One of the many pleasures of parenthood is rediscovering aspects of my childhood that I had enjoyed so much the first time around. The reintroduction of Scooby Doo and his gang to my life has offered much enjoyment but now, from a more critically astute viewpoint, has also presented some conundrums.
I’ve discovered that in the intervening years Scooby Doo has had a bit of an overhaul. In the original (and best) versions of the cartoon the gang travel around in their Camper Van (known as the Mystery Machine) stumbling across and solving mysteries. If you know the show you know the format. The gang arrive at some remote or isolated location – what they’re doing there in the first place is never quite clear. There they meet terrified locals who tell tales of creepy happenings. The gang encounter a spooky monster, split up, are chased at least twice and wander about alternating between wholesome American cheerfulness and slapstick horror. There’s usually a joke about Shaggy’s appetite and some Scooby snacks. Eventually, by following some clues and using the science of deduction they unmask the fiend and expose his or her dastardly deeds. What is so satisfying about Scooby Doo is that the friends always always get their man. With a dramatic flourish the scary phantom is revealed to be a miserable scoundrel the gang had met earlier. For the discerning viewer the identity of the villain may lack the element of surprise but nevertheless the show is a bastion of fair play, high moral values, rationalism and justice.
However, in the newer versions the thrust of the show has changed significantly. No longer does rationalism and reason prevail; instead, some of the spooky goings-on are revealed to be exactly that: paranormal and supernatural incidences. There is now a plethora of zombies, witches, ghosts and werewolves running riot and scaring the living daylights out of the chums.
Now I’m mindful of Douglas Adams’ maxim that anything that’s invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things, but somehow the fact that Scooby Doo and his pals are now being chased by supernatural beings just doesn’t seem right. I thought that the whole point of unmasking villains was to expose human weaknesses and to restore order and justice. If the baddies are now aliens how are we ever supposed to get the better of them? One of the reasons Scooby Doo is so endearing is that he is cowardly, not fearless and brave. His first instinct is to run and I respect that. But what kind of world is it when the baddies are playing by a set of supernatural rules and doing away with the certainty that the ElectroMonster is really Mr Dodds from next door.
Intrigued by this shift in villainy I set out, purely in the interests of research of course, to do some investigation work of my own. I found out that Scooby Doo first aired in America in 1969. JINKIES, this made perfect sense – for what else are the gang except a bunch of old hippies? It explains the wanderlust, the bellbottoms, the camper van, Fred’s neckerchief, and especially Shaggy’s Beatnik behaviour. After all, let’s face it, this is a guy who constantly has the munchies and believes that his dog can talk. It has been suggested that the original Scooby Doo Show is representative of a particular type of American optimism. The gang are children of the Space Age with their faith in science, rationality and progress while brainy no-nonsense Velma (who has a logical explanation for everything) is a very contemporary female role model.
It wasn’t until 1994 that the first Scooby Doo cartoons featuring the supernatural were aired on television. Did this mean that good old fashioned American optimism was now a thing of the past? Is it just a coincidence that around this time programmes with paranormal themes started to become very popular on the telly, for example, The X files, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The more I think about it the more there seems to be a case to answer. I wonder if it is something to do with the end of a century; when people face into an unknown era they express their fears through culture. The monster Frankenstein is a symptom of anxieties about technology and progress as is the robot Maria in the film Metropolis nearly 100 years later. The figure of the vampire enjoyed huge popularity at the turn of the twentieth century. After the end of a century and the beginning of a millennium, are the number of narratives about the supernatural a similar type of fear? Really, to even write the words Scooby Doo and millennial anxiety in the same sentence invites derision but I can’t help thinking that we do live in uncertain, precarious times. I mean if Scooby Doo and the gang can’t guarantee that everything is going to be alright things are pretty bad out there.
Bring back the old fashioned baddies I say. At least we know they’re humans who think they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids.

Elaine Sisson
Broadcasted RTE Radio 1 on Sunday Miscellany July 2005