From accusations of being "too woke" to a cheap joke about a serious women's movement, both sides
of the aisle are up in arms over Velma. Here's why the HBO animated series can't make anyone happy.
Whenever a franchise with an established fandom gets a new entry,
there tends to be plenty of detractors who struggle to accept their beloved characters
being completely reimagined. But, unlike the backlash from other well-established fandoms,
the response to Velma seems to be uniting many disparate groups of viewers in their
dislike. Typically, re-imagined shows catch a lot of hate because of their divergence
from the source material. However, Velma has taken flack for a variety of reasons. Slate
cited the show's adherence to the cash grab streamer formula. The outlet noted:
"[This formula entails] rebooting major IP, darkening the tone of a beloved
children's franchise, [and] attempting the 'wokeification' of older franchises."
Additionally, groups like the fundamentalist Christian group One Million Moms railed against
the series. However, for every critic and audience member that blasted the show as
"too woke," another spoke up to claim the show is openly mocking wokeness. Forbes even reported on a
theory that Mindy Kaling, the voice of Velma and an executive producer, created the show
to parody progressives, though the writer of the piece didn't buy into it, writing,
"I'm not sure I subscribe to this 'Mindy Kaling made a dogwhistle series for right
wing trolls' theory, as the Occam's Razor explanation is that the show is just... bad."
While the theory that Mindy Kaling created Velma as a way to subtly mock the left and arm the right
is far-fetched to say the least, some have pointed to past controversies involving the
comedian as proof that she's not as progressive as many of her peers in Hollywood. Kaling's memoir Is
Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? was deemed offensive and insensitive by some reviewers.
Viewers have claimed that Kaling's comedic repertoire often makes light of negative South
Asian stereotypes, mocks South Asian culture, and features a South Asian protagonist with an extreme
attraction to white men — and that Velma is no different. Others have flat-out accused Kaling of
hating her heritage. Women's Republic founder Sai Seshadri tweeted two days after Velma premiered:
"I'm happy Mindy Kaling's style of writing brown girls that hate themselves wasn't around when I
was younger & only became a thing when I was at the age where I loved my heritage and skin color."
As The Wrap observed, Kaling's character on The Mindy Project was exclusively paired with white
men, a complaint the writer dismissed while speaking with Entertainment Weekly. She said:
"Do people really wonder on other shows if female leads are dating multicultural
people? Like I owe it to every race and minority and beleaguered person."
Although Velma features a few central characters from the Scooby-Doo franchise,
it's hard not to notice the very prominent absence of the linguistically gifted Great Dane himself,
an absence that many fans of the franchise find hard to swallow.
"Scooby-Doo? More like Scooby-Don't."
Speaking to TV Insider, Kaling expressed her and showrunner Charlie Grandy's mutual love for the
original Scooby-Doo, as well as their gratitude for Warner Bros. allowing them to "modernize
certain elements" of the property. According to Grandy, Kaling approached him about developing an
origin story for the Mystery Inc. gang, something he jumped at. However, while Warner Bros. were
okay with her developing Velma, the studio's blessing came with a caveat — no dogs allowed.
Grandy addressed the canine's absence during a New York Comic Con panel,
explaining that Warner Bros. explicitly refused to grant HBO the rights to use
Scooby-Doo for the series. To Grandy, this was an acceptable loss, since he
and Kaling intended the series to be an adult animation anyway. Grandy said on the panel:
"We couldn't get a take on it that was like, 'How do we kind of do this in a fun,
modern way?' [We] felt like what made it a kid show was Scooby-Doo."
By going into the gang's life before they met the franchise's titular pooch,
they were able to solve the canine conundrum. However, for the fans — many of whom feel
that Scoob is the heart and soul of the sleuth circle — the dog's absence is hard to overlook.
In a world where whitewashing has been the standard for far too long,
changing the race of a character — or racebending, as it's often referred
to — is a way to broaden minority representation on the screen. When done well, these changes allow
for an insightful reimagining of a character, but does Velma get it right? On the surface,
it seems like Velma takes a positive step in changing the races of three main characters.
Besides reimaging its titular character as an American of South Asian descent,
the show changes Daphne to Asian and has Shaggy — who goes by his actual name, Norville — as Black.
"We're just breaking barriers on the show."
However, the response to this went down poorly on both sides of the
political divide. Right wing comic Leo Kearse called the show "openly racist
against white people" in an article for the Scottish Daily Telegraph,
pointing to the fact that Fred "seems to always be the butt of the joke." Yet,
many people who are in favor of more diversity were also disappointed and called the show out
for being racist in its new depictions of Velma, Daphne, and Shaggy. One person wrote on Reddit:
"It's been a joke that Shaggy's a stoner for the past couple of decades. They took the stoner,
cast a Black actor, and redesigned him to be Black. Daphne has been consistently
depicted as a rich socialite. Making her a rich Asian is just another stereotype."
The Reddit post goes on to lament the fact that the creators made Velma,
a South Asian character, a whiz with computers, dubbing the show "a smorgasbord of stereotypes."
Part of what makes Scooby-Doo so endearing are the lovable characters and their chemistry. Although
each of the main characters superficially fits a stereotype, their personalities are all pretty
likable and come together perfectly in a way that lets them all be more than their label.
