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00:00This video is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service that premieres a new film
00:04every day.
00:05I don't have low self-esteem.
00:07I have low esteem for everyone else.
00:11Daria Morgendorfer made it cool to be a wry and cynical loner.
00:15This teen girl who didn't care about popularity or trends was the picture-perfect example
00:19of 90s alienation.
00:21The question is, am I supporting my friend or her surrender to the system?
00:27Do you mind?
00:28This is a private conversation.
00:30From her early days as one of the only students who seemed to sort of understand the mentality
00:34behind her idiot classmates Beavis and Butthead to her five seasons as the anchor of her own
00:39animated spinoff, Daria was a fixture on MTV from the mid-90s into the early 2000s.
00:44And she was a surprising character for a channel that often sold brash, extroverted, or overtly
00:49sexualized versions of womanhood during that same period.
00:52My world would be made fair through the simple step of eliminating all money.
00:57Years later, Daria still resonates with anyone who's ever questioned whether the problem
01:01is you or the system you're living in.
01:03And it can help us understand cultural changes that were happening back in the 1990s.
01:07As Sonya Saraya wrote in Variety, at the turn of the millennium, MTV was saturated with
01:12Backstreet Boys and NSYNC music videos and obsessed with the nascent careers of Christina
01:16Aguilera and Britney Spears.
01:17Daria became one of the first characters I saw on television who seemed to feel the way
01:21I did about the world.
01:22There's no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can't be improved with pizza.
01:28Here's our take on how Daria sees the world and how her show captured both the 90s where
01:33it began and the decade that would follow.
01:35My goal is not to wake up at 40 with the bitter realization that I've wasted my life in a job
01:40I hate because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens.
01:50If you're new here, be sure to subscribe and click the bell to get notified about all our
01:55new videos.
02:02Daria began as a side character on the 90s cartoon Beavis and Butthead where she acted
02:07as an occasional foil, issuing detached commentary on the boys' juvenile antics.
02:11I knew you guys would screw this up.
02:13I just had to see for myself.
02:15While she clearly and correctly thought Beavis and Butthead were stupid teenage boys, it was
02:19vaguely implied she had a certain affection for their idiocy.
02:22They were cretins, but they were fellow outsiders who were unapologetically and unavoidably themselves.
02:27Beavis and Butthead were also emblematic of the dead-end stupidity of their barren town
02:32of Highland, Texas.
02:33For her spinoff series, Daria moves to Lawndale, an unspecified but
02:37seemingly more affluent suburb, and the show explores her point of view
02:40about the vapid, vacuous, and sometimes mean-spirited teenagers and adults surrounding her.
02:45You know what I tell myself?
02:47Quinn, if not you, who?
02:50If not now, when?
02:52If not leave, puke.
02:54One of her most consistent targets of disdain is Quinn, her younger, conventionally attractive,
02:59sometimes cruel and extremely popular sister, an embodiment of the consumerism-driven
03:04superficiality that Daria sees as eye-rollingly phony and ultimately pointless.
03:08She spent the whole dinner talking about himself and then accused me of not paying attention
03:12just because I had to quickly check my lipstick and the butter knife.
03:15Wait!
03:16Where are you going?
03:17Quinn is shown as aggressively superficial for buying into the most reductive ideas about
03:21beauty, gender, and social currency?
03:22Well, how do I make them stop?
03:24By acting like you don't care what they think.
03:27But I do care what they think, it's why I do what I do, wear what I wear, say what I say!
03:33Before this point, Daria's deadpan affect was more often seen as the voice of the sarcastic
03:38best friend, not the main character of this kind of show.
03:40My hormones don't rage.
03:42Oh, sure, they get mad sometimes, but then they just stop speaking to each other.
03:47The character from Clueless, for example, more closely resembles Quinn than Daria,
03:51though Cher's shading and complexity makes her more immediately likable.
03:54May I please remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty?
04:00Even contemporaneous teen girl characters with more going on than Quinn Morgendorfer
04:05tended to still be more emotionally open than Daria.
04:07Look at Angela Chase from My So-Called Life, which debuted around the same time as Beavis
04:11and Butthead.
