Wait, was Scooby-Doo not in the new show?
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Scooby-Doo was cut, there's a lot of race swapping, and basically it follows Velma who is an amazing girl-boss (/s) who solves all the mysteries, and everybody else is just kind of "around". There seems to be a lot of resentment of anyone who is wealthier, more successful, or popular. Fred is a punching bag for a lot of jokes, he's just a rich white boy who doesn't really know how to do anything.
Papa Meat (Hunter Hancock of MeatCanyon) has a review. It's pretty balanced, but even that's still negative, mainly rated high as it was because he liked the art. 😅
Apparently, despite a seemingly horrendous reception by the public, it has been renewed for a second season. ¯\(°_o)/¯
I think race swapping is a non-issue, unless doing so messes with the character's backstory or story arc in a meaningful way. So I could care less about that.
I'm all for racial inclusivity but just create a new fuckin character.
If you can't be racially inclusive by making a whole new character then all you're doing is pandering/race baiting.
Why does it matter that the characters retain their original races?
Imagine if you just made Peter Parker black. Cool, I guess. But is it enough just to swap the skin color? IMO, it is not. You have to represent the culture as well. So you change the family dynamics, the character background, relationship dynamics etc... after all of that is it still essentially Peter Parker? If so you have succesfully race swapped a character but most of the time I think it fundementally changes the character. At that point I believe it is better to create new character like Miles Morales and call him Spider-Man. But that is just my opinion.
How is that any different than any of the multiple other times they changed the "fundamentals" of peter parker?
Like when he is the sidekick of iron man who gets free robo spidey suit upgrades? Which completely changes everything important to his character?
Or when they make him a completely different age? Fundamentally changing the relationship he has with his romantic leads, with aunt may, with his villians, with his job, with his school (college? High school? Neither?), etc etc?
Short answer? Its fuckin not. Its the exact same as every other time theyve altered a key aspect of parker to shake up the story and tell a new angle with new spins and twists and turns.
It literally doesnt matter. Its just a big deal because its race this time.
Look, I kinda get both sides here.
I strongly agree with you that the skin color doesn't really affect the acting or the story in general. I believe that the last Lord of the Rings show on Amazon actually did a spectacular job at it. It was probably the best fantasy show that I've seen in awhile. However, I can also understand it from a Lore perspective that I feel the other guy is trying to to point out. If there are other ethnicities of Hobbits (which there are actually three), then at least explain why they are there. Did something bring them together? Your not wrong that by just changing the skin color of a character doesn't really affect the story at all, but when you want to understand what's behind the story, you really need to look at and consider everything.
[As an interesting aside. It turns out that the Harfoots are actually a dark skin type of Hobbit, and the Fallohides are taller and fairly light skinned. I just wish the show explained that more and perhaps provided a reason as to why those two groups merged. If they did, I must have missed it. I would love an excuse to go back and watch that show..]
Like, if we were writing a script about a tribe in Malaysia, or about a K-Pop group in Korea, it would be really jarring to see a white or black guy play any of those rolls in effort to avoid a "diversity problem". Like....will it affect the overall story if the script and acting was the same? Honestly, probably not. But I'm still going sit there the entire time and ask why is famous actor Whitey McWhiterson playing the lead role as a singer in a K-Pop boy band.
The point I'm trying to make is that yes, I agree that race does not affect a story at all, but to be frank, including every race for diversity's sake (take many of the new Disney Star Wars shows, for example) is colorblind, and I feel antithetical to racial justice in general. It's denying that these people are different. I don't care what the skin color of someone is, but I would at least expect there to be some sort of explanation as to why things are the way they are. It just feels lazy, political, and shoe-horned in.
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It's interesting that you picked Spider-Man as the example of creating a different character being a better alternative, because there are plenty of racists out there that really hate that Miles Morales is even a thing. They would say "Why do we need a black Spider-Man? The original was fine!"
It's almost like racists are only ever going to whine about inclusivity, and "characters remaining their own race" vs "creating new characters" is a moot point because the people out there who are upset by the former are going to be upset by the latter anyway.
Imagine if the new scooby show had a cast of all white kids and a single black, well written character was added and made a pivotal role in the gang. The exact same people complaining now about race swapping would be complaining then about the new character being shoe horned in because of "woke" inclusion. Just like they do with Miles Morales.
