I'm anti-Daria
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reddragonhero17 — 11 years ago(December 14, 2014 11:00 AM)
Alright, maybe I did miss some growing up aspects, but that still doesn't change my opinion on this. Especially when Daria and Jane did the "Look back in Annoyance", it almost looks like they carried the same negative attitude, and that's the reason I can't support this show. On the other hand, what you guys did mention made me think of some movie of high school, "The Breakfast Club" where everyone confesses their own weaknesses and insecurities. But to totally top it all off (I know I'm going off a bit, but this is relevant) one episode from "The Real Ghostbusters" (Ragnarok and Roll) gave this great message of dealing with life's hardship's during its climax where one character admonishes his friend for nearly destroying the world:
"You've thrown everything away because the world hurt you. Well look at me, yes I'm small, I'm twisted, and I'm ugly, but at least I'm still human. Nobody ever said the world was an easy place, nobody ever said you wouldn't be hurt. If you weren't sufficiently loved it's your own fault not the world's!" -
cmmosher — 11 years ago(December 14, 2014 03:38 PM)
Cheers for the Ghostbusters reference, its a much better show then one would expect a movie spin-off should be. But I looked up the episode you brought and I would argue there is a difference between being an arrogant teenager who feels that they are above the suburban world and the Ghostbusters character who tries to bring about the apocalypse because of a broken heart.
Anyways different people have different tastes and I completely understand that Daria isn't the show for show for everyone.
Spoilers
Incidentally the show's final episode does have Daria and her parents acknowledge that Daria has been a difficult child to raise but they also say how important they are to each other. I like the show because it deals with the fact that life isn't always prefect and that sometimes even our hero isn't always perfect. -
bravelikethelion — 11 years ago(December 29, 2014 04:24 PM)
I get that Daria's attitude can rub some the wrong way, but for what it is worth, her exaggerated aloofness and "am too smart for this" boredom were called out at times. She wasn't presented as always being right all the time, just like even the Britney's, Kevin's, and Fashion club people of the show were given human/likable qualities at times. Since the show is basically from her point of view, it is going to have that teenage sardonic, outcast feel to it. So if that doesn't float one's boat, you may not like the show.
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blondiebear_17 — 11 years ago(December 30, 2014 07:31 PM)
You had to kind of be one of those angry outsiders in high school to get it I guess. I mean obviously Daria is very defensive judgmental and kind of rude but she has a lot of reason to be given her environment and the people around her. Daria is never painted as perfect herself people constantly call her out on her crap when she is being hypocritical Jane her mom Jodie Tom and even Quinn and Brittany can be really inciteful sometimes when it comes to enlightening Daria on how she can be wrong about stuff. Daria is just refreshing because I think it does a good job of showing what it is like when you are not quite like all the other kids your age and how that can make you come off as a little bitter and jaded. I mean at that age lots of kids think they are smarter than everyone else and that nobody gets them so I can see how this might irritate you but for some people it's real. I think even with how exaggerated the characters are and it being animated that Daria is about 1000xs more realistic than Saved By The Bell or Boy Meets World. I liked BMW as a kid but it was too campy for me to take too seriously as an adult and SBTB is basically a Saturday morning cartoon. I relish in Daria's indifference to the people around her but that is because when I was in high school I felt like everything was way too political.
RIP Cory Monteith your fans miss you dearly -
reddragonhero17 — 11 years ago(January 02, 2015 06:25 PM)
You raise some good points how some teens gather that superiority complex issues and that's what rubbed me the wrong way about this show. I wasn't exactly and angry outsider, I did have some friends that I hung out with both in and out of school but I was a little disappointed more with the freshman than the seniors. Of course no student has ever had that "perfect" high school life and mine was no exception (bad grades, demanding sports, parental pressures and bullying the last one was the biggest). I can give Daria some good points however that a least she never bullied and the Scholarship report and graduation speech did exactly make me not completely dislike her or the show, it just still couldn't get me to become relatable to it nor a fan.
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blondiebear_17 — 11 years ago(January 03, 2015 09:23 AM)
Yeah, that sort of superiority complex does bug people which is why people hate characters like Juno Maguffin and April Ludgate too although Daria is not putting on as obnoxious or immature a front as them. It is an act as much as it is real. Daria uses apathy and snark as a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt. Daria herself has said more or less on many occasion that she rejects people before they have a chance to reject her. You really get to see how vulnerable Daria can be near the end in Boxing Daria when you see flashbacks of her childhood. Daria was withdrawn when she was a kid because she couldn't understand the other kids or get along with them because she liked reading on higher levels and not the games that they did. She had to go to counseling and her parents really butted heads on how to approach it and it caused fights between them because this added more stress to their workload at the time they were both working really hard to provide for Quinn and Daria I am guessing that kind of thing can be traumatic for a kid. Daria started to retreat into her own world by crawling into a refrigerator box in her room. By the end of it I was glad that Daria realized she needed to appreciate her parents more and that she had been oblivious to their feelings and ungrateful for a long time. Wish the moment had been even bigger but I guess they didn't want the episode to get too wishy washy. I am actually okay with Daria just being a smarter than everyone else snob but she has a lot of different dimensions to her.
