{"id":2051,"date":"2010-07-22T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=2051"},"modified":"2018-12-06T15:19:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:19:40","slug":"where-are-the-darias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/22\/where-are-the-darias\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Are the Darias?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Daria<\/em>, the MTV nineties-era animated sitcom, was not the first show to tell the high-school experience from the point of view of the outcast. It just happened to be the most emboldening. In Daria Morgendorffer, adolescent girls (and fans of any gender or age) could use an outsider unafraid to be herself. Today, that archetype hardly seems to exist.<\/p>\n<p>Daria dwells near the bottom of the caste system\u2014somewhere between the geeks and art kids\u2014at her suburban school. With her round glasses, sarcastic monotone, and chunky black boots, she is equally disaffected and defensive\u2014an outsider who&#8217;s smarter than most everyone in her town. In the pilot episode, she quips, &#8220;I don&#8217;t have low self-esteem, I have low esteem for everyone else.\u201d Of her peers, she explains: \u201cI&#8217;m not miserable, I&#8217;m just not like them.\u201d Her lack of pep makes her an outcast not only at school, but at home, where she\u2019s the black sheep to Quinn, her younger, more attractive, and socially ambitious sister. But Daria is no loser; she stands up for herself, doesn\u2019t care about the social hierarchy, and has no trouble speaking her mind or talking back. She has a sidekick and confidant\u2014Jane Lane\u2014and while Jane\u2019s brother Trent is something of a crush for Daria, boys are far from the main topic of their conversations.<\/p>\n<p>Daria&#8217;s character originally appeared as a foil to the characters on <em>Beavis and Butthead<\/em>. In the extra features of the DVD, Glenn Eichler, the executive producer (who&#8217;s now at <em>The Colbert Report<\/em>), said that \u201cMTV was looking for a show that would appeal to its female viewership.\u201d After all, this was the bikini and booty-shaking Spring Break era of MTV, and as another writer mentions, the network wanted a show that would make girls appear smart. The creators of <em>Daria<\/em> cast around, looking at other teen characters on television\u2014Darlene Conner from <em>Roseanne<\/em>, Angela Chase from <em>My So-Called Life<\/em>\u2014and noticed something: teen girls were portrayed as fully realized people, and not mini-adults.<\/p>\n<p>So where did all the Darias go? Eight years after the show went off the air, the super-smart, dry, withering, righteously angry girls are largely absent from pop culture. For every sassy adolescent as played by <em>Juno<\/em>\u2019s Ellen Page, our current teen cultural landscape is clogged with heroines whose principal interests, as on <em>Gossip Girl<\/em>, are status and men. It\u2019s a transition that happened gradually from the late nineties to the present: There was the dry-humored <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>, the earnest clique on <em>Dawson\u2019s Creek<\/em>, <em>Mean Girls<\/em>, the teen magazines that brazenly suggested $400 APC wedges for fifteen year-olds, the endless YA series that read like junior versions of Danielle Steel novels. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Daria\u2019s brand of snide sarcasm seemed realistic to her audience and probably edgy to advertisers. But over the ensuing years, her trademark snarky voice was everywhere. On LiveJournals and on MySpace pages, teenage girls could rant about the high school caste system or proudly proclaim their every disaffected mood to virtual friends. And on blogs like Gawker, the grown-up popular crowd\u2014celebrities, the wealthy, the media elite\u2014were skewered in an often deadpan voice.<\/p>\n<p>Only it had hardened into something more mean-spirited. The tone was caustic in weekly tabloids or on websites like Perez Hilton\u2019s that wondered aloud whether starlets were with child or just bloated. Over the past decade, being overly sarcastic wasn\u2019t just considered out of fashion, it was seen as a social problem. David Denby called snark \u201ca nasty, knowing strain of abuse spreading like pinkeye through the national conversation.\u201d But Daria\u2014both the character and the tenor of the show\u2014was full of nuance: outraged, sullen, eye-rolling, but also, like most teenagers, tender when you least expect it. These days, teen culture can be about sex (<em>The Hills<\/em>), or optimism (<em>Glee<\/em>), or vampires, but it seems to have no place for a snarky teen girl.<\/p>\n<p><em>Marisa Meltzer is the author of <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/girlpower\">Girl Power<\/a> <em>and<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/howsassychangedmylife\">How Sassy Changed My Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Daria, the MTV nineties-era animated sitcom, was not the first show to tell the high-school experience from the point of view of the outcast. It just happened to be the most emboldening. In Daria Morgendorffer, adolescent girls (and fans of any gender or age) could use an outsider unafraid to be herself. Today, that archetype [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1160],"tags":[484,487,481,482,488,483,486,485,54],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-television","tag-90s","tag-archetype","tag-daria","tag-daria-morgendorffer","tag-geek","tag-mtv","tag-outsider","tag-sitcom","tag-television"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Marisa Meltzer on Daria Morgendorffer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 22, 2010 \u2013 Daria, the MTV nineties-era animated sitcom, was not the first show to tell the high-school experience from the point of view of the outcast. 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