Tooning In: Scooby-Doo and the Father-Son Connection
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 03:23PM A long time ago, in a place not so far from where I am right now, both geographically and mentally, I was a kid. And when I was a kid, I did kid things. A few of my favorite kid things were tossing the ball against the house, cracking open packs of baseball cards and pestering my little sister. I was, quite obviously, easily entertained.
Like most kids, I was also hooked on TV. Long before satellite or even cable TV, the choices were few. In my house, there were six channels. Imagine a world without the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network. That is the one in which I grew up in. Yes, kids, a world like that actually existed. I see them shuddering right now, at the very thought of such an empty world.
What we did have were Saturday morning cartoons. After five days with your homeroom teacher, nothing was better than curling up in front of the TV and watching three hours straight of nothing but cartoons. This was Kid Time. I can't help but feel that kids today, spoiled by being able to watch cartoons 24/7, are, somehow, missing out on one of the true treasures of childhood – a special time that was just theirs. That, to me, is what Saturday mornings were.
By 1969, I was seven years old and already an established cartoon connoisseur. That year, man walked on the moon for the first time. However, much like today, a war in a faraway land divided America.
A scene from "What a Night for a Knight", the first episode of Scooby-Doo, Where are You! It was on a Saturday morning of that year, September 13 to be exact, that Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! made its CBS network debut with its first episode, "What a Night for a Knight."
At age seven, I didn't fully comprehend war, and I guess that adding thirty-seven years to my life hasn't changed that much. Cartoons were so much better than the real world outside my doors. Grown-ups don't always get that.
In 2002, Jamie Malanowski of the New York Times commented, "[Scooby-Doo's] mysteries are not very mysterious, and the humor is hardly humorous." You have to wonder if Jamie Malanowksi bypassed childhood and went straight to grown-up.
I suppose that purely from a grown-up perspective, Scooby-Doo is, well, rather immature. Isn't that the reason we, as kids, enjoyed watching it so much? We liked the idea that there was no situation Scooby wouldn't put himself in, just for one more Scooby Snack. And wasn't there a certain comfort in knowing that there really were no ghosts or monsters in the world, and that when the Mystery Inc. team pulled off the mask at the end of each episode, there was always a person (albeit, in cartoon form) behind it.
Before I became a parent, I spent a lot of time in front of the Boob Tube, watching mostly mindless programming. There's nothing wrong with that, we, as adults, need escapes from reality now and then.
When I became a parent, time became more precious to me. Something in my life had to give if I was going to continue to be a working father – and a writer. That's when I turned off television in my life, and I was surprised to find that I really didn't miss it.
At some point in my child's early development, a little before age one, I suppose, Mommy and Daddy began to realize that the TV set could, on occasion, temporarily fill the need of babysitter, so that we could actually get things done around the house, like bathing, cleaning and eating. At first, there were Baby Einstein videos. Then came the Wiggles and Thomas the Tank Engine. Next were the Little Einsteins and Dora the Explorer. As our child grew older, he wanted more and more – and, oftentimes, he wanted a parent to sit and watch with him.
So, for the second time in my life, I had reached a point where the bulk of my TV-viewing was in the form of programming aimed at kids, or cartoons. The difference being that now, watching them as an adult, I didn't find them in the least bit entertaining. Baby Einstein videos bored me. The Wiggles and Thomas made me squirm. The Little Einsteins and Dora annoyed me.
One day at the neighborhood video store, The Kid and I were browsing through the kids section, as we ordinarily do, and he picked up A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, one of the many incarnations of the Scooby-Doo mystery series.
The Pup series came after my time as a kid. The series follows the same format as the original series, the only difference being that the Mystery Inc. team – Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne – are all kids. You see them before they, well, grew up. Watching it with the mini version of me was kind of like being in an alternate universe, where there is you as a kid and you as a grown-up.
The Kid, like me thirty-seven years ago, has become a Scoobaholic. He can't seem to get enough of Scooby-Doo and his gang. He even makes Scooby-inspired jokes. When I tell him I don't want to do something, he says, "How 'bout for a Scooby Snack?"
The other day, the two of us, together, watched that very first Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode, "What a Night for a Knight." I don't recall whether my father watched it with me back in 1969. My guess is that he didn't, but I like to think that he did, and that there really is an alternate universe where there are no ghosts or monsters.
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