Every so often, a new embodiment of the 'manic pixie dream girl' hits our screens, and collectively we shudder at how insufferable they are. The Bear's Claire (played by Molly Gordon), Carmy's new love interest in season 2, fits the MPDG criteria.
She's cool, she's beautiful, she's effortless. She's smooth and confident, in a quirky and endearing way. But she's got depth, too, obviously! A trait that is illustrated heavy-handedly by the scenes of her training as an emergency doctor; her job seemingly serves no other purpose but to drill home her perfection. Everyone around her loves her, constantly telling Carmy not to mess things up, that she's A Good One.
Claire talks in riddles, and says things like, “Because you're the bear and I remember you.” Her nickname is “Claire Bear”, which couldn't be more on the nose. She's always free to see Carmy, picks up the phone whenever he calls, despite her job being, arguably, more demanding than a chef's. But no! It's all about Carmy, and his internal battle between love and work, work and love.
They have a meet-cute in a supermarket aisle, they have a slow-build romance (she knew him when he was a kid, and always fancied him), they fall in-love quickly. When Carmy gives her a fake number, and explains that his shitty actions were because he was scared of how much he likes her, she forgives him and they move on instantaneously. The Bear's Claire is an archetypal MPDG. And people hate her for it.
“She's too good to be true, because she is too good to be true.”
TikTok creator @delaneysayshello is known for her series ‘Absolutely insufferable female lead of an indie movie', where Delaney produces hard-to-watch skits that remind us of the most reductive MPDG's. A lot of people on social media are pointing out her likeness to Claire. They're not wrong, it's uncanny.
The Bear is incredibly smart and well written, and it has a pool of well-rounded female characters like Ayo Edebiri’s Sydney, Liza Colón-Zayas’s Tina and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Donna. So it begs the question, why? When it comes to The Bear, I believe that we are seeing Claire through Carmy's eyes - not as she actually is. The MPDG exists in popular culture, but she also exists in the minds of men; whilst we know that the MPDG is reductive, and that no woman can fulfil this trope in real life, some men have not yet grasped this. Carmy has not had many relationships, he never went to parties and missed out on being a young man because of his career; so, it's understandable that Claire, his first real love interest, would be someone he idealises. She's too good to be true, because she is too good to be true.
Claire is a fantasy of Carmy's, and her character actually enhances the show's narrative (albeit in an annoying way). Carmy uses her as a distraction, and to scratch his itch for being seen as ‘fun’. But, in reality, he wants to focus on the restaurant. Claire is a symbol of another life, another path he could have taken; a rose-tinted glasses version of domesticated bliss and the ‘perfect’ girlfriend. Maybe in season 3, we'll see a more realistic Claire. Maybe we won't. But one thing's for sure: we need to stop hating on the MPDG.
Back in 2007, the term ‘manic pixie dream girl’ was coined by film critic Nathan Rabin after seeing Elizabethtown. Defined as as a fantasy figure who “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.” In 2014, Rabin wrote a piece titled I'm sorry for coining the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. In which he said “Let’s all try to write better, more nuanced and multidimensional female characters: women with rich inner lives and complicated emotions and total autonomy, who might strum ukuleles or dance in the rain even when there are no men around to marvel at their free-spiritedness. But in the meantime, Manic Pixies, it’s time to put you to rest.”
“I've been a Claire, a Zooey Deschanel, a Kate Hudson; and I have no shame admitting that. As a young woman, men would project their idea of me back to me like a funhouse mirror.”
Molly Gordon's Claire joins a long list of MPDG characters, who all deserve better. Natalie Portman in Garden State; Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer; Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World; Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club; Kate Hudson in Almost Famous; Charlize Theron in A Million Ways to Die in the West; Charlotte Richie in You.
So, even the inventor of the term feels bad for the MPDG, and yet we still continue to turn on her. On social media, commenters of the show have said “I love The Bear but I cannot stand the “perfect girlfriend” archetype that is Claire. She has no character other than unwaveringly supportive and smiley” another added that “rewatching the bear and claire really is the most boring unlikeable indie girl ever created.”
They're not wrong, but rather than hating Claire, we should be hating on the reasons she's created. The MPDG is almost always written by men, or featured in male-directed films. She is born from patriarchy and misogyny, not given the grace of being a real, complex human character, but is only there to serve a man's needs and ego. She is usually a white woman, brunette, fashionable in an effortless and indie way, achingly cool, but also very cute. She is a male fantasy. Claire, to add an even more meta element to the MPDG, is created by the show's protagonist to demonstrate how this trope has seeped into real life.
I've been a Claire, a Zooey Deschanel, a Kate Hudson; and I have no shame admitting that. As a young woman, men would project their idea of me back to me like a funhouse mirror. In turn, because I was not yet wise or old enough to have learnt that male validation was a hapless pursuit, I would pretend to be who they wanted. I would act chill and cool, hand out quippy one-liners in-front of their friends, try and be ‘mysterious’.
Looking back, I feel sympathy for the MPDG of my past, and how much she had internalised misogyny; because this is an understandable, and very common, reaction to living in patriarchy. Let's not hate on Claire for being cast as a MPDG in Carmy's story, she is not the one at fault here.
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