04:12Angela's not one of the popular girls, but she's also not as uninterested
04:15in her peers and family as Daria is.
04:17I just like how he's always leaning against stuff.
04:22He leans great.
04:23Another aspect of Daria's personality is that throughout the series,
04:26she chafes at the way people try to read or pigeonhole her based on her deadpan mannerism
04:30and lack of school-spirit enthusiasm.
04:32You're one of those misery chicks, always moping about what a cruel world it is,
04:39making a big deal about it so people won't notice you're a loser.
04:42She's often annoyed or even hurt when she's perceived by classmates as gloomy or dark.
04:47You're used to being all gloomy and depressed and thinking about bad stuff.
04:53Why does everyone keep saying that?
04:54She thinks of herself as realistic and intelligent more than outright depressive.
04:58I knew I could talk to you, Daria.
05:01You're always miserable.
05:02But I'm not miserable.
05:04I'm just not like them.
05:06It's part of the show's interest in what it's like to actually be an outsider.
05:10Showrunner and co-creator Glenn Eichler explains,
05:12somebody said something about this show on like a message board,
05:15and it was my favorite thing I ever read about it.
05:17If it weren't so funny, it would be unbearably sad.
05:19We were trying to process all those horrible things in a lighthearted way
05:23and let people exhale a little bit and say it's not just me,
05:26or thank God I'm not there anymore.
05:28In addition to sadness, there's an undercurrent of anger to Daria's worldview.
05:32Daria probably wouldn't describe herself as an angry person,
05:35and certainly doesn't present that way with her quiet, even-handed delivery.
05:39Where do you think you're going?
05:40Slowly and sane, but I need to pop in at home first.
05:43But people who use a lot of sarcasm are sometimes hiding
05:45a sincere sense of anger and hurt.
05:48Daria's home life is generally supportive, though her parents may be clueless
05:51and unlike her in their temperaments, they clearly love her.
05:54Yet she doesn't always trust that support or love.
05:56You don't make friends as easily as, uh, some people.
06:00Quinn, for instance?
06:02That's not what I meant, necessarily.
06:05It may even be that seeing the unconditional love they have for Quinn
06:09makes Daria feel suspicious of those feelings,
06:11though overall her family does reveal more depth as the show goes on.
06:15Now nothing's under control.
06:16It never is, sweetie.
06:18We just tell ourselves otherwise so we can function.
06:21Life sucks.
06:22Yes.
06:23Sometimes.
06:24Often.
06:25That's reassuring.
06:26But it still beats the alternative.
06:29But even as her view of her family or peers may soften,
06:32Daria sees the world as valuing stupid, superficial, or shallow things
06:36like good looks, popularity, conformity, and deference to authority,
06:39and putting on airs about why they value those things in the first place.
06:43It's about whether a public high school should be using its status
06:46as a place of authority to serve as one more marketing tentacle
06:49of corporate America.
06:50She has a clear yearning to escape her current life
06:53and move on to something else.
06:54Her two made-for-MTV specials are called Is It Fall Yet? and Is It College Yet?
06:58conveying a tired impatience.
07:00Still, she doesn't always seem to have a firm plan about how she might accomplish this,
07:04or even know whether it's possible.
07:06That all of these emotions can exist beneath the surface of a sarcastic teenage girl
07:09makes her deceptively relatable.
07:11Part of the appeal of Daria is that she feels like a real, authentic person,
07:14and her worldview was one that viewers of all stripes could relate to,
07:18even if they weren't specifically a glasses-wearing teenage girl with a deadpan affect.
07:22You guys are hopeless.
07:24Damn it, she saw right through our facade of hopefulness.
07:27As the show's supervising director Karen Disher explained,
07:29Daria was always written gender-neutral.
07:31Glenn was very specific about that.
07:33There are no episodes where they're talking about their periods or having slumber parties.
07:36This is the kind of activity that teen girls do together to cement their friendships.
07:40Don't you want to cement our friendship?
07:42I'd probably do better with actual cement.
07:44At the same time, Daria does embody a strong, unique form of feminist teenage girlhood.
