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There’s an episode in season one of Daria called “The Misery Chick.” In it, a former quarterback/golden boy who attended Lawndale High, Tommy Sherman, is welcomed to the school anew so that he might commemorate a goal post named in his honor on the football field (it all has to do with his legendary “technique” of accidentally running into the goal post every time he scored a touchdown while waving at the crowd). As is to be expected, Daria and Jane are less than impressed with his sudden infection of every corner in the school as he skulks around “propositioning or insulting” whoever he comes across.
When Daria is forced to give him a piece of her mind upon seeing him obstructing access to her locker, Tommy insults her back with the assessment, “You’re one of those misery chicks. Always moping about what a cruel world it is. Making a big deal about it so people won’t notice you’re a loser.” This is the crux of what a “grim girl” a.k.a. “misery chick” must contend with: easily scandalized normies lashing out at the slightest shattering of their worldview. And it was a prototype that Wednesday Addams laid the groundwork for.
It seems no coincidence that with the advent of grunge in the 90s, the commodification of misery would play into not only the revival of Wednesday through Christina Ricci in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, but also in the brand-new 90s icons of Daria herself and Emily the Strange. The latter first appeared in her germinal form even before Daria’s on Beavis and Butt-head. That’s right, Emily in her genesis materialized on a skateboard in 1991. From Santa Cruz Skateboards, Emily was eventually sold to San Francisco-based company Cosmic Debris, by which time comics and merchandise starring the Wednesday-esque cartoon were ramping up.
Even so, Daria Morgendorffer was likely the more recognizable between the two in the late 90s. After all, she had her own animated MTV series complete with non-stop sarcastic lines, often courtesy of Glenn Eichler. Emily’s lines were instead more one-dimensional, the stuff of t-shirts and bumper stickers—including, “I Want You…To Leave Me Alone,” “Strange is not a crime” and “Emily isn’t lazy. She’s just happy doing nothing.” So is Daria, usually—her favorite pastime being to sit on the couch (whether alone or with her only friend, Jane) and watch Sick, Sad World. That is, when she isn’t in her padded room reading. Wednesday, too, prefers solitude, generally repulsed by her parents’ displays of affection and/or annoyed by her brother’s stupidity. This being part of what compels her to torture him on a constant basis.
Daria’s own sense of schadenfreude is more limited to the verbal. Case in point, in the aforementioned episode, “The Misery Chick,” Jane consoles Daria, “Maybe he won’t live that long.” Daria responds, “Come on, you know wishes don’t come true.” At that moment, the sound of the goal post crashing down on Tommy’s body can be heard offscreen. The “beloved” (though generally hated) quarterback’s death prompts many of the show’s characters to approach Daria for “advice.” Mainly about how to deal with being sad. As Kevin, the current quarterback at Lawndale, puts it, “I figure you think about depressing stuff a lot. You’re that type, you know.” His girlfriend/the head cheerleader, Brittany adds separately, “You’re used to being all gloomy and depressed and thinking about bad stuff.” Her English teacher, Mr. O’Neill, puts it even more bluntly with, “That’s your thing, right? Facing the void.”
Daria is anything but “flattered” by this sudden form of popularity. For it only feeds into what Tommy had accused her of being. At the same time, Jane points out that what it all really amounts to is that they’re not accustomed to thinking at all, and want advice on how to do so before they can all return to their regularly-scheduled vegetative state.
Wednesday suffers from a similar plight, but is far less bothered by it than Daria (at least in her Christina Ricci rendering). And Emily, too, would likely be more unbothered than Ms. Morgendorffer, for she is the admitted direct descendant of Wednesday. This much was made clear during a lawsuit that occurred over the character’s origins. For Cosmic Debris was sued by the creators of a 1978 children’s book called Nate the Great Goes Undercover, featuring an Emily-like character named Rosamond. With the same dark hair, dress style and Mary Janes—along with the accompaniment of some cats—Rosamond’s similarity to Emily might have been written off as pure coincidence were it not for the additional presence of a very familiar line next to Emily’s image: “Emily did not look tired or happy. She looked like she always looks. Strange.” The line next to Rosamond was, almost identically, “Rosamond did not look hungry or sleepy. She looked like she always looks. Strange.”
So it was that Cosmic Debris had to establish that such a “misery chick” trope was long ago established by the likes of Vampira and Wednesday Addams. Maila Nurmi’s Vampira, however, was actually a concoction inspired by Morticia Addams (at that time, still unnamed) in the Charles Addams cartoons showcased in The New Yorker. So, by that logic, the Addams women truly are the progenitors of all so-called misery chicks—with Vampira then effectively creating Elvira, Mistress of the Dark through her channeling of Morticia.
The most noticeable difference between Morticia and her daughter, however, is that Wednesday is decidedly asexual (except in the Tim Burton world of Wednesday). Whether or not that’s because she’s still “too young” seems irrelevant. For girls start to unveil interest in “crushes” fairly early on. Wednesday, on the other hand, has far more pressing torture methods to explore. Daria is also pretty much avoidant when it comes to sex, preferring to admire Jane’s brother, Trent, from afar. What’s more, the series’ writers didn’t see fit to display Daria so much as even kissing a boy until the finale of season four. Perhaps the universe imploded so much as a result that there was only one more season after that.
Asexual or not, Wednesday forged a path for “misery chicks” everywhere to be themselves, even if it came with constant mockery. Especially since most misery chicks are presented as middle-class white girls—but hey, don’t discount that unique form of misery unto itself.
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Genna Rivieccio
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