The answer is just that we need to keep creating media with both of those scenarios and accept that shows created with a single color cast are products of their time and we can do better now. Racists aren't going to be happy either way.
Edit: Bring on the downvotes. If you consider "they're not supposed to be that race" as a valid, lone criticism of a character, you might have to ask yourself some difficult questions.
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Because of the principle of it. If your goal is inclusivity how is completely changing the race of an established character inclusive? It's not. It's just pandering.
If you're actually trying to be inclusive then make a new character. Anything else is a pathetic attempt that just shows how disingenuous the attempt is.
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It doesn't necessarily matter. Did you watch South Park: Into The Panderverse or whatever it's called? I can only find this super short cut down clip of Eric Cartman's nightmare he's explaining to his psychiatrist
It misses the most important line: and finally I wanna scream, and I was like, "WHY ARE THEY REPLACING EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER WITH SOMEONE WHO IS DIVERSE??"
It's weird, it's hokey, these remakes look & feel very forced, agenda driven. I ask for more than original characters; I want actually new fucking ideas. New stories! We're not seeing very many of those lately; we're getting re-skinned versions of established characters, they just cut off their face & wear it around, and we're supposed to act like we don't notice. If we do notice, we're racist, or sexist, some -ist or -phobe. No, your work is just a lazy, contrived retell of a story that was already told pretty well. Wrapped up nice & neat with a bow on top.
Personally I'm not super invested in the whole debacle, and I simply choose to not see the new stuff & remakes. I'm an adult man, I have no kids, anyway. No dog in this fight. It's alright. If it's truly better and/or a fantastic story, it will probably bear out at the box office & I'll hear about how what an incredible movie it is.
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It kills any nostalgia I have for the character, because race swapping very rarely means just a change in skin color
I'm fine with black characters. I prefer female characters. Ultimately, I don't care that much. Give me good writing
Make me care about them for who they are. Oh, you want to make my beloved character Pakistani? Go fuck yourself. I don't care about the actor, don't change my character.
You want to make a Haitian main character? I'm listening.
Write well, pay respect to the characters and the work. That's the only rule...I don't know why it's seemingly impossible to follow
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follows Velma who is an amazing girl-boss who solves all the mysteries
Velma as a character was a lot of things, but she was mostly an insufferable, pathologically egotistical narcissist with hallucinatory delusions and severe mommy issues. Like, the show was horribly written, don't get me wrong, but let's not act like she was a Mary Sue.
I agree with your assessment, I maybe should have included an '/s' after amazing girl boss. That's the image she has of herself, that's how she carries herself. Like an insufferable, pathologically egotistical narcissist with hallucinatory delusions and severe mommy issues would do. 🙂
I'll go ahead & add the /s, why not?
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I believe it's because it's so universally seen as terrible that it got renewed. People couldn't believe it could be that bad, but was, in fact, that bad. So many people watched it either to rip on it or to see if it was as bad as it was made out to be and that got the show a lot of ratings on paper I bet.
Execs see numbers and conflate that with a "good show". It's our own fault really. I still haven't seen it yet though so I can't weigh in on it's quality at all
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Fred is a punching bag for a lot of jokes, he's just a rich white boy who doesn't really know how to do anything.
Everyone is taught that racism against white people isn't real and can't happen, so they're perfect targets.
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It was that Velma crap where it has nothing to do with Scooby Doo, just random characters with the same names and no dog.
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Assuming this is about Velma, it doesn't have Scooby Doo. They just reused the character names and basic-ish traits and changed pretty much everything else.
They should have had the Venture Brothers team write a show based on their version of the Scooby Doo gang
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I can't read the purple person's face in the last panel.
Same face from the frame before it, but eyes in a state of shock, blank.
Don't forget the cross popping vein (universal symbol of anger)
Both of their eyes turn white. That little small white circle is her eye focusing on his phone.
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I always thought race swap gender swapping roles was a cash grab and a way to just make people fight. And it seems to work every time. I personally think it's a slap in the face to the genders and races that were swapped in. If new movies can't make new characters and stories with different races and sexes without seemingly purposefully causing controversy by replacing one race or sex with the other I'd take that as a low blow.
