Daria

For St. Daria, see Sts. Chrysanthus and Daria.

Daria
File:Daria-FallDVD-Cover.jpg
Created by	Glenn Eichler Susie Lewis Lynn
Starring	Tracy Grandstaff Wendy Hoopes Julián Rebolledo Amy Bennett
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	unaired pilot, 65 episodes, 2 TV-movies (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	22 – 23 minutes (episodes), 66 – 75 minutes (TV-movies)
Original release
Network	MTV
Release	March 3, 1997 – January 21, 2002

Daria is an American animated television series that aired from 1997 to 2002 and was created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn for MTV. Daria was a spin-off of MTV's Beavis and Butt-head.

History

Daria's first appearances were as an occasional character in MTV's animated Beavis and Butt-head. When this series was in its last season, Story Editor Glenn Eichler was approached by MTV representatives with the offer of giving the character a spin-off series. A short pilot, "Sealed With a Kick," was created under Eichler and Beavis and Butt-head staffer Susie Lewis. MTV gave a greenlight for a full series order of 13 episodes. Eichler and Lewis became executive producers.

The first episode of Daria aired on March 3, 1997 (about nine months before B&B ended its original run). Titled "Esteemsters," it featured Daria's previously unseen family, the Morgendorffers, settling into their new hometown of Lawndale (having moved from Highland, the setting for Beavis and Butt-head). Now given center stage, Daria's cynical and often abrasive personality became stronger.

The series ran for five seasons with 13 episodes each, and a TV-movie, "Is It Fall Yet?", which aired in 2000. MTV requested a sixth season (reports vary as to its length), but at Eichler's request this project was cut down to a second TV-movie, "Is It College Yet?", which served as the series finale in January 2002.

Plot and setting

As a running television series with mostly self-contained episodes, Daria had very few running plot-lines, relying mainly on a familiar established premise to build episode-length stories upon. The basic premise was that of an overtly cynical teenage girl dealing with day-to-day life in her American suburban hometown.

For comedic and illustrative purposes, the show's depiction of American life was a deliberately exaggerated one. Daria's hometown of Lawndale was filled with stereotyped personalities of all kinds, and Daria herself served as the series' observer.

The show follows Daria through her high school years, ending with her graduation and acceptance into college. Daria and her best friend Jane Lane, share their droll observations about their school's flaws. Though Daria initially has a crush on Jane's brother Trent, her attraction remains unrequited, as she never reveals this to him. Trent, on the other hand, doesn't make it entirely clear whether or not he regards Daria only as a friend.

The dynamics among the characters change during season 4, when Jane begins a relationship with Tom Sloane, son of one of the town's richest families. Though Daria is hesitant to accept Tom at first, she and Tom find themselves becoming closer, culminating in a kiss in the final episode of season 4. The emotional and comedic turmoil among Jane, Tom, and Daria largely fuels the remainder of the series' stories.

Characters

Main article: Characters in Daria

File:Dariatitle.jpg

From left to right: Jake, Helen, Quinn, Daria, and Jane

Daria featured a large ensemble cast. Daria Morgendorffer was the show's eponymous protagonist. Her immediate family and best friend Jane Lane all appear in nearly every episode.

Music and licensing

Daria's theme song is "You're Standing On My Neck," written and performed by all-female band Splendora. The band later created original themes for the two Daria TV-movies, "Turn the Sun Down" (for "Is It Fall Yet?") and "College Try (Gives Me Blisters)" (for "Is It College Yet?"), along with some background music.

Notably, however, the show itself had no regular score. Though elements from Splendora's theme were used on occasion, Daria's incidental music was taken from pop music songs. Most of these were very recent (lending some credibility to the show's airing on MTV), inserted over exterior shots and some scenes, with rarely any story relevance or awareness from the characters.

For example, one episode depicts characters dancing to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy With It" mere weeks after the song's release, whereas the sequence itself was designed and animated months in advance.

Some story points were built around specific songs, such as in "Legends of the Mall," where "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" became a major plot point for a fantasy sequence. The ending credits also featured a licensed song on all but a few occasions. (These choices often did comment on some aspect of the preceding episode.)

Though a spectacle for its time, the use of so many songs by different recording artists has created countless licensing problems in making Daria available for home video. As early as its 1998 and 1999 VHS releases, incidental music was replaced by no-name filler, and the end credits rolled over "You're Standing On My Neck." The same strategy was used for the bonus episodes of the program that were featured on the DVD releases of the program's TV movies.

Further complications have arisen with the market demand for "complete" editions of TV-show seasons. As Daria's run spanned the period immediately before the boom of TV-on-DVD, this problem could not have been foreseen during production, and is a testament to the show's status as pre-iGeneration.

Unauthorized bootlegs circulate among collectors and are sold on some websites.

Production details

• Many of the voice talents for Daria were recruited from among MTV staff (including Tracy Grandstaff as Daria) and from high schools and colleges in New York City.
• After the show had become popular, rumors circulated stating that actress Janeane Garofalo provided the voice for Daria. Garofalo later stated that she was flattered to be considered "cool enough" to be the voice. She played upon this, and her similarity in appearance to Daria, when she hosted a half-hour "behind the scenes" MTV feature about the production of the show that aired during the fourth season.
• Production of each half-hour episode took ten months to a year, from concept, story, voices, and design (at MTV's New York offices), to generating the animation (at a Korean company), to post-production.
• No other characters from Beavis and Butt-head made an appearance on Daria. Glenn Eichler, in an interview conducted after the series' run, explained:

"B&B were very strong characters, with a very specific type of humor and very loyal fans, and of course they were instantly identifiable. I felt that referencing them in Daria, while we were trying to establish the new characters and the different type of humor, ran the risk of setting up false expectations and disappointment in the viewers - which could lead to a negative reaction to the new show and its different tone. So we steered clear of B&B in the early going, and once the new show was established, there was really no need to hearken back to the old one."

