Daria is one of my all time favourite shows. It is an exemplary show involving a female protaginist and strong women characters. However, for such a woman-centred show it does have an interesting example of a stereotypical feminist in the form of Ms. Barch. A bitter misandrist woman who never fails to espouse her hatred towards men (more specifically a former husband). This is a paradox: how can a show that sets a new high for woman have a straw feminist (and to a lesser extent, Mr. O'Neil, whose sensitivity is played for laughs)? How can a show that challenged gender perceptions be, at the same time, critical of challenging gender perceptions?
I'd argue that the reason for this is the perception of feminism and its usefulness in the mid-90s. Furthermore, I'd argue Daria's feminism is undercut additionnally by the show's focus on Daria as an outsider rebelling against an indifferent world.
The nineties were a more liberal decade than the one that preceeded it. AIDS awareness was challenging both the stigma of AIDS as a gay disease and the stereotype of the liscentious homosexual; women were more prominent in popular culture (eg, Alanis Moresette, Courtney Love, the Spice Gils) and politics (eg, Hilary Clinton) than before. After all, this was the decade of 'Girl Power' and 'Lillith Fest.' The Soviet Union was gone, ending, at least theoretically, the tough macho pose of the decade before. In theory, the 90s should have been a more liberating decade for women, and a time for gender and sexual norms to be challenged. Which, I won't deny, they were.
However, the conservativism of the eighties cast a long shadow. The liberalism of the 90s was still shaped by that, even deferential to it. Bill Clinton was involved in many battles with a Republican Congress, specifically over health care and his eventual impeachment. In the last decade the extremeley popular Reagan and Bush administrations had reinvigorated American standing and the world and prosecuted the successful Gulf War. In effect, the Republicans succeeded where the Democrats had failed and smugly define the course of American politics for the next decade. Politically or culturally there were limits to what liberalism could accomplish. Bill Clinton, for all his popularity and political gifts, could only accomplish so much.
Similarly, alot of what could be seen as "liberating" for women does not hold up to closer scrutiny. The Spice Girls, who were extremley popular in 1997 when Daria premiered, yes, boasted about "Girl Power." However, "Girl Power" is a slogan, not a philosophy. A very useful way to market pop music to young girls, not ideas about equality or freedom. "Girl Power" proved to be as empowering to women as sugary treats are nutritious. While there were examples to the contrary they struggled to be as mainstream as, frankly, women artisits are today. While Lady Gaga and her ilk may not have been as high quality as artisits of the nineties, there are pushing buttons and boundaries alot more influentially than similar artists of the time.
Which brings us back to Ms. Barch's ramblings. If you were an intelligent teenage girl, you could see that Ms. Barch's arguments against men holding women back (and Mr. O'Neil's attempts to talk about feelings) as leftovers from the sixties and seventies---an argument that lost. The feminism of the time that preceeded the nineties would have been seen as quaint and out of touch. If Daria was good at anything, it would be pointing out the difference between what was said and what was lived.
Does Daria consider herself to be a feminist? At no point do "feminist" themes creep into the show: they are not, for example, fighting to get into male dominated spaces such as sports. Daria's anger is focused more on parochial and superfical mind than on gender inequality as a whole---if pressed, I believe she would argue that gender inequlity is part and parcel of living in a world of the self interested and shallow. Daria and Jane defend their freedom of expression; Jane joins the track team with no resistance. Daria and Jane push boundaries and challenge assumptions as intellectuals---not as women.
Does that mean Daria is a success or failure to women or feminism? Its a difficult question to answer and depends heavily on whether it is important that Daria challenge assumptions for the benefit of women as a whole. Daria is focused on intellectual revolt as opposed to feminist revolt: fighting the tide of mediocrity and closed mindedness, frustrated that she was alone in the fight. On the one hand, fighting on behalf of women would have meant forming closer relationships to women not on Daria's level---something Daria could do, but not easily. She was not the sort of person to get close to anyone that did not assure her of being sufficently open minded. Even at its most generous, this elitist attitude would comprimise any efforts towards equality.
If Daria was made today would the show be more feminist? Likely, since the Republican war of women's health and gay marriage struggles have made feminism more relevant to the present generation than probably in the nineties. However, something that defines Daria is the nineties spirit of the jaded, misunderstood loner lost in an empty sea, which, by its nature, is not a feminist position. It is a human position, and it could be argued a superior one.
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