Daria Morgendorffer

This article describes a work or element of fiction in a primarily in-universe style. Please help rewrite it to explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective. (October 2009)

Daria Morgendorffer
Daria as she appears on a DVD cover
First appearance	"Sign Here" [Beavis and Butthead, 1993]; "Esteemsters" [Daria, 1997]
Last appearance	"Beavis and Butt-head Are Dead" [Beavis and Butthead, 1997]; Is It College Yet? (2002)
Created by	Glenn Eichler
Portrayed by	Tracy Grandstaff (voice)
Information
Aliases	N/A
Gender	Female
Age	18 (by the end of Daria)
Occupation	Freshman at Raft College.
Family	Helen Morgendorffer (mother) Jake Morgendorffer (father) Quinn Morgendorffer (sister)

Daria Morgendorffer is a fictional animated character from MTV's animated series Beavis and Butt-Head and Daria. In 2002, Daria placed at number 41 on the list of the Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of all Time by TV Guide for her role in the two shows.^[1] She was voiced in both incarnations by Tracy Grandstaff.

Conception and development

MTV senior vice president and creative director Abby Terkuhle explained that when that Beavis and Butt-Head "became successful, we ... created Daria's character because we wanted a smart female who could serve as the foil."^[2] Terkuhle said that he added Daria "to put [Beavis and Butthead] in their place."^[3]

Beavis and Butt-Head

In Daria's first incarnation as a recurring character on Beavis and Butt-Head, she formed an intelligent female foil to the two main characters. Though she is not amused by their antics, she does not have the passionate hatred for them that Principal McVicker and Coach Buzzcut have nor does she really believe there is any hope for them either as David Van Driessen had. At times, she would also make fun of the two for their stupidity. She also took advantage of their idiocy and got them to unwittingly pledge a hundred dollars apiece on a charity walkathon.^{[episode needed]}

Daria likes to be around Beavis and Butthead because she finds their behavior and attitude to be entertaining. John J. O'Connor of The New York Times describes Daria "as sharp as B. & B. are dimwitted."^[4] John Allemang of The Globe and Mail described Daria in Beavis and Butthead "the prematurely wise girl who could be counted on to put their idiocy in perspective."^[5] Beavis and Butthead often call her "Diarrhea."^[5][6]

In the episode "U.S. History" ^[7], she turned around to talk to the duo and said they would never graduate, and she told them that "to graduate" means to be all done with the final year of school (Beavis responded, "You mean, like...school ends?"). In the Christmas Special, it is stated that Butt-Head had been responsible for giving her a negative outlook on boys. In the final episode of the series when the boys "died," Daria expressed the sentiments that Beavis and Butt-Head did not have very bright futures to look forward to. She was one of the few characters that the duo never managed to drive crazy as they had with many other students and teachers. Daria appears in the Marvel Comics adaptation of the TV show. In Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, she appears once throughout the film with a group of students, but does not have any dialogue.

Daria

In her eponymous series, following Beavis and Butt-Head in the order of time, Daria is a bespectacled, plain, unfashionably dressed, but highly intellectual, seemingly cynical and sarcastic teenage girl who is portrayed as an icon of sanity in an insane household in an equally insane upper middle class suburb, with her vacuous, fashion-obsessed sister Quinn and career-obsessed parents Helen and Jake. John Allemang of The Globe and Mail said that Daria is "both the disappointment of her overachieving parents and an embarrassment to her boy-crazy sister Quinn."^[5]

David L. Coddon of the San Diego Union-Tribune described Daria as "the anti-cheerleader, the un-social climber, the jaundiced eye in a cartoon world of too much makeup and superficial crayon colors." Coddon added that Daria "may look like a misfit, but the catch is that Daria's the only character on the show who "gets it." It's everyone else who's a misfit."^[8] Daria said in an episode that she does not have low self esteem for herself, but that she has low esteem for other people around her.^[5]

Allemang said that in Daria, Daria "seems more tortured and neurotic, if only because it's more clear that the airheads have won."^[5] Daria often talks to herself. Allemang adds "in a perky-teen world with its twisted values, soliloquies are the best hope of intelligent conversation."^[5] In addition he said "There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Daria, just because she can't or won't hang out with the cool kids."^[5] John J. O'Connor of The New York Times said that Daria has "a withering eye" towards her classmates.^[4]

Daria and Jane like to watch the television show "Sick, Sad World."^[4]

Unlike most animated characters, Daria and her counterparts age during the duration of the series.^{[citation needed]} When the series began, Daria was 16 years old, she moved to Lawndale, and was a sophomore in high school, and was introduced in the school (this was not seen in any of the episodes). When she graduated from high school in Is It College Yet?, she was 18 years old. According to the episode Lane Miserables, her height is 5'2". She is ready to stand up to misused authority. Daria lives with her family at 21 Woodland Avenue.