It’s hard to do well, but I disagree that it’s a slap in the face or a low blow. The gender swap of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactic was seen as sacrilege by fans, but she became one of the highlights of the show. Miles Morales was a creative way to do a race swap for Spider Man, and the narrative is richer for it. Jason Mamoa turned Aquaman from white to Polynesian, and the depiction was better than ever. Would Nick Fury be better as a white guy, as he was originally for decades, instead of Samuel L Jackson?
And then there are all the “swaps” that happen before the first day of filming, like Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien, who was originally (edit) going to be cast as a man. This was “controversial” at the time, with people decrying “political correctness”. I would not take “causing controversy” as a reliable indicator for whether something sucks.
Edit: point taken about gender neutral script. See discussion below.
Miles Morales isn’t a race swap. That’s why it works and everyone likes it (well, except actual racists).
It’s an entirely new character that exists in the spiderman multiverse and has a different personality and backstory from Peter Parker. That’s what inclusivity actually should look like.
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I really tried to watch Velma, and the only way I felt I could watch it was to totally disassociate it from Scooby Doo.
The problem in doing so, which is obvious in hindsight, is that on its own merits, there isn't really a show there that can stand on its own two feet and be compelling. That realisation alone should have been enough for the networks to pass, but with star power assigned to the writing and a known IP, I guess this was enough to get the green light.
I'm all for creative retelling of stories, but the fundamentals don't change. The absolute WORST thing you can do, once the reviews come in, is to criticise the critical response. Sure, many probably didn't get the artistic vision, but ultimately you are in the entertainment industry, and the creator and producers arguably gave themselves a heavy job in creating a show that caters across several cultural subjects, while also limiting themselves to the Scooby Doo/Mystery Inc gang. It's why I don't consider it "lazy" - if anything, they shot for the stars and hit the ceiling.
IMO, it's a bad show, but could have been good if they had written original characters. It would have highlighted that some characters were either unlikeable/lazy, or that the premise needed more work.
Geez what's next, a Breaking Bad show without Walter White or Jesse?
Walt and Jesse are there but there's no drugs.
Breaking Bad reimagined this time it's about the bad breakup between Walter and Jesse stretched into 8 seasons.
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Hear me out. They should've put someone's brain in a dog to make Scooby.
Why the everliving fuck they didn't do that when the big bad guy was cutting brains out of people is just beyond comprehension.
"Scooby-Doo doesn't have Scooby-Doo" is like saying that my PB & J sandy has neither PB, nor J, nor is it a sandy. Like, what are we saying, at this point? It's obviously not even the same thing, it's like, a bean bag chair, or whatever else. At the same time, I don't find myself crying for how the symbol has been dissolved, because that shit is happening all the time and only iron law of reality is that everything changes eventually.
I dunno I get it but at the same time the shit strikes me as dumb and every time I hear somebody complain about this shit I get flashbacks to 4chan and also real life where I'm gonna be like "yeah sure that's kinda stupid, scooby doo should have scooby doo or whatever" and then somebody's gonna take that as an opportunity to start extrapolating a bunch of shit about how postmodernism is ruining the culture and yadda yadda white genocide, and I'm like. Damn, I thought we were gonna talk about scooby doo.
It literally feels another show with the mystery gang paint slapped on that's incredibly mean spirited with the jokes.
I don't even think it just feels like that, is what I'm saying, I think that's literally what it is, exactly, to a T. "Mystery gang paint" is right on the money.
That is probably why the show is not called scooby doo.
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Maybe because scooby doo was my least favorite cartoon as a kid, on Saturday mornings it came on once the good shows were done and it was time to play video games, but I didn't mind Velma. It wasn't great, I'm not going to go out of my way defending it, but it was a solid okay. I don't get the hate, it seems overblown for a mid show. It had some jokes, solid sleep time show rewatch (to ruin any credibility my opinion has, brickleberry is in the same category for me).
Ouch, yeah, brickleberry. Ouch.
My thinking with sleep time shows is they need to be predictable, with the occasional joke.
Interesting enough so that when I'm trying to sleep, but can't I can chuckle, but not so interesting that I want to open my eyes and look.
You know, a generic mid show.
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Which version of scooby doo? The original run of the show was very different from what it morphed into.
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Best Scooby Doo adaptation is the Venture Bros episode with the gang, and I will die on that hill
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