The Scooby Doo Fallacy and Other Explorations in Social Science Fiction

This is ‘book’ 4 in the series The Impossible Books of Keith Kahn-Harris. The cover was created by Gus Condeixa. For more on this series, read the introduction here.

What sort of book is it?

An odd mixture of criticism, sociology and playfulness. It could perhaps work as a quirky introduction to sociology.

How likely is it that I will write the book?

Sadly, not very. But it’s not that I don’t think I could write it and deliver a decent book. I’m open to encouragement.

Am I happy for anyone else to write the book?

It’s a pretty individual perspective so I don’t think anyone else would write it, unless they were an unashamed plagiarist.

Synopsis

How realistic is Scooby Doo? My contention is that the eponymous hero of the cartoon’s unlikely ability to talk is only one element of its utter lack of believability.

How likely is it that someone who covets a particular piece of disputed property, would attempt to gain that property through an elaborate ruse to scare people away from it? And how likely is it that, once discovered, there would be a law in place under which this person could be arrested and charged?

It certainly stretches the imagination. But the creators of the classic Scooby Doo cartoons would have us believe that this is a credible scenario!

Clearly, Scooby Doo’s entire dramatic edifice rests on an untenable fallacy.

Yes, yes, it’s only a cartoon, it’s only for children, it’s not meant to be taken seriously and in any case recent remakes have played the whole thing for postmodern ironic laughs. Of course my outrage at Scooby Doo’s lack of realism is only feigned. But a serious consideration of the realism of this cartoon can open up valuable insights into the nature of fictional worlds and intriguing new possibilities for looking at the world afresh.

As contemporary trends in criticism and social theory have shown us, one cannot judge fictional texts simply by comparing them to ‘reality’. Not only is it impossible to ‘fix’ reality in its entirety, but all perspectives on the world are partial by their very nature. Whether it is Scooby Doo, Middlemarch or The Godfather, fictional texts are partial representations of the world, rather than works that we can judge with reference to how well or badly they ‘reflect’ the ‘real world’.

So far, so postmodern. Yet, even if judging texts in terms of their relationship to the real world is ultimately untenable, I don’t think we should dispense with reality just yet. It is the unreality of fictional texts that can make them valuable. To create a fictional text often means creating a world that is very different to the world we live in. These alternate worlds are not the sole property of fantasy and science fiction. Rather, fiction often creates ‘social science fiction’, worlds where the sociological scaffolding of everyday life is very different from our own. Social science fiction is often created accidentally, as the result of the pragmatic decisions that creators make to enable fictional possibilities. Its radicalism is often implicit and surprising; it takes work to tease it out.

Such is the case for Scooby Doo.

Let’s ignore the physical impossibility of a talking dog and focus instead on the apparent ridiculousness of Scooby Doo’s most frequently used plot device: The modern world is not one in which protagonists in property disputes set in train elaborate schemes to further their aims through the creation of fake monsters. Nor are their laws under which such schemes can be suppressed. Why do such schemes never happen? Because the existence of monsters and supernatural beings is not widely believed in, at least in most western societies. Even if they were believed in, the urgent imperatives of capitalism are such that no monster could ultimately prevent property development from happening.

The social science fictional elements of Scooby Doo may have been created as a simple device — a way of inserting the eponymous hero into modestly scary situations that are ultimately safely and satisfying resolved — but their implications are tantalizing. What would the world be like if the central fictional premises of Scooby Doo were correct? It would be a world in which modern capitalist societies were so haunted by the fear of the supernatural that it persisted despite its repeated unmasking as a simple human masquerade. It would be a world in which the transition to modernity has been only partial, in which primal fears had not been quenched. How did this happen? How was it that in this world the deep and profound social changes that in our world accompanied capitalist modernity, failed to happen? What trauma lies behind this world beset by its own terrors?

The Scooby Doo Fallacy seeks to demonstrate how apparently minor, pragmatically-based plot devices, can, when extrapolated, produce strange new worlds. These social science fictions allow us to see our current reality in new ways, illuminating paths not taken in human history. The book explores these alternate realities, going beyond criticism to the creation of new fictions based on existing ones.

Chapters will include:

- The Batman Fallacy

I am thinking here of the films The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The villains of both films, the Joker and Bane, construct schemes of dazzling and elaborate complexity with tiny teams of ad hoc accomplices. How might the world be different if the intricate coordination of human activity that is — in our world — only possible through large bureaucracies, could be carried out simply through the efforts of one charismatic individual and a few minions? Would we have a world in which the dizzying diversity and complexity of capitalist modernity could be accomplished through forms of pre-modern authority?

- The Cocktail Fallacy

In Tom Cruise’s Cocktail, the bartender occupies a critical role in social life, to the extent that customers will turn up at a bar in large numbers to watch them ‘perform’. While this is, for the most part at least, a ridiculous fallacy, it raises interesting questions: What would our world look like if professionals in the service industry were the heroes?

- The Star Trek Fallacy

There is no dirt in Star Trek. There is no mess, no object out of place. Could such a future ever be possible? This isn’t simply a matter of considering possible technological developments, but of assessing whether human beings would ever be able to create a universe in which materiality is entirely ordered. Would this universe allow for the disorder that characterizes all human societies up until the present? Would living in such a universe require humans to abandon something essential?

- The Coronation Street Fallacy

In Coronation Street, and other similar soap operas, people’s main loyalties remain to their immediate locality: by the simple fact of moving to a neighbourhood, other friendships, family connections and group identities are rendered null and void. What would the world look like if the limited spatial horizons of the pre-industrial world had continued into the modern post-industrial capitalist era?

- The Harry Potter Fallacy

The young people who attend Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books are all massively invested in school life, in grand questions of good and evil and the fate of their magical world. This world has stripped out the apathy and cynicism that characterizes the life of young people in modern capitalist societies. What would be the implications of living in a world in which the transition to adulthood is not accompanied by the tumultuous rebellion that adolescence today produces?

- The West Wing Fallacy

In The West Wing and many other TV series that deal with organizational life, briefings and meetings take place in a matter of a few minutes or seconds. This would clearly require a kind of subliminal understanding that would make redundant much of the grueling talking and communication that the organization of human life in our world requires. In which case, why in the world of The West Thing is talking even necessary? Perhaps it demonstrates a stubborn human determination to retain physical and aural contact with others despite the possibility of quasi-telepathic communication?

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this Impossible Book, why not browse through the rest of the series here?

Also, please recommend and share it on Medium or elsewhere. I would love to read your comments too.

Many thanks!

Finally, here are a couple of alternate cover ideas: