by Did you ever wonder what happened to other students after high school? Do you ever remember some of the highly intelligent but socially reclusive outcasts that were attendance at the same high school? If so, there was this animated comic in the late 1990s-2000s that expressed such outcasts and their perspective on life and it was called Daria. Before the show however, Daria was actually a character that was briefly shown on another MTV animation called Beavis and Butthead. The first animation was created by Mike Judge with the show being both controversial and comedic, it described the life of two kids who were (to put it lightly) had double digits IQ’s. I never watched the show when I was kid because I rarely had access to TV and Internet but Mike Judge went on to create other works such as King of the Hill and collaborate with degenerate social experiments such as Jackass. Fast forward to our present-day dystopia when I’ve recently discovered this Daria on the public library (*wink wink*), many of the characters represented to me social alienation, constant recognition of hype-reality within existence, and caricature of personalities with behavioral traits taken to the extremes. It was a documentary of my life, described orally and visually where words couldn’t describe eloquently when I was younger. Then my interest with the show peaked more and so I research to discover how such a show performed when I was still in Elementary school and the results were shocking, 65 episodes, 5 seasons which lasted from 1997-2001
“Daria was put together by Harvard-educated Lampoon alum Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis, who spent her days at Temple University doodling MTV logos on notebooks until a classmate suggested she get an internship at the network. His book smarts combined with her street smarts and pop culture knowledge, in a dynamic not dissimilar to that of Daria and her best friend, Jane Lane. They made their project work without a singular creative mastermind like Judge, who wanted nothing to do with the spin-off and was on his way out the door to bigger (and much more lucrative projects) with Fox anyway.”
Daria ended up being the longest-running show to come out of MTV’s Animation department, surpassing even Beavis and other cultural touchstones like Celebrity Death-match. Although MTV would go on to produce other great cartoons, many lasted no more than one season, and none were able to replicate Daria’s success. In light of Daria turning 20 on March 3, I called up all the people behind the deadpan smart-alack classic to ask how it got made, and why MTV will probably never have another animated mega-hit.”(Conti, 2017)
The voice actors were decently, the music chosen as the theme song fit perfectly to the mood-board of Daria’s life, and I can personally feel what the main character went through. Most of the shows that ive watched so far started off with Daria and her family set in the living room, talking but not communicating or concerned with the other members. Starting with the parents, Helen Morgendorffer is the mother of Daria, works as a lawyer, emotionally manipulative and career driven to get a higher salary and preserve the status of being the first women in her law firm as a leader at the expense of not care taking for two daughters and a husband. The husband, Jake Morgendorffer is an insurance consultant who slaves away at trying to appeal toward everyone in the hopes of being recognized as a human, always stressed out to perform and backup Helen’s decisions and enforcing rules and regulations Helen dictates. The Parents shield both daughters from how the real world works and the challenges they face throughout the show in high school. The result is polar opposites for both sisters, with Quinn Morgendorffer being “Vice President of the Fashion Club” being the most popular girl in high school with most guys wanting to date (and potentially marry her) and Daria being a smart and cynical girl goes through teenage life as a proud outsider in a world of mainly idiotic adolescents and condescending adults. The other side characters are the jockeys and average person including teachers that each deals with their own personal trauma. The only main side character that is important to maintain Darias sanity is Jane Lane, the best (only) friend and creative artist who just lives for the moment and attempts to pursue her dreams of having a studio apartment, similar to Trent Lane (named after Trent Reznor) that pursues a music career as the singer of Mystic Spiral.
This show hits too close to home all time, mostly due to Daria’s alienation from others but what isn’t quoted but hinted at throughout the entire show is the curse of having intelligence. Many people, both online and in real life don’t understand the above average category of intelligent people and how their existence is tormented, this illusion of conformity and fake reality that High school creates, not to mention how woefully unprepared students are with 12-20 years in dorms and complexes. It is no coincidence that suicides and depression are spiking overall across American schools and it isn’t the students fault for feeling this way,in fact if most of these students tested their IQ’s, they would see higher than average results.
“Whether we like it or not, we will derive 100% of our value and happiness from other people. You can have the latest PS4 video game with a 60 inch screen TV,
a Ferrari, and a small island in your name, but it does not change the fact that
without family, friends, loved ones and a social life all the material items in the
world mean nothing. Additionally, we also need to function in society outside of
our circle of loved ones, not only because we need jobs and have to interact with
people on the street, but for the simple truism that there is no other society to
function in. It’s the only one available to us. This in an “eagle surrounded by
turkeys” sense limits our success and happiness in life in that we need to rely,
interact with, and depend on other people less intelligent than us.”
Happiness is something that is getting harder and harder to achieve, the rules to playing social games are getting more complicated, more of the superficial acts of romance are becoming more obvious and the marriage rates across the world are declining on mass, causing concerns for stable families and relationships. For most millennials and Gen Zer’s there is nothing really to be inspired about, standards of living are declining and more social media means less interaction of genuine conversation other than small talk are the options given to people who use their brains. You can be very successful, travel around the work like Anthony Bourdain, have kids and become and inspiration to others but that existential dread that leaks around the corner of “this is it?” and many people don’t have a means of handling these situations come up and eventually overdose and commit suicide.
” Yes, we were all very successful. And yes, we were all “eccentric” in one way or another. But while an argument can be made that this was selection bias, a mere preference to hang out with like-minded people, it was the freakishly high IQ’s that explained the misery component of my cabal of friends. For in taking inventory of my friends, the nature of their problems, and the sources of their misery, as well as combining it with my own experiences, observations,research, and theories, this correlation made it increasingly clear that:
1. Our problems were not unique, but shared and common among
people with high IQ’s (depression, alcoholism, ennui, indifference, loneliness, boredom, etc.), and
2. It was being caused by abnormally high intelligence’s that unintentionally ostracized us from the rest of society.” (Clarey,2016)
Statistically speaking, social outcasts with high IQ’s are freaks, their oddity comes from a lack of inherent efficiency in that we cannot capitalize or benefit from the economies to scale that exist to serve the vast majority of the population which happens to be less intelligent than them. Daria is a perfect example of such oddity, shes morbid in her thinking, her sarcasm is an attempt to distance herself from others and hide her emotions because expressing them openly could cause unintentional harm both from herself and others throughout the show. Overtime as the show progresses, Daria learns to slowly open up to other girls and eventually dates guys that actually understand how she feels. This is important as she learns how to deal with not just other peoples misfortune but also her self awareness. As I go back to finishing the show, there is something that needs to be said to readers who experience being outcasts who are intelligently aware of society, many of these problems have no solution as they’re just inherent to the nature of life and your only option is to suck it up and endure it. This means to live life as much as possible before you decide to end your life. But at minimum we can provide an explanation as to why you’re feeling down, why you drink, why you can’t find friends, why you can’t hold a job, etc. It may not result in happiness, sobriety, or an active social life,but it will at least provide an explanation and the precious sanity that comes with.
References
Conti, A. (2017, March 2). The oral history of ‘Daria’. VICE. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkxbvb/the-oral-history-of-daria
Clarey, A. (2016). The curse of the high Iq. Aaron Clarey.
