“Daria” was an animated television show that aired on MTV from 1997-2002. Its leading lady, Daria Morgendorffer, was a cynical and sarcastic teenage girl attending a High School she had a deeply sardonic and deep-seated sarcastic relation too. The show could be seen as the female response to “The Simpsons”, and is to date one of the few adult cartoon shows that’s main characters are all women.
Quinn Morgendorffer, Daria’s popular and shallow sister takes the second seat in this animation of the vaudeville of the teens. Quinn plays out the role of “popular girl” going on dates with hundreds of boys to gain more status in the high school hierarchy, and completes the role by being the vice-president of the schools’ “Fashion Club”. Daria and Quinn are constantly in conflict, due to the fact of Daria being the penultimate outsider at their High School, and not helped by being considered a “brain” (i.e. Freak), which Quinn in true form of the popular teen elite is deeply ashamed of. A third central person in the show is Daria’s best friend Jane, a television addict and artist. Daria and Jane, her also spurned teen friend, spend their time laughing and criticizing all the weird stuff that people do in the hot bed of suburbia and the high school microcosm.
“Daria” was an excellent animated comedy with an equally excellent heroine. Daria was a person you wished you could emulate in your own life due to her innate toughness and quick wit in the face of the insipid actions and statements circulating around her. Her clashes with Quinn were amusing, showing two very different kinds of women which a strong sense of their “own” identity and their wills to defend them to one another (Even if Quinn wasn’t always THAT loyal to her “identity”). The archetypes of this binary played out in the animation as Daria being the somewhat “Intellectual” self-determined woman and Quinn the “air head” superficial woman.
The show tackled a lot of impressive subjects, like fashion modeling (“This year’s model”, Season 1), censorship (“Crash n’ Art”, Season 2) and the bad sides of sponsoring (“Fizz Ed”, season 5). Most of the episodes were written and directed by women. The most notable director of the episodes, as well as the two expanded movies in the franchise (“Is it fall yet?”, “Is it college yet?”) was Karen Disher. The first film Disher directed with Guy Moore, the second she work as lone auteur. This still unusual in the world of animated television shows, that is often created, written and directed for men.
“Daria” was an unusual show in many ways, regarding it’s concentration on female head characters, subject matters along with the predominance of women who were shaping the show. I consider “Daria” one of the high points of Women’s television shows. But this show isn’t only groundbreaking in its female centered nature, but for its bravery to be one of the rare shows to have an openly non-religious, skeptic heroine. Even if the word “Atheist” was never really used in the show, Daria just might be one of the few positive portrayals of atheism in popular culture.
Daria’s beliefs are made mostly clear in the episode “Grouped by an Angel” in season four. (Before you continue this post, I must warn that there will be spoilers for this episode). Quinn becomes obsessed with the idea of guardian angels. After an incident at Dinner, where Quinn just in time leaves the table to miss a lamp falling on her, she is convinced that she has a guardian angel of her own. In the days which follow this instance her good luck convinces her to become even more engaged with the idea of her own Angel. Daria, on the other hand, finds Quinn’s beliefs annoying and stupid. The turning point of the episode, however, is when Quinn experiences a series of unfortunate accidents at a popular girl’s party. This sends Quinn into a sullen state. She wonders why her guardian angel has abandoned her and if she has ever had a guardian angel at all. Turning to Daria, Quinn demands of her to answer what, if she doesn’t believe in Angels, does she believe in? To this demand Daria simply replies: “I guess I believe in treating others the way you would want to be treated”. Daria continues saying:
“… Until I see some pretty convincing evidence, I think we (humans) are on our own”. This statement seems not only to hint that Daria is an atheist, but practically says she is one. Some commentators note that directly after this Daria states the vaguely conditional: “Well, I don’t have any proof that one of that stuff exists…” However, in the context of the episode, there can be no doubt that Daria says this merely to cheer Quinn up, and is counter to what she actually believes.
Daria was, even from the outset of the show, an original and outstanding character, but this episode made her even more rare and special. To this date there are few good atheist characters on Television. “Family Guys” Brian is the only other atheist character to be “out-ted” in a popular show. “The Simpsons”, for instance, has never really had an atheist as a character (which is strange since they’ve had Protestants, Catholics, hinds, Buddhist, Jewish people and Muslims appear in the show. Basically all religions have been presented on the show, but not atheist or agnostics…).
The closest to a real atheist in animated television comes in “The Boondocks’” hero Huey Freeman who is an openly agnostic. Agnostics are more common “non-religious” characters on TV since they are less controversial since they often aren’t sure whether higher powers exist or not. What was brave about Daria’s frank words, where that she makes it clear to the viewer that she doesn’t believe in any kind of higher powers, is the strong meaning she voices in the rejection of a belief in any kind of God.
