CliqueClack Flashback – Daria

There was a time when it was okay to like MTV. In fact, for certain age groups, voluntarily viewing MTV was expected, unlike today, when no self-respecting person of any demographic should acknowledge the channel’s very existence, let alone pay attention to it. The early 2000s marked that shift into disaster territory; MTV did a lot of dumb stuff when the new millennium rolled around (turning up the sex, turning down the music even more, turning up the sex, Jesse Camp, the list goes on), but Daria remained the coolest, despite being the biggest outsider. What did an unpopular girl have to do on MTV? Absolutely nothing, but there she was.

I wasn’t a big fan of Beavis and Butt-head (Fun Fact: Daria‘s a spin-off) and I was too young to watch Daria when it first aired in 1998, but I did it anyway. I was both surly and super-artsy, so I could strongly identify with both Daria and Jane. I firmly believe that this played a significant role in turning my pre-teen soul into a breeding ground of endless snark and senseless sarcasm. After a while, I had to actually consciously reign it in; I didn’t have enough life experience to justify my jaded talk and hearing a middle schooler talk about how much she hates the world is less endearing and more super-sad. Regardless, the show was still a much more convincing portrayal of “smart is cool” than those screaming Seventeen magazine covers with hot chicks wearing lensless glasses telling me to go to school every day.

Daria was a relatively straightforward view of high school life. There was no wacky twist or gimmick; it was just interesting characters suffering through the same worries as every real world high schooler and hilarious writing combined with the fantastic benefits of using animation. Daria and Jane weren’t non-stop boy-crazy but they weren’t unrealistically asexual either. Every relationship, including potentially shark-jump-worthy Jane/Tom, was handled incredibly well. Even Daria’s half-mumbles every time Trent talked to her in the first season were perfect. It should say something that I found these cartoon lives more realistic than that of most live-action characters these days.

Aside from the overall tone of the show, one of the biggest things I enjoyed was the use of music. There are specific moments that will forever be burned in my brain simply because of the music attached. For example, Daria’s brief fantasy sequence with Trent in “Pierce Me” wasn’t particularly riveting, but Pulp’s “This Is Hardcore” playing underneath sealed the deal for me. Unfortunately, this is also the most heart-breaking part of the Daria history, because the number of music licenses involved are the biggest reason why we still don’t have Daria series DVDs. It’s crazy that we don’t have American DVDs for Daria or Clone High, while I can walk to the drugstore and buy a Blu-Ray of Heidi and Spencer licking Nutella off each other for three hours (I don’t know if that actually exists; please don’t look it up).

It kills me — kills me — that there isn’t anything like Daria on television these days and we can’t even share it via DVD. I have a younger sister that had to receive most of her sarcasm schooling from yours truly because all she watches on television is 90210 and old episodes of Hannah Montana. It’s not like a show like this couldn’t happen now; Daria was actually a really clean show that just seemed adult because of its incredibly sharp writing. Television today really underestimates what youth wants. Give us — I’m going to pretend I’m still young enough to use “us” — something intelligent, something clever. We can handle it. Really. No, really. Maybe The N just needs to start airing episodes again. The themes are universally relevant and the writing has aged beautifully. Less Selena Gomez, more Daria, please.

I’ll still have my fingers crossed for some relatively un-butchered DVDs in the near future. Until then, I’ll have to resort to slightly more shady means. Look what you made us do, MTV.

Enjoy this intro from, oh, so long ago:

Clacked by Annie Wu
on Feb 18, 2009 @ 17:00 EST5EDT