07:49She's an unwitting tour guide through a version of high school,
07:52where the goal isn't necessarily getting the guy or undergoing a popularity makeover,
07:56but just getting through it, because it just kind of inherently sucks a lot of the time.
08:00Or possibly just another adolescent embarrassment,
08:02she'll need to repress in adulthood just to get out of bed in the morning.
08:05Huh. So far, that makes everything after my 12th birthday.
08:09Daria's situation may not be especially enviable,
08:12but for a lot of people who identified with her feelings,
08:15frustrations, and introversion, her personality was something approaching aspirational.
08:19He said he looked up to you?
08:21Isn't that weird?
08:22Flattering, but weird.
08:24Thanks again to MUBI for sponsoring this video.
08:26As a special gift to our viewers, MUBI is offering 30 days free.
08:29Just click the link in the description below to start streaming now.
08:32If you're looking for more edgy animation after revisiting Daria,
08:35check out Liu Jin's Have a Nice Day.
08:36This sly animated neo-noir is a thrilling, biting critique of moral decay in today's China.
08:42If you're anything like me, these days you may be totally uninspired and stuck
08:46when it comes to figuring out what to watch next.
08:48Subscribing to MUBI completely fixes that.
08:51Their team of curators handpicks every film they show,
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09:00Click the link in the description below to start streaming now.
09:08Though Daria remains relatable to viewers today,
09:10the character is also deeply rooted in her origins in the mid to late 1990s.
09:14So let's take a look at how Daria is a product of the 90s,
09:17and how her show actually subverts and deepens some aspects of 90s culture
09:21that had become prevalent even by 1997 when the show premiered.
09:25Daria springs from a popular cultural movement that made her popularity on television possible.
09:30The rise of grunge and later period Gen X culture circa 1992,
09:34finally displacing a lot of the remaining baby-boomer-driven culture
09:37that had flourished since the 1960s,
09:39made it fashionable to be sarcastic, anti-authority,
09:42and suspicious of selling out.
09:44Oh, dazzling academic achievement, eh?
09:46What a sellout.
09:47Look at bands like Nirvana, who brought punk rock values
09:50to the mainstream music charts,
09:51or movies like Reality Bites or Clerks,
09:53where disaffected young workers aren't sure what they want to do with their lives.
09:57I'm not even supposed to be here today!
09:59Though Daria's age technically makes her an older millennial rather than a true Gen Xer,
10:03she feels like an animated teenage version of live-action personalities
10:07like Janine Garofalo, who played the sarcastic best friend from Reality Bites,
10:10and graduated to leading lady status right around the same time Daria premiered.
10:14According to a 2017 anniversary piece in Variety,
10:17other character designs were picked up from other bits of 90s culture.
10:20Jane's brother, Trent, was named after Nine Inch Nails' mastermind,
10:23Trent Reznor, and based on Jane's Addiction guitarist, Dave Navarro.
10:27While the design of Mr. DiMartino, a perpetually angry teacher at Lawndale High,
10:31was modeled on Christopher Walken's appearance in Pulp Fiction.
10:33I want to volunteer with the answer.
10:36Now! Daria, stop showing off!
10:38But if the show lovingly incorporated a lot of 90s culture into its world,
10:42it also went in some bold new directions.
10:44In 1997, it was already rare to build a TV show around teenagers.
10:48My so-called life was a one-season-and-done cancellation victim just a few years earlier,
10:53and Dawson's Creek wouldn't premiere until 1998, and it was even rarer to build one
10:57around a female protagonist.
10:59It was especially rare to see a teenage girl so skeptical of her family, peers, and authority,
11:04a smart girl character who isn't a nerdy teacher's pet or obsessed with behaving properly.
11:09This is the part where you say,
11:10Hey, way to go, congratulations.
11:14Hey, way to go.
11:16Congratulations?
11:17Congratulations.
11:19Even a subversive teenage and girl-centric comedy like Heathers,
11:22which came out at the tail end of the 1980s, looked at popularity from the inside,
11:26assuming the perspective of a teenage girl with experience in her school's highest social cast.
11:31Just like, there are people I work with and our job is being popular and shit.
11:35Daria begins and ends her series as an outsider.
