Daria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Daria | |
|---|---|
 Daria Morgendorffer |
|
| Genre | Animated sitcom |
| Creator(s) | 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) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | MTV |
| Original run | March 3, 1997 – January 21, 2002 |
Daria is an American animated television series, created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn for MTV.
A spin-off of runaway hit Beavis and Butt-head, Daria also became something of a cultural icon. The show aired from 1997 to 2002.
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[edit] History
Daria's first appearances were as an occasional character in MTV's animated Beavis and Butt-head, where she formed an intelligent foil to the two main characters. During that show's final season in 1997, MTV approached series writer Glenn Eichler, credited with creating the Daria character, about giving her an eponymous series.
A short pilot, "Sealed With a Kick," was created under Eichler and Beavis and Butt-head staffer Susie Lewis. MTV greenlit it to 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, giving the new show its edge.
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.
[edit] 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 show's witty observer.
The show follows Daria through her high school years, ending with her graduation and acceptance into college. Daria and her best (and only close) friend, talented artist Jane Lane, share their droll observations about their classmates' obsessions with being popular and fashionable (traits exemplified by Daria's vapid younger sister, Quinn). 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.
[edit] Characters
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.
[edit] Music and licensing
Daria's theme song is "You're Standing On My Neck," written and performed by all-female band Splendora. (An extended version is played in the closing credits of the Daria's Inferno video game.) 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."
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.
[edit] 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 celebrated rock musician Dave Grohl played Jane's pretentious art camp host. The band Foo Fighters (for which Grohl is frontman) featured some half a dozen songs on the series.
[edit] Story trivia
- The only TV program Daria is shown to watch is Sick, Sad World, the Daria team's spoof of sensationalist oddity programs. However, only the preview or commercial break of the show was usually 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. (A clip meant to suggest Charlie's Angels is shown in "Murder, She Snored," before the dream sequence begins.)
- The Morgendorffers usually have heated-up pre-made lasagna as a meal, though they have been known to eat take-out chicken, tacos ("Jake of Hearts"), and a variety of bizarre meals created by Daria's father Jake.
- Tom Sloane's surname was possibly chosen to connote his family's old money status by alluding to their British counterparts, dubbed Sloane Rangers.
[edit] Pop culture in Daria
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").
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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. MTV2 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.
[edit] 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 fans to be region-free. More information is on this page.
Fans are campaigning for a DVD release of every episode, uncut. By December 2006, 3853 people had voted for Daria at TV Shows on DVD, bringing the show to fourth in the list of most-wanted unreleased DVDs, and first on the list of most-wanted unreleased cartoon DVDs. A petition for MTV to release the full series on DVD, which passed 20,000 signatures in May 2006, is also available online.
In July 2004, fan Michelle Klein-Hass reported that MTV was currently 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."
[edit] 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
[edit] Games
- Daria's Sick Sad Life Planner; Pearson Software, 1999
- Daria's Inferno; Pearson Software, 2000, later distributed by Simon & Schuster Interactive
[edit] Fan community
Most of the interaction among fans takes place online. Discussions take place in Usenet group alt.tv.daria, on the IRC channel #daria+, and in message boards.
Fan conventions have been small, informal gatherings run on a not-for-profit basis. Thus far, these have been held in private homes. Larger events using public venues are being planned by some fans for 2007 (the tenth anniversary of the MTV debut of Daria) and 2008.
[edit] External links
[edit] 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.
- Daria at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- Daria (1997-2001 TV-series) at the Internet Movie Database
- Is It Fall Yet? (2000 TV-movie) at the Internet Movie Database
- Is It College Yet? (2002 TV-movie) at the Internet Movie Database
[edit] Blogs, forums and news sources
- DVDaria works to gather support to have Daria released in full on DVD.
- The Paperpusher's Message Board, the major gathering place for Daria fans.
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Characters • Episodes • Is It Fall Yet? • Is It College Yet? |
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