Sunday, May 8, 2016

Anarchic Providence and Quantum Menace

Scooby-Doo Review: “Mine Your Own Business”

The magic of Scooby-Doo involves the mixture of horror and playfulness – like, of course, the holiday of Halloween.  When the gang arrives at an abandoned saloon, Scooby and Shaggy immediately indulge their impulse to fantasize and role-play amid the ruinous tavern.  This pair cannot resist the impulse to clown around.  Scooby can’t even walk past a mirror without grinning at himself and messing about!   Mystery solving and criminal investigation are combined in a tenuous alliance with mischief and mayhem.  This pattern is highlighted by Shaggy’s frequent failure to correctly identify vital objects.  He reads a map upside down, lights some “candles” only to discover that they are actually dynamite, and mistakes crude oil for chocolate syrup.  Scooby even tries to scare Shaggy at one point, suggesting that for all their campy cowardice, the pair is intrigued by the delights of danger.  Of course, their relentless playfulness can also be productive, at least when harnessed by the more thoughtful and focused members of the team – at Freddy’s suggestion, Scooby and Shaggy mimic an approaching train to chase down the villain.


There’s a kind of chant-like poetry about certain moments in the show.  Consider the rhythmic, almost ritualistic repetition of this exchange:

Hank: “It’s the miner.”
Shaggy and Freddy: “The miner?”
Scooby: “The who?”
Hank: “The miner ‘49er.”
Velma and Daphne: “‘49er?”

Every episode of the show, it seems, includes the quest of Scooby and Shaggy to eat without limitation – food is their hobby, their refuge, their playground.  Yet it is inextricably woven into the menace of the situation.  “You ask for a sarsaparilla and all you get is a glass of spider-webs,” observes Shaggy at the saloon.  Scooby steals cheese from a mousetrap, to the vehement annoyance of the rodent.  Scooby may be the only animal that really talks in the show, but he is not alone in articulating purposes and emotions – these animal intentions provide both comic relief and a glimpse into world of hidden intelligences, a gentle organic counterpart to the presence of ghostly agendas and supernatural enigmas.  Of course, food (in the form of Scooby Snacks) works its own magic, transforming Scooby from a coward miming a chicken to a hero saluting like a dutiful soldier.



In this world, clues erupt from an anarchic Providence – Scooby runs away, gets caught on a cigar store Indian, and knocks it over to discover an essential map.   Likewise, opening a door will reveal the villain standing there with inconceivable patience, apparently just waiting for someone to arrive at that particular spot.  In a mine car chase, characters inexplicably switch vehicles, creating a sense of quantum menace – of discontinuous reality held together only by dramatic or comedic effect.  A mirror will suddenly and impossibly become a window through which the villain can emerge.  Somehow this brilliant show makes the supernatural mundane (and therefore conquerable by a child’s imagination) without destroying the excitement of the unknown.  At the same time, it makes the mundane more supernatural, thus stimulating the imagination in exciting and unexpected ways.

Images: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
Scooby-Doo is © Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. Enterntainment