11:38Her experience is especially Gen X and 90s,
11:41in that it's not necessarily specific people who are Daria's sworn enemies,
11:44but the entire system of popularity, phoniness, clueless authority figures,
11:48and consumerism that she wants to opt out of.
11:51It's not nerds versus preps versus jocks,
11:53it's Daria and her artist best friend Jane versus the world.
11:56As Megan Coaster writes,
11:57Daria and Jane operate as quit machines,
11:59but do so solely in order to create protective armor around themselves in a hostile world.
12:04One more night with those whose stupidity has so tormented and entertained us,
12:08lo these many years.
12:09Coaster also observes that Daria's angst penetrates the whole world of the show.
12:13Quote,
12:14Daria's sister Quinn, who at first glance appears to have it all together as a popular mean girl,
12:18is nevertheless riddled with existential ennui.
12:21There's some irony in the fact that Daria the character was so disdainful of popularity,
12:25while Daria the show was able to take on this point of view,
12:28only in a time where that was a culturally cool thing to do.
12:31The fact that Daria was in step with cultural trends of the 90s
12:34made Daria the show popular and beloved.
12:37Another reason for that popularity probably has to do with how it's not
12:40quite as viciously satirical as it might seem.
12:43Kevin and Britney, the jock and cheerleader pair who appear in most episodes,
12:46are much more dim-witted than actively cruel.
12:49The Pigskin Channel.
12:51Great big guys slamming into other great big guys.
12:55Fun.
12:56Cool.
12:58Some of Kevin and Britney's friendliness comes from a myopia and self-involvement
13:01that can't allow them to conceive someone treating them with disdain or derision,
13:05as Daria and Jane sometimes do.
13:07Do you know where you're going yet?
13:08It's a secret, man.
13:10Why?
13:10Is the school embarrassed?
13:11Why would it be embarrassed?
13:13I'm a QB.
13:13It's not like I'm a brain or anything.
13:15Truer words were never spoken.
13:17Thanks, man!
13:18At the same time, the show does seem to regard Britney at least affectionately.
13:21Oh, Daria, now we can have womanly talks!
13:25Unlike Quinn, she's never really cast as Daria's enemy or tormentor.
13:28As Eichler told Variety,
13:30we were satirizing people, but I hope we were sympathetic.
13:33And the show further departs from Daria's caustic point of view
13:35by exploring the very different problems of Jodie Landon,
13:38a high-achieving black teenage girl who is intensely aware
13:41of both the expectations her parents place on her,
13:44because I'd finally get a break from having to be the perfect Jodie doll
13:47at a mostly white school,
13:48and of how Lawndale treats her and her similarly accomplished boyfriend Mac
13:52as tokens of a diversity that doesn't really exist in their student body.
13:56Isn't it great how they keep electing us homecoming king and queen every year?
14:00It's such a generous and enlightened gesture.
14:02It completely makes up for the town's utter lack of diversity, in my mind.
14:06This balance between anti-authority satire and a softer,
14:09more palatable side of teenage alienation is what makes Daria feel late 90s in particular.
14:14The show became popular by capitalizing on the fashionableness of alienation,
14:18which mirrored the post-grunge gold rush toward alternative rock
14:21over on the music side of MTV.
14:23Why can't you smile when somebody takes your picture?
14:26I don't like to smile unless I have a reason.
14:28Nirvana was influenced by punk and indie bands of the 70s and 80s,
14:32but a lot of popular post-Nirvana bands didn't actually sound much like punk.
14:36They sounded like Nirvana, or other popular influences
14:38that didn't have much to do with the punk or indie scene Nirvana emerged from.
14:42Similarly, Daria the character is rightfully disdainful
14:45of a lot of the failings she sees in society,
14:47while Daria aired in an MTV lineup that at various times in Daria's run
14:51included shows like Total Request Live or Singled Out.
14:54To survive on MTV in the late 90s, Daria must have been able to appeal
14:58to at least some segment of that audience without making them feel
15:01they were just being mocked.
15:02This doesn't make the show hypocritical,
15:04it actually gives it an interesting generational subtext.
15:07Daria is forced to interact with the society she disdains,
15:10rather than just shut herself out from feelings or engagement with her community,
15:14just as a lot of 90s kids were gradually learning the limits
15:17of their teenage rebellion or disaffection.
