I hate teen dramas. HATE THEM. With a fiery passion. To
paraphrase the film Scott Pilgrim “If Teen Dramas had a face I would punch it.”
Most teenage dramas fall under the category of what I like to call “pretty
people with problems.” Not a single one of these shows ever bore any
resemblance to what I felt high school was like. Except for Daria. Ironically
the show that I felt best-captured reality was a cartoon.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Daria was a spinoff of
Beavis and Butthead that aired on MTV in the mid and late nineties. The main
concept of the show revolved around titular teenager Daria Morgendorfer who
moved to the small suburb of Lawndale with her family; Daria’s workaholic
mother Helen, her addle brained yet eager to succeed father Jake, and her
fashioned obsessed sister Quinn who usually pretends Daria is some sort of
cousin or complete stranger living in her home.
From the very first episode, it is obvious that Daria does
not fit in with the other students at her school. She is far smarter than most
of them and has little to no interest in the social activities that the rest
are obsessed with. Welcome to exactly how I felt in high school. While I may
not have actually BEEN smarter than many of my fellow classmates, I certainly
felt it. And as such I did not want to interact with many of them. So for me,
Daria was very much my peer.
But it is more than just the way Daria interacts with the
world around her. It is also the other characters that populate her world. Her
parents are self-absorbed and usually do not have time for her problems, a
feeling that many teenagers have about their parents. Her best friend and her sibling
seem to have an easier time being social than she does. Her teachers are both
impressed by her intelligence and yet frustrated by knowing she is smarter than
they are while hating the job they feel trapped in (I knew way too many
teachers like that).
Even though Daria is a cartoon, the show rarely takes
advantage of this fact and show anything outrageously over the top or
cartoonish. Everything about the premise and episodes is grounded completely in
reality. There are a few episodes with dream sequences and one bizarre episode
where Daria goes to a HS for teenage Holidays (yes, Holidays, embodiments of
Christmas, Halloween, St. Patrick’s day, etc.) but those were the rare
exceptions. For the most part, the bizarre imagery shown in the show was
usually just a reflection of the character’s inner thoughts, which for most
people can usually be pretty bizarre. So even when the show is imaginary, it
still seems more real than most shows on television.
And in a bizarre twist for a teenage drama, Daria is portrayed
as growing throughout the course of the series. That is, she becomes a more
accepting character, gains a boyfriend, and even receives the acknowledgement
from her sister that she is in fact her sister. The cracks in her sarcastic
armor break and expand. She’s still the character we love, but with a slightly
less bleak outlook on things, which in many ways is why so many people love the
character. While we identify with her negativity, we hope things will work out
for her.
Like High School, Daria came to an end, making way for such
important MTV shows like Road Rules vs. Real World Challenge (and one day,
Jersey Shore). While I wish the show had gone on forever, a part of me dreads
to think how the show would change as its audience changed and the drive for
ratings would force Daria into new and wackier situations. Right now, the show
is timeless. All though it aired more than a decade ago, I’m sure high school
students today could see a similarity between this show and their academic
life.
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