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TUESDAY!
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Call: #734-418-4115
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ACROSS
1 __ for the course
4 Proverb
9 Wire fence
stickers
14 Winner of the
most 2016
Olympic medals
15 Prize founder
16 Accustom (to)
17 __ Tin Tin
18 “We’re done
here. Please
leave”
20 For mature
viewers
22 Foot prettifier,
briefly
23 Miss. neighbor
24 Grape-Nuts
cereal brand
26 Big Board
letters
30 Lone source of
local
entertainment
33 Pop in a glass
34 Wonder
35 Longtime name
in Syrian
leadership
36 Prereq for a
lifeguard
37 Fred Flintstone’s
boss
40 CBS logo
41 Yoga position
43 Conservationist’s
prefix
44 Part of 14-
Across: Abbr.
45 Eschew
modern
conveniences
49 Worrisome
grades
50 Misplace
51 Tennis do-over
52 Open house
offering
54 Great suffering
57 Like the child of
your first cousin,
to you
62 Great Lakes’ __
Canals
63 Baseball legend
Satchel
64 Dior skirt style
65 “__ the
President’s
Men”
66 Does’ mates
67 Cares for
68 Sound on Old
MacDonald’s
farm
DOWN
1 Sound of a
contented kitty
2 Great Wall setting
3 Deliver a tirade
4 Sometime soon
5 “Let’s Make a
Deal” selection
6 __ Dhabi
7 Emerald, e.g.
8 Slip by
9 Texas city of 1.3
million, familiarly
10 Consecrates with
oil
11 It may be unearned
12 Compadre
13 Clinch, with “up”
19 Mythical
Himalayan
21 Singer Fitzgerald
24 Feline feet
25 Brunch servings
27 Ill-tempered
Looney Tunes
character
28 Persuaded
29 Week or rear
add-on
30 “My bad!”
31 Needlefish
32 Scottish denial
33 Nearly boil
37 Long March leader
in 1930s China
38 Tylenol target
39 One may be
stubbed
42 Retirement fund
44 Belligerent god
46 Chimney part
47 Word processing
category
involving page
dimensions
48 Moves smoothly
53 Lodes and lodes
54 Patch up
55 Hershey’s
caramel candy
56 Modern-day
carpe diem
spelled out at the
starts of 18-, 30-,
45- and 57-Across
57 Black __: covert
missions
58 D.C. ballplayer
59 Spy novel org.
60 “¡Viva el
matador!”
61 __ Scully, Dodger
announcer for 67
seasons
By John Lieb
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/25/16
10/25/16
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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6A — Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
T
he Manic Pixie Dream
Girl has been part of
pop culture for as long
as men have looked to women
to occupy a two-dimensional
role in their lives. The feminine
trope acquired that quirky
name when Nathan Rabin, a
film critic for The A.V. Club,
used that phrase to describe
Kirsten Dunst’s character in
“Elizabethtown” (2005). He
called her “that bubbly, shallow
cinematic creature that exists
solely in the fevered imagina-
tions of sensitive writer-direc-
tors to teach broodingly soulful
young men to embrace life
and its infinite mysteries and
adventures.”
Having never actually seen
“Elizabethtown,” I cannot
attest to the truth of this state-
ment. However, I do know a
MPDG when I see one: they’re
everywhere. In fact, they seem
to be multiplying, waltzing
with their ukuleles from film to
TV show to music video, from
Hollywood to Sundance to
Cannes to SAC 310.
It’s great that people are
more aware of how female
characters are often written as
solely two-dimensional vehi-
cles for male enlightenment.
But recently, as more and more
female characters are slapped
with the disparaging label of
MPDG, there has been some
backlash — and deservedly so.
People, including Nathan Rabin
himself, who has said that he
regrets coining the phrase,
are starting to think it’s unfair
that every female character
who possesses some weird trait
or unusual hobby or obscure
taste in music is labeled as
MPDG. If girls are MPDGs
when they’re different, but
basic when they’re “normal,”
how do you write a non-MPDG
female character who doesn’t
too closely resemble a piece of
Wonder Bread?
