Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Arts 'N Crass

toonsday
***½

Forced to enter into a school-funded art contest, Jane and Daria create a poster depicting student life at the dawn of the millennium with a commentary on the lengths to which young girls will go in order to maintain a semblance of beauty. The poster sparks debate, leading Jane and Daria to protest the injustice in an effort to bring attention to the plight of the American teenager.

The review for "the Misery Chick" can be read here.

Having been forced to participate in a school function during the events of "Café Disaffecto," Daria (Tracy Grandstaff) is well-versed in the art of subverting scholarly expectations. Here Daria and Jane (Wendy Hoopes) use their situation as an opportunity to put a focus on the real struggles of the average teenage girl, a cause they not only believe in, but are willing to fight their authority figures to discuss in a public forum.

Jane is not the kind of person that takes being forced into something lightly, and her realization that no one said the message of her work needed to be positive is exactly the kind of thought process that many people in her situation would happily land upon. Deciding to show the truth about student life, and depicting how terrible it really can be, Jane and Daria choose to make a commentary on how being beautiful on the outside doesn't necessarily signify the inner happiness that society equates with it, and while their message is an important one, it's also very understandable that Ms. Li (Nora Laudani) and Mr. O'Neill (Marc Thompson) would want to change the tone of their poem to something less sensational. In the end, O'Neill changes the tone of the poem to emphasize good nutrition, extracting the message about anorexia entirely, stating that the subject is "not pretty because she starved herself into it, she's pretty because she takes care of herself," sending Daria and Jane into a tailspin of anger. The plot here is unfortunately realistic, and it's handled very well; it's clear throughout the story that Daria and Jane are in the right, despite the crass nature of their wording, but it's equally important to note that Li's opposition is just as valid in regards to the way the school and students are viewed.

Daria finds herself in an argument with both of her parents, with Helen (Hoopes) opposing Daria's views, asking her to change the poster, while Jake (Julián Rebolledo) agrees with Daria on the issue. Despite Helen's staunch disagreement with her daughter, she later comes to her defense when she learns that Ms. Li had changed Daria's work against her will, entered it into competition against Daria's wishes, and threatened Daria with punishment for defacing her own property. While Helen can often be bull-headed when it comes to what she believes in, here she proves that, even though she disagrees entirely with how Daria handled the situation, she will defend her rights until the very end. Often Helen has used her knowledge as a lawyer against her family in an effort to win arguments, and it's great to see her here harnessing that same ability to defend them against those who would do them wrong.

At the top of the episode it's shown that Jake has lost one of his clients because he was honest about "cigars for pets" being a bad idea. Helen's only words of comfort are that she has plenty of work to deal with and that Jake needn't worry about things, essentially making it seem as though he never has contributed as much to the household as she's capable of doing. Sometimes it's as though the writers are working to turn everything against Jake to the point where it's unbelievable, using him as the crux of misfortune when nothing bad seems to happen to anyone else. Jake is at his best when there's a balance between the good and bad in his life, and here he's just a spectacle of depression.

When Helen loses the argument at the dinner table her anger flies off the handle and she storms out of the room after overturning a pot of pasta on Jake's head. As a lawyer she should be far more adept at handling her own anger, and it's not as though this is an argument that she even needed to be all that invested in. It's just strange here that she would reach her boiling point over something so trivial, and it makes her seem like she's a much angrier person than she has been presented as in the past.

Thompson does a great job in this episode as Mr. O'Neill, simpering through his phone calls and largely being as ineffective as possible while trying to maintain an air of excitement and control. Laudani's role as Ms. Li proves very well cast as she proves very particular in her intonations, making them just peculiar enough to seem as though she's attempting to put people at ease with the control of her voice while instead sounding quite robotic and cold. Hoopes and Rebolledo also do quite well as their characters begin to break down, panicking at every turn while trying to recapture their calm facades.

There are a lot of little things in the background to like about Karen Disher's direction of this episode, a nice change from the static backdrops of the first season. When Ms. Defoe (Nicole Carin) asks Jane to stay after class to discuss something, Jane and Daria exchange furtive glances, and Daria is shown to leave the room, then stand right outside the door, out of Defoe's view, in order to listen in. It's the small details such as that that really add a sense of depth and realism to this world, and it's fantastic.

Glen Eichler gets a chance to explore Jane's life philosophies in his script, having her voice that she doesn't want to participate in the contest because she believes in a community of creativity, feeling that, as artists, creators should not be in competition with one another but simply work to do their best works. While she maintains her belief throughout the story, we also learn that Ms. Defoe, the art teacher, is one of the few people that Jane looks up to, and she finds herself unable to say no to her, and is later unable to make a case for her work in front of Defoe for fear of disappointing her. Despite her reluctance to participate, Jane eventually creates something that she's very proud of, and when it's repurposed and used against her will, she fights back and defaces it rather than letting her name be attributed to something that she doesn't support.

Having been given something to stand up for, a cause to believe in, Daria and Jane prove that they can be a force to be reckoned with, and it seems as though they may end up becoming the poster children for invisible causes. A rivalry also appears to be brewing between Helen and Ms. Li, which should prove interesting in future episodes if the two land on opposite sides of an issue.

The review for "the Daria Hunter" can be read here.

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