I HATE MY LIFE AS LIZ, Part 3

Yesterday, for the first time in YEARS, Daria was on television, IN ENGLISH, at a watchable hour (on Logo, randomly). I WAS ECSTATIC LIKE YOU HAVE NO IDEA FOR REAL.

Daria, as you obviously are aware, was an animated series on MTV of all things back in the 90s, when the M still stood for "music" and not "my God this is terrible." It was snarky, but it was genuine, it was sincere, and Jane and Daria's perpetual cynicism was not unchecked. They were likable, but I think a lot of the time this was despite their raging sarcasm. Of course it's fun to see them get away with their vitriolic, witty quips, but you understand that these girls were not supposed to be models for the viewer. They had flaws. They were real.

Scarily enough, Daria and Jane were even more real than the person that many are touting as their present-day, real-life "counterpart." Guess who that could be? YES INDEEDY, the abominable Liz "Look At Me, I'm So Nerdy With My Makeup and My Expensive Art School and My MTV Affiliation and Hipster-esque Appreciation For Anything Ironically 'Cool'" Lee. How I loathe that woman; her hair, dyed red with the blood of those who fought in the Great War for the Betterment of Teenage Culture, sends me into a murderous frenzy upon sight, for gods-sakes. Unlike Daria, Liz Lee lives in a completely manufactured world where everyone is played by an actor and almost everyone is a self-obsessed idiot. (Oh, wait, that's exactly like Daria. BUT DARIA IS A CARTOON OKAY) This fact infuriates me, mostly because Liz has kept up this ruse successfully for two years now, and is not going away like I so politely ask her to every night in my dreams. And by "polite" I mean "threateningly," but that's besides the point!

What's most infuriating about the Daria/Lee comparison is that Lee herself embraces it, as stated in this new and completely unnecessary interview by CNN (yeah, remember when they were a veritable source of information?). She is deluded enough to call Daria an inspiration, and y'know, as disgusting as it is, it makes a lot of stinking sense. Liz Lee is a cartoon character, through and through. Too bad none of her snark is even vaguely amusing.

The article disgusts me in so many ways. May we count them?

1. This quote: "'The executives at MTV are really smart. The fact that a show like that is on now is amazing and great,' said Fogelnest, who hosted his own show on MTV as a teenager (from his bedroom, no less), 'Squirt TV,' in the mid-1990s. 'My Life as Liz' is 'the one thing where someone's not pregnant or drunk; it's what real people are like.'" Okay, I understand that Jake Fogelnest and Liz Lee are "friends" or something weird like that, but this is some actually scripted nonsense. "Amazing and great"? Huh? And NO, real people are not like this. Honestly, the people on stinking Teen Mom are FAR more real than any person on My Life as Liz. Sorry. (Not.)
2. "But My Life as Liz is unique for another criticism that has been leveled against the show's star: 'My nerd cred is attacked all the time. People think that that was fabricated by MTV. That's the hardest rumor for me to deal with.'...When people (online) say, "You're not a real nerd,"' said Lee, 'I'm sitting in my room with shelves overflowing with stacks of comic books.'" LOLOLOL YEAH OKAY BECAUSE THAT MEANS YOU'RE A NERD. Shelves overflowing with comic books. PUH-LEEZE. Look, maybe Liz Lee DOES read comic books. Whatever. But that doesn't make her a "nerd." That just makes her someone who likes comic books. She is unbelievably image-obsessed, and that just adds fuel to my intense hatred. Which, if you couldn't tell, is super crazy intense, like, whoa.
3. "Benjamin Nugent, author of 'American Nerd,' noted, 'When you have people choosing to be nerds, questions of authenticity can come up. Before, you had no choice to be a nerd. Now that it's an acceptable option, you can accuse someone of being that way just to be cool. When it was uncool, you never had to worry about authenticity.'" I just find this really idiotic while also extremely obvious. What I don't understand is why one now suddenly has an option when they didn't before. You can choose to like video games and what-have-you or you can choose not to. It's that freakin' simple.
4. "'Daria made it cool to be a smart chick,' said writer Jennifer Vineyard, who worked at MTV for eight years. 'Just the presence of people or characters like Daria help make it cool to be yourself. There's a tendency for young girls to play dumb. Characters like Daria show you that you don't have to.'" I mean, I don't know, I don't think that being who you are has to be cool. You just are who you are and you don't complain. Well, you do complain, but then you grow up and you realize that it doesn't matter, these things are forever. Daria definitely is cool, but I don't know why she had to come around to prove to people that being intelligent was something worth being!
5. "Nugent also pointed out, 'Because it's now being put on MTV, teenagers are seeing it as more acceptable. I'm surprised how many kids come up to me and introduce themselves as geeks.'" I don't even know what to make of this. It's just...wow. Um.

