Great Character: Mavis Gary (“Young Adult”)
The Great Character theme for the month: Women Written by Women. Today: Mavis Gary from the 2011 movie Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody. Here is GITS contributor Jason Cuthbert’s post on this Great Character:
Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody proved to be quite the combination for comedy that possesses a wonderfully awkward edge with their teen pregnancy jumbo hit Juno. It was this high school humor-fest that vividly captured a young teen growing up faster than she would like. But in Reitman/Cody Collaboration Part 2, aptly titled Young Adult, a 37 year-old “grown-up” Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is doing the complete opposite. Ms. Gary is trying hard to reject adulthood all together, frozen in the teenaged-centric priorities that turn her current reality into an outdated delusion.
After a divorce and a successful author career that has now found her struggling to ghostwrite the final installment of a declining YA (young adult) book series called “Waverly Prep,” Mavis fears her best days have passed her by. But when she gets an ex-boyfriend blast-from-the-past by being emailed the newborn baby picture of happily married Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), somehow Mavis decides that this is her invite to rekindling their previous high school sweetheart standing.
Young Adult plot summary from IMDB:
Soon after her divorce, a fiction writer returns to her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now happily married and has a newborn daughter.
Mavis Gary has made her big city lifestyle in Minneapolis, Minnesota as much a part of her identity as she has her profession. She feels it necessary to express these status symbol details of her existence, even when no one has actually inquired — as if she is trying to convince herself that they make her special.
MAVIS GARY: Yes, I’m an author of a young adult series. It’s disturbingly popular. I like your decor. Is it, shabby chic?
Mavis seems to have formed a post-marriage routine: fight furious hang-overs by downing Diet Coke by the 2 liter bottle, watch constant reality television to overcome writer’s block (or to live vicariously through) and swiftly sneak out of bed before the man does after a sex-capade.
Suddenly, Mavis turns Buddy Slade’s baby announcement into an exaggerated prophecy and she abruptly heads back to Mercury Minnesota, a hometown she is none too proud of.
MAVIS GARY: I hate this town! It’s a hick, lake town that smells of fish shit!
If there is any question as to whether Mavis is trapped in her past, Exhibit B is wearing Buddy’s Kelly green high school sweat shirt, but Exhibit A is her 1990s era mixtape cassette circa her teenage love with Buddy. She blasts her flashback theme track “The Concept” by Scottish alternative rock band Teenage Fanclub from their 1991 album “Bandwagonesque,” on manual repeat. The “I didn’t want to hurt you” chorus becomes an ironic mantra for Mavis, an increasingly un-hinged, romance-deficient neurotic who’s involuntary venting is hurting everyone within earshot.
MAVIS GARY: Sometimes in order to heal… a few people have to get hurt.
Before her Buddy reunion happens, she finds herself having a drunken reintroduction to the physically disabled secret admirer and her ignored high school locker neighbor Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt).
After uncomfortably watching Mavis repeatedly pluck hairs out of her scalp, we learn from her father’s unnerved response that like her crush on Buddy, this forced follicle removing behavior also dates back to her youth. This obsessive disorder is referred to as Trichotillomania, typically triggered by depression or posttraumatic stress disorder. Mavis seems to have the symptoms.
The deteriorating career and relationship trophies that once were the recipe for her unchecked ego are now unraveling her self-worth. Since she is clearly not happy, she seems puzzled that anyone else should be allowed to smile — most of all Buddy Slade’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser).
Mavis’s deepest dilemma appears to be her inability to share herself with others. It pains her to be polite and it sickens her to attempt to understand and relate to others; unless of course she has something to gain from all that graciousness. People get treated like chapters in her books, an entertaining hobby to pass the time until she can hurry back to her safe zone of self-absorbed personal attention. She seems to want to be completely alone — just not lonely.
MAVIS GARY: It’s really difficult for me to be happy. And then for other people it just seems so simple. I know. They just grow up and they’re so fulfilled.
When she accompanies Buddy to watch his wife’s cover band perform, she is forced to melt under the flaming glare of these bitter past acquaintances. They seem to be a flock of distant peers that she once looked down on with judgment and contempt from her ivory tower of popularity.
MAVIS GARY: Mary Ellen, you were great tonight. It’s so inspiring to see a single mother with so much confidence on stage. Really.
After compromising her once innocent friendship with Buddy by pulling him into an impromptu kiss that his babysitter has the misfortune of witnessing, Mavis looks to step her homewrecker game up a notch — at his baby’s naming ceremony. In a realm that is full of Buddy’s closest family members and peers, Mavis aggressively attempts the impossible, to proclaim her unreciprocated love, in a small town world that has moved on without her. Chaos and a crippling collision course with the truth ensue.
Mavis Gary doesn’t make it easy for anyone, including the audience, to love her. But her scornful scars and scabs from her own youth desperately scraping its way out of her late-30s resistance makes for an intriguingly manic midlife character study.
For her volatile, diabolically critical dialogue, her dependency on bragging rights as opposed to selflessly earned admiration and her cantankerous thwarting of change in any of its forms — Mavis Gary is certainly a refreshingly unorthodox GREAT CHARACTER.
I love this movie. Cody, Reitman and Theron pull no punches in this unflinching look at a desperate, largely unlikeable, but totally compelling character.
Many thanks to Jason for sharing this analysis of her character. You may follow him on Twitter: @A2Jason.