Fifty years ago, on September 13, 1969, Scooby Doo, Where Are You! premiered on CBS. The premise of the show was always the same: whether it was a ghost, a phantom, a ghoul, or a poltergeist, it was back from the dead and it was out a’haunting. “Meddling kids” Fred, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and their talking great dane Scooby Doo tackled the supernatural, followed clues, and uncovered the culprit. The mood of the show made up for its predictability; the mysteries were set in haunted houses, dark forests on full-moon nights, dilapidated ghost towns or deserted museums and circus grounds. Rife with suspense and tinged with horror that was watered down with slapstick comedy, Scooby Doo masqueraded as a cartoon mystery but really was surprisingly gothic.
From its first episode, “What a Night for a Knight,” Scooby Doo establishes the very atmosphere that is integral to the gothic genre. The episode opens onto an empty country road under a full moon when a pickup truck rolls into view. The crate in the back opens. An armored knight rears his head and fixes his glowing eyes on the driver. Danger is imminent. “What a nervous night to be walking home from the movies, Scooby Doo,” says Shaggy, echoing the viewer’s sentiment. Moments later they come across the abandoned pickup truck where the suit of armor sits behind the wheel. Pristine, it shines in the moonlight. Suddenly, the head of the armor rattles and tips over, landing at their feet. Boy and dog chuckle nervously before they run away in what will become their signature manner of dealing with problems. The next two seasons of Scooby Doo, Where Are You! follow in this same vein, resting on a balance between suspense and fear, mystery and horror.
Instrumental to evoking these feelings in the viewer was less the plot itself than the atmosphere framing it. Geared towards children as it was, Scooby Doo made clowns out of Shaggy and Scooby to temper the seriousness of the dangers the gang was exposed to. Unless anyone needed help, Scooby and Shaggy were the first to flee the scene; they were impelled more by their stomachs than their curiosity, which in retrospect made them the least reckless of the gang. Ironically, the light-hearted humor coupled with “easy” mysteries (the suspects always did look the part) augmented the pervasive darkness of the show.
Most of Scooby Doo’s episodes hinge on imagery of death. When the gang is in an urban environment, the buildings are overwhelmingly on the verge of collapse (e.g., “Mine Your Own Business”). Inside, the rooms are steeped in darkness, covered in cobwebs and, we imagine, the walls and floorboards are overrun with rot much like the houses found in the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Dark corners where the eye can’t penetrate, spiraling staircases, and endless hallways traditionally, in gothic literature, are terrifying because they alert the imagination, awakening its fears. Meanwhile the mind is suspended between knowing and not knowing: There could be someone hiding behind the curtain or in the corner, but in this darkness it’s hard to know for sure. Encountering a place that was once inhabited and now is in decay is undeniably uncanny—strangely familiar and for that reason, eerie—because it is witnessing a life that’s been extinguished.
When touched by the gothic, no setting is safe, not even nature itself. When natural landscapes figure into Scooby Doo episodes, they too are tinged with death, just as in folklore, and in the romantic nature-influenced gothic. Scooby Doo trees in “What a Night for a Knight” or “Which Witch is Which” for instance, are preternaturally stocky, have thick barks and weird shapes that make them look like ossified, contorted human figures. The viewer can’t stop from thinking that they may come alive at any moment. The distinctive barrenness of the trees in Scooby Doo, additionally, signifies a perduring winter which subtly nods at nature’s cycle of death and rebirth.
Nature invoking terror on the imagination is a concept dating back to philosopher Edmund Burke’s theory of the sublime which figured into iconic gothic settings (like the moors in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights). According to Burke, the natural world was so stupendous that it evoked awe and astonishment. Essentially, upon witnessing the sublime, the human mind just stopped. Waterfalls or the edge of a precipice were common examples of the natural sublime. They awakened our reverence for nature but not without horror. Ironic, how something so beautiful can also be utterly frightening. With this in mind, when Scooby Doo’s creators usurped the settings reserved for gothic horror, they must have also been cognizant of their effects—which they used. A great deal.
