I dunno ... Daria might have held her tongue. But wasn't it *satisfying* to see Daria tell Val what she *really* thought of the ninny?
Heh ... unfortunately people like Val are all too common in a certain subculture.
I'm a 34 year old male, not a "misery chick" at all (though I have a friend who proudly calls herself that), but I had no trouble sympathizing with Daria in this situation. People like Val are real, they poison our culture with an unrealistic (and dangerous) model of behavior, and their lives really are messy due to their attempts to live their fantasies. I'm glad Daria got to puncture Val's balloon just a bit.
Actually, Daria's critique of Val was succinct and quite rational.
On 25 Mar 1999 05:41:20 GMT, [email] (JBassior) wrote:
Yes, she did. But her conflicts are supposed to be entertaining. This one was so obvious.
Daria was not going to hold her tongue, we all knew it. If Daria held her tongue, there's no point at all to the episode.
No, they aren't. People are rarely so black and white. Quinn is a real example of how a fashion club member would be in real life. She has more than one side to her personality.
There is no way a person as incredibly one-sided as Val was could ever succeed. It was a total caricature of an aspect of our society, rather than a character.
You may not consider yourself a misery chick, but you are probably part of that subculture.
People like Val are not real, people like Val don't exist. People with certain aspects of Val's personality *could* exist, but Val was so cliched it was ridiculous.
They do not "poison" our culture, because they are our culture.
Rational? yes. Pathetically obvious? yes. And the fact that it was so easy for Daria to slam her shows how unreal she really was.
___
Kyle
Trying is the first step towards failure
Cubs Win! Cubs Win! The Good Lord wants the Cubs to win!
Some things are obvious, in life as well as in fiction.
Yeah, but I would argue that Daria was sorely provoked by the situation.
For all we know, Val may have had more complexity of character, but she didn't reveal it. People encountered over a short period of time (a day in this episode) do not always reveal much complexity of character.
Quinn, observed over a similarly short period of time, would not seem particularly complex.
Val may be highly competent running her magazine, yet still completely clueless in the environment in which she was depicted. Obsession, incidentally, tends to lead to success in the field about which one is obsessed.
Val was a character who caricaturized an aspect of our society. A characterization technique with worthy antecedents ... Dickens, for example, used this extensively.
Which subculture? When I was a teenager, I was your basic science fiction fan. (Upchuck without the constant sexual innuendoes). I would have liked someone like Daria or Jane if I'd met them, of course; I did have some female friends who had some of the same positive (and negative) attributes possessed by those characters. After around 16-17, I had increasingly less time for the professionally "cute" (a la Quinn), that may be called "maturity". I *never* bought into the idea of happiness through arrant conformity, if that's what you mean.
I have seen in my lifetime a lot of seductively dangerous messages mass-marketed to teenagers, most of them involving promises of "coolness" if one does certain stylistic things that in real life have severe costs. I'm old enough, for example, to remember back before there was any real (popular) anti-drug sentiment (and I've known a few smart people who destroyed their minds that way). The whole image satirized by "Waif" (which in real life is attainable only through heroin and/or anorexia, and which causes serious insecurity in anyone *not* starving themselves) is another.
"Val" was arguing that one should pursue "cool" and "youthful" behavior irregardless of other considerations; that intelligence and thoughtfulness were bad approaches to life; and that image was everything. As a result of really believing her own message, Val wound up chasing after (and being dumped by) a shallow young man (who seems to have left her pregnant). Daria merely underlined the lesson shown through action in the show's climax.
This is a rather scary thought, and one reason I'm especially glad this episode got made and shown.
The only truly unrealistic thing about the episode was that Val displayed herself so extensively in such a short time. Then again, part of Daria's character premise is that she is a very wise and insightful girl.