Why ‘Velma’ Is the Internet’s New Punching Bag

The latest from HBO Max Entry into the Scooby-Doo canon, Velmahas the kind of pedigree that usually signals beat. Executive Producer is veteran TV writer Mindy Kaling, who also voices the animated series’ title character. It’s a show about one of pop culture’s most beloved nerds. Like Riverdale before, Velma also takes a staple of children’s entertainment and gives it a new, tongue-in-cheek twist for adults. Despite everything, the show has still become the internet’s new favorite punching bag.

Tweets are flipping the show’s attempts to mock edgy humor that satirizes the culture wars. parodies aim on his plot lines. Forbes took a hit at chronicling the backlash dramatically: showrunner Charlie Grandy, “a frequent collaborator of Kaling’s” and “the son of a former love boat star” was apparently “accused of the nepotism case,” according to one post. As another succinctly put it: “Everybody hates Velma.”

The whole truth behind this fallout is, as usual, complicated. Despite the vitriol, people watch the show; According to HBO Max, Velma was his greatest animated series premiere ever. The problem is that they’re looking at it through the lens of the entire story of Velma and the Scooby-Doo franchise as a whole.

for one Velma opted for a color blind casting whose title character is now a South Asian woman. Second, this Velma is portrayed as overtly queer. But while it might be easy to attribute the usual racism and/or homophobia that accompanies things like this to backlash against the show — and there’s probably a little bit of that at play here — what’s wrong with it Velma runs deeper.

The biggest criticisms of the show don’t seem to be that it addresses issues of diversity in the Mystery Inc. gang, but rather that the show does so in a shallow, unanimous way. And when it comes to Velma’s sexuality — something that’s been a topic of discussion in Scooby-Doo discourse for years — any attempt to address the matter needs depth.

For decades, the writers behind the character have implied that Velma is gay through various Scooby-Doo traits. She was definitely queer-coded in her earliest iterations, and James Gunn, who wrote two Scooby-Doo live-action films in the early 2000s, claimed a few years ago that Velma was “explicitly gay” in his first script back in 2001 ” be. “But the studio kept watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the filmed version), then nothing (the released version) and finally a friend (the sequel).” During Pride month in 2020, Tony Cervone was the Supervising Producer the animated series was Scooby-Doo! secret integratedOn Instagram, she posted that her Velma is “not bi. She’s gay.”

But Velma’s sexuality in secret integrated, which aired from 2010 to 2013, was only hinted at. Then, late last year, in animated film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, subtext became text: Velma had a crush on a villain, and the internet loved it. When The Washington Post reported, an Ontario teenager was one of the first to spot the confirmation, and Her gushing tweet promptly went viral: “OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY CANON LET CANON IN THE FILMS GOOOOOO.”