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Known as an aesthetic after all—a style, a décor—as well as a genre, the gothic is in the details, and for good reason. Ornamentation, decoration, setting, weather are just a few examples that combine to create the distinctively heavy, loaded atmosphere of the gothic—a mood that tips off viewer (or reader) and character alike to secrets lurking, things unsaid, crimes buried under the mold in the basement or the dust in the attic. Classic gothic edifices are castles, mansions with turrets and pointed arches and too many windows and rooms to count let alone know. A breeding ground for evil, the gothic gives rise to the classic villain of the ghost. Naturally, the appearance of a ghost is a mystery in itself igniting many ontological and epistemological questions, most of all, How can it be? Or its extension, Can it be?
We have always lived in the castle…Right, gang?
Week after week, the mystery gang hops into the psychedelic van, the Mystery Machine, and confronts these exact questions. With every new mystery, at the sighting of a new villain, they grapple with the supernatural and question what they know about the laws of reality, the world as they know it. Generally, the villains are either ghosts or monsters—a blanket term for witches, aliens, robots, werewolves, vampires, mummies, pirates, to name a few. Each puts on a sensational ruse replete with stage settings and props, costumes, makeup, and voice disguises to scare away anyone who crosses their path and might interfere with their scheme. Shaken but not fooled, the gang insists on uncovering the mystery and following the clues to their logical end. This means them looking past phantoms that walk through walls, witches that conjure zombies out of campfires, a snow ghost that appears to fly. They are adamant that reason—order—will triumph over illusion—chaos.
With every new mystery, at the sighting of a new villain, they grapple with the supernatural and question what they know about the laws of reality…So each episode concludes with a wrap up, the trademark “Scooby Doo ending” where the supernatural is debunked, and what was initially considered frightening is now branded as foolish. The bigger questions, the existential uncertainties rest; all along it was simply a man with a grudge hiding behind a mask.
Surprising as it may seem, the “Scooby Doo ending,” one of the show’s hallmarks, was in fact co-opted from yet another feature of the gothic: the “explained supernatural.” This framework was devised in the quintessential 18th century Gothic novel in which the figure of the con man with his elaborately planned ruse first made his appearance. Specifically, in German playwright Friedrich von Schiller’s unfinished novel Der Geisterseher (1786). The novel follows a German prince who sees apparitions that, really, are but a hoax contrived to manipulate him. Despite appearing in Schiller first, Ann Radcliffe’s use of the “explained supernatural” in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) solidified the form as part of the model for ensuing gothic novels. For instance, strange noises and apparitions were accounted for by ventriloquism.
Similarly, in one of Scooby Doo’s scariest episodes, “The Backstage Rage,” ventriloquism is to blame for various puppets appearing suddenly onto a stage or becoming animated when least expected. As a child, I was terrified primarily by the “jump scares.” A cast of unknown characters (puppets) keep dropping from the ceiling or appearing from nowhere like some terrible game of the subconscious. A puppet-come-to-life is one of those tropes used and re-used in horror because it is such a neat embodiment of the impossible. The conceit is: the inanimate has become animated. But the inanimate cannot become animated, says reason; even so, say the senses. This discord between faculties is jarring, and prompts a so-called “reality check” to ensure we are seeing correctly; sight being a reliable way to experience the world accurately unlike say, dreaming. Now the thriller component of horror, and the sleuthing part of Scooby Doo is the journey to discovering if what one fears to be true—the supernatural—is indeed true. Because that would cause all sorts of problems to our rationally wired minds.
“Hassle in the Castle” is a great example of the fixed schematic of logical reasoning that governs Scooby Doo. The gang gets lost in a fog while out “boating” and gets deserted on Haunted Isle. As one would imagine of such a charmless locale, there is but one abandoned, haunted building, the former house of an infamous pirate. It doesn’t take the kids long to get mixed up in the business of the ghost. A high pitched cackle permeates the castle: a first warning. “It’s probably just the wind,” Velma says to Shaggy to console him. “Well that’s the first wind I’ve heard with a sense of humor,” Shaggy retorts. Shortly after, the ghost appears and threatens them—a second warning. The gang chases the ghost but he escapes by walking through a wall. Even Velma gets panicked then.
