Media Literacy and Scooby-Doo

Scooby-Doo is a children’s cartoon about a gang of ambiguously aged, amateur mystery solvers. While travelling around in their brightly coloured van, they stumble upon mysteries— usually involving evil spirits, curses, and monsters— that they take upon themselves to solve.

The gang is made up of five characters: Shaggy Rogers, Fred Jones, Velma Dinkley, Daphne Blake, and Scooby-Doo. In most adaptations— though it has gotten better in the more recent ones— each member is characterized in highly stereotypical way. Fred is the “man” of the group. He is the leader and doesn’t have much of a personality past this he formulates the plans for how to catch the bad guys and decides the groups when the gang splits up. Velma is the smart one, she always just so happens to know the right— and often oddly specific— facts that the gang needs to solve the mystery. Daphne is the pretty one, which is somehow a personality trait in her case. She likes to point out the obvious “clues” like: “Hey, gang, look at this giant footprint.” And is often the damsel in distress. Shaggy and Scooby serve as the comic relief. They are in a perpetual state of hunger and are frightened by almost everything they encounter. Usually, they will accidentally stumble across a clue while running away and sometimes they will even be responsible for the villain’s capture, though it’s never intentional.

The characters’ cliched personalities serve as the punchline to almost every joke. Shaggy and Scooby are hungry and eat a lot or they run away from something completely non-threatening. Velma looses her glasses and apparently, she is legally blind without them. Daphne isn’t the subject of many jokes, but her ability to get herself into danger is sometimes made fun of. Fred is probably the least joked about of the gang because his character is generally pretty serious. However, the portrayal of every character differs depending on which adaptation you’re watching. The first version of the show, Scooby Doo, Where Are You? is very different from newer versions like Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

In many adaptations, the police don’t really seem to care that there’s a group of amateur mystery solvers trespassing and breaking into places at night. In fact, they usually don’t appear at all until the end of the episode when the gang has caught the monster. The exception to this is in Mystery Incorporated where the police captain seems to have it out for the gang because it’s the police’s job to catch criminals, and although it is definitely true that a group of teenagers shouldn’t be hunting down monsters, his character is villainized.

The gang also seems to solve the mystery by connecting clues that don’t actually make much sense. Rather, when I watched the show, I would guess who the villains were by who seemed the creepiest. Usually, I ended up being right. They almost always acted very suspiciously, and I always felt very smart when I guessed correctly even though it took almost no brainpower of any kind.

In the beginning of the show, the characters were likely portrayed a certain way that fit with the status quo at the time, while also being exaggerated to add some comic relief. The creators probably thought Fred made an ideal leader because he was ‘manly’ and that Daphne and Velma were accurate portrayals of different types of women. As time went on and our views about people became less stereotypical, the exaggerated personalities of the characters became more about humour and most of the gang developed characteristics beyond their stereotype. The stereotypical personalities of the characters work because the audience that the show is aimed at, young children, find it funny.

The way that villains are characterized also works to make the show more fun for kids to watch. If the viewers think they can ‘figure out’ who did it, then it becomes more entertaining because it gives them a sense of gratification. In reality, you would not be able to solve a mystery by meeting one person and thinking they seem suspicious, but it makes it more fun if you can. The villains are also generally pretty dumb. They rise to silly taunts by the gang, and fall into traps that include cages being dropped on them, being scooped up into nets, or Shaggy and Scooby accidentally catching them. Again, this just adds entertainment value to the show, it’s funny to the viewers when the villains are stupid, so they make the villains stupid.

While the kids who watch this often just find the quirks of the characters and the stupidity of their enemies funny, it can be harmful to see such a stereotypical portrayal of things. As a kid, you often find role models in your favourite movie or TV characters. Since the roles that the characters play are so confining, a kid might feel that they also have to fit into that role. A young girl watching the show might feel she has to choose between being smart and being pretty, and a young boy watching the show might feel he has to either be strong and manly or else end up being the comic relief.

Although there are parts of Scooby Doo where the characters defy their stereotypes, the message doesn’t always strike the same way with older viewers and younger ones. For instance, in Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy, Daphne is cursed to loose the things she values most which is her looks— a fact that is unsurprising based on her character— by gaining weight and getting frizzy hair. Later, the message is meant to show that looks aren’t everything and that her friends are what truly meant the most to her. However, to a young girl who looks up to Daphne, who is horrified by her looks, might take away the message that although loosing her looks isn’t Daphne’s biggest fear, it is still one of them, which makes it a fear worth having.Older kids and adults might not see the damage that portraying these types of stereotypes can have, because they have the ability to brush it off, but young kids don’t have the same critical thinking ability needed to see through the stereotypes. They might just take these characters to be accut=rate portraylas of “grownups.”

Stereotypes aside, Scooby-Doo does help children understand crime in some ways. At the end of each episode, the gang will unmask the villain and Velma will usually explain how they figured it out. These rationalizations about why the villains did what they did and how they got away with it help young people understand that criminals always have a motive to commit crime.