{"id":16062,"date":"2020-10-16T13:25:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T20:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=16062"},"modified":"2020-10-19T16:26:11","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T23:26:11","slug":"why-scooby-doo-is-still-so-popular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/why-scooby-doo-is-still-so-popular\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ‘Scooby-Doo’ Still Endures After 50 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While it predates me by a pretty decent margin, anything with Scooby-Doo <\/em>was perhaps my most beloved cartoon growing up. I\u2019ve watched every episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You<\/em>! at least half a dozen times, probably more. I would watch A Pup Named Scooby-Doo<\/em> each day before school. I even quit playing rec league soccer in 4th grade because the games were on at the same time as the new episodes of What\u2019s New, Scooby-Doo?<\/em> every Saturday morning. It\u2019s safe to say if Scooby was on a show I was keen to watch it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, the Scooby-Doo franchise reached an impressive milestone. 2019 was the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the popular series, and 50 years of regular content is no small feat. Even more impressive, it\u2019s not drastically altered from its original format. It begs the question, what is it about Scooby-Doo<\/em> that\u2019s allowed it to survive and even thrive well past its original contemporaries?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand why<\/em> Scooby-Doo, let’s first answer what<\/em> is Scooby-Doo. If you haven\u2019t seen it, you\u2019ve surely heard of it, but for the uninitiated, the Scooby-Doo cartoons follow a group of four young adults\/teenagers\/meddling kids and their talking dog, Scooby-Doo. These meddling kids travel around in a neon turquoise van, aptly named the Mystery Machine, and solve paranormal crimes as the detective agency Mystery, Inc. They\u2019re never looking for ghosts, they just kinda stumble upon them. Every episode starts with the gang on their way to some event they\u2019re destined to miss when they come across a spooky house and just can\u2019t help but investigate. The ghosts are rarely actually supernatural but usually adults in masks trying to scare someone away for land development. The mystery itself always takes a backseat in the episode, so much so that the revealed villain is often a character we never even meet until the mask comes off. The mysteries are impossible to solve from the audience’s perspective, but that’s not the point. This isn\u2019t really a mystery show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is to focus on the spooky hijinks of Scooby and Shaggy, his human bestie. As the main characters, neither of the two ever have any interest in solving mysteries and are instead much more motivated by food. Terrified of everything, they\u2019re obvious monster magnets and are constantly stumbling into some sort of trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, knowing all of that, what’s the enduring appeal of Scooby-Doo<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Characters Are Archetypical And Unchanging<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The cast of 2002’s live-action ‘Scooby-Doo’ movie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I think the biggest reason we see Scooby-Doo\u2019s lasting presence is because its characters all fit easily into archetypes. In Joseph Campbell\u2019s The Hero of 1000 Faces, he describes a number of archetypes, character types we see repeated over and over in stories. Roles like the hero or the mentor, things we recognize culturally. For example, in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker would fit the hero archetype, and Obi-Wan would be the mentor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Scooby-Doo, the archetypes are more modern and specific but equally recognizable. Fred is our brave leader. He\u2019s earnest and na\u00efve but fits a common understanding of a type-A personality. He drives their van so he literally guides the group. He\u2019s often the one who instigates the investigations, guiding the gang of their intended trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is heavily implied (or explicitly stated) in most versions of Scooby-Doo<\/em> that Daphne is very wealthy. She\u2019s well-dressed and was the typical damsel in distress character in the early iterations of the cartoon; in later versions giving her a feminist update, she gets captured by the monster far less frequently and instead knows karate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Velma is the only truly competent detective and clearly fills the role of\u2026er, smart person. She often explains the mystery at the end, so the audience gets closure. She bridges the gap between the clear divide in the group: Freddie and Daphne on one end and Shaggy and Scooby on the other. When the group splits up, she fits well with either group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaggy rounds out the human members of the team, a fraidy-cat with a gluttonous nature. He\u2019s not interested in mysteries but somehow always walks right into them. He\u2019s the comic relief character but also serves as something of a secondary protagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scooby is our main character, a talking Great Dane inseparable from Shaggy and also somewhat indistinguishable from him, the two more or less codependent. The two are two peas in a pod and the conflicts between them often stem from them being too similar; they often fight for food with Scooby always getting the upper hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These characters are timeless. If the Scooby-Doo: Where Are You? <\/em>of the ’60s were to be released today, it would feel very dated. But with tweaks to some of the animation and the background music, the series is easily updated to match the times without losing the spirit of the show. This is shown over and over again every time a new version of the series comes out. This is largely because with each revival the core archetypes remain the same. The five characters are ones we already know in circumstances we understand. The character dynamics and relationships never change, just the animation. This timeless quality is what makes it ripe for revival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Characters Balance Each Other<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Fred might seem confident and well-adjusted when the adventure starts, but that all changes when he tries to capture the ghostly villains. Without fail, he always suggests a Rube Goldberg-esque trap that will obviously fail from the beginning, and when it inevitably does, it\u2019s up to the other characters to support him. He has moments every episode where his strengths and his weaknesses are clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same can be said for every character. Scooby has no interest in solving mysteries but he often has to rise to the occasion to save the day and help solve the case. Velma is the only actual adept detective but a frequent gag in the show is to have her lose her glasses and spend a portion of the show out of commission as she fumbles around looking for them. The five characters all need each other as they complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Each character gets the chance to ask for help and each character gets to be the hero. At the end of the day, you could put the five members of Mystery, Inc. in any circumstance and they\u2019ll still generate fun as long as they\u2019re together. You can put Scooby in a spacesuit, on a surfboard, or downloaded into a computer game, and each one of those premises could be (and actually is) a Scooby-Doo<\/em> episode. They’re even fun when interacting with characters from a completely different TV show, as was the case with the crossover 16th episode of Season 13 of Supernatural<\/em> when Sam and Dean were pulled into the world of Scooby-Doo<\/em>. That’s how iconic Scooby-Doo<\/em> is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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