Where Are the Darias?

[Sylph]

<span style="font-size:105%;">I was reading The Paris Review and bumped onto this. Some might be interested, I hope.

The second part is here.

Anybody here liked Daria?</span>

[beebs]

DARIA! <3

And I think it speaks to a fundamental problem with a lot of youth-focused programs I see lately...they all leave me ice cold. Daria was prickly, snarky, monotone, but at the same time (as they said) had heart when you least expected. Daria was pretty much everything I looked up to as "the outcast closeted nerdy teen with acne and a brain". I think Gilmore Girls combined it the best with the snarky quirky clever dialogue wrapped up in the bubbly demeanor to soften it out. 90210/Jersey Shore/The Hills or whatever is just bitchy and unbelievably vapid.

Having said this, I don't think it's a great idea to overkill the "Daria" types on TV, they won't be as memorable or as well-regarded, though I'd love more clever and less annoyinglybubblycute Jennifer Aniston types we see ad-nauseum.

[All My Shadows]

I liked Daria. It could be over-the-top with its stereotypes (Kevin and Brittany, the fashion club, etc), but I like how this paragraph describes it:

The "in crowd" as depicted on Daria weren't bullies or evil or anything like that. Shallow, self-centered, sure. But Daria wasn't that much of an outcast.

What made me hate MLAL with a passion was the fact that, from the jump, we were supposed to just accept popular=bad, outcast=good without ever seeing any evidence. It's the type of thing that annoys me because there wasn't this epic, stringent "caste system" in my high school. Instead of more shows/movies that perpetrate the same boring stereotypes, I'd rather see something that's able to be sympathetic to all of the different groups and cliques.

The whole "snarky teen girl" thing, though, I'm really not a fan of. It's pretty hypocritical, IMO. It's not cute, it's bitchy, and it's no different from what the "popular girls" do.

[Sylph]

We have a deal: one would be more than enough. So I too wouldn't advocate for an army of Darias, rather for more "unique" teenage characters. The primetime TV screen is infested with insipid, lifeless teenage creations, it's difficult to feel anything for them. If you add the wrong kind of sarcasm and irony...

Gilmore Girls did try something like this out, but in my opinion Rory got trashed (too) quickly. She became needy and a snob, something I feel was a complete opposite of what this character was when we first saw her. Rory evolved, but in a wrong direction.

In a way, you are being a snarky teen girl right now.

It's a defence mechanism, some people deal with the superficiality that surrounds them in that way. Since no one's really trying to really change something, people are left with caustic, sneering remarks to help them "cope" with it.

I think I can "digest" teen sarcasm better than Let's save the rain forest! crap.

[All My Shadows]

But that's the thing. There's a difference between having this feeling of entitlement and superiority where you automatically dismiss people you don't really know simply because you feel you "know" who they are...and owning your [!@#$%^&*].

I didn't have a defense mechanism in high school because I never felt the need to defend myself. If so-and-so wears too much make up and has sex with too many guys, I don't *need* to make a snarky side comment about it. I don't have an urge to wallow in how much cooler I am than them. If other people's superficiality affected me, then I opened my mouth and said something. But that's the thing. One of the chief components of the "snarky teen girl" archetype is that she must be secretly terrified of all that she looks down upon. That's why Daria was different, because she wasn't scared to cut a bitch if need be. Liz from MLAL had all these problems with these horrible, horrible "robot Barbie dolls," but when she was forced to work with them on things, she turned on the pretense loud and clear because she was scared shitless of calling them out for the things that annoyed her.

[beebs]

I think a lot of that was a sort of a "you can't escape becoming your parents" kind of thing, which, while I admit happens a lot, it definitely didn't do Rory any favours down the road. Especially when her life situation is so completely the opposite of her parents, which should normally keep you grounded. It just...yea. Didn't sit well with me.

I just feel bad for all the awkward teens growing up now having the only young people they see on TV being plastic, blonde & rich...or are castrated on Glee

[Sylph]

OK, now I got lost: what's the thing? I didn't get the thing!

I don't think clever, sarcastic teens have a feeling of entitlement and superiority. I think their sarcasm is just a way of showing the completely unnecessary and silly entitlement of the school's "upper class", how stupid it looks from a point of view of a "normal" person, un-obsessed with social status and its symbols.

So perhaps I should correct my earlier stance and say that what I mind about it is how writers (and snarky teens in real life too) all too often get all cosy in such a position: As long as I'm critical of them and "funny" etc., I did my share of things. It rarely gets transformed into action, some sort of a creative way to "fight" it or, better, propose a new, healithier kind of "lifestyle". Instead it just hovers there, self-sufficient, uninterested in doing anything else but "commenting".

But, even as such, it's deeply necessary right now because only in that way you could uncover certain truths.

Yeah, it's awul. Especially when coupled with the depiction of sex and sexuality on today's TV shows. Sex kind of became a tool for achieving certain things, whereas previously it was depicted as something amoral or whatever, now it became "vilified" in its own way, it became something dirty and awful in a different sort of way.

I liked Daria, I really did.

[All My Shadows]

You know I tend to talk too much The thing is that there's a difference between A: having your own faults but being too concentrated on rolling your eyes and being snarky to work on fixing yourself, and B: fixing your own faults while also shining a light on others'. Sitting in the corner being snarky isn't going to change a damn thing if you're not gonna say it to someone's face.

But that's what I mean. Just as there is the girl who thinks she is just awesome because she's cheer captain and the homecoming queen, there is the girl who thinks she is just awesome (or "normal") because she doesn't care about being cheer captain or the homecoming queen. I say quit worrying about other people, do what you do, and let that be the end of it.

Put it like this. When the clique of pretty girls pass by the clique of outcast girls, they're all mugging at each other for the exact same reason: "I don't like them." It makes the outcast girls no better than the pretty girls because neither group is putting forth the effort to remedy the situation.