Admit it: Scooby Doo SUCKED!!

[Arcegetrix]

*Originally posted by Sauron *
**
One other note: Regardless of what some may think about the programming decisions of the folks at Cartoon Network, the people they have writing shorts for them are brilliant. My personal favorite is the one with Aquaman and Wonder Woman being captured by Lex Luthor and his evil friends. The PowerPuff girls bust in and beat the hell out of Luthor et al., leaving them in a pile. WW and AM tell the PowerPuff girls that they’re developing as superheroes, and one of the PPG says “Yes, someday we want to be as developed as you.” WW gets a funny look on her face, and crosses her arms over her chest, while AM, Lex, and the pile of baddies on the floor start laughing. Classic stuff. **

I’m with Sauron. That short is hilarious. The opening joke is great, to whit:

Wonder Woman and Aqua Man, bound with rope, are being lowered into a pit of acid. Aqua Man is projecting some sort of sonar beam out of his forehead.

AM: “My ability to speak with fishes won’t be able to save us now.”

WW: [Rolls her eyes]

[Pink]

I agree. Scooby doo is like Marmaduke. I hate big slobbery dogs.
They aren’t cute and they aren’t funny, they are just annoying.

[Freudian_Slit]

Biotop: Great analysis of Scooby. I couldn’t have done better myself. (Really.)

Pink-
Marmaduke and Scooby were NOT the same thing. Believe me. Marmaduke was slobbery. Scooby only slobbered over food and scooby snacks.

[Philster]

*Originally posted by Biotop *
**While we may argue debate the merits of the many incarnations of Scooby Doo, under no circumstances may we say that “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” sucked. This show was and is an important artistic and educational work only masquerading as as quasi-horror-mystery Saturday morning fare. Indeed, just as most of the adults in the series were unable to see past the mask of the villain, so are the anti-Scooby crowd unable to see past a superficial reading of the show. The very strength of the show lies in the similar plots, less than stellar animation, and repeatably solvable mysteries.
Any in-depth study of the 1969-1970 Scooby Doo episodes must first place the series in its historical context, and also remember that the perspective of this historical context must be perceived through the mind of a child. Not a very young child, for whom the show was probably “too scary”, but in the mind of a child reaching out towards the mystery of the adult.

There is no need to go through a listing of what was happening historically in this country at this time. Obviously this was an especially difficult period to be a child. Right and wrong, good and evil, truth and fiction—these divisions were surfacing in America in ways never before seen in our history. Children could not help but be aware of these divisions and uncertainties.

Enter “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?”

Unlike most previous Saturday morning cartoons,the original Scooby Doo dealt with a world of norms seemingly gone to chaos. And the chaos was something any child could understand. The chaos was the monster. As we grow old we leave a world where everything is a new wonder to a world where there are rules, routines, and often rote lives. But there is a between time. It’s an age where we know there is no monster in the closet, but we still aren’t quite comfortable with the light going out a night.

“children remembered/ but only a few/ and down they forgot/ as up they grew”.
e.e. cummings

In 1969, we were confronting a world where norms were being shaken. And in the original Scooby Doo this was represented in the dichotomy of the mask. The confusion over appearance and reality that is the central theme of the show is evident in the main characters themselves. Freddy and Daphne are the beautiful ideals. They are the Brad Pitt and Brittany Spears of today. Shaggy and Velma were their opposites. They were normal in appearance. Viewers had crushes on Freddy and Daphne. They were who every kid wanted to be. Shaggy and Velma represented more the type of kids who watched the show, and more importantly represented who every child COULD BE!

Freddy drove the Mystery Machine. Freddy demanded the solving of every mystery. Freddy cooked up the Rube-Goldbergesque traps at the end of that ultimately failed to solve the mystery. Daphne (AKA Danger-prone Daphne)tended to more often than not get the gang into trouble with her ineptness. It is no surprise that Freddy and Daphne were always paired together, while Shaggy, Velma and Scooby Doo usually formed a team. For where Freddy’s outlandish traps would fail, the cowardly Shaggy and Scooby Doo always were the ones who finally caught the monster. Velma used her mind and deciphered the clues. Freddy and Daphne may have set up the parameters to find a solution, but it was always Shaggy, Velma, and Scooby Doo who actually solved the cases.