While there’s no shortage of
Manic Pixie Dream Girls pop-
ping up, the quickness of the
gavel to label a female charac-
ter a MPDG — thus shrinking
opportunities to believe in
creative, complex female char-
acters — isn’t the real crux of
the issue.
The problem is that the term
Manic Pixie Dream Girl is
starting to become an insult in
itself wielded against women,
not the men who use them. The
whole point of the label is to
hold writers accountable for
using women as plot drivers,
bringers of male epiphanies or
adventuresses who brighten
the lives of the men they laugh-
ingly lead by the hand into the
horizon (or don’t: see “500
Days of Summer” for an exam-
ple). Instead, it has become
a quick, culturally relevant,
in-the-know way to criticize
women. This is especially
relevant to how it relates to
aesthetics. The point of Manic
Pixie Dream Girl is not to
criticize a woman’s wardrobe
or hair or makeup choices; it
never has been, but that is what
it has devolved into.
By focusing too much on aes-
thetics and allowing the term
to be used to criticize female
characters in a vacuum without
analyzing how they’re used
by the men in the story, we’re
forgetting the point. What used
to be a term used to criticize
writers and directors for using
women solely as props has now
become a term to demean or
dismiss the women themselves.
I have even heard people
call real women — women they
know, are friends with, are dat-
ing — Manic Pixie Dream Girls.
The most obvious example of
this would be Zooey Deschanel,
who has become the poster girl
for MPDGs. The actor herself
has been referred to by this
label, starting from when she
was the undeniable MPDG
in “500 Days of Summer” to
the recurring Saturday Night
Live sketch “Bein’ Quirky with
Zooey Deschanel” to even her
character in “New Girl.” While
her character in the 2009
movie was absolutely a MPDG
— her only role to lead Joseph
Gordon-Levitt to emotional
awakenings — her character
in “New Girl” is not. And the
SNL sketch doesn’t make fun of
the idea of MPDGs, but rather
takes Deschanel’s character
traits and holds them up to
mockery.
Real women can’t be Manic
Pixie Dream Girls, because that
term refers to a construct built
by men. Calling a real woman
a MPDG for any reason — her
wardrobe, her taste in music,
her favorite books, whatever
— is essentially turning her
into two-dimensional arche-
type. Please, for the love of
the nine muses — all of whom
were women, who would’ve
thought? — don’t refer to a real
woman as a Manic Pixie Dream
anything.
Ross Putnam, a producer
with a Twitter account that
went viral — @femscriptin-
tros — helped shine a spotlight
on the origins of this problem
when he started tweeting
“intros for female leads in
actual scripts” that he has read,
changing all of the names to
Jane.
Some of my personal favor-
ites include: “JANE stares into
camera through intense eyes
— she’s beautiful but hard, like
a layer of humanity has been
scraped away,” “Jane (late 20s)
sits hunched over a microscope.
She’s attractive, but too much
of a professional to care about
her appearance,” “All heads
turn to fine JANE (28) in the
doorway: stunning and trying
her best to hide it” and finally,
“A gorgeous woman, JANE, 23,
is a little tipsy, dancing naked
on her big bed, as adorable as
she is sexy. *BONUS PTS FOR
BEING THE 1ST LINE.”
The worst part is that not all
of these characters would be
described as MPDGs, because
some of them may just be side-
kicks or non-romantic leads or
just happy neurotypicals. Not
every single one of these char-
acter intros have to do with
the woman’s attractiveness or
her relationship to her physical
appearance, but the vast major-
ity do. And these are real films.
If even the intros to a character
hold nothing of substance, how
is the character supposed to?
The MPDG trope isn’t the
only archetype or misogynis-
tic weak writing tool that still
plagues our media, but the
creation and consumption of
trope itself coupled with the
flawed criticism of it is one of
the most insidious problems in
the industry.
Kaufman is moving to New York
on a whim. To start a new life with
her, email sophkauf@umich.edu.
Manic Pixie Dream
Girls gone wild
The popular phrase should be about bad writing, not real women
DO YOU PRONOUNCE ‘THEATRE’
WITH A BRITISH ACCENT?
DO YOU READ THE NEW YORKER MORE
THAN YOU TEXT YOUR PARENTS?
DO YOU LIKE CHICKENS?
