RIP Joe Ruby

We’ll get back to talking about the fear and ignorance which is tearing America apart in later posts.  For right now, I would like to say goodbye to one of the people who defined my childhood and provided me with endless delight back in the Saturday mornings of the 1970s.  Joe Ruby (1933-2020) was a writer and producer who worked with Ken Spears to create “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” a hit animated series about four teenagers and a Great Dane who traveled around in a groovy van, solving various mysteries.

Each episode featured a supernatural mystery, which, upon closer inspection was revealed to not be supernatural at all.  The ghosts, monsters, phantasms, and sorcerers were always revealed to be scary tricks employed by grifters and con-artists (usually as part of a real estate scam or a smuggling ring).  The gang would unravel the mystery and unmask the villain through classical sleuthing, slapstick, and ratiocination.  Although the gang occasionally collaborated with other classical American cultural heroes, such as the Harlem Globetrotters, Batman & Robin, and the Addams Family, the real break in the case usually came from the group’s intellectual, Velma, who would spot a loose thread and pull at it until the villain’s ridiculous scheme lay exposed in its full venality.

“Scooby Doo” debuted in 1969 and eschewed the violence which was a staple in other cartoons because the studio was concerned about the the wave of political assassinations which had rocked the sixties.  Although some of the various spin-offs (of which there were many) abandoned Ruby’s core principle that the supernatural stuff was not real, the original series was actually a show about enlightenment values and reason (albeit dressed up with plenty of hijinks and a talking dog).

In most cases of “Scooby Doo Where Are You” the gang was able to figure out who the monster really was by means of a simple question: who would benefit from scaring people?  Then it was a simple matter of conquering their own fear to  unmask the villain.

Joe Ruby also wrote “Thundarr the Barbarian” a post apocalyptic show about a distant future where everything is hopelessly ruined and grotesque warlords oppress the world’s beleaguered survivors.  Maybe if everyone had asked more “Scooby-Doo” type questions centered around rational, material evidence, the dark world of Thundarr would never have come into being.  You must cling to reason, even if you are scared, otherwise the monsters step out of the smoke and mirrors and become real.