That was then, this is dumb
Watching Daria on a loop as it cycles from season 1 to 5 and back again at 6am on MTV weekday mornings over the past few months I’ve been struck by the inane ads for inane shows that air before, during, and after Daria. And come to the only conclusion possible. Daria was commissioned to give 90s MTV a smart female audience. And yet now the dumb jock and bimbo characters mocked in it, Kevin and Brittany, are not just the MTV target audience but the stock personalities of the ‘reality’ shows that MTV substituted for music a long time ago. Doesn’t it just suck when you become that which you once sought to satirise?
The decline of chance
We have all lost a year of chance occurrences. Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is that we have lived thru a year almost entirely devoid of serendipity. I have been preoccupied with the role of chance in our lives for quite some time. Think of how it works – that moment when, for no rational reason, you take the long way round instead of the shortcut, just to enjoy the scenery, and then you unexpectedly run into someone you had no earthly reason to expect would also be in the environs, let alone taking the long way too. Once you start thinking about the double coincidences you really start to bake your noodle like Neo wondering if the Oracle hadn’t said anything would he still have broken the vase. There are unseen lines of chance that take place in everyday life: a number of tiny decisions lead you to a certain place at a certain time, where you might run into someone who is also there because of a number of tiny decisions they made without even really thinking about them. Or you might not, because they did not. This is not fate, this is a roll of the dice; you need two sixes.
Talking Movies 