Now while Freddy and Daphne wore the masks of the hero, and Velma and Shaggy performed much of the actual heroism…what of Scooby Doo? (Scooby Doo, where are you?) I believe Scooby actually represents the viewer. Caught between the ideal (Freddy and Daphne)and the reality (Shaggy and Velma)Scooby not only co-exists between the two, he cements them. Just as we cannot and perhaps should not sacrifice our ideals, so must we always live with the realities.

The ghost/monster is almost always presented early on in complete supernatural imagery. Take, for instance, the episode where Scooby and his relatives must spend the night in a haunted castle to inherit a fortune. The two Phantom Shadows are transparent early on, but as the episode progresses, they become more and more real. Just before Mr. Creeps and Mr. Crawls are unmasked, the transparancy has disappeared. The reality replaces the fakery. But until perceived truth is debunked, that faux-truth must take on the appearance of actual truth. How deliciously wonderful that the fortune involved also turns out to have been wearing a mask–it is confederate money!

More important though, then the presentation of the dichotomy of the mask is what can be called the morality of the mask. In dealing with a world where the natural and supernatural are confused, where right and wrong as well as good and evil may be wearing the mask, the true question is what is our response? And I think here we begin to see why the message of the show resonates with kids and adults alike some 31 years later.

The adults present a world gone haywire. The Scooby gang, does not respond by placing blame on these adults. They do not rebel and retaliate against the world but instead make a challenge to it. “Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you? We’ve got some work for you now…we need some help from you now” The chaotic inexplicable world is a challenge. In other words, “We’ve got a mystery—dare to make sense of it!”

The main characters of Scooby Doo are always on the road, never resting. Because there is no home, they are forever riding forth in the mystery of life. There may be a mummy in the museum, a space ghost at the airport, or an evil ghost clown at the circus. No matter. The differences of ideal and reality not only co-exist, they thrive on each other. We, like Velma, may lose our glasses for a time. But eventually we find them. Or we find a spare set. And we go on. Scooby acts as the unifying center for the ideal and the potential, the chaos and the order, the masked and the unmasked.

“We had to help. Scooby Doo is our dog. And we love him very much.” So says Freddy when Scooby is saved from the witchdoctor/dognapper. It’s a world we want to love very much. We must go out and try to save it. Would you do it for a Scooby snack? Yes, because of the many many Scooby Snacks we will face the many many monsters. **

Umm…yeah, that’s the ticket.

Scooby Sucked. That’s my vote.

[Miller]

Biotop, you are the MAN!

[Snooooopy]

The Mystery Machine is not unlike a bag of holding. It can not only transport the whole gang, but it carries the innumerable various devices that Fred uses to construct ghost-catching traps.

[The_Asbestos_Mango]

I’ve just been reading the last dozen or so posts, and this is starting to turn into a potential GD thread.

Hey, wait a minute, this is a GD thread! Was a GD thread…

Aww, come on, Gaudere, put it back.

[Freudian_Slit]

It is defintely a classic TV series.

Sure its not Gilligan’s Island that can spark heated debates- (Ginger or Mary Anne? Why’d they pack all that for a “3 Hour Tour”? Was Gilligan a virgin?)- but practically all kids know this TV show. Everyone can quote Scooby Doo. They know the names of the characters. Its a milestone in our history of childhood TV!

[S-Terry_Dan]

Put me in with the Scooby Doo Sucks gang. Sure, it might not’ve sucked when you compared it to whatever was on TV Saturday mornings when it was still in production, but it sucks in all current incarnations.

Cartoon Network filler: Urk. SNL is to Comedy Central as Scooby Doo is to Cartoon Network. Well, except for the fact that SNL can be funny, especially the older ones, and you generally won’t see the same episode twice in a day, unlike Scooby Doo on CN.

