The Hanna-Barbera cartoon franchise
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? was conceived in response to parental concerns that the particular Saturday morning line-up, which consisted of
Space Ghost, the
Herculoids and
Tom and Jerry, was too violent. Producers were initially infatuated with the idea of doing a spin-off of the
Archie syndicate that featured a teen band who happened to slip off fight crime and
solve mysteries in between gigs. The whole concept still needed re-working because these bandmates (with a cowardly mascot) were in pursuit of actual ghouls—rather than some villainous human disguised that those meddling kids would unmask at the end of each episode—and came across as rather too scary. The second, familiar version had its cast of characters drawn directly from the old-teenagers portrayed on the series
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis—Norville “Shaggy” Rogers voiced by DJ Casey Kasem and based on the template of beatnik Maynard G Krebs (Bob Denver, later of
Gilligan’s Island fame) and
Velma Dinkley is lifted from the tomboyish Zelda Gilroy (portrayed by Shelia James Kuehl presently a member of the California State Senate) as a couple examples.
It’s strange to think how all supernatural and superstitious elements were debunked by the show’s finishing scene—excepting the canine sidekick who was retained from the original proposal, of course, and one that could talk (I don’t recall a musical inclination, the Archies’ dog played the bongos)—and I suppose that expectation, moral placated fretful parents. The title character was named reportedly after the scatting verse at the end of
Strangers in the Night rather than Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew, who investigated the Jack the Ripper murders and some other gruesome crimes in turn of the century London, plus cases cat-burglary and forgery. It would not have even occurred to me to connect these two sleuths and wonder, had not I learned that the Inspector, in pursuit of a fugitive, had once travelled under the name Mister Dewhurst. It made me think of some of the reoccurring distant relations (this series was keen on extended families, too, it seemed and everyone had their pedigree) like those who lived on Doo Manor, or cousin Scooby-Dee, Dixie-Doo or Sandy Duncan.
I came across a new, perfectly cromulent word—as it’s not marked up by teacher’s red ink when put out there in the รฆther, in absquatulate. Although the term to abscond is more classical and synonymous to a degree, to absquatulate—suggestive of not only fleeing or to decamp, taking the money and run, it also implies abdication, shirking one’s duties, like some tinpot dictator—came into colloquial use in American English around the 1830s, as part of a larger, slightly baffling wave of pseudo-Latin vocabulary that lasted for a few decades. Other examples from this trend include perambulate (to have a stroll), discombobulate (to confuse), bloviate (to speak boastfully) and infamously sockdologising (an ambiguous word for something rude or to make a back-handed compliment, a corruption of doxology) which made the audience at Ford’s Theatre burst into laughter and was the cue for John Wilkes-Booth to assassinate president Abraham Lincoln. No wonder some vocabulary has gone the way of hornswoggle and skedaddle.
