Is Velma from Scooby Doo coming out as gay an entirely good thing? It should go without saying that any maniacs whining about “loss of innocence” can be waved off without further consideration. The Great Dane and his chums have been inviting children to wallow in criminal depravity for half a century. Shaggy, the most hungry of the team, has long been coded as a habitual cannabis user. One law-abiding lesbian isn’t going to do the young audience any harm.
The question is whether the world might miss the convoluted attractions of coded gay characters elsewhere? As we’ll see, Alfred Hitchcock would, without such creative sublimation, have lost some of his most resonant creations. Audiences have long enjoyed feeling smugly “in the know” about hidden inclinations that may have evaded their less sophisticated neighbours.
Velma’s story is a trip. For a long time, fans have read the bookish, speccy, sensibly dressed boffin as lesbian or lesbian-adjacent. Simplistic caricature this may be, but that is how largely sympathetic arguments have gone. Two years ago, James Gunn, who wrote the 2002 live-action Scooby film, confirmed she was openly gay in his original script. