HAROLD AND MAUDE and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Who doesn’t love a Manic Pixie Dream Girl? You know, that incredibly attractive, inspired and lively young woman who’s inexplicably but incredibly attracted to a dull, depressed male protagonist? She’s so cute, right? But in like, a totally nonsexual, awkward, supplementary kind of way.

I’ve loved a couple of them, myself. Garden State and Almost Famous, maybe the most common examples of the MPDG, are two of my favorite movies. I also recently saw Harold and Maude, which is arguably a simple variation on the trope; but also, arguably, not. 

Maude (Ruth Gordon) clearly introduces deep meaning (not to mention sexuality) into Harold’s (Bud Cort) boring and, literally, lifeless existence. You could certainly argue that the whole point of her character is to take care of her man, and once she does that, she no longer has a reason to live. You could also, and rightly so, point out that it makes no sense for her spend her last week on Earth with this boring little boy. Wouldn’t a more realistic, more liberated, and less male-dependent woman want to hang with her friends in her last few days of life? But I think these characters are more complicated than that, and the film certainly has more to say than some reiterated message about finding inspiration in the mundane. While Harold and Maude’s relationship could have easily unfolded along this conventional plotline, the actors’ brilliant performances saved this film from becoming a just-another-romantic-comedy.

First of all, Maude is old. She turns eighty towards the end of the film, and while we never learn Harold’s age, he basically looks like a kid. The 60+ year difference between the two characterizes their relationship as at least somewhat unorthodox from the get-go, even when the actors seem to be performing in traditional gender roles. Part of the Manic Pixie Lady’s whole deal is how adorable she is, usually without even noticing her own sexuality – but Maude not only is a-typically beautiful, but she is also acutely aware of how attractive she is to Harold. So even when she is at her most used, her most femininely-secondary to her male counterpart, she still represents a protestation against the typical women depicted in these kinds of relationships.

This dynamic is particularly apparent when the two sleep together for the first time, a sex scene that tastefully substitutes the actual dirty deed with bubbles and fireworks and sunlight, all in true Manic Pixie Dream Girl form. Instead, the actors portray their characters’ activity post-copulation. Bud Cord is sitting upright in bed, awake, alert, and blowing bubbles. Through this movement, which reflects the brilliant firework display that directly precedes this shot, Cort emphasizes Harold’s active role in the relationship, as well as the male active role in sex. Maude herself is sleeping in this scene; Ruth Gordon does not stir at all, juxtaposing Cort’s movements and emphasizing the passive role that most women play in the traditional romantic comedy relationship. Because Gordon takes on such a “feminine” role while Cort simultaneously becomes the active agent in their relationship, this scene proves that Maude, despite her age, is still able to fulfill Harold’s conventional sexual desires as competently as she fulfills his emotional ones. By presenting so unorthodox a couple in such traditional masculine and feminine roles, the actors challenge conventional conceptions of beauty, sexuality, and attraction – a key part of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s whole deal.

The film goes on, in my opinion, to break down the MPDG trope in a second, very different way, this time by addressing these conventional gendered power dynamics themselves. On the night of Maude’s 80^th birthday, Harold surprises her with a private celebration and, though he never actually goes through with it, a plan to propose to her. At the outset of the scene, Cort is again the active performer: he removes her blindfold, leads her in dancing, and even reaches across the screen to remove a tablecloth with a large flourish, allowing his body and his movements to completely dominate the shot. He also kisses her, all while she stands very still and stays relatively quiet throughout the scene. Finally, he hints at his marriage proposal. This is the ultimate example of his activity and her passivity, as he decided to marry her, assumed her consent, and announced it to his mother as a fact – all without informing Maude herself of his plan. At this pivotal moment, however, Gordon tells him (quite kindly) that she took pills to kill herself and will be dead by the end of the day. With this announcement, Cort immediately stops moving. In fact, he seems frozen, an abrupt transition symbolic of the realization that he is not, in fact, the only active partner in the couple, and that Gordon, quite untraditionally, has an agency of her own.

Now, I understand that lots of Manic Pixie Dream Girls die, robbing their partners’ of the enjoyment of their bodies, but leaving their spontaneity behind -- perhaps as a final metaphor for these women's desexualization. Cancer is one thing, however (and I'm thinking, like, A Walk to Remember, here) – suicide is another. Despite claims that Maude is just another Manic Pixie Dream Girl, albeit unexpectedly so, her final actions and control over her own death give her a freedom, at least in my eyes, that traditional female love interests simply do not have.

So, it's hard to discuss this without talking about how Harold and Maude is essentially a film about tackling authoritarianism. I do not believe that this movie, and particularly the actors in it, presents Maude as dominant over Harold in any way. Instead, the film seems to be challenging the idea that a relationship requires one active and one passive agent at all. Both main actors demonstrate these claims through their performances, toppling traditional power dynamics and introducing an alternative, anti-war and anti-authority paradigm of love.