Contemporary Hollywood Animation: Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s by Noel Brown

“This has all happened before”: Intergenerational Trauma, Tulpas, and Tackling Lovecraft’s Cultural Legacy in America in Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated

“…SD!MI adheres to the Cthulhu Mythos narrative structure that subverts the teleological Campbellian hero's journey typical of the narrative ideology of Hollywood children's horror (Brown 2021), which sees the child protagonist leave their home, overcome some sort of obstacle, and eventually return home to re-enter society with a newfound sense of maturity. Closure is thus an integral element of this narrative ideology.…”

“…This shift in narrative structure is also strategic in that it enables SD!MI to deliberately defer closure rather than seek it out. Despite being presented with the opportunity to assume the narrative teleology of the Campbellian hero, in which the gang would adapt to their now utopian circumstances, assured in their maturity and achievements, and resume life as is conventional of most longform children's animated horror protagonists (Brown 2021), the gang instead choose to restart their cycle as Lovecraftian heroes anew. For them, closure as it is framed in Campbellian terms becomes a site of existential terror rather than psychological maturity and narrative fulfilment.…”

“…The diverse, flexible nature of the series' predominantly "Monster of the Week" (MOTW) format, typical of short-form horror television (Rudy and McDonald 2016) and particular to Scooby-Doo, enables SD!MI to adapt elements of Lovecraft's work and to flesh out the specific political and sociocultural traumas that inform the series' Lovecraftian tulpas. Similarly, Hollywood animation's use of a "hyper-realist" aesthetic (Brown 2021), or a "a stylised realism that ha[s] a lifelike feel without actually being photorealistic" (Price 2009, 213), in tandem with humour provides a familiar, nostalgic, but experimental medium through which to visualise these traumas in accessible but no less nuanced terms. As such, I argue that SD!MI foregrounds semi-anthology short-form horror animation as uniquely capable of "unmasking" Lovecraft's legacy and the horror of perpetuating intergenerational trauma for a contemporary audience in the best way Scooby-Doo knows how: the revelation of a grim reality lurking beneath a rubber mask scapegoat, with a dash of the supernatural for emphasis.…”

“…Animated children's horror is regarded by many (though not all) scholars as inherently subversive for its introduction of "taboo" or "radical" concepts that are perceived as anathema to otherwise "mainstream" children's animation, these concepts including the supernatural, the grotesque, death, and moral ambiguity. However, in the case of long-form horror animation such as Hollywood children's horror films, Noel Brown (2021) argues the following:…”