“There’s a very logical explanation for this,” she says.
“Quick, tell me,” Shaggy says.
“The place is haunted.”
The play on words is so clever here: even belief in the supernatural is expressed with the language of reason. If the only logical explanation is that the place is haunted, then where’s the logic in that? It’s a trick question. There is none. So effectively from the start of the episode Scooby Doo foregrounds the later debunking of the supernatural. Just like in Schiller and Anne Radcliffe’s gothic novels, belief is but a brief interlude, a trick, before explaining the supernatural away.
What was the point of Scooby Doo, a kids’ show that indulges fantasies of sleuthing, following in the footsteps of the gothic?
The truth is, Scooby Doo could have remained a mystery show sans the supernatural. But the show creators Silverman, Hana, and Barbera went out of their way to infuse each episode with something borrowed from the supernatural and the gothic aesthetic. So even when the show didn’t deal directly with gothic tropes, it still glowed with its aura of decay, horror, and ghostliness.
They must have thought the supernatural elements added something to the show. Was it intrigue? Yes; some horror? Yes. Overall, did it heighten the show’s stakes? In one sense, yes—since battling the supernatural seems more legendary and dangerous than fighting ordinary humans—but in another no.
For its purposes—minding its audience—Scooby Doo wanted to simply unleash chaos and then resolve it within a 20-minute segment. Its form was never conducive to a deep dive into the philosophical questions that plagued the gothic. And although its mysteries were watered-down to be palatable and villains were dressed up to mask their humanity when committing their crimes, the genius of the show lies, ironically, in what most people would say is its weakness: its repetition. On one level, the show performs the very function dictated to it by detective fiction, which is to reassure the viewer that justice will prevail and that order will be reinstated. On another level, the show’s very pattern allows the viewer to predict the plot of upcoming episodes: Even during the celebration of catching one villain, the viewer begins to imagine the next. Repetition is, ultimately, a cornerstone of life, and harmful cycles can only be broken if something changes.
Another night at the ghost port.
The last thing to consider about Scooby Doo and why it adopted the gothic supernatural is its context. The 1960s marked the counterculture era, a decade of activism (e.g., Second Wave of Feminism; Stonewall riots that became symbolic of the gay rights movement; the growing Civil Rights movement) and anti-establishment protests mainly by young people (the Baby Boomers) who wanted to see a new direction in American politics and reinterpretation of the American dream. In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, the Stonewall riots occurred, as did the Manson murders, Nixon withdrew thousands of troops from Vietnam, and the Woodstock festival gathered about 400,000 people at a farm in Bethel—an event that, in pop-culture at least, defined an era.
Scooby Doo was a show dark enough to mirror the fundamental anxieties of its decade, but mellow enough to superficially quell those worries.America in 1969 was wrought with sociopolitical tension and from this chaos stemmed a nervous uncertainty as to what would follow in the coming decade. Against this context, Scooby Doo was a show dark enough to mirror the fundamental anxieties of its decade, but mellow enough to superficially quell those worries. If even in the battle with the supernatural order prevails, then surely, the problems of the real world could be confronted.
Scooby Doo played the low-stakes game of addressing real issues and upset but in a metaphorical sense, with figurative monsters, who in the end weren’t even real. Gothic residue, its ghosts and many dark, undiscovered places endures in fictional imagery because it gets straight at the heart of universal, cyclical anxieties about the future, the so-called certainties of life, and the state of the world and our place in it. Scooby Doo communicates that our world as we know it will be upset again and again—that is just the nature of uncertainty lingering in the backdrop of life. In the same way that the gothic has been adapted and altered since its first appearance in the 18th century and its ghosts have stood for something different over that time, so the cycle of representation can be disrupted, things can change and perhaps the ones capable of effecting change are, ultimately, those meddling kids.
