Blithe Spirit

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Too many entries list a work, but fail to list who the Blithe Spirit is. The characters need to be identified.

A Blithe Spirit is a free-spirited Fish Out of Water who goes to strait-laced land and shakes things up there despite the insistence of everyone else that the way things are can't possibly be changed.

Common variants of this character include:

Not to be confused with the Noel Coward play or the classic film of the same name (both of whose titles derive from Shelley's 'Hail to thee, blithe spirit'). Interestingly, there's a famous quote by Matthew Arnold about Shelley's hopeless attempts to be a blithe spirit to the world himself: a "beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain"

The Complainer Is Always Wrong is an inverse of this trope. Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a subtrope that serves as a shaker-upper of one particular person. Contrast Fisher Kingdom, which tends to eat these people and turn them into cogs (not usually literally).

Examples of Blithe Spirit include:

Anime and Manga

Film

Literature

  • Cold Comfort Farm[context?]
  • John the Savage of Brave New World is this entirely. He protests against the loss of art, truth, and passion, despite the fact that for everyone else, it works.
  • Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land[context?]
  • Daisy in Henry James' story Daisy Miller is also just like this, the quirky American girl trying to shake things up in Europe. Except the European aristocrats don't lighten up, and things end tragically, to say the least, for Daisy.
  • Pippa in the poem Pippa Passes by Robert Browning - a young girl in Asolo, Italy who strolls through the town (on her single annual day off from the factory) singing a song which influences the lives of all who hear her for the better.
  • Stargirl[context?]
  • Pippi Longstocking[context?]
  • Caitlín Mulryan, the eponymous character of Poul Anderson's The Avatar.
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where McMurphy shakes up an asylum
  • A Sudden Wild Magic by Diana Wynne Jones - the women who go survive the trip to Arth start trying to deliberately upset 'the balance'. Except a few of them are quite mean-spirited about it - the people of Arth have been essentially robbing earth for centuries.
  • Granola Guy Capricorn Anderson in Schooled is the high school version of this.
  • The title character of Pollyanna certainly qualifies.
  • Leslie Burke from Bridge to Terabithia seems to fit this trope.
  • The eponymous protagonist of Heidi.
  • Anne of Anne of Green Gables.
    • Which makes her married name all the more fitting.

Live-Action TV

  • The Doctor in Doctor Who. All the time.
  • In LazyTown, Stephanie is theoretically responsible for helping to get everyone exercising again (at least, according to the theme). That she's just as likely to have the lazy ball in a given episode is apparently irrelevant.
    • Also, Sportacus is new to the town at the beginning of the show and wants to inspire the kids to eat healthy and become fit.
  • Every single episode of Touched By an Angel.[context?]
  • The Vicar of Dibley[context?]
  • Andy of WKRP in Cincinnati started off as one.
  • Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
  • Lwaxana Troi in TNG's "Cost of Living."
  • Accounting Prof. Whitman on Community thinks he's Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society".
  • Subverted on an episode of Frasier, in which the eponymous psychiatrist is hired to testify on behalf of an elderly philanthropist whose son is trying to have him declared mentally incompetent. After meeting with him, Frasier becomes convinced that the man is just a blithe spirit trying to enrich the lives of those around him...and is humiliated when he has a complete breakdown in the middle of Frasier's testimony.
  • Fran Fine in The Nanny is this trope.[context?]
  • Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother thinks he's this trope, gracing his friends with his presence to guide them through life and make them "awesome" like him. He refuses to acknowledge the fact that his friends all actually consider him a walking, batshit insane, Your Approval Fills Me with Shame generator, and only indulge his ridiculous shenanigans out of loyalty to him (and on occasion, amusement).

Video Games

  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus fills this role in the world of Spira, questioning the current way of dealing with Sin and generally being an over anxious Fish Out of Water

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • Both used straight and subverted in Cartoon Network's Mike Lu and Og. Mike is a hip American girl and the islanders are all descended from Brits (although they're "going native" by adopting faux-Polynesian customs), but they often manage to surprise her by being a lot less strait-laced than she expects.
  • The Simpsons has an episode like this with Lisa Kudrow as the voice for the new, hip, fashion-savvy girl at Springfield Elementary. Lisa learned to be comfortable with her self image (again) and New Girl learned that you don't have to grow up so fast, and can appreciate fun for what it is.
  • Fry in Futurama unwittingly acts as one of these, when his twentieth-century outlook persuades Leela and Bender to abandon their thirtieth-century ruts and follow him.

"It's funny, you live in the universe, but you never do these things until someone comes to visit."

Real Life

  • Many Westerners who go to China immediately find themselves in this position. This is especially true with educated Chinese expatriates who speak Mandarin well, as they can communicate with more of the natives but usually have a mindset that is completely different. This usually manifests as the foreigner seeming to have an enormously expansive personality that both intimidates and fascinates those around them, coupled with a directness that seems comically rude. The result can be very funny to watch.
    • And also Japan. While it's certainly not universal, the average Westerner does a lot better at thinking outside of the box than most Japanese are encouraged to.
    • The above statement is actually true for pretty much every Western tourist in Asia. Heck, sometimes the natives can speak English just fine and the Blithe Spirit effect goes boomerang.
      • Speaking of boomerangs, it's not just in the East that this holds true. Australians (and other Westerners) often have the same reaction to Americans.
    • This can depend on the nationality. Italians, Spanish and Frenchmen, for example, are perceived as more laid back than the ultra-serious Germans. Russians have the whole "depressed vodka-swigging Russkie" stereotype, and Canadians are seen as more mellow and polite. Depending on how the Americans are perceived and the nationality they clash with, there can be different results.
    • African-Americans who go to Africa. It's an interesting conversation to have when a native is explaining to you that you are a white man, too.
  • Socrates. He described himself as a gadfly stinging Athens into life.

Evil Counterpart Trope

Sometimes, the shaker is a villainous character, causing trouble for their own ends and means which might not be in the target's best interests. Sometimes involves a Deal with the Devil with them as the Devil. Examples include: