This Is My Stop
Daria premiered in 1997, meaning the show is now old enough to drink, and the original target audience is no longer disaffected teenaged cynics and realists. “Generation X” is the term commonly applied to Daria Morgendorffer, as she was a breakaway character from Gen X mainstay Beavis and Butthead (essentially Mike Judge’s paradigm before he mellowed into West Texas families in King of the Hill), as well as the fact that Daria’s voice actress had plenty of Gen X cred, starring in the pilot of The Real World (a point which Janeane Garafalo has repeatedly pointed out when people assume she provided the voice of Daria). Millennials claim Daria on virtue of the character’s high-school age and the series release in 1997, suggesting a birthdate in 1980 or 1981, putting her into the fuzzy range of the Echo Boomers/Generation Y before the more definite Millennial start date of 1985.
Got to Get Off, I May Go Pop...
Now available to stream in its entirety on Hulu, I dove back in with nostalgic abandon while my peers wailed and lamented that it will be “rebooted”. The reboot, tentatively titled Daria and Jodie, will focus on white, straight, and cisgendered Daria as well as Jodie, the straight, black cisgendered honor student shown in several episodes to comment on the immense pressure upon her to succeed, not just from parental pressure, but how she’s seen as the role model for her fellow black students, and the expected ambassador of her race to anyone in the predominantly white suburb of Lawndale.
“Why would they reboot it!?! It was perfect before!” is among the most common comments, but as diversity and visibility goes… was it? Even updating the setting to reflect 2018 or 2019 will require major changes both on the political landscape and the technological landscape. Consider that Gen Z/iGen will be starting college in 2019, that’s the current population of high school students, who would find the students of Lawndale High to be lacking in diversity. Where are the LGBTIQAP+ characters? Examples of gender fluidity? Students who aren’t just white, token or background black, or token Asians?
I've Got to be Direct
Chances are that Daria and Jodie wouldn’t be targeted at aging Gen X or Gen Ys, but current teenagers that are two generations ahead who’d eye-roll as well as Daria at the full-screen, dated animation of cartoon from the previous century.
But, if rebooting beloved Gen X properties has proven anything, there will be, and already is, some whinging about it, because hearing about a show you loved as a teenager or in your early 20s getting rebooted twenty-one years after its premiere could force some uncomfortable, and readily denied, confrontations of self-image: you’re getting old, you’re becoming your parents, and thanks to Facebook updates from jerks you knew in high school, you’re likely running far behind the pack in the race of life. It turns out we can be as bad as the Boomers and Busters when it comes to feelings of ownership and entitlement when it comes to what we consider established aspects of our cultural identity, as well as the touchstones that define us, from “You remind me of the babe…” to “P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way…” and everything in between.
If I'm Wrong, Please Correct... (La, La, La...)
An excellent example is provided in the original series, the season 3, episode 6, “The Lost Girls”, where Daria suffers through being shadowed by an aging mid-thirties writer from NYC who runs a teen magazine named after herself, Val, which Daria of course skewers mercilessly for its slavish and asinine attempts to be cool and edgy in the most branding and market-positive way possible. Val, of course, lives in denial of her age and continuing assertion of her consciousness of youth culture, because she’s deluded herself into believing that not only is she part of it, but that’s she’s the one at the helm of it. In 1999, when it debuted, the message was “Recognize the Vals in your life”. In 2018, the message is, “If you can’t recognize the Vals, there’s a good chance you’ve become her”.
That is the danger when a property is rebooted, that the original audience will cling so tightly they strangle the life out of a new project because they still believe that either the original is timeless and without fault, or that the reboot isn’t targeted explicitly at them instead of a newer, younger (or differently gendered) audience.
You're Standing On My Neck
For rebooting Daria, the bar isn’t set too high. The requirements are a sarcastic realist teenage girl, a collection of current high school archetypes, a display of generational divide between parents and children, as well as siblings, and a depiction of Galentine’s Day-worthy female friendship. Pushback might occur from including Jodie, a black honor student, in the title, implying that Jane Lane won’t be reprised, but intersections of Daria’s and Jodie’s lives occurred several times over the course of the series, particularly in the season 2 episode “Gifted”, where both Daria and Jodie are selected to possibly attend a pipeline prep school for gifted students. The episode demonstrates the strength of both characters, as well as the secluded interaction between Jodie and Daria where the former points out that the latter is free to be as combative, sarcastic, and abrasive as she wants because no one expects any different from Daria, a white student, while Jodie is expected to perform according to the expectations of a black role model despite possessing the same sly and scathing wit as Daria. A reboot in the era of “woke-ness” would allow Jodie more room to breathe and more time to speak while still allowing a white audience to still enjoy Daria’s repeated barbs of her more privileged white classmates.
La, la, la, la, la...
In the end, the concern lies with MTV, and the fear that the show will be retooled into a crass, tone-deaf, focus-grouped hollow and shallow parody of itself, but that’s the fear, not, as many old guard fans believe, the assumption. Through bringing on younger, diverse writers, while still maintaining the style of animation, the reboot could be an enjoyable introduction for a younger audience to the sort of jaded, sarcastic humor that was the calling card of their Gen X and Gen Y parents, while still addressing the same social issues and concerns now being faced on a regular basis by today’s youth culture. After all, if Brooklyn Nine-Nine can have a scene where twin black 6 year olds have institutional racism explained to them while still managing a laugh, then a reboot where a young white cynic quips sardonic and drops snark can easily make room for a young black woman to read and drop shade.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://vaughndemont.com/2018/07/09/excuse-me-excuse-me/