From bad guys in masks onwards : what has happened with portrayal of crime and illicit trade?

If you are of a certain age, and you had access to a specific amount of cross-cultural influences, there exists a very good chance that you, too, grew up with Scooby Doo. That is...the original Scooby Doo. The one where bad guys wore masks, the crime was mild, the comedic relief was real and where we were expected to learn to think rather than jump to conclusions. It wasn't a perfect process, and it wasn't a perfect show, but it was a show where crime wasn't cool, it largely wasn't personal (mostly, a bad guy, gal or several people were either stealing something specific or trying to find a treasure), unlike in many other franchises where good and bad guys had a very personal issue to settle, and most of the interactions that would qualify as danger were the gang running away from someone marginally scary going "boooo!!!" very loudly in their direction.

Maybe it wasn't the most accurate portrayal of how horrible crime can get, but at that age, arguably, one doesn't need it. Those of us who sadly experience it all too early know about it already, even when we really shouldn't have to, and there is no reason to think that the rest of us have to then somehow conform to that early exposure. The world should be all about trying to fix bad things, not embrace them.

Scooby saw the light of day just as the 70s were dawning, in 1969, and while a lot of stories exist about why and how it came to be, the main interest in such a series seems to have been started by parents who were concerned about the amount of and portrayal of violence on TV. There are many ways we could discuss this specifically, and I'm not actually fond of discussing such issues as a homogenous matter - for me, they need to be discussed from show to show and consider what the motive behind the concern is. Are we talking about a certain amount of callousness that makes violence normative, vs a point of view? Are we talking about a rising moral panic born out of not much? Is the truth somewhere in between? What percentage of truly violent or disturbing content is balanced out by what percentage of anything else? What gender-related (and other minority) messaging is present (eg masculine aggression as a go-to emotional response)? To truly understand whether there is a problem, one must always look at evidence, even when faced with very real emotions felt or experienced by the parties involved. All moral panics function predominantly on emotion supported by a group joined by initially a concern that later morphs into joining because one is not Other; and while moral panics are generally a mountain made out of a molehill, real issues, even if they are inflated or even lost when something becomes a panic, are definitely present in the world (and sometimes possibly at the bottom of the panic). From my perspective, I can honestly say that I found Scooby Doo refreshing in amidst shows that were either a bit too silly or indeed a bit too rough, and where how many punches are thrown seemed to be the main goal. I enjoyed the stories in which comedy and thinking were the main goal instead.

Looking at it as an adult, I find that there are other aspects of Scooby that were and remain of interest. Crime wasn't, as I specified already, "cool", for a lack of better phrase. The clumsy wrongdoings of the crooks made them seem laughable and self-centred in a way that made you either shake your head or pity them for being so greedy and foolish. What's more interesting still is that, in many ways, it portrayed types of illicit trade too rather than violent crimes : counterfeiting and trafficking of luxury objects (yachts, at some early point, I believe), as well as essentially heritage crime, including looting and trafficking, were a part of the storylines. (Side note - that said, they did mix the potential of kidnapping, forced disappearance and physical assault in as an actual tactic criminals may use, so the stories definitely built an awareness that a criminal doing this may also resort to that when confronted.)

Even when later ghosts do make an appearance in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo (1985 and reruns in the 90s) as actual mischief makers, the format was easy-going, and more a parody of the concept of ghosts than anything else. They could be scary, they could be silly, or a bit of both, but they could be stuffed back in the chest and the problem that they were causing solved. Comedy, arguably, was even more the forefront here, with a definite tilt towards supernatural, which returned in the late 90s with Scooby Doo on Zombie Island - the one case that somewhat retcons the premises of the 13 Ghosts in favour of the gang, having gone their separate ways and reuniting for one last hurrah, tries to look for (and finds) real paranormal activity. And it takes them a moment to come to terms with it - if you saw it, you'll remember Freddie trying to pull a "mask" off a zombie, grumbling "It's the gardener! It's the fisherman!" until it becomes blatantly clear it's neither.

Fast forward into the 2000s, and the idea of what is too scary or too violent has changed. I recently watched the Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated on a whim, and the storyline has changed to accommodate a different generation completely; while there were almost joking shall we say memory lane moments that reminded of the show's early years, the whole point of it was to feed the 2000s obsession with horror. Crime, therefore, becomes a subsidiary of paranormal activity; everyone who is doing something bad is in some way connected to a greater, almost Lovecraftian amount of villainy. (A nod to feelings of helplessness in today's world? A group subconscious response to the ever-present threat of terrorism? Or something else entirely?)

While that may or may not seem to appear "cool" to a viewer, and while tastes can differ immensely, there is no doubt that what we prioritise has changed. Easy-going "crime solving" is out; proper scaring and deeply dark mysteries are in. And as we continue along the years, we can see that more and darker content is replacing lighter content in general, and much of it has a positive or arguably too neutral a view of crime. Criminals become fashionable mob wives whose aesthetics are to be emulated. Criminals are just misunderstood...even when their actions are highly problematic. Crime is down to supernatural beings that we can't control. (If you want examples, I suggest Griselda , Joker and, ultimately, the Mystery Machine series, especially as that one is aimed at a slightly younger audience, or at least should be.)

Why is this important? Because social behaviours about crime, criminality and ultimately criminalisation come from joint perceptions of normativity...which we help establish by creating narratives that support a point. If a minority member can only ever be a villain, then they go down, in social conscience of most, as a mould of what a villain looks like. If women are always helpless, then that is what women and men both might internalise, for various reasons and with various consequences. If crime happens as something to aspire to, or totally out of our control as a form of supernatural development, then that, too, will shift attitudes towards what crime is and what it means. The early stories showed some form of impact on the victims - some people were afraid of the "hauntings", others were victimised as a greedy co-worker (eg What a Night for a Knight, the very first story in the first ever season of the series) captured them to be able to go on with their plot. Responsibility in innovation was addressed when Charlie the Robot "ran" the amusement park. A form of gaslighting popped up when Daphne's aunt thought she was turning into a jewellery stealing feline monster in season 3. Unlike the attitudes of the later, much more modern shows (at least the ones I have seen - I cannot currently comment on the rest), and indeed in the way we portray crime across various stories with various "heroes", the impact of crime on victims was clear when it is often lost nowadays.

The simple, easy-going shows of the by-gone times weren't perfect. (Including where diversity is concerned.) Nor did they tackle the seriousness of crime that we know takes place in our world. Scooby and the gang never talked about stranger danger; they never talked about human trafficking; they didn't have to break up drug rings (at least as far as I recall). But the show was aimed at relatively young children. And while stranger or indeed people-we-know danger should definitely be discussed in a kind and clear manner early on for obvious reasons, being a child should also mean being allowed to live in a relatively safe and calm bubble of childhood. While the series wasn't hardboiled, or even junior hardboiled, where you could expect such topics, it did present a clear point to start from - that crime leaves a victim, and that criminals aren't heroes. We know that identifying with criminals can and does happen, often for various reasons, including when people and children specifically live in a space where crime is strongly present; in those spaces, communities may try to offer a different path through not only teaching positive behaviours and providing good alternative activities than the ones that pull children into gangs, but also help children learn that this existence isn't something to aspire to. (And doing this doesn't come without a price. Listen to DeepDive episode on Colombia to learn more.) For those people, crime is very real, and they know they're fighting a complex battle against it. For the Westerners, despite crime definitely existing in various ways and intensities, and despite the general fear of crime we have as a society, none of this knowledge seems to be influencing our current tendencies of portraying crime. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves at what cost? When did victims disappear, and crime become something that excites us without measure, or even something that is utterly out of this world?