Oh, be still my Daria loving heart!
Last Thursday Deadline announced that the first in a series of spinoffs based on the animated series, is in the works. The first character they have chosen to explore is one of my favorites: Jodie Landon. Tracee Ellis Ross, star of the ABC sitcom Black-ish, is an Executive Producer, and will voice the character of Jodie.
Are you excited yet? Because I am.
The Daria series played a big role in my childhood, it ran from 1997-2002, which was my entire middle school/ high school years. I remember looking forward to every single episode and yes, I have seen the movies too (I even have them on DVD). I always loved Daria and Jane’s characters, but I identified with Jodie more. Jodie is an African American girl and was easily one of the most relatable characters for me.
Being a young black girl going through high school myself, I could identify with just about every single struggle she went through. The thing I loved about Jodie was that she wasn’t the stereotypical black girl. She was not a caricature. She was an extremely intelligent well-rounded young woman.
She was also very self-aware. She knew what it meant to be one of only a few minorities in her school. At times she felt like the “token black girl,” but she never let it define her and it wasn’t her focus all the time. In school, I was always referred to as an “Oreo” by my classmates. If you are not familiar with this term, allow me to elaborate. A black person referred to as an “Oreo” means they are black on the outside, but they are white on the inside. I’ll be honest, this bothered me a lot because it was like they were saying because I was smart and didn’t act like the “typical black girl,” I acted like a white person.
In my opinion, Jodie made being the smart black girl cool. She made me feel that it was okay to be an intellectual.
Daria will always be iconic. It dealt with real issues that teens still deal with even today. That’s why people still love it. Back in April, I watched a video that laid out all the ways in which Jodie was an iconic trailblazer. Check out the clip below.
I am truly excited for Jodie’s spinoff and I have a lot of expectations:
- First and foremost, I hope that they maintain Jodie’s authenticity. I don’t want them to take away the things that made her so relatable.
- The series needs to show how Jodie navigates the world we are living in now.
- I want to see her dealing with things like racism, because it’s still a real issue.
- I’m curious to see if she still deals with anyone from Lawndale high.
- I want to know if she ended up with Michael, or if they went their separate ways.
- Most importantly, I just expect the series to be just as good as Daria was, because I will be so sad if it isn’t.
I trust that Tracee and Co. will do the series the right amount of justice, so I have high hopes.
Are you excited for the Daria Spinoff? What do you expect to see from Jodie? Tell us in the comments below!
