Is Daria a Role Model?

Growing up one of my favourite shows on television was Daria, and heck, I still watch downloaded episodes of it, and am asking for the complete 5 seasons for my birthday this year (my birthday is in October, if you’re feeling generous).

It’s compelling stuff. I identified a lot with Daria, given that I didn’t share my classmates’ penchant for general enthusiasm, derided sport (I still love the opening sequence with Daria playing – or rather ignoring – a game of volleyball). I shared Daria’s fairly bleak world views and academic prowess, as well as the way she expressed herself, her thoughts and reactions to what can be a bizarre and illogical world through writing.

Daria never lived perfectly according to her very strong values either. She demanded honesty from herself and others, alongside her bleak brand of realism. She did not respond well to vanity, frivolity and optimistic cheer. Yet, she wasn’t infallible, like any other teenager. She ‘stole’ her best friend’s boyfriend, she had a brief brush with self-consciousness when replacing her glasses with contact lenses, and then eventually, blindly stumbled around her school corridors when the contact lenses incited an allergic reaction, choosing not to replace her glasses.

When I watch episodes now, rather than finding someone I can relate to in the midst of navigating the social life of a high school student alongside high school administrators who are both incompetent and condescending, I wonder about whether Daria is a positive role model for teenagers, or anti-social, someone to avoid, someone contributing to all these social issues she finds to be problematic, rather than working on a solution.

In the episode, Fizz Ed., Daria is furious because her school is installing vending machines and advertising soft drink in order to gain funding from an Evil Corporation. Nobody else at the school seems to care, though the people she talks to suggest that if she feels so strongly about it, she should do something, instead of just whinge about it. Eventually, she gives in to the suggestions and talks to someone high up who dismisses her immediately. She gives up, and it takes the school principal to go on an advertising and cola-drinking rampage for the advertising to leave the school halls. Daria oftentimes gets angsty about her circumstances, but she rarely responds to them. You kind of get the feeling that she isn’t an agent in changing her school, or the world, and just carries with her a very defeatist attitude.

Similarly, in an episode called Arts and Crass, Daria and Jane design a depressing poster they admit to a showing on ‘student life’ depicting the realities of eating disorders. When asked to tone down the message, they refuse until a teacher convinces them that he should rewrite the poster’s poem. They do not approve of this change and say that they withdraw their poster to be shown. The administration show the poster anyway and instead of talking to them, they deface their own poster. In the end, they get into trouble for their actions, and it’s up to Daria’s mother to bail them out of a suspension. They don’t talk their way out of the ideological problem they have, they instead get passive-aggressive and in the end will not stand up for themselves directly to the people they should have stood up to in the first place.

Despite her angst, Daria also lives a very charmed life. Her family is a little nuts, but they’re intact and largely supportive. Daria’s biggest qualm seems to be the constant begging of her mother to get involved in extra curricular activities so as to help her in the college admission process. She also has a great best friend who shares her view on life and in later series, a caring and kind boyfriend who meets her intellectually and supports her creatively. Yet, she barely musters a smile in her daily life. She is the epitome of white privilege, and instead of doing anything about the inadequacies of her social world, she can only seem to make fun of it, judge it by assuming that others lack depth or intelligence, or complain about it.

Nonetheless, I think I must maintain that Daria, with all her imperfections, is a good role model. She values the deep before the shallow, she cares a lot about knowledge and truth, and is ultimately loyal. Her critiques of the world are absolutely spot-on, albeit a little naive. For instance, she expects herself to live by her own stringent values, when she discovers through wearing contact lenses and liking her new, un-framed appearance, she is supremely ashamed of her own vanity, until she eventually learns that nobody is perfect, not even her. The fact that she critically engages with her life and her decisions is highly applaudable.

The disparities between the world you expect to see, and the world that is actually there, with all its frivolity and at some points, stupidity, is a big one to deal with. I was privileged to watch Daria try and make sense of it while I was trying to do so myself. Although I think I’m a little more moderate in my views, and a little happier with life than her, she was one of the very few teen characters I saw who actually fully felt things and fully questioned what was going on.
Maybe she isn’t someone we should hope to be, but the way she tackles the challenges of high school is worthy of admiration.