Her grave is what the Manic Pixie Dream Girl stands on. Ophelia’s story is eminent to Hamlet, but she does not exist without him she exists to serve the ideals of men and, in failing that, has to pay the price with her sanity and then her life. These two polarising men and their behaviour towards her quite literally drove her to madness, and yet her depiction in five scenes of Hamlet is merely seen as a tragic story of a young girl who is either infantilised or sexualised, but most of all, her conviction for love for pleasure is often overshadowed by fetishising her picturesque death. She was forced to choose between her love for Hamlet and her duty as a daughter. Her boyfriend had madness that the culture suggests had a method in it, and her father’s expectations of her are read as the product of their time. Ophelia was Hamlet’s girlfriend who was forced to choose between her toxic boyfriend and her strict idealistic father. Even the gendered lens of understanding Hamlet has also seen her as one-dimensional. In the initial readings of Hamlet, one may not strike a lot of complexities in her persona. The word Ophelia means “to offer”-Ophelia was an eternal lover who is used as a metaphor for being a fool in love, often neglecting her conviction and individual story. More often than not, this eternal assistance to the hero’s narratives is also portrayed as the all-consumable muse-a trope that’s been overdone but has finally come close to its expiry date. Ophelia walked so that Tara from Tamasha could run. And more importantly, that that person doesn’t need to be perfect.One thing that is often lost in translation is how Shakespeare created the heroine Ophelia as a road map for the manic pixie dream girl complex in our culture. Surely, there is other meaning to this song, but for me it’s about realizing that the perfect girl I always had in mind is merely a product of Hollywood and Bollywood bullshit. His words always seem true, like what’s he’s singing about comes from “ a secret place where no one dares to go” ( King of Carrot Flowers Part I). When I listen to Mangum perform “ My Dream Girl Don’t Exist,” I feel those same sentiments speaking to me through his voice. So, I would like to say my official fuck you to films like The Notebook and Twilight: FUCK YOU!Īnyway. I mean, I think I would have totally dealt with pretty much all of my break-ups better if I grew up watching 500 Days of Summer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or High Fidelity instead of all the other crap that made me believe in something that didn’t really exist (there’s a great scene in 500 Days of Summer that elaborates on this). If anything, they’re creating unrealistic expectations for the naïve and ignorant, ultimately making break-ups and rejection all the more difficult to deal with. It’s bullshit because these songs and movies aren’t doing any favors to the kids who experience them. Growing up, listening to a bunch of love songs and watching countless rom-coms, I don’t think I was alone in creating an overly romanticized picture of “the dream girl” for myself.
Jeff Mangum’s voice exudes a vulnerability that few other vocalists have.
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