Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Vanishing Photographer

In the Beavis and Butt-head episode, "Sporting Goods," fifteen-year-old Daria complains, "My parents made me join the school paper. The paper made me fashion reporter because I'm a girl. I hate fashion! There's no fashion in this town! I want to be an inquiring photographer." She then proceeds to use her skills to put an embarrassing photo of B&B, with accompanying article, in the school newspaper.

One year later, in "The New Kid," she briefly joins the yearbook staff of another high school and again becomes a photographer, but only to get a first-person shooter game for her computer by trading in the software her parents will get for her. Her interest in becoming an inquiring photographer is gone, despite the high praise lavished on her photography work by Ted Dewitt-Clinton. Daria's interest in photography reappears only rarely in the series. She creates a photographic essay for Mr. O'Neill (in The Daria Database) and makes a video of her sister in "Monster," but that's about it.

Whatever happened to the budding "inquiring photographer"? Why did Daria stop using her considerable talent at camerawork? Could this interest return later in her life, perhaps in college? Not many fanfics have looked at Daria's photography skills (except in AU stories), and it would be nice to see that inquiring photographer resurrected, with a very Daria-ish twist.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Simple. She was more skilled as a writer than as a photographer, and she knew it. She put her energy into sharpening her writing skills, and set the camera aside.

After all, Sandi Griffin is a skilled model airplane builder, but you'll never catch her making a big deal about it. That would be tres gauche.

Anonymous said...

I'm willing to bet that the minute Helen and Jake, mostly Helen, found out about the interest they tried to force her to do things to better it and so on and it caused her to nearly hate it. That was why when she went to writing they left it alone for the most part. At least it is a viable canonically realistic reason that could be in fanfic.

Anonymous said...

The real question is, what happened to her flute playing?

Anonymous said...

I remember one time, when I was at band camp . . .