Retro Daria

With all of the pictures of “future Daria” posted on the Daria Fandom Blog II -- a fine site, highly recommended – I recall a conversation I had with my wife. The contention was that even though Daria was on hip and happening music video (at the time) network MTV, the show was as much of a relic of the 1980s and before as just about anything.

The world of Daria is high school . Not any modern high school, but apparently the high school that Glenn Eichler must have gone to…and from my understanding, assuming that Mr. Eichler became a National Lampoon editor of the ripe young age of 22 in 1983, then Eichler graduated from high school sometime before 1979. Daria comes a lot closer to representing the high school Glenn Eichler attended than the high schools of any of the Daria viewers.

The first example is Brittany Taylor. Brittany Taylor is the big boobed dumb blonde cheerleader. This is an archetype that’s been around for a while and it will take several generations of Nobel Prize winning cheerleaders to eliminate it. Brittany’s activities consist primarily of supporting her Kevvie and writing cheers.

The joke in “See Jane Run” is that Ms. Morris’s gym classes are little more than cheerleader classes in disguise. However, Daria and Jane aren’t required to do much more that wave pompoms. In another episode (I forget the name) we learn that Lawndale High School at least has a trampoline, which might have some useful purpose in a cheerleading practice session.

Brittany does some splits, but can’t even keep her balance. The most athletic thing that any of the Lawndale cheerleaders are doing is forming a three-level pyramid…but this activity takes place only in the imagination of Jane Lane. In short, the cheerleaders of the Daria world are little more than pompom-waving sex objects of limited intelligence.

Brittany wears a short skirt, which would provide some lower body mobility, but she’s encased in an upper body sweater more suitable for a cheerleader of the 1970s – close fitting sweater (the better to show off the goods!), short sleeves and not extending below the hemline of the skirt. The only concessions to modernity (1980s and early 1990s) are Brittany’s slouch socks and sneakers.

The problem with this portrayal is that it’s a dated portrayal of high school cheerleading. If Daria were going to be accurate, she’d probably wear a short-sleeved spandex “shell top” and she spend a lot less time writing cheers and a lot more time doing complicated tumbling and gymnastics routines. (The only hint of these we see are from “The Daria Hunter”.) Brittany would come to class with say, her ankles taped up or maybe with a bruise or two.

Eichler portrays cheerleading as an activity for young women to engage in to gain popularity. (Back in Eichler’s day, cheerleaders auditioned for their role by giving their cheers in front of the student body. We see an audition in front of a smaller crowd in “The F Word”.) But by 1997, cheerleading was a lot closer to a sport than it was to something like a Fashion Club. Brittany wouldn’t need to feel that she had to match up with Kevin Thompson. She’d be taking the Lawndale Cheer Dance Team on tour to the state finals, working with cheer coaches and spirit camps, performing complex dance routines. These routines are often dangerous, resulting in broken bones or worse. (Remember, no one is wearing a helmet or pads while doing any of this.)

Another example is Kevin Thompson, and by extension, the rest of Lawndale High sports. During the first three seasons of Daria, Kevin Thompson floats on by. We know that Brittany is the smart one of this intellectual challenged duo – a C-minus is grounds for celebration – so God knows what kind of grades Kevin Thompson makes.

The understanding is that the jocks at Lawndale High School don’t have to take exams. They are given the infamous “bye”. However, during “Mart of Darkness”, something changes. (Thanks to Scissors MacGillicutty for pointing this out.) It is made clear that Kevin will simply float through high school and not face any intellectual challenges.

This might have been true in Glenn Eichler’s day – teachers and administrators would have looked the other way and given their Kevin Thompsons an automatic diploma. It would be the college’s problem, and many colleges of Eichler’s day had formulaic approaches to the admissions process. College scholarships weren’t tied to rigorous academic standards.

This all started to change in the mid-1980s, after Eichler graduated high school. States began to institute high school exit exams. Colleges were more closely regulated by the NCAA and Division I school applicants were forced to have grade point averages above a certain minimum to get a sports scholarship. When it was learned that high schools were artificially changing grades for star athletes, the NCAA began to require minimal scores on the SATs.

Someone must have reminded Glenn Eichler – probably Rachelle Romberg, writer of “Mart of Darkness” – that academic standards existed. The plot thread will not be dropped, and now all of a sudden, Kevin’s father is asked by Mr. O’Neill to convince his son to study harder. (A plea that falls on deaf ears.) One can only wonder why Ms. Li supported the candidacy of George W. Bush and his “No Child Left Behind” program with its heavy emphasis on standardized testing.

(* * *)

My wife, Ruth, comments on the fact that the Fashion Club would not be considered fashionable by 1990s standards. The most popular haircut of the 1990s for women was the “Jennifer Aniston/Friends” haircut, a haircut which is never seen in Daria. Short hair was in in a big way in the 1990s, but oddly enough…it can be argued that all of the main female characters of Daria have long hair! One could argue that Jane Lane’s hair is not long, but she’s the only one. Jane Lane has weird artist helmet hair, not meant to represent any popular style. If Daria were true to fashion, Quinn would have a Meg Ryan do. At least Quinn’s pink baby-doll midriff-bearing T-shirt more accurately reflects the styles of the time.

Even slacker Trent Lane is more retro than grunge. Let’s look at his musical influences, and the periods when they were the most popular

Jane’s Addiction: The high point of the band was 1985-91.
Morrissey: 1988-1997
The Doors: the Morrison Doors were gone by 1972
Cocteau Twins: hung around till 1996 or 1997, but its real high point was the 1980s
Frank Zappa: died in 1993
Nine Inch Nails: when Daria hit the airwaves, NIN hadn’t released an album in three years.
Nirvana: Cobain died in 1994
Gregorian Chants: by the 16th century, it was falling out of use
thunder: thunder has never gone out of style
the Banana Splits: Fleegle sadly died of a heroin overdose in 1970

In short, the only way Trent Lane represents grunge is in his clothing. Musically, he’s a retro throwback. I can understand why it was so easy for him to do a commercial for Happy Herb; if Mystik Spiral hadn’t agreed, Herb would have had to search through The Carpenters old back catalog.

(* * *)

Unfortunately, I have not been able to think of a good ending paragraph for this essay. Is Glenn Eichler a big fat lazy retro jerk? No. I worship at the man’s Doc Martens. However, it’s clear that not only his conception of the 1990s, but the conception of the other writers and designers of high school life is a bit…tilted toward the 1980s and earlier.

Then again, every writer writes about the way things were back in the day. I’m sure that in the future we’ll get a vision of Daria that actually illustrates what high school life was really like back in the late 1990s…when new Daria episodes finally come on the air in the 2020s.