CELEBS « In Which Manic Pixie Meryl Streep Can Do Whatever She Feels Like »
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 9:33AM 
Be That Girl
by QICHEN ZHANG
Meryl, listen. You've got to stop doing things like this. It's enough that you basically doom any other nominee come Hollywood awards season in any year you make a movie, but I draw the line at being nominated twice in one category and then beating yourself for the trophy, shoving it down the real Julia's mouth. Come on. Now you're just being crass.
Neener neener neener!On a serious note, Meryl Streep is probably severely hated in Tinseltown, but not for the obvious Oscar-hogging reasons she's been known for. Although the camera always manages to pan to the losers' faces at the exact moment when they purse their lips in sour jealousy while golf clapping, everyone usually has too much champagne at the afterparty to stay disappointed for long. It's another kind of envy altogether, something less artificial and perhaps more threatening at the same time and stirred by a rare quality. In L.A., it's known as plastic surgery, but most people refer to it as perpetuity.
M-Dawg here does not fool around when it comes to embodying the kind of quirky woman with that certain effusive charm and those specific idiosyncrasies that are somehow not irritating enough to prevent a man from falling in love with her.
Take her role in Out of Africa, for example. A stretch on the definition of manic pixie, perhaps. But below the face value of her portrayal of Karen Blixen, the qualities of the enchanting ingénue are slyly yet clearly embedded. First, Karen leaves a privileged life in Denmark to milk cows in the middle of the Nairobi desert. Then, in a spontaneous fit of pixiedom, she decides to open a school to educate the native people and surround herself with the Maasai. Not to mention some casual sex with a burly, hunting Robert Redford. Adventure, open-minded initiative, and sexual liberation. Did I mention casual sex with Robert Redford, none other than the Horse Whisperer himself? THE HORSE WHISPERER, PEOPLE.
A girl's got mad skills when she can convince a straight man to double as her stylist.Not only does Meryl hold the title of the original manic pixie dream girl, but she does so at an age three times that of one of our generation's most well-known imp Kirsten Dunst (four, if you want to count starting with Dunst's role in The Virgin Suicides as her ultimate pixie performance). Women clearly start counting backwards after a certain age, but Meryl seems to transcend all of time's impositions and triumphs as the quirky maverick in a place where most actresses her age have already resorted to supporting roles as overbearing, shrill mothers who drink to escape the suffocating boredom of marriage.
The subtle and disarming features that she injects into her characters is something few have succeeded at doing (see: Diane Keaton). As a roving reporter on a mission to find the truth about flowers in Adaptation, Meryl flawlessly portrays Susan as a wildly intrepid thrillseeker and manages to perform a sex scene with a very bald Nicholas Cage. Props, girlfriend!
The original indie pixie, complete with romantic sensitivity. Um. Yeah.One caveat: can a character still be a manic pixie dream girl if she's been divorced? After all, in It's Complicated, no matter how easy it was for her to literally charm the pants off of Alec Baldwin, girl's still got too much game to evoke that certain charismatic innocence that loosely defines the woman who can exude that je ne sais quoi allure. But in this age of self-righteous feminism, I am probably obligated to say yes. But as a fan of evidence, I simultaneously offer everyone an example and Diane a redemption for being in a movie with Mandy Moore: Erica Barry in Something's Gotta Give.
You feel me? Alec does.So Meryl. Here's the thing. It's too bad you work the pixie dream girl thing like it's your job. (Oh, wait.) You've got to tone it down. Every woman in Hollywood over the age of 40 hates you. Don't be that girl.
Qichen Zhang is a contributor to This Recording. This is her first appearance in these pages. She is a student at Harvard University. She tumbls here.
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Reader Comments (1)
yr math is bad.
kirsten is currently 27, meryl is currently 60, which would make her roughly twice kirsten's age right now (much closer to twice than three times, which would make meryl 81).
in 1999, when the virgin suicides came out, kirsten was 16 and meryl was 49. that's a 3-fold age difference.
they do offer math classes at harvard, do they not?