Scooby Doo was one of my all-time favorite cartoons growing up. As a kid, I didn’t think too much about the messages which were being instilled in me through it, though. But now it just seems all too obvious.

At first, you’re probably thinking: “This is just a kids TV show; it doesn’t mean anything, silly!”

Oh, but you’re mistaken. First off, let’s look at the typical formula of an episode. The “gang” finds out about a seemingly paranormal mystery someplace. They travel in The Mystery Machine - the name of their van. The entire show is summed up right there: mysteries = machines. They are made up of cold hard facts, and can be exposed through careful analysis.

Shaggy & Scooby represent innocence, naivete and the base “animal” instinct of fear. Velma represents the super-charged intellect. Daphne is the passive beautiful feminine energy. And Fred is at the top of the hierarchy. Always in command and together. As alpha-male, I’d say Fred’s “consort” is Daphne - the submissive vain woman. Which sets up Velma and Shaggy as the secondary pair. You could maybe make the argument that Scooby was the consort of Shaggy though… although I’d sooner say that Shaggy was his alter-ego. Anyway, by combining all these various mental & emotional forces, they are able to unlock the “mystery machine”.

In the beginning of each episode, we’re confronted by what seems like genuinely spooky shit. Scooby and Shaggy are freaked out because they automatically assume it’s real. To them, everything is real. Everyone else has their stereotypical responses. And the group goes through its machinations until by the end of the episode, it’s uncovered that what seemed like a mystery was not a mystery at all, but a crime! The implied message seems to be that behind all spiritual phenomena are fraudulent activities designed to bilk people out of money.

It’s kind of a cool message, in one way. I don’t agree with it fully, but I think it’s a valuable tool to have in your kit while you’re exploring these strange worlds. It makes a whole hell of a lot of sense how this feeds into modern conspiracy theory - at least one strain of it. Average people are presented with real-world situations that just seem insurmountable or impossibly complex. They may be intrigued or scared of them, but they go no farther. But the conspiracy theorist applies the “mystery machine” formula to it, and tries to break it down into it’s component parts. Essentially, they dissect the mystery to look for the underlying fraud or crime. Of course, some conspiracy theorists go way beyond that.

The other problem with the underlying message of the show is that no matter what the gang uncovers, they always turn it over to the authorities at the end of the day. The police always come along, and the villain is unmasked and exclaims “And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!” The message here - in a sense - is that the conscientious citizen acts as the eyes and ears of the state: the so-called citizen’s arrest.

What if we could go back and make a Scooby Doo episode today in the style of the original, but with (what I see as) the negative messages removed? Like what if the Scooby gang went around finding out about a mystery that involves aliens, black magic rituals, and ritual abuse and child prostitution by people in positions of power? Instead of unmasking the villain and handing him over to the police, what if they unmasked the villain and found out that he was a policeman? What would the gang do then? What would they do when they were confronted by the question of God: an irreducible mystery? I wish I knew enough about animation so I could go back and re-engineer an episode like this. It would be absolutely fucking mind-blowing.

Check out this excellent follow-up to this on Fantastic Planet, analyzing Scooby-Doo from a Gnostic & Kabbalistic perspective.