If there was ever an animation that made an impact on our lives whether we were children, teens, or young adults, Daria was probably it. The series was brought to life by MTV, back when the channel actually produced quality content (think nineties) rather than weekend marathons of Jersey Shore or Teen Mom. Daria was the answer to our prayers for content addressed to those in alternative circles, which started to become more prevalent.
The use of intellectual references was a way to highlight the ignorance and apathy we come across on our daily lives. It was something we could all relate to at that age. Certain bands, particular movies, as well as selected universal literary works were the perfect excuse to portray a supposed civilization that we could barely spell its own name.
With a peculiar gaze on the popular culture the US has embodied, this series has successfully created an ever relevant satire that looks with disdain at its shape, content, and messages, even when this doesn’t translate into prohibiting its global spread. Daria has been the most legitimate attempt to propagate a different perspective of that society that at first glance appears to be amazing and unique, yet hides just as much emptiness and pointlessness (if not more) than any other.
The references from the literary world were never enough in Daria’s universe, and these 57 titles are just some that showed up at one point or where used as hidden messages on the show. If you don’t want to be the target of her jokes, why not start reading these?
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
City of Glass by Paul Auster
Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
On Moral Fiction by John Gardner
Goya: His Life and Work by Pierre Gassier
Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
The Chess Garden by Brooks Hansen
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Iliad by Homer
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar A. Poe
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever by Igloo Tornado
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Prince and The Pauper by Mark Twain
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The honesty with which this animation would depict and introduce itself into our lives, with the occasional musical and cinematic flirtations of the youth it was trying to reach out, was phenomenal. Through the eyes of an unusual girl we met the prejudice or stereotyping of an era governed by the North American vision. Although this program seemed clichéd as ever, its protagonist represented in the best way the authenticity of someone who could live out their days in the nineties. Daria was a breath of fresh air for the entertainment options of the not-yet-adult.
