Revisionist History In One Lifetime

I’m sure all of you have heard the news by now. How could you not have?!

Velma is gay.

At least, Velma of 2000-2022 is gay. The article gushes about how this has been a long time in coming, citing Scooby Doo “creatives” who wanted to make her sexual orientation obvious as far back as 20 years ago.

Wow. Twenty whole years ago. That’s a long time. But not hardly as long a time as Velma has existed. Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran as an animated series from 1969-1970 (and in other iterations through 1973) and has lived on in syndication ever after. And there’s not a word in this article from any of Scooby Doo’s original creatives about Velma’s sexual orientation. Or any of the other characters for that matter. Strange, huh?

Not too strange. First of all, the original creators are all dead.

Secondly it’s not strange because truly, the Scooby Doo of the 21st century bears little resemblance to the original series. Some 30-years on, the characters are reimagined through modern sensibilities. Obviously there must be sexual tension between the characters, right? That’s what every teenager is most obsessed with, right? Daphne and Fred with their good looks surely must be an item, or an item in the making? And no teenage boy eats a lot naturally, Shaggy must really be a stoner. Velma all nerdy and awkward? Surely she’s lesbian. Frankly I’m surprised there isn’t speculation about Scooby’s orientation. Or that awful additional character, Scrappy Doo.

While the creators of the series are all dead, many of the voice actors are not. I’d be curious what Nicole Jaffe, the primary voice actress for Velma, would have to say about her character’s orientation, or if there was any thought given to that at all.

I grew up watching this show and loved it deeply. At 22-minutes a pop it’s certainly not Sherlock Holmes quality mystery, but it was great fun. And sexuality and sexual orientations never entered into the equation. Understandably, since it was a show aimed at kids and we still as a culture believed at that point in time that sexuality and sexual themes were inappropriate in children’s programming.

My, how much has changed.

Of course there’s no need to talk to these people for clarification of original intents and purposes. Such information is irrelevant today. What matters now is what we choose to make of something, how we opt to interpret it. And while history is always undergoing revisionism of one sort or another, it’s hard to believe it could occur so quickly and with so little regard or attention to the primary source materials.

It’s a shame that a teenager can no longer just be nerdy and awkward, or even not obsessed with the opposite sex. Or the same sex. And while I’ll admit that some interpretations may sound plausible given the timeframe the series was created, it’s a shame that those interpretation eclipse the actual original reality of a silly series about a talking dog and crime-fighting friends that transcend typical teen cliques.

It’s a shame that such an ‘inclusive’ idea isn’t radical enough any more.