RIP Cory Monteith your fans miss you dearly -
bravelikethelion — 11 years ago(January 04, 2015 09:55 AM)
You know, I rewatched Boxing Daria and I was really impressed how they tackled the issues of Daria's apathy and isolation. Considering the show was originally such a broad satire on high school and the suburbs, it really grew in to a nuanced, insightful show. I like that nobody in that episode was either the good or bad guy, and we really got to see that, at their best, Daria's parents truly loved her and learned to accept her (while still trying to encourage her to spread her wings and learn from her mistakes). I think this would be a good episode to see for people who are turned off by early Daria's more cynical undertone.
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TRhett — 9 years ago(April 27, 2016 08:30 PM)
it really grew into a nuanced, insightful show.
Yes, it did. Let's face it - high school is an easy target, so satirization of high school has to be REALLY sharp (Buffy springs to mind), or it falls flat. Like most broad satires, it took them a while to find the right "balance" for this show. By now, everybody knows that animation is a double-edged sword . . . it allows for greater absurdity and humorous exaggeration, but it can also make it easy to go too far with the characterizations and situations. Personally, I thought this was a GREAT show (and I was about as far as you can get from being a high school "outsider"), but I can certainly see why it wouldn't be to everyone's taste (like King of the Hill). After reading some of these comments, it became obvious that a LOT of people either missed the point entirely, were "rubbed the wrong way" by the characters (but apparently weren't by Beavis or Butthead???), or just didn't want to see it (in which case, why bother watching?). I saw a comment somewhere about what this show would be like if it were done today. That WOULD be interesting . . . seeing as how critics wet their pants at every TV show about an "outcast" of some sort today (I thought if I read one more thing about how monumentally, stupendously brilliant "Breaking Bad" was, I was going to lose it). -
Daria_McCloud — 9 years ago(July 28, 2016 03:52 PM)
Daria uses apathy and snark as a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt. Daria herself has said more or less on many occasion that she rejects people before they have a chance to reject her.
I was like that in high school. Not as snarky as Daria, but I did tend to keep my distance from others out of fear that I would get screwed over if I let my guard down. I'm still like that sometimes, actually quite a bit, and my teenage years are way, way behind me. -
Caffeine-Free — 11 years ago(January 04, 2015 10:29 PM)
I struggle with this thread because it's clear you did not stick with it long enough. If you were to watch the entire series, including the movies, you would see that Daria is not portrayed to be a hero and her initial outlook is not totally celebrated at the end. There are many consequences to her attitudes and some bad choices, and a lot of growth with her character as she makes mistakes and as her friends and family call her out for her rigid, unattainable and sometimes hypocritical perspectives on life. Ultimately she softens a lot to the people around her. She maintains her individuality but without some of the pride she had before that made her so surly.
She just doesn't like highschool, and the system of their school which rewarded airheads and patronized and ostracized smart kids. The principal is totally shady and corrupt, and all of her teachers are unstable though some are well-meaning. I think she respects that but overall they're not really adept at teaching and guiding the students, something that is not unusual to a public school and to a good student like Daria would be a natural frustration. She doesn't like pop culture, mass media, etc. for its devastating influence on youth, which is totally valid and gotten even worse since Daria's time on the air.
There is a lot of substance when you go through it from start to finish. The thing you note about her family are addressed and she is humbled in one classic, moving episode to remember and realize that she was a difficult child to raise with her antisocial behavior and appreciates how her parents stood by her. How they allowed her to be who she is but she realizes she took her cynicism and bitterness toward them too far. Daria and Helen (her mom) have several moments where they grow closer as Daria finds she needs her valuable counsel and support, and Jake is her dad who is a basketcase due to having an abusive father and passive mother, but Daria and him bond too because in some ways they are really similar characters where things are always going awry for them. They really help each other out in a few episodes and those are touching episodes. Her sister she struggles with early on because she knows that Quinn is a good and smart person, but allows her shallow, peer pressuring friends to control her, which of course Daria does not believe in. But eventually I feel she understands Quinn more, and they also learn from each other. Quinn too has a very substantial story of growing up.
If it isn't your sense of humor or just not your thing, no problem. But again, if you really watch it start to finish you may see that it was done really, really well in how the characters and tone progress. -
littlelotte1410 — 10 years ago(May 19, 2015 09:42 AM)
^This. Perfect. I hate when people are so quick to make judgments about shows that they've barely seen any of. If they've seen at least 75% of it, I'll give what they have to say more credence. Until then, I can't listen to it.
