Daria
Prize Fighters
Season: 5
Episode: 11
Air date: 2001-06-11
Daria's family encourages her to apply for a college scholarship.
In the progressive era of 2025, I remember a lot of discussions regarding the entertainment industry about how many writers could only "write what they know" based on their beliefs of identity politics, specifically American identity politics, as opposed to writing more universal themes of justice and equality for all of humanity. As a Singaporean, Chinese and male viewer, I could say that this is true for the audience members as well, that we only relate to what we know based on our life experiences, and that messaging in shows that doesn't resonate with our own worldviews just doesn't engage us as effectively. Sure, people could definitely see beyond their own worldviews, but it's that much harder, especially if you have only lived in your own country with a very different kind of ideology than America's.
This episode of Daria deals with the company, Wizard Computers handing out scholarship applications that she ended up signing up for (largely due to Helen's prodding). However, it's soon discovered that their hiring practices are "unethical" as very few amount of women and black people, if none at all, were promoted or even hired by the company. This is a common narrative in the American mainstream media. As a non-American, I can't speak for the accuracy of that (though I've seen Americans in the reviews comment that this episode is relatable, and such prejudice is by now a commonly discussed topic in America), so I could only speak for myself as a Singaporean Chinese man who had trouble getting jobs and apartments for rent because they were looking for "ladies only." Bigoted hiring practices, over my decade of working part-time jobs in more than 10 companies (and a couple of short-term full-time ones), have never been existent in my country AFAIK, especially when the ladies seem to get better paid positions here than the men.
However, despite that kind of upbringing, I've never really believed in the red-pill MGTOW practice (a practice Wikipedia claimed to be misogynistic rather than men seeking equality, but I'm doubtful what the more liberal Wikipedia says nowadays); I've always been a firm believer of meritocracy instead, that hiring privileges should be given based on your values as a person in terms of personality and skills, not your identity.
That should be rather irrelevant to Daria as a person anyway because her academic prowess would mean that colleges would probably grant her their own institutional scholarships anyway. But I do understand that both Daria and Jodie are just those kinds of teenagers, their beliefs firmly rooted in the institutions being unfair and prejudiced, so I don't blame them for getting fired up about wanting to change said practices in a company they're not even going to work in anyway (since they're merely applying for their sponsored scholarship). But it is that kind of writing that separates Daria from your less sophisticated teen drama like Zoey 101 or Lizzie McGuire, the tackling of real world issues that might be deemed (by Nickelodeon and Disney, respectively) to be too complicated for your 12-16 year olds, and that's why I picked up Daria the show in the first place (instead of doing an adult rewatch of Lizzie McGuire... damn Disney to Hell for canning the reboot).
That being said though, it is still an MTV teen drama, so it doesn't get more complicated than exploring Daria's hypocrisy of not wanting to sell out but also wanting to be awarded the scholarship anyway, and of course, you have your typically nonsensical B-plot of Jake accidentally bulk purchasing crates of sausages (because the computer's too blurry). That's fine, I enjoy that kind of writing regardless, including Daria and Jane's self-aware acknowledgement that they're getting older and would be more prone to caring about this stuff that affects their future scholarly pursuits.
