Scooby would have got away with his iconic status if it wasn’t for that meddling film company (and Scrappy-Boo of course)
Scooby-Doo was an icon for a generation and no big budget, live action film is going to Change that. Words: Paul Dale
was at a dull dinner party recently. empty bottles of wine
piling tip on the table as we roared and argued over the
comfortably important issues upon which we were all clearly under-informed: the Middle liast. NATO warmongering. globalisation and the terminal decline of the health service.
Most of my friends have become fascists over the years as their wage packets have bulged with their ginhs. btit there is one thing. perhaps the only thing. we still all agree on. an agreement that has withstood the decades and keeps us unified in murderous hatred. And we returned to it once more this tannin choked night: ‘Scrappy-l)oo is the devil: he stole the
hippie dream. he drove Scooby and the gang into the valley of
mediocrity in their mystery van.‘ No returns. no quips. no arguments: this much we can agree on.
If you are somewhere between the ages of 25 and 4() you will know who Scooby-l)oo is. l‘rom l‘)(i‘) to sometime in the early 90s (excluding some rather crap TV specials and mini movies) the scaredy-dog and his friends solved ghostly crimes and dastardly mysteries in the hinterlands ofAmerica. A place overrun with decrepit old funfairs. castles and deserted family estates. To those of us whose parents think 'llower power" was an early form of genetically modified. speed-grow gardening. this intrepid quintet were radical salvagers of the hippie dream. Different in every way to Bugs Bunny. Tom and .lerry and the gallery of (in retrospect quite brilliant) Tex Avery
14 THE LIST It 18 Jul 200?
cartoons we had obsessed about tip to that point.
As .loab Jackson points out in his excellent essay. Scan/{V- “on: Icon ol'u (iwn'mriun: '(iet Scooby and you get (ien X.‘ There was Scooby. a huge brown great dane who could say his own name and was scared of his own shadow. There was his proto-hippie best friend Shaggy. a dim-wilted beatnik who would eat snacks the si/e of his own body. Their driver was a piece of rump steak by the name of lired. a tight bunned stiff who seemed to spend a bit too much time with Daphne. the gangs tiber-babe who had legs that rivalled those of Josie of the Pussycats fame.
finally there was \r'elma. the brainy. short one with a bowl cut and glasses. A cause celebre in lesbian circles. she seemed happy enough hiding in discarded mummy tombs with Shaggy and Scooby while l"red and Daphne ‘went to try and wear otit the warranty on the shocks of the Mystery machine~ (Mark l)orr. 'l'im Solley and (‘had Holler from the website .St'UU/{Y-Urm.‘ '/'/I(’ l.().\‘l lit/(1' (i/(lt'llU/‘(H/‘UH X).
You. of course. know all this. You also know that between ION) and WW (before the intervention of shitty little Scrappy. who we shall come to later) Sr'uu/ry'-I)uo. ll'ln'rt' (m' lim.’ was the greatest: predictable. anti—corporate and so full of holes it could have been a hunk of (iruyere on a particularly formidable Scooby snack. the reassurance to be found in each episode was confounding: good always succeeding despite itself in a way so hapha/ard it could only be justified by the