• In the TV-movie "Is It Fall Yet?", several celebrities provided guest voices. Talk show host Carson Daly played Quinn's summer tutor, female punk rock singer Bif Naked played Jane's art camp companion, and rock musician Dave Grohl played Jane's pretentious art camp host. The band Foo Fighters (for which Grohl is frontman) featured several songs on the series.

Satirizing popular culture

One of the show's primary objectives was to exaggeratedly portray and subsequently mock general popular culture. This was done by surrounding the character of Daria, who embodied cynicism, an intellectual bent, and anti-social feelings, with extreme stereotypical personalities, reflective of the culture of a teenage generation (see characters Quinn, Kevin, Stacy).

Specific aspects of pop culture that were satirized include cultural obsessions with self image and fashion, the favoring of sporting achievement over academic or artistic accomplishments, and the general conformist mentality of Daria's generation.

Though the show's satirical nature was omnipresent, Daria would rarely directly reference specific facets of pop culture, such as particular TV shows or bands (apart from the musical underscore, which deliberately consisted of nothing but pop songs).

After each episode, credits would roll on one half of the screen, and the other would display series characters drawn out of character (termed by fans as "alter egos"). They ranged from Tiffany as a Pokémon, to Quinn's constant followers (Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie) as the three main characters from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to Jane as the Statue of Liberty.

Nearly all the episode titles are puns, such as on common phrases ("Pinch Sitter"), on famous TV shows or films ("It Happened One Nut"), or, in one case, on a band's name ("Jane's Addition").

The only TV program Daria is shown to watch regularly is Sick, Sad World, the Daria team's spoof of sensationalist oddity programs. Usually, only a preview or commercial-break bumper for SSW was shown before Daria turned it off or other action ensued. In "Just Add Water," Daria and Jane were shown trying to watch an all-night SSW marathon. Occasionally Daria zaps from one channel to another, which are showing common TV shows. For example, a clip meant to suggest the series Charlie's Angels is shown in "Murder, She Snored," before a dream sequence begins (which satirizes various famous series).

Episodes

Main article: List of Daria episodes

Spanning from 1997 to 2002, the series consisted of 65 episodes and two TV-movies, which preceded and followed the fifth and final season. The original animatic pilot was never aired, but was released on video.

Airing information

Daria was first shown on MTV in the United States. Reruns were carried from 2002 to 2006 on The N, the young teens' timeblock on a channel shared by children's educational timeblock Noggin.

Many American Daria fans have reported that these reruns were edited for content, frequently making the remaining portions confusing, or removing much of the satirizing, subplots, and subtext. (A detailed report of the removal of single words to entire scenes from "Is It Fall Yet?" is available here.) Several episodes were not shown at all.

The rights to show Daria have been bought by many broadcasters outside the USA. MTV Two and The Music Factory show it in the UK, as has the ABC in Australia. Daria International lists current airing information for more than 25 countries.

Videos and DVDs

Seven VHS tapes have been issued, all of them in PAL format, but only the first two of them in NTSC format. The first tape, titled simply "Daria," includes the animatic pilot.

Two DVDs are available, of the Daria TV-movies "Is It Fall Yet?" and "Is It College Yet?" Each DVD includes two episodes from the series, but these episodes have all of their music removed except for the opening theme.

The "College" DVD uses a shortened second-showing MTV version (by about seven minutes), not the originally cablecast version. It does, however, include a short clip of a Daria appearance on Beavis and Butt-head as a hidden "Easter egg."

These DVDs were ostensibly coded for Region One (North America), but found by purchasers to be region-free. More information is on this page.

A viewer campaign has been made over several years for a DVD release of every episode, uncut. As of 11 June 2007, 4271 people had voted for Daria at TV Shows on DVD (registration required to view), bringing the show to third in the list of most-wanted unreleased DVDs. A petition for MTV to release the full series, which passed 25,000 signatures in June 2007, is also available online.

In July 2004, fan Michelle Klein-Hass reported that MTV was investigating options for a DVD release of more Daria episodes. She quoted co-creator Glenn Eichler as saying: "[T]here's no distributor and no release date but what there is, is very strong interest from MTV in putting Daria out, and steady activity toward making that a reality." MTV has also released statements saying that "there is much legal tape to cut through before we can release Daria" due to the music used on the show.

Further information

Books

• The Daria Database by Peggy Nicoll; MTV 1998 ISBN 0-671-02596-1
• The Daria Diaries by Anne Bernstein; MTV 1998 ISBN 0-671-01709-8

These books, by two of the most prolific writers of Daria episodes, have comedic and satirical material based upon the show as aired, but (apart from character guides in Diaries) are not reference works.

Games

• Daria's Sick Sad Life Planner; Pearson Software, 1999
• Daria's Inferno; Pearson Software, 2000, later distributed by Simon & Schuster Interactive

External links

Websites

• Official site at MTV, no longer updated or maintained.
• Outpost Daria, the longest-running and largest fan-created site (since 1998), with archives of essays, media coverage, fan fiction, and fan art. (A "final update" was announced on May 20, 2007, but the site remains on line.)
• Daria at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Daria (1997-2001 TV-series) at IMDb
• Is It Fall Yet? (2000 TV-movie) at IMDb
• Is It College Yet? (2002 TV-movie) at IMDb

Blogs, forums and news sources

• DVDaria (prospects and actions for a full-series release on DVD)
• Petition for New episodes of Daria on [[Petition Online
• The Paperpusher's Message Board (largest gathering place for Daria fans)