AMERICAN ANIMATION'S FINEST HOUR ================================================================ Why "Fire!" and "Dye! Dye! My Darling" Have Reached a High-Water Mark for U. S. Cartoons ================================================================ By Peter W. Guerin ================================================================ "What we want, and what we need,/Has been confused, been confused/ Your finest hour/Your finest hour" --REM, "The Finest Work Song" "Men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.'" --Winston Churchill in a speech to the British House of Commons, June 18, 1940 "The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." --William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act III, Scene 2 ================================================================ It's been about more than eighty years since someone first came up with the idea of creating a series of drawings, filming them, and creating the illusion of motion with them. Along the way, there have been many masters of animation: Walt Disney, Bob Clampett, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Tex Avery, Ralph Bashki, John Kricfalusi, Fritz Freling, Osamu Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki, Leiji Matsumoto, Don Bluth, and so forth. There have been, as well, many dramatic moments that have raised the bar for the art form. In animation's "Golden Age" of the 1930's and 1940's, we had Bambi's mother being shot, along with the forest fire later on in the movie. In the original "Fantasia", we had the Dinosaur Sequence and the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence. Moving on to later decades, we've had series that are replete with dramatic moments like "Uchu Senken Yamato" ("Star Blazers" to you), with the death of Captain Okita/Captain Avatar at the end of the first season; the heart-wrenching moment in the "R" season of "Bishôjo Senshi Sailor Moon" where Mamoru Chiba/Darian breaks up with Usagi Tsukino/Serena, with her subsequently crawling into a phone booth. I don't even have to recall all the dramatic moments of "Batman: The Animated Series" or the "Phoenix/Dark Phoenix" storyline from "X-Men"; those speak for themselves. Now, we can add to that pantheon of dramatic moments in animation the "Daria" episodes "Fire!" and "Dye! Dye! My Darling". I can safely say that the final two episodes of the fourth season have raised the bar for American animation in a way that I don't think anyone would have expected. Granted, "Fire!" started out in the usual caustic, cynical style of humor we're used to seeing on the show, but by the third segment, and all of "Dye! Dye! My Darling", it had switched to dramatic mode; toward the end of "Dye! Dye! My Darling", I was beginning to feel that the episode had the feel of the later, darker episodes of "M*A*S*H", with little if any comic relief (now I feel kind of weird for putting Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce in my fan fiction story "Outbitched", given that and Alan Alda's appearance on "ER", especially the episode where he's treating a whiny little girl named Quinn who even looks like [here I effect my impersonation of Trent] "Daria's sister"). At the end of the season finale, we're given a cliffhanger of an ending. Poor Daria Morgendorffer is the loneliest we've seen her in the entire series. First, Jane angrily accused her of trying to steal her boyfriend Tom away from her by botching up a hair dye job, then Tom kisses Daria. When Daria tells Jane about it, Jane breaks up with Tom and casually suggests to her that she can go out with him, then leaving her friend in disgust. The phone call from Tom at the very end leaves us at the edge of our emotional seats, and make us wonder just what will happen in the upcoming, feature-length, made-for-MTV movie "Is It Fall Yet?" Will Daria indeed start a relationship with Tom? Will she--fulfilling all those 'shippers' wildest fantasies--do the right thing, no go out with Tom, profess her love for Trent and start a relationship with him? Will there ever be any reconciliation between Daria and Jane, or will Jane hang out more often with the person she befriends at art camp (voiced by Straight-Edge rock singer Bif Naked)? Will all of this carry over into the fifth (and perhaps final) season? If this was a live-action show, people would have said that the show was becoming like a typical teen show like "Saved by the Bell", another typical sitcom like "Friends" or a Prime Time soap opera like "Melrose Place". However, since this is an animated series, this actually breaks new ground in the genre, a genre that most Americans still feel (given the success of "The Simpsons", "Beavis and Butt-Head", "King of the Hill" and "South Park") as still being "kids' stuff". It is like series creator Glenn Eichler has decided to become--to borrow a bit from Michelle Klein-Häss' favorite show "Iron Chef"--the Iron TV Show Writer Animation, utilizing new and different themes to the chosen theme medium to express his work. In fact, if I may be so bold, I thought there was some elements of shojo, or girls' anime in the final two episodes. Somehow I kept thinking about the final two episodes of the anime series "Here is Greenwood" entitled "Second Love--Always Be There for You". In those episodes, Kazuya Hasukawa falls in love with a girl named Miya Ishiragi, who, however, already has a boyfriend, the possessive Tenma. Kazuya tries his best to break the iron hold Tenma has over Miya; if he succeeds is something you have to see for yourself. In a sense, Daria faces somewhat of a similar dilemma. If she goes out with Tom, she'll effectively backstab Jane, and any hopes of reconciliation may be tossed out the window. If she doesn't, in a sense, she'll be vindicating her feelings that Tom ruined