{"id":5398,"date":"2016-07-25T00:09:55","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T18:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5398"},"modified":"2026-07-17T21:37:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:07:34","slug":"scooby-doo-shaggy-fear-of-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5398","title":{"rendered":"50 Years of Scooby Doo: What Shaggy and His Gang Taught Me about Fear of the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M<\/span><\/p><\/div>

\ny most vivid <\/span>childhood<\/span><\/a> memories involve getting up at 10 am on a Saturday morning and rushing to the TV room to watch one of my favourite cartoons of all time: <\/span>Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? <\/span><\/i>Created by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears back in 1969, it was a show that sent me quivering with fear, every time Shaggy yelled \u201cZoinks!\u201d to signal that the monster was on the attack. I didn\u2019t want to look at the screen and yet I couldn\u2019t stop myself from looking \u2013 it simultaneously scared and elated me. Sure, the show followed a formulaic arc, but that hardly stopped it from being engrossing: Velma\u2019s glasses always got knocked off at a critical moment, Scooby could always be lured to participate in some ridiculous plan, the gang\u2019s plan to trap criminals was always necessarily complicated and failure-prone, and the villains always complained at the end that they \u201cwould have gotten away with it if it hadn\u2019t been for those kids and their scabby dog\u201d.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nTimes have changed now. I have grown up and cartoons don\u2019t have as strong a hold on me that they used to, once upon a time. But recently on a listless afternoon, one thing led to another and I ended up revisiting the show. It\u2019s during this rewatch that I was stuck by an epiphany. As it turns out, <\/span>Scooby Doo<\/span><\/i>, might have revolved around a gang of misfit teenagers and a talking <\/span>dog<\/span><\/a> who fooled villains with their cheap, impromptu disguises, but it wasn\u2019t just about solving mysteries. What most of us failed to discern at the time was its subversive skepticism: a gang of teenagers debunking the superstitious beliefs of people by unveiling the masked ghosts. Now that I think of it, <\/span>Scooby Doo<\/span><\/i> has always been a show about the triumph of reason over superstition and credulity \u2013 about finding a rational explanation for everything.\u00a0<\/span>\n\n\"Scooby-Doo\"\n

\n

Scooby Doo<\/em> has always been a show about the triumph of reason over superstition and credulity \u2013 about finding a rational explanation for everything. <\/p>\n

Hanna-Barbera Productions<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThe show drove home this message on the back of brilliantly written characters. The gang comprised people who we can find even today in our <\/span>society<\/span><\/a>: You had Fred and Velma, the rational leaders of the group, who consistently convinced the others that there is no such thing as ghosts and remained determined to prove it. They always said, \u201cHmm, I wonder if there is some reasonable explanation.\u201d Then there was Daphne, a fickle-minded teen who switched between skepticism and rationality. And finally, my personal favourite, Scooby and Shaggy, the superstitious \u201ccowards\u201d who fell prey to every supernatural trick. Yet they were always the ones who lured the <\/span>paranormal<\/span><\/a> masked demons into the gang\u2019s cleverly designed trap. They constantly found the courage to confront their fears, and ultimately reaped the greatest satisfaction from uncovering the truth.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nEssentially, <\/span>Scooby Doo<\/span><\/i> proved time and again, how needless the idea of fearing the unknown really is. It\u2019s a show that taught me that werewolves, mummies and monsters aren\u2019t real, at the same time it reminded me that ghosts weren\u2019t really ghosts \u2013 they were just people dressed up as ghosts. Vampires weren\u2019t really vampires \u2013 they were people with fangs on. Week after week, I watched and I learned.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nAs a child, I feared clowns. It all started when I was five and my cousins locked me in a dark room, mimicking the demonic laughter of <\/span>clowns<\/span><\/a>. But watching <\/span>Bedlam in the Big Top<\/span><\/i>, on a Saturday morning, helped me overcome that irrational fear. Ghost Clown, was a stereotypical clown villain in this episode; with a silly costume, white makeup on his face, a red nose, an evil grin, and dark eyeshadow. His evil laughter used to send a shiver down my spine. But at the end of the episode, Shaggy and Scooby unmask Ghost Clown as Harry the Hypnotist, and this in a way that convinced me that there was little to be afraid of.\u00a0<\/span>\n\n

Scooby Doo<\/em> proved time and again, how needless the idea of fearing the unknown really is.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nFor me, <\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i> then, stands as a victory of science and reason over <\/span>sorcery<\/span><\/a> and occultism. It\u2019s the reason why when someone knocks on the door of my room in the middle of the night, I don\u2019t instantly panic. I know that evil is real, that fear is real, but I also know that it\u2019s not necessary that supernatural powers lie behind them. Only a human, just like us.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nAt the end of each episode, <\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i> made me realise that reason and curiosity will always triumph over <\/span>fear<\/span><\/a>. And it proved time and again, that those monsters are just the products of people who want to make us too afraid to see through their lies. It also provided a blueprint that shows exactly how to defeat them. Today, thanks to <\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i>, the 10 year-old kid, who was once scared to enter the dark alleyways and feared the demons under his bed, is no longer scared to walk around alone at night. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scooby Doo proved time and again how needless the idea of fearing the unknown really is. It is the reason why a scared 10-year-old me dared to enter dark alleyways and stopped fearing the demons under his bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":356,"featured_media":5401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[9184,9185,9186,1225,9187,9188,9189,9190,9191,9192,9193,4609,9194,9195,9196,9197,9198,9199,9200],"class_list":["post-5398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-50-years-of-scooby-doo","tag-bedlam-in-the-big-top","tag-cartoon-network","tag-childhood","tag-daphne","tag-fred","tag-ghost-clown","tag-joe-ruby","tag-ken-spears","tag-occultism","tag-reason","tag-science","tag-scooby","tag-scooby-doo","tag-shaggy","tag-sorcery","tag-velma","tag-where-are-you","tag-zoinks"],"yoast_head":"\n50 Years of Scooby Doo: What Shaggy and His Gang Taught Me about Fear of the Dark<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scooby Doo proved time and again how needless the idea of fearing the unknown really is. 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