff in my head for maybe six months, and then I went on a solo vacation to San Francisco. So part of getting out of the city and going on that vacation really made me focus, because the only thing I had to do was write the lyrics to go along with the riff. Because the last project was so heavy and dealt with really complex issues, we really wanted to experiment with how things would sound if we arranged it as a band, recorded it, and then put it out without really thinking about it.
So I came back home and we recorded it, then we performed it for the first time at a show at Rubulad in Bushwick. Then we recorded it a few weeks later and we put it out. It’s interesting because I normally would have so much time to stew over a song and change a million things, but it was a cool experiment to simply give ourselves the creative freedom to do this seamlessly and just have fun with it without putting so much pressure on ourselves. I’ve always loved The Strokes, so I was going for that angular guitar sound with a really simple and catchy melody.
Oh absolutely, the riff is very Strokes-y. Well now I must ask: Have you ever run into Fab Moretti at a show? He’s still a big pillar of the indie rock scene here, which is insanely cool.
No, but I did meet some guy at some Irish bar on the Upper West Side who used to be really close with Nikolai [Fraiture], but I guess they had this crazy falling out. But he was telling me all these crazy stories, and apparently Nikolai wrote some music for one of his short films as well. It was fascinating.
Fuck, Marry, Kill: Manic Pixie Dream Girl edition. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Elizabethtown?
Easy. Kill Elizabethtown, marry Eternal Sunshine, and fuck Scott Pilgrim.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl was such a cerebral feminist manifesto, and after recording that and promoting it for so long, I really felt like I needed to take a beat and just write some feel-good songs for a minute.
Brea Fournier
In your opinion, is (500) Days of Summer an irresponsible perpetuation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope or a self-aware critique of it?
That movie does not read “self-aware” at all to me. If you’re gonna satirize something, it has to be obvious. You’re not poking fun at anything if you’re just doing the trope. Calling something “satire” doesn’t make it satire just because you say so. I don’t see [500 Days of Summer] being any different from Elizabethtown or literally any other Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie. I guess they do acknowledge what’s happening, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t perpetuating it.
Definitely. And it’s so obvious that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character is the villain. But did they know that while they were writing the script?
Absolutely not. The writers themselves have said that JGL was playing a self-insert character, and that’s the problem. I truly don’t believe we’re ever going to get anything remotely criticizing the trope until it’s actually written from a woman’s perspective.
Who would you book on your dream lineup if you could play a show with anybody you wanted?
Blondie, Paramore, Hole because I’m a big Courtney Love sympathizer… I actually wrote a whole essay in college about how the media villainizing her was 100% misogynistic.
You’re kidding. I literally wrote that same essay my freshman year!
Holy shit, we should compare. That’s crazy. Another band I would love on my dream lineup is Dog Party, who I’m about to go on the road with. I’m a massive fan of them, so that tour is going to be so much fun. I would say The Strokes, but my biggest fear is Julian [Casablancas] showing up super wasted and embarrassing everybody, so that’s a very tentative choice. I would also book my good friend Lady Lychee.
What does the rest of the year have in store for Brea Fournier & The Dream Ballet?
I’m going on this tour and we just released the new song “What Happens In The End?” so give it a spin. We also did a cabaret performance at the City Winery in March, and our taped performance is coming out soon. And of course, more shows, writing music and doing the thing. Thanks for having me!
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