her friendship with Jane, but, at the same time, she may have nixed any chance to express how she feels for Trent. Daria is not like Quinn, Sandi Griffin or the other members of the Fashion Club. The Fashion Club feel free to use boyfriends like Kleenex; Daria, however, realizes that people--even people she despises--do have feelings, feelings that can and do get hurt. Her decision to turn to her mother Helen for advice (as well as Jane turning to Trent) may open up some possibilities in the next season. I have heard that "Daria" has lost its edge as compared to the first two seasons. Nothing can be further from the truth. This season is definitely better than the last, and Daria hasn't "softened up" as some have alleged; she's still smart and cynical, but now she's using it for more emotional--and perhaps, more destructive--purposes. However, those who wish to freeze time and have the show like it was in its first season, with Daria and Jane sneering at all the miscues of Quinn and the Fashion Club as well as their elders are keeping their heads in the sand. The past two episodes have seen a lot of emotion. In "Fire!" and "I Loathe a Parade", we've heard Daria laugh for the first time in the series (other than the dream sequence in "Monster") and for the first time since she and the other students in Mr. Buzzcut's class laughed at Beavis and Butt-Head in the classic episode "No Laughing". We've also heard anger in both Daria's and Jane's voices for the first time as well as some physical violence with Jane beating up Tom (at least on-camera; Daria beat up on Quinn in "The New Kid", but that was off-camera). We've heard Daria tell Tom off why she's so pissed off at him. In fact, we've heard the two strongest swear words in the whole series to date so far: Mack saying that Kevin was going to "piss" Mr. DeMartino "off" in "Legends of the Mall", and Daria calling Jane a "bitch" in "Dye! Dye! My Darling". Granted, we won't be hearing Daria curse a blue streak like Eric Cartman does anytime soon, but teens do talk that way these days. Perhaps the biggest shock to some fans was that Daria and Jane, whom, to quote Shakespeare, were not seen to be "passion's slaves", showed a lot of emotion. Let's face the facts, even they have a breaking point, as Martin J. Pollard proved in his classic fan fiction story "Sins of the Past". Perhaps the biggest shock that could be dealt to fans of "Daria" is to show that Daria can be and indeed is vulnerable to the everyday "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", to continue the Shakespearean analogy. In fact, Daria right now seems to be going through what the Germans call "Anfechtung", or a severe trial of the spirit. Roland H. Bainton, in his definitive biography of Martin Luther entitled "Here I Stand", defines "Anfechtung" as thus: "It may be a trial sent by God to test man, or an assault by the Devil to destroy man. It is all the doubt, turmoil, pang, tremor, panic, despair, desolation, and desperation which invade the spirit of man." Daria is going through the greatest test of her strength of will right now. She desperately wants to do the right thing, but in doing so, will she wind up doing more damage to the people she does care about: Jane and Trent, and, perhaps to a certain degree, Tom? A lesser person, as Martin Luther himself pointed out, would not suffer more than "a tenth of an hour" of "Anfechtung" before being reduced to ashes. Daria's cynical attitude has so far weathered the storm that is life, but that shield of hers is beginning to buckle. I should know about things like this; as a person who's had a life-long behavior problem, I, too have gone through "Anfechtung", especially at moments when it seemed that the whole world was against me. Can Daria survive her own "Anfechtung" and emerge a better person for it? We see some evidence in earlier episodes that she can stick it out; in the episode "Psycho Therapy", she makes it perfectly clear that despite what life dishes out against her, she is not one to commit suicide, something that is further clarified in Katherine Goodman and Tony Seljuk's fan fiction story "Ragged Denim" and even in Michelle Klein-Häss' latest story "Daria, Interrupted". To her, the question Hamlet proposed, "To be, or not to be," has already been settled. No matter what happens to her during the summer, she will not give up. Whether her beliefs, principles and points of view will survive such an upheaval are open to question. Glenn Eichler and the rest of the production team have turned out two masterpieces in "Fire!" and "Dye! Dye! My Darling". I realize that there's been heated debate at the Paperpusher's Message Board over these episodes, but the parties to the dispute miss the point. The show has evolved. A show has to evolve, or it will die, or it will wind up recycling the same jokes over and over again like in so many long-lived comic strips (like, aren't you getting a bit tired of Sgt. Snorkel beating the crap out of Beetle Bailey by now?). Perhaps things will be resolved in the movie, perhaps in the next season, perhaps never, but if there are two episodes that deserve to be added among the best ever made, the final two episodes of the fourth season are them. For that, we should salute the creators, not heap scorn. Before I go, I would like to thank the many friends I have made in the past two years: Michelle Klein-Häss, Martin J. Pollard, C. E. Forman, Paperpusher, Father Martin Sylvester, Canadibrit, Jennifer Border, mouserr, marsman57, Tawny Puma, John Berry, Orca, Kara Wild, jewli, alih, and others too numerous to mention. I really couldn't ask for better people, and I hope if they're ever in the Adirondack North Country, to stop by and see me. Thank you for reading this, and take it easy. Peter W. Guerin August 5, 2000