Newer Scooby Doo movies: Points for actually adding a facet or two to the character’s personalities. Minus several thousand for the fact that it’s fairly obviously farmed out to the same animation studios responsible for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (oy, the theme song in my head again) and Mummies Alive (replace turtles with mummies and there ya go). Minus aleph-null for making it “real” paranormal activity that they investigate but, gosh-darn it, manage to lose all evidence of before they go public. And they didn’t even bother to update the humor any.

But I will give Hannah-Barbera credit for payrolling Gennda Tartavosky, animator of Dexter’s Lab and PPG.

[one_last_glass_dear]

Thea Logica: “After that, it started felching 'possums”
(what is this, “to felch”?)

Maybe this is an age thing…I was a coherent 10 to 12 year old in the Scooby years, and with my elder eyes of discernment Scooby looked like a bad feltboard play, when compared to the work of the aforementioned Chuck Jones.

I had the disconcerting experience at a Halloween party of sitting in a room full of twenty-somethings who were intently watching a Scooby video…and then I realized that several of them were dressed as Scoobians! AAAHHHH! And it wasn’t a joke, or it was sort of a joke but not enough of a joke…Scooby Doo is not worth this amount of adoration. Hong Kong Phooey WAS better. And think upon what that means. Think…and despair.

[capacitor]

People like mysteries, even kids. They especially like mysteries where the smart, smug and not-too-beautiful/handsome person solves the case. This is probably the only outlet in all media genre in which looking intelligent is more of a factor in popularity than looking good. Note that in some shows, Fred and Daphne are left out of the loop when it comes to solving a case.

Problem with “Hong Kong Phooey” was that back in the time it originally showed, Americans didn’t care for martial arts too much.

[Ukulele_Ike]

Huh?

The only reason HONG KONG PHOOEY was on teevee at ALL was that KUNG FU was such a hit during prime time.

Oh yes…Scooby does suck. Big time. My kids understand that the Old Man will sit with them during Batman, or Superman, or the Powerpuffs, or Bugs and Daffy, or even Dexter. But when Scooby comes on, Dad’s off to the kitchen, turning up the stereo real loud.,

[Biotop]

Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" was not about animation, dammit! I have seen some amazing modern animation that will blow you out of your theater seat, but with the depth of a Florida snow.

The show was not about character development. Shaggy, Scooby, Velma, Freddy, Daphne, and the masquerading villain were not meant to be complex humans. Don’t you see? The viewer and our chaotic world are the complexities. They are the true mysteries. SDWAY was a mirror for which we hold a troubled and non-sensical world up toward, in hopes of reflecting sense again.

Art manifests itself in different forms. Too often critics note the lack of Quality A or Quality B and therefore dismiss a piece of art. Ultimately art is not about the cosmetics, it is about truth. See how quickly we return to the mask?!

Frequently children’s television takes one of two forms:

1. The hero is good. The world is good. The villain is bad. Good hero defeats the bad villain.
2. The hero is right. The world is wrong. The hero makes fun or puts down the world. The powerful world is shown to be stupid–an emperor without clothes.

We’ve seen this stuff over and over again. Some of these shows are good, some not. But in SDWAY we have:

3. The hero is good. The world is postulated to be good, but something has gone wrong. The world is awry. The hero re-assembles the world and finds the good.

SDWAY is therefore not so much an adventure or mystery as it is a quest. In the show the true antagonist is THE UNKNOWN. So just as the adolescents who watched the show were stepping their feet into the unknown of life–here was a show that dealt with the ineffable realities ahead. It did so by confronting a truth that had already been faced: the monster under the bed. The unknown wears the mask of a previous unknown. So much of life is about making sense of it all, of seeing through masks to deeper truths. You the viewer are the one on the quest. Further character development of the majors involved would be superfluous and in a very real sense, a distraction.

And I still say the strength of the show is in the morality expressed by the characters confronting that unknown. Not with anger, not with cynicism, but with a brave trepidation that transcends age and era. Please let the kids watch the show, so that when confronted with the difficulties of life they do not simply retreat and turn the stereo up very very loud.