Series

This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (November 2009)

During the series, Daria attends Lawndale High School, where on her first day in "self-esteem class" she meets Jane Lane, the artist and classmate who will be her first real friend and her best friend through the rest of her high school life. It also showed that Daria was susceptible to the same kind of crushes other teenage girls had, as through the series she got visibly nervous around Jane's older brother Trent, for which Jane often teased Daria. Their strong friendship and mutual endurance of gloomy adolescence was a motif of the series, which survived despite Jane's boyfriend, Tom Sloane, becoming Daria's. Normally, they prefer to avoid engaging with the world more than necessary, but Daria's strong conscience and carefully guarded emotional insecurity often compels her to stand up to her world's idiocies with her distinctive wit and perception. Furthermore, the final regular episode had Daria come to a troubling epiphany that she was burdening her parents needlessly by being herself. However, her friends, and especially her parents, reassured her that fundamentally they were proud to know such an intelligent, principled and perceptive young woman.

The final two seasons of Daria made a departure from the "static world" that most western animation series occupy, giving all of the characters opportunities for growth, and crises to manage.^{[citation needed]} Among them include Daria struggling to cope with the kind of romantic turmoil she never anticipated facing, even while she makes peace with her sister who is beginning to abandon her superficial facade.^{[citation needed]}

Movies

The first Daria movie, Is it Fall Yet?, gave the principal characters time apart from one another in parallel narratives which foreshadowed further changes in their relationships.

By the time the finale movie Is it College Yet? arrives, Daria's character has undergone noticeable growth. She chooses to attend Raft College, which is possibly a thinly-veiled fictional version of Tufts. She graduates from Lawndale High, winning the Dian Fossey Award "for dazzling academic achievements in face of near total misanthropy", and crowning her acceptance speech with the assertion that "...[T]here is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can't be improved with pizza."

Appearance

Daria, wears rounded, thick glasses and shapeless, bulky sweaters. John Allemang of The Globe and Mail said "to surrender is to be normal, to sacrifice your brain in the rush to be popular and wear uncomfortable shoes that make your legs look hot. Daria, as always, keeps her integrity. She wears sensible shoes, and finds her intellectual reward in not being hot."^[5]

Relationships

• Jane Lane: Daria's best friend whom she met in a self-esteem class.
• Quinn Morgendorffer: Daria's younger sister. They constantly antagonize each other. Quinn is pretty and popular, Daria is not.
• Trent Lane: Jane's older brother whom Daria for much of the series had a crush on.
• Brittany Taylor: A popular cheerleader who sometimes sees Daria as her friend, though Daria begs to differ.
• Kevin Thompson: A popular football player and Brittany's boyfriend. Daria enjoys manipulating his stupidity like she did Beavis and Butt-head.
• Jodie Landon: A friend of Daria's. She and Daria sometimes clash over Jodie's practicality and Daria's rigid idealism.
• Tom Sloane: Daria's only boyfriend during the series.
• Fashion Club: Quinn's social circle who also dislike Daria.
• Joey, Jeffy and Jamie: Near-identical in personality, Daria sees them as pathetic. They adore Quinn and constantly attempt to get her affection.
• Beavis and Butt-head: Daria tolerates the duo more than do most others, and they respect her more than they do most others, as the boys respect most people not at all. Daria occasionally seems to derive amusement from their stupidity.

Cameos

Daria makes a brief cameo in the Drawn Together episode "Lost in Parking Space, Part Two". She is being tortured in the basement of a Hot Topic along with other cartoon characters. She has a nail being hammered into her eye and says, "This is men's fault," in her infamous monotone and is rather indifferent to the pain.^[9]

Reception

Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison, authors of Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture, said that "for the cerebral, writerly types who liked television Daria was the outcast she-hero who dared to say things they were too scared to say in their teenage years."^[10] Van Toffler, then the general manager of MTV, said in 1998 that Daria "has an attitude about parents, school, and siblings that is common to the experiences of our audience. She is a good spokesperson for MTV... intelligent but subversive."^[10] A 1997 The Nation article referred to Daria as "a 10th grade Dorothy Parker."^[10] John J. O'Connor, a television critic for The New York Times, said that Daria "is every glorious misfit I ever knew."^[4][10] Another critic praising the character said that she is like "a 50-year old deadpan Jewish comic in the body of a 16-year-old."^[10]

Some commentators believed that the character's deadpan humor had too much morbidity for the teenage audience. A critic said that Daria uses her "omnivorous deadpan" contempt against other people, represented a variety of "living death," and was "a grim reaper in a dress" who was more dangerous than Marilyn Manson.^[10]

References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Daria