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mpiccolo55000 — 11 years ago(March 28, 2015 08:29 PM)
I agree with all the replies that the original poster missed the point. She was a cynical teenage girl, yes, but she also had knowledge beyond her years. It's not easy being around other kids when kids can be so shallow, and Daria had discovered more "truths" than they had.
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RazorFriendly2 — 10 years ago(February 04, 2016 10:13 PM)
I can't take any of the complaints the OP of this thread has about Daria seriously. My reason? Because the OP cites Saved by the Bell as the more realistic portrayal of high school life while saying that Daria was just unbelievable. Let's examine Saved by the Bell a little more closely, shall we? Does anyone really think the following "realities" shown in SBTB were anything close to realistic?
The school: The school looked like a shopping mall. Spotlessly clean and in up-to-date 80's colors, This school must have been the most sanitary high school that ever existed on television.
Stereotypes: Want to talk about unbelievable portrayals of high school life? How about that group? Let's see, we have a cheerleader, a jock (who looks like a prep), a prep (who looks like a jock), a brain (who looks like a cheerleader) a geek (who looks and sounds like the worst stereotype of geeks in every movie ever made, right down to the pocket protector), and, who am I missing? Oh yeah, the black American princess (who also looks like a cheerleader). Later, the writers would add another female character who was a rebel. How do we know she was a rebel? Because she wore a black leather jacket and sneered a lot. An equally stereotypical female geek was brought in as a love interest for the character of screech.
Let's be honest. The script for Saved by the Bell was insulting to a fifth graders intelligence. Not only were these insipid characters (or should I say caricatures?)completely shallow and unbelievable, the likelihood that they would come together as a group of friends was completely implausible, especially with the inclusion of Screech, who, in a more realistically written show, would have died in a hazing at the hands of Slater and Zach, or committed suicide after being bullied to death.
High school life: I don't know anyone who had all of their classes with all of their best friends. Yet, in the bizarro universe of SBTB, there they were together in every single class. Not only were they in all classes together, they also ruled the school. Every event, every dance, every talent show was dominated by this group,if not created for it. No attention was ever paid to peripheral characters. At least on Daria, her peers were fully developed characters who often fit the stereotypes in SBTB, but they were nuanced with depth and given more substance than what their outward appearance or social ranking within high school hierarchies would indicate.
The adults: All the adults in SBTB were idiots, including patently stupid principle Mr. Belding. Even the monkey Gleek from The Super Friends had more intelligence than any of the adults on this show. For some reason, Belding was always falling for some stupid prank orchestrated by Zach and carried out by his minions.
I was in high school when SBTB first aired. I only know of the details of it because it seemed it was always on and all of my friends watched it. Personally, I never understood the popularity of that show or the people who found it funny. I thought it was offensively stupid then. It's stupid now. In fact, I think Daria was the perfect antidote for a show like SBTB, and in some way, seemed to parody the very mainstream that pop culture junk like SBTB was aimed at. I was in my early 20's when Daria premiered and I connected with it immediately. I thought it was intelligently written, and for once, it wasn't pandering to people who might have been the outcast in high school or simply didn't fit in. In Saved by the Bell, it was like the writers were saying "let's make these shallow characters seem like good people by letting someone into their clique that they would never associate with in real life.
I wasn't unpopular or unattractive in high school, but I wasn't popular or considered part of any group either. I had bullies but stood up to them. I didn't care for the jocks too much, but didn't outright dislike them either. I even tutored one in English to help him get his grades up at the request of my favorite teacher. We got along, but when tutoring sessions were over, he was with his friends and I was with mine. I knew a lot of kids that more closely fit the profiles seen in Daria than even came remotely close in Saved by the Bell. Other than the fact that Daria was a cynical, less artificial portrayal of high school life, if not shockingly accurate at times, I really don't understand what the OP's problem is with this show. If the paronizing tone, braying laugh track, and winking self awareness of Saved by the Bell is your idea of a well written and hilarious show, then by all means, watch the reruns to your hearts content. Let the rest of us enjoy Daria for the honest, and less idyllic portrayal of high school life that it really is.
You're such a mess, the train wreck stops to watch you! -
RazorFriendly2 — 10 years ago(February 08, 2016 08:07 PM)
You're welcome, and thank you. I normally wouldn't have made such a long-winded post, but felt compelled to do so since the OP compared Daria to what I considered then, and now, to be and inferior show that I could never relate to. The jock I tutored that I mentioned in my post was on the football team. He reminded me a lot of the character Kevin from Daria. His name was Matt. He wasn't a "dumb" jock, but he was no academic either; which is where I came in. My relationship to Matt was very similar to that of Kevin and Daria. We ran in different circles but there was never any malice. We just didn't really get each other. That said, Matt was someone I probably wouldn't have had much interaction with had it not been for our teacher, but he was nice as a person, not unlike the Kevin character. And that's what I like about Daria. Maybe the characters weren't people we would have chosen to hang around, but they were portrayed as humans who had insecurities and flaws no different from our own.
You're such a mess, the train wreck stops to watch you!