I have to give up because I hate so much about what this article chooses to be. My Life as Liz is a terrible misrepresentation about the "nerd" subculture. It doesn't help. It hurts, and it hurts a lot. Liz masquerades as some teen nerd queen but she's just a robot programmed by Viacom to appeal to the one niche not watching MTV. God, I wish she wasn't succeeding.

Daria: She's Like You, Except Actually Cool

Sometimes I wish I was born earlier. Like, at the end of the eighties. I really do like being [insert age here; I always forget], but I missed out on a lot of cool stuff. I feel like I should be older. Albeit with the same very low maturity level. Anyway.

One of the things I was too young for but totally would have dug had I been old enough was Daria, which just came out on DVD yesterday. I can appreciate it now, yes, but there's nothing like seeing something and liking it the first time it comes on. But I never got to experience that.

Copy pasta from Salon:

I've come to the same conclusion as many of the devotees who signed petitions and clamored on message boards for the series' DVD release: "Daria" could have only happened at that time, during that strange, transitional period after the grunge and gangsta rap of the early '90s and before the boy bands and teen queens stepped up to create a glittery pop landscape in the '00s. It spoke directly to those of us on the borderlands between generation X and Y, growing up with the shadows of Kurt Cobain, Tupac and Biggie looming large, who could relate to "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" and "Reality Bites" as well as "The Craft" and "10 Things I Hate About You," who could identify with the screaming discontentment of the 1990s but could also feel the lighter, more hopeful influence of the easygoing and revirginized 2000s.

On all of those things, I missed out. Not alive in the early 90s but barely able to spell at the beginning of the 00s. (Well, actually, that's a lie. I've always been a pretty awesome speller. Although in 2000 I thought that 2 plus 2 was 5, so.)

But enough about me! Let's talk about the show! This isn't supposed to be a borderline lamentation of being born in the wrong decade! Exclamation points!

Set in a mid-Atlantic suburb, the series revolves around Daria and her family, the Morgendorffers. The minutiae of modern life are filtered through Daria's caustic lens, providing moments of apt reflection about the nature of adulthood. At first glance, Daria Morgendorffer appears to be a strange icon to come from the same network that gleefully produced "The Hills," "Laguna Beach," "Jersey Shore" and "My Super Sweet 16." After all, Daria's deadpan delivery and constant cynicism don't exactly fit with the new programming, and her friends are far too multidimensional to be seen on the channel today. Between the eclectic artist Jane Lane and the archetypal high-achieving model minority Jodie Landon (and matching boyfriend Mack), Daria finds backup during the turbulent teen years -- especially while dealing with Beavis and Butt-head clones Kevin and Brittany -- and the machinations of the Lawndale's self-proclaimed fashion police and popular girl squad, the Fashion Club. The series' complex web of teen life is almost impossible to imagine in the demographic-obsessed media market that has emerged since, when so many personalities gracing MTV direct all their contemplative energy toward the nearest tanning bed.

Harsh! But true, really. It's hard for anyone who hasn't heard of the show before to really comprehend that it was on MTV. But MTV was actually a pretty cool place back in the day. Not that there wasn't still stuff on the channel to make fun of -- and Daria did just that.

Daria and Jane were the misanthropic voice of their generation. Their mumbles, grunts, rolled eyes, were all relatable to the average teen outcast. Am I being sarcastic? Slightly, but only because I think that as much as every kid who ever watched the show wanted to be Daria, they never could be; Daria was much cooler than the archetype she was supposed to be representing. In retrospect, it's slightly disheartening, but at the same time, it's fun to think that people like that really exist. She was the weirdo messiah, except not nearly as annoying as you might think she'd be.

So, for years after the show was cancelled, people who felt validated, reaffirmed, comforted by Daria petitioned for the show to be on DVD. And now, nearly ten years later, it finally is. And the nice thing is, Daria, despite its roots firmly planted in that aformentioned transition period, still is applicable today. Everyone goes through their Daria phase, whether or not they're actually anything like her at all. At some point or another, teenagers feel hateful towards the world, to each other, and that's where she comes in.

I think if the DVD was ever going to come out, now is a good time. The people who watched it in their teen years are old enough to watch it with a nostalgic twinkle in their eye but still young enough to be able to enjoy it without an air of pretension. And then there's people who are only now just coming into their "Daria years," people who are starting to feel like they're in the wrong place, people who resent everything, who can take something from the show.

This blog is getting particularly sappy, so let's end it here. Please buy Daria on DVD because it's well worth it. It's stinking hilarious but also nice and reflective towards the end.

And if you could buy me a copy, too, that would be nice. It's a little expensive. I'm young and jobless. I just took an AP exam. Thanks!

Buy it here. And read a nice little interview here.