15:19I'm not being negative, I'm being edgy.
15:22Indeed, it's telling that Daria actually ran into the middle of 2001,
15:25with a final wrap-up movie that aired in January 2002.
15:28By this point in pop culture, the irony, disaffection, and alienation of certain
15:3290s cultural touchstones were giving way to a more optimistic millennial sensibility.
15:37Just as alternative rock fell out of favor at a time when boy bands
15:40and teen girl pop singers were gaining popularity again,
15:43the show ends with Daria graduating from Lawndale and heading for college,
15:46a life change that usually necessitates some kind of shift in worldview,
15:50now that the easier targets of high school are left behind.
15:52Daria was cynical about that possibility, too.
15:55What do you think we'll find when we get there?
15:56Hmm, that the students are shockingly ignorant, the professors self-centered and corrupt,
16:02and the entire system geared solely to the pursuit of funding?
16:05But her show clearly believed that some kind of progress, or at least survival, was possible.
16:10Given the unalterable fact that high school sucks,
16:13I'd like to add that if you're lucky enough to have a good friend and a family that cares,
16:17it doesn't have to suck quite as much.
16:19Darya may have moved on to college at the end of the series,
16:28but the series itself has stuck with fans and continued to influence popular culture.
16:32Some viewers might look at the 2001 movie Ghost World as a live-action version of Darya.
16:37The lead characters are two young women who are best friends and outsiders.
16:40They're derisive of their stupid high school classmates and the consumerism they see everywhere.
16:45Everyone's too stupid.
16:47One of them has an artistic sensibility that seems destined to be misunderstood,
16:51and their fashion choices are not preppy or mainstream.
16:53It's obviously a 1977 original punk rock look.
16:57I guess Johnny's face over there is too stupid to realize it.
17:01But though the movie Ghost World came out around the time Darya was ending its run,
17:04it's based on a comic book that ran throughout the 90s,
17:07and may have actually influenced the Darya series in both writing and its art style.
17:11There are times when the thick lines and vivid but semi-static facial expressions
17:15on Darya resemble a comic strip.
17:16Both the movie and the comic of Ghost World are a lot more cutting,
17:19and a lot less hopeful than Darya.
17:21I used to think about one day just not telling anyone,
17:26going off to some random place, and I'd just disappear.
17:32And whereas Ghost World is acerbic and designed to appeal more to specific subcultures,
17:37the big Darya impact is that it brought that cutting sensibility further into the mainstream.
17:42Since then, there are a lot of characters in the wake of Darya who feel influenced
17:46by her sensibility, like Diane from BoJack Horseman.
17:48She's basically Asian Darya, right?
17:51With the glasses and the jacket and her whole blah thing.
17:54Or Lindsay Weir on Freaks and Geeks, who's more earnest and emotionally open,
17:58but essentially someone questioning her good girl past
18:01and trying out a more Darya-like personality, even donning a similar green jacket.
18:05Hey, how come your sister is dressing so weird now?
18:07What do you mean?
18:08I don't know, I mean, she's been wearing your dad's army jacket.
18:12Lizzie Kaplan's characters in both Mean Girls and Party Down have Darya lineage.
18:16Janice from Mean Girls is sarcastic and disdainful of popular kids,
18:19while Casey on Party Down is like a grown-up version of that personality type,
18:23still uncertain about what exactly comes next for her.
18:25Thanks to its sensibility, Darya wasn't marketed as the same kind of teenage sensation
18:30as shows like Dawson's Creek, which ran around the same time.
18:32I don't think in very commercial terms, Eichler told Variety years later,
18:36Dawson's Creek was on the same time we were on,
18:38and if I could think like those people, I'd have a much bigger house, but that's okay.
18:42And though Darya wasn't as heavily watched as Dawson at the time,
18:45her show may actually be more beloved and influential today.
18:48Maybe all along, Darya Morgendorfer was a lot more popular than she ever realized.
18:53I really look up to you and your opinion's important to me.
18:56You look up to me? Huh.
19:00Oh hi friends!
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19:31We'll see you next time.
19:33Bye bye!
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