This month in The Rom-Com Project, I’m looking at romantic comedies that fall into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl category. Usually, I save my wrap-ups for the end of the month, but occasionally I have more complex thoughts about individual movies and will want to write about them in individual posts. (500) Days of Summer is one such movie. I saw this movie in the theaters when it first came out in 2007 and loved it. After watching it for the second time, I still loved it, but for a different reason.
The first time I watched (500) Days of Summer, I saw the film as a story about two people who had a good relationship while it lasted but ultimately were not each other’s The One. After watching it again, I saw the film as a story about a misguided hopeless romantic who falls into a self-indulgent funk after a breakup, mopes obnoxiously for a while, but ultimately gets over it and moves on with his life.
One of the strengths of (500) Days of Summer is the way it allows and encourages us to empathize with Tom and laugh at him at the same time. There are moments where I truly felt sorry for him because I remember how I felt when my heart was broken. There are moments where I laughed at him because he was moping and grieving for an inappropriate length of time, and then stopped laughing and cringed because I thought, “I didn’t act like that back in college, did I?” And then blushed because suddenly Tom’s moping seemed all too familiar for comfort.
Ultimately, Tom has to accept that Summer is not The One, she never was The One, and that he needs to move on with his life. It’s an unusually healthy plot for a romantic comedy.
What I object to, however, is the idea that Tom was the only person in the wrong.
I’ve seen some feminist criticism of (500) Days of Summer that has criticized Tom for having unrealistic expectations of Summer while defending her for being upfront with him from the beginning. After all, she told him that she didn’t believe in love and that she didn’t want a relationship, so he has no right to bethat upset when she ends things with him – right?
Well, that criticism didn’t sit right with me the first time I watched the film, and I agree with it even less the second time. I think the assessment of Tom is correct – he put unrealistic expectations onto Summer and wanted her to be someone that she wasn’t. The fact that he couldn’t see beyond that is his own fault. But I also couldn’t help but think, several times, “Wow, Summer’s kind of a jerk.”
Please note my choice of phrase. She’s not a harpy bitch. She’s not the worst human being of all time. She’s not a soul-sucking succubus who crushes men’s hearts for fun and then laughs as she eats them alive. But she’s kind of a jerk.
Seriously, who invites an ex-boyfriend-of-sorts to a party, barely talks to him all evening, and lets him find out she’s engaged by having him glimpse her ring from across a crowded room?
I’ll tell you who: someone who’s kind of a jerk!
Now, as I said before, Tom is unquestionably responsible for his own heartbreak. Summer told him that she didn’t believe in love, didn’t want a boyfriend, and wanted something casual. He agreed to her conditions, but clearly took it for granted that she would eventually change her mind. That’s not fair to her, and he certainly set himself up. But I think Summer equally took for granted that Tom’s feelings wouldn’t change, that he would be able to keep things casual and not develop a stronger attachment to her, because that’s what she wanted him to do.
My favorite sequence of the movie is where Tom goes to Summer’s party and the story is split into two screens showing the difference between Tom’s expectations of the evening and the reality of the evening. The differences between “expectations” and “reality” are subtle at first but become more pronounced over the night. I bet if we saw Summer’s split-screen, we’d see Tom enthusiastically congratulate her on her engagement and promise that they’d always be friends, when the reality is his abrupt departure from her apartment.
Ultimately, I think Summer was dishonest about her feelings – not in a horrible, unforgivable way, or even an intentionally misleading way. But she came across to me as someone who wanted to reap the benefits of a romantic-esque relationship without actually committing to anything until she knew how she really felt about Tom.
And trust me, the last thing I want to do is participate in Nice Guy apologia. But I’ve been a Tom before, getting unrealistically excited and hopeful after meeting someone interesting and setting myself up for a fall, where I’ve been an active participant in breaking my own heart – but at the same time, I’d have a Summer who would kiss me at a party and then say he can’t pursue anything “right now,” while still sending series of flirty text messages and calling me after I wrote a Facebook status about dating. I’m more than willing to accept responsibility for my part in getting crushed, but my Summer is still partially to blame for sending mixed messages.
The bottom line is that leading someone on, even unintentionally, is a not-nice thing to do regardless of sex or gender. And I can’t help but feel that if the sexes/genders were reversed in this film, if a woman named Tina had fallen for a guitarist named Steve in (500) Days of Strummer and Steve acted the way Summer did, some feminist criticism would be more sympathetic to Tina than it is to Tom. (I’m saying “some” because obviously feminism is not a monolith and feminist reactions to this movie are varied.)
In the end, I loved this movie because the two characters who had such unrealistic expectations for each other didn’t end up together. And they didn’t end in bitterness or hate. Nor did they end with the implication that they were each other’s true loves all along, and that they were permanently separated by fate because it’s too late oh noes! No, they said goodbye, on peaceful terms, and moved on with their lives. I wish more movies about relationships ended like that.
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I really enjoyed the movie, but I kept getting the feeling that I was supposed to see Summer as a harpy, man-eating bitch because she refused to do what Manic Pixie Dream Girls are supposed to do (i.e. fix everything in the broken man’s life and forever be his inspiration to go on to do great things.) That feeling that I was being steered toward that conclusion made me want to rebel against it, so as I was watching the movie, I ended up feeling much more sympathy for Summer and much less for Tom than I would if I hadn’t felt pushed towards the opposite. You are absolutely right that Summer is kind of a jerk, but I wanted to be on her side because it felt like the movie maker wasn’t.
And the sad thing is, I probably wouldn’t have felt that way if the text intro hadn’t ended with the word, “Bitch.” That hit me in the gut the first time I saw it, and I was instantly on the defensive watching this movie. I think without the text intro, I would have seen this as a pretty fair and even nearly realistic Rom Com.