Daria isn’t portrayed as the stereotypical mean and harsh atheist either; she does give Quinn hope to carry on her own beliefs, giving a group of some-what good reasons for why her angel wasn’t there to help her at the party, making Quinn hopeful. This is pretty radical, since most atheists shown on TV are often grumpy and mean-spirited (like the main character in “House”).
“Daria” was a show I wish they had more of. After Daria, all of the main adult cartoons have been male centered (“South Park”, “Family guy”, “King of the Hill”). And as for live-action shows, most of them center on pretty shallow women (even if they are some pretty awesome shows with good female leads, like “30 Rock”, but that’s one of few). And besides Daria, very few shows have had the courage to have a (likeable) atheist character. When discussing atheism in popular culture, Daria is sadly often forgotten and not mentioned as much as she should be. She was one of the first atheists on TV, long before Brian from “Family Guy” or House from “House”. “Daria” as a show gave women a clever and witty show and one to be proud of.
I would love to show just the part of “Grouped by an Angel” where Daria tells Quinn her beliefs, but unfortunately I can only show the first half of the episode due to copyrights. But if you get the chance to check out the whole episode, definitely due so!
Ruby Soup with Pearl Juice 
Åh, vad roligt att du skrev om Daria! Jättebra inlägg!
Du har rätt i att de verkligen ger en väldigt sympatisk bild av Darias tro. Jag tycker att den känns mer riktig också. Det är fel att bara gestalta ateister så där extrema som i House… Darias samtal med Quinn är verkligen gulligt.
Daria är en sån djup och välutvecklad karaktär och så intressant. Det är verkligen roligt att följa en sån huvudperson. Har nog aldrig stött på någon karaktär som liknar henne i något annat. Eller någon serie som liknar Daria för den delen. 🙂
Ja, Daria är en “One of a kind”- karaktär verkligen! Och programmen också.
Darias samtal med Quinn är verkligen supergullig! Daria är så snäll, om man kan säga så. Håller med dig att det känns mer “riktigt” än t.ex. hur House gestaltas, och massor av andra program också.
Love your take on Daria. And interesting, generally, about the representation of Atheists on Television.
One of my favorite atheists on Television was Mal Reynolds from the shortlived (and one of the most wonderful created televisions series of recent years) “Firefly” show. Mal has rejected his naive belief in God due to the evil he sees as being rewarded in the world.
Living a moral life of the “criminal” (what one has to do in relation to the tyranny of the government) he voices the position of Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov that the horrors of the world show either there is no god, or we should be in opposition to this idea and its worldly order.
His two most famous quotes about this are:
“You’re welcome on my boat. God ain’t.” (said to a Pastor coming on to the ship)
And
When asked by a member of the crew: “Captain, would you mind if I say grace?” Mal replies: “Only if you say it out loud”.
Here is Mal’s Song from the Show. It (in fairly romantic style) tries to indicate his trying to live through the concepts of independence and freedom and the positioning he takes in regard to the over determining codes of the institutions of belief and society.
And, lastly, Joss Whedon, being an atheist himself, was deeply influenced by the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre (the show’s final episode, Objects in Space, as well as Mals song above, draws heavily from Sartre’s Nausea) and he has been highly criticized for his positions in the show from even the fans themselves. Here is his attempt to answer the question (in the context of the Serenity movie version of Firefly) “What do you have against being a Christian?”
What do you think of Mal? And naturally, Hurrah for both your post and Joss!
Hurrah for Joss!
Mal’s a great character, no doubt about that. I liked his no non-sense behavior and loyalty to his crew. A pretty good atheistic character from a TV series!
Whendon’s answer was wonderfully worded. I always admired his works “Buffy The Vampire slayer” and “Firefly”. He’s also one of few men who identify themselves as a feminist; good for him! 🙂
Didn’t know about the Feminism, but not suprised. Do you have some links or other places where I can check this out?
One thought though. His show “Dollhouse” may have attempted a feminism of sorts, but I thought it did pretty much just the opposite. Ouch! but with all art you usually only can get about half right when you go for real experimentation.
Well, despite some errors in the last season, I would consider “Buffy the vampire Slayer” to be a feministic show. It did have some episodes that dealt with sexism and hatred towards women. There was also quite a few episodes about violence towards women. Also, Whendon told in a interview that “Buffy” was his protest against the cheesy horror flicks he grew up with where women did nothing but scream, faint, die or be rescued by the men. 🙂 Haven’t seen “Dollhouse”, so can’t say anything there. If what you say about the show is true, I can say that I thinkalways make Whendon does try, and succeeds like in the cause of “Buffy”, but doesn’t make it quite right.
I blogged about this subject myself earlier today, and it was a pleasure to read your view on it maaretta. – cars2scrap
Hello!
Glad you thought my post was fun to read! I’ll have to see if I can find your blog so I can read your post. 🙂
Maaretta
james,
Been looking for your post. Could you put up a link here so I can find it?