Like all good friend groups, they're simply better together. While every incarnation of
the gang tweaks their personalities slightly, each iteration somehow manages to maintain the
same core chemistry and charm — that is, many fans assert, until Velma came along.
Many viewers simply don't like the show's incessantly cynical lead character Velma,
who spends most of her time dragging her classmates and anyone else with the
misfortune to cross her path. Within the first five minutes of the pilot,
she physically attacks an unarmed Daphne, calling her a "b---h" and "stupid." When she becomes a
person of interest in Brenda's murder, her dad reminds her she was voted "most revenge-y."
While the original Fred was a likable fellow with a borderline obsessive love of traps,
the Fred in Velma is a narcissistic, barely functional rich kid who can't
remember Velma from one interaction to the next. And then there's Daphne,
the ultimate Mean Girl who calls Velma "Vermin" and demands $500 in exchange for Velma's mom's
cold case file. Norville is arguably the most likable among the four, but the fact
that he spends most of his time pining for Velma is a bitter pill for OG Shaggy fans.
As a character, Velma has long been seen as a lesbian icon. Many people involved with various
new takes on the character hinted at it over the years, and Velma's sexuality finally became canon
in the 2022 film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! To many fans, the idea that Velma would be gay in
her latest iteration seems to naturally follow her long history of queerness. And yet, many feel that
Velma failed in its representation of the beloved character's identity, engaging in what is often
referred to as queerbaiting — hinting at a queer relationship developing but not seeing it through.
At the show's outset, Velma is obsessed not with Daphne but Fred,
which may seem an odd choice for the brainy gal. While it makes
sense that this early Velma would be in the process of exploring her sexuality,
her quick shift from crushing on Fred to getting red-faced over Daphne after the two share a kiss
seems performative and unearned to some viewers, given the fact that they start out as enemies.
Of all the controversial things about Velma, the biggest of the bunch has to be the joke
that pokes fun at the #MeToo movement. In the episode "The Candy (Wo)man," Velma tells Daphne:
"I spit the truth without a filter, like every comedian before #MeToo."
It was the Mindy Kaling mic drop heard around the world — or, at least,
all over Twitter. Reactions came pouring in, many of them angry, others confused. One user wrote:
"The fact that Velma goes from weird transphobic jokes in the same
episode mocking how comedy shifted after 'MeToo' to 'woah guys! Diversity win!!'
Has officially made this the first ever show without a demographic to appeal to."
It's a joke that looks even worse when juxtaposed against a throwaway
line from Episode 1, in which one of Daphne's cop moms tells Velma,
"You were lurking around the showers like a gym teacher who isn't a gym teacher anymore."
Although the argument could be made that Velma's take on #MeToo is just another
example of her need for growth, going down this route is not a good look for the show.
It's almost hard to believe that fourth wall breaking was once rare. This type
of self-referential or "meta" humor served as a device for examining or even subverting a genre's
use of tropes and was integral to the comedy writing of shows like Arrested Development and
Community. Unfortunately, the trope has seen a rise in usage that veers into cliché territory,
showing up in everything from children's films to laugh track sitcoms. Increasingly, audiences are
reporting a kind of meta fatigue as they tire of the oft-formulaic insertion of referential jokes
that add little to the writing. And perhaps because it's such an easy formula to write,
Velma makes abundant use of this joke writing strategy, much to the chagrin of some viewers.
The relentless meta humor begins moments into the series when Velma ruminates on
origin stories and continues through the first scene with Daphne's proclamation that:
"Have you ever noticed how pilot episodes of TV shows always have
more gratuitous sex and nudity than the rest of the series?"
As Steve Reviews lamented,
"You can't go more than two minutes without the
show trying to show off how clever and self-aware it is."
From lines like "what would happen if this was a show" to explicit discussions of the TV trope
the animation is currently referencing, there's a lot of meta humor. Although Cracked reminds
detractors that Scooby-Doo has always been meta and reviews from the likes of Collider
found this writing subversively hilarious, many feel meta humor is best when used sparingly.
Despite the show's poor reception, many viewers have praised the animators responsible for Velma.
As an adult animated series, it's to be expected that the show would redesign the
Mystery Machine universe. The show's stylistic appearance may feel familiar to fans of other
contemporary adult animations, like HBO's Harley Quinn, for example.
There's no denying that Velma is a treat to look at, with fans praising the art
despite the show's other shortcomings. And, although there aren't nearly enough of them,
Velma also contains beautifully-rendered depictions of the titular character
hallucinating dark psychedelic visions as she veers into mystery-solving territory. However,
aside from these trippy scenes, most of the animation surrounds
some pretty straightforward storytelling that doesn't allow much room for creative license.
Some viewers also observed that the writing and animation teams struggle to sync up
their intentions. As Quinton Reviews noted, the animators incorporate pop
culture references that aren't supported by the acting or storytelling, tweeting:
"The main cop in the show is visually based on Don Knotts,
a famous guest in the [original] show... but his voice isn't?"
While it's clear the animators understood their source material, these gaps in storytelling have
caused many to question the authenticity of the showrunners' relationship to the source material.