I definitely understand that. The way I interpreted the opening was that it was a play on the typical disclaimer and maybe a bit of the filmmaker making fun of himself for being immature. “I’m going to pretend I’m above pettty revenge through storytelling…but who am I kidding, I’m not at all.”
…That is probably not how the disclaimer was intended, heh. But that’s how I felt when I first saw it and that initial impression is hard to erase on a gut level even if I know better from an intellectual ending.
I guess I don’t think Summer was meant to be hated because I’m so used to seeing the Nice Guy story end with the lady who broke his heart begging him back, and he spurns her for his hotter, newer girlfriend. Summer, on the other hand, gets her happy ending. And there are enough times in the movie where characters tell Tom, “The problem is YOU,” that I don’t see it necessarily as us being meant to hate her. His blind date calls him out on his behavior and so does his overly wise little sister.
I agree. I was the Tom in my last relationship which lasted 10 years because I kept expecting my “Summer” to change. He didn’t. Sometimes two people are just simply a bad match. I adored him and he still felt the urge to keep looking. He even told me at year 5 that he did not believe in marriage and would never marry. My advice to any person in love is to listen to your gut and when your love tells you this kind of negative stuff, walk the other way and never go back. Your feelings MUST be mutual for a relationship to work.
Most people are a lot easier on Summer than I am. I completely agree with you assessment that Summer wants to reap the benefits of a romantic relationship without committing. In my opinion, she clearly leads him on and spends a lot of time with him doing boyfriend/girlfriend things. She clearly sees that he is falling for her and she comes on to him in a big way (kissing him in the copy room etc.). Is Tom needy, whiny and unrealistic? Yes. But that’s no excuse to feed in to his delusion like Summer does.
I really enjoy this movie because I’ve been in both the Summer position and the Tom. Although I didn’t keep beating a dead horse the way Tom does I can definitely relate to his confusion about her mixed messages. When I was the Summer in the situation I definitely didn’t lead the guy on or use him the way Summer does and I think people like Summer (men or women) who lead people on can leave a lot of broken hearts and bitterness in their path.
I enjoy your analysis a lot because I’m glad I’m not the only one who has problems with the way Summer treats him. Most women I’ve talked to are completely on her side and I’m afraid most men I know would think she’s just a heartbreaking witch.
It’s a very interesting movie.
Maybe the women you talk to feel compelled to defend Summer because we don’t ever get inside her head and only Tom really gets to tell “his side” of the story? And I think a lot of women are sick and tired of hearing things like “the bitch broke my heart” and look at it that way.
I understand both of those points of view, but I also feel like saying to my friends who take her side, “Come on, if a guy dated one of our girlfriends and treated her the way Summer treated Tom, we’d think he was a total asshole who led her on.” And we’d also think our girlfriend was stupid.
For me it all comes down to the part where he tells her that he doesn’t need labels but he needs consistency, and she says, “I can’t give you that. No one can.” And that’s just total bullshit. For all Tom’s faults, he’s at least being honest about his feelings, and she’s basically saying that she’s going to continue to give him mixed messages. Which is a shitty thing to do!
Of course, Tom was well within his power to end it right then and there, and the fact that he stayed in the relationship is his fault, not Summer’s. But again, that’s why I liked the movie so much. They were both wrong. 🙂
>>Of course, Tom was well within his power to end it right then and there, and the fact that he stayed in the relationship is his fault, not Summer’s.<<
My problem w/ that and with Summer is he DID end the relationship right then and there, the relationship w/o a label was off the table he made that perfectly clear and she still showed up wanting to be with him/sleep with him at his apartment which I think is a tacit acceptance of his terms to continue seeing each other as his GIRLFRIEND. Which is not to say Tom isn't still responsible for his own happiness/unhappiness with their relationship, he totally is because his romantic idealism made it impossible for him to see Summer for who she really was and what she really wanted.
One of my favorite things about the movie is that the director is totally acknowledging that it was his own immaturity about women/relationships that lead him to be so bitter about Summer, that indeed he didn't treat her as her own person and instead she was just a character in the movie (musical) about his life. I think that is so true when you're young that people aren't actually "real" to you and exist mostly as projections of what you think they are or want them to be.
I’ve seen friends on both sides of this type of relationship, so I think it is a successful movie in that it has a different kind of relationship story and I like that they don’t get together at the end.
People are imperfect, and often selfish or self absorbed and unable to see things from the other perspective or have the proper expectations of their partners. It sucks but it’s life, and at least in the movie they do move on with their lives, having learned. I assume Summer has learned a lot from Tom as well, and wish we’d seen a bit more from her perspective.
I have to say that growing up I loved Manic Pixi Dream Girls. And in many ways I find myself sort of filling that role in real life, though not usually romantically. It makes me relate to that trope in a couple movies (Garden State) cause I am maybe a bit weird and mostly mellow and I end up playing therapist to people and trying to encourage them. The problem, especially in a romantic relationship, is MPGD (or male equivalent, like white knights etc) creates an imbalance where one person becomes responsible for holding up the other. If the MPDG has a life crisis, will her partner be able to lift her up when he is so used to her carefree wonderfulness making his life better – or will he react poorly, trying to get her to fulfill her previous role and make him feel better? This stuff happens a lot in either gender and I think that is where the MPDG goes most wrong. 500 days gets it right by letting Summer go and let Tom recover himself.
I think most some defense of Summer is that she just is the way she is, which isn’t a good excuse for being a jerk. But she is a jerk in a way that makes sense – if she was thinking how she would react in his situation and not considering that his feelings and reactions are different than hers.