Then Join Daily Arts Community Culture!
Email ajtheis@umich.edu and
katjacqu@umich edu for information
on applying to Daily Arts.
As climate change is a hugely
complicated
and
multifaceted
issue, it’s difficult to create a com-
prehensive
look
into all of its causes
and implications.
However, “Before
the Flood” does
an impressive job
of showcasing the
multiple perspec-
tives surrounding
climate change, as
well as its real-time impacts and
possible solutions. Oscar Award
winner, United Nations Ambassa-
dor for Peace and slick man about
town Leonardo DiCaprio (“The
Revenant”) partners with Nation-
al Geographic to create a terrify-
ing and provocative exposition of
climate change.
The documentary begins with
a look at the industrial side of cli-
mate change, revealing the world’s
dependence on fossil fuel indus-
tries for global energy systems.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. is revealed
as one of the major consumers of
energy and subsequent emitters
of fossil fuels, providing a much-
needed slap in the face to the issue
and consequences of American
consumerism. The film constantly
reinforces the massive scale and
harmful effects of the fossil fuel
industries. However, it sometimes
falls short in explaining exactly
how they operate, instead assum-
ing the viewer understands these
processes.
One of the major achievements
of the film is that it goes beyond
attempting to convince the view-
er that climate change exists;
instead, it presents the indisput-
able science and moves on from
any discussion of its validity. The
film does address the many biases
in politics and the media, with
clips of Republican politicians and
newscasters deny-
ing the existence of
climate change. The
documentary
suc-
ceeds in revealing
a terrifying reality
of the number and
power of climate
change
deniers,
showing gridlock in
a Congress stuffed with ignorant
policymakers blocking legislation.
The public, in turn, is force-fed the
illusion that climate change is a
debatable issue.
The brilliance of “Before the
Flood” lies in the way it shows
how all these perspectives are
intertwined. The film uncovers
the practice of fossil fuel corpora-
tions paying people with scientific
or political credentials to deny cli-
mate change and lobby Congress
to block any climate change legis-
lation. In short, politics is rife with
institutional corruption in favor of
corporate interest. This influences
the media and the public perspec-
tive, adding to public ignorance of
the very real and immediate prob-
lem of climate change.
The documentary also does a
nice job widening the lens from
American politics to the global
environmental and social effects
of climate change. With gorgeous
footage from all over the globe,
Leonardo DiCaprio explores the
melting of the polar ice caps, the
flooding of agricultural lands in
India and the devastation of the
pacific islands. Testimony from
real people in real places works
to put this issue into a digestible
context, reinforcing the fact that
climate change is affecting land-
scapes and people in real time.
Furthermore, the film brilliantly
captures one bitter paradox, that
those who contribute to climate
change the least are the ones most
effected. This crushing reality is
necessary to understand but leaves
the upper middle class American
viewer feeling powerless.
The film rounds out with an
exploration of solutions. Almost
gratuitously,
President
Barack
Obama slides in with his charac-
teristically presidential optimism,
reinforcing the hope that educat-
ing the masses will elicit change.
Economists and other officials
discuss a carbon tax to incentivize
clean energy use, while reinforc-
ing following the example of world
leaders in renewable energy. Even
the Pope endorses climate change
and calls for global systematic
restructuring.
Despite these possible solu-
tions, Leo remains heavily cynical;
the film ends with the bone-chill-
ing driving point that the U.S.
and the world has the capacity to
reverse climate change, but lacks
the political will. The documen-
tary’s main failing lies in its final
confusing placing of responsibil-
ity – is it the people’s job to change
policy through careful consumer-
ism or careful voting? Does it go
higher, with the need for nations
to implement clean energy sys-
tems? Is it both, or something else?
The effect of this confusion is an
overall documentary that is cap-
tivating, thought-provoking and
inspiring – but ultimately over-
whelming.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
“2 Revenant 2 Furious”
A-
“Before the Flood”
National
Geographic
DiCaprio saves the world
FILM REVIEW
SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Gender & Media Columnist
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
“Hey I just met you and this is crazy, but could you hold my pet chinchilla?”
GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN
SYDNEY COHEN
Daily Arts Writer