I’m honestly speaking generally not just about Scooby Doo. It just so happens that this portrayal of Scooby Doo is just pure blatant pandering.

Why did they even call it Scooby Doo? Why even attach the show to that franchise when it’s so separated in it’s basic concepts?

The answer is because they were trying to use the franchises name to push some stupid race pandering bullshit.

They put in all the effort to change each character to the point that they only resemble their original designs by physical appearance. They literally could have just come up with a completely different show that had nothing to do with Scooby Doo at all.

Look, I kinda get both sides here.

I strongly agree with you that the skin color doesn’t really affect the acting or the story in general. I believe that the last Lord of the Rings show on Amazon actually did a spectacular job at it. It was probably the best fantasy show that I’ve seen in awhile. However, I can also understand it from a Lore perspective that I feel the other guy is trying to to point out. If there are other ethnicities of Hobbits (which there are actually three), then at least explain why they are there. Did something bring them together? Your not wrong that by just changing the skin color of a character doesn’t really affect the story at all, but when you want to understand what’s behind the story, you really need to look at and consider everything.

[As an interesting aside. It turns out that the Harfoots are actually a dark skin type of Hobbit, and the Fallohides are taller and fairly light skinned. I just wish the show explained that more and perhaps provided a reason as to why those two groups merged. If they did, I must have missed it. I would love an excuse to go back and watch that show…]

Like, if we were writing a script about a tribe in Malaysia, or about a K-Pop group in Korea, it would be really jarring to see a white or black guy play any of those rolls in effort to avoid a “diversity problem”. Like…will it affect the overall story if the script and acting was the same? Honestly, probably not. But I’m still going sit there the entire time and ask why is famous actor Whitey McWhiterson playing the lead role as a singer in a K-Pop boy band.

The point I’m trying to make is that yes, I agree that race does not affect a story at all, but to be frank, including every race for diversity’s sake (take many of the new Disney Star Wars shows, for example) is colorblind, and I feel antithetical to racial justice in general. It’s denying that these people are different. I don’t care what the skin color of someone is, but I would at least expect there to be some sort of explanation as to why things are the way they are. It just feels lazy, political, and shoe-horned in.

Idk why I feel this way, but I feel like “but I like Miles Morales” is becoming the new “I voted for Obama so I can’t be racist”, which had replaced “I’m not racist, but…” for a while.

It’s almost like racists are only ever going to whine about inclusivity, and “characters remaining their own race” vs “creating new characters” is a moot point because the people out there who are upset by the former are going to be upset by the latter anyway.

Uhm, no?

Have you seen the reception to both Spiderverse movies? It was overwhelmingly positive. I’d say they were probably the most universally liked Marvel movies of the decade. You would really compare that to the reception the new Little Mermaid or Ghostbusters got and say “yeah, the same amount of people got upset by both things”?

It’s nowhere nearly close. Obviously, it’s also because the spiderverse movies are written much better, but that’s also a symptom of better writers being hired for better projects. The fact that raceswapping a character and writing an entirely different one are received the same way is just plain false. Not to mention, even better, just making new movies with black characters altogether. But those two things require considerably more effort than taking an old, already liked movie’s script and copy-pasting it with a random character of a different race. And Hollywood doesn’t like effort, they just like money and free advertising.

Because sadly the world doesnt work that way. Imagibe if you had a black peter parker in segregation era. Could Peter be black and still go through the exact same things? And i am not saying that because being black inherently different. Its just that black people go through different hardships due to inherent racism in america. It is not racist to say people with different backgrounds have different cultures and values.

And there are cases where this is not important, for example in the new batman film we had a black Jim Gordon and it was great. But again that is just my opinion.

Its fascinating that you can change age, gender, class, job, good vs evil, city, power origin, family, parents, backstory, goals, romantic relationship, friends, enemies, powers, on and on and thats all fun new twists on the character to revitalize the story.

But race? Woooaaah buddy, slow down! Thats too far!

Its fuckin transparent, is what it is

So that’s your perspective and it’s valid and matters. If you consider the perspective of others, you may find it’s not lazy, but actually one of the only forms of representation in mainstream media of these ideas. People are particularly butthurt when you include their nostalgia and find it an afront (sp?) to them.

So whereas one familiar but not invested may see an on the nose literal call out of how “we already know these groups feel,” the aforementioned, underrepresented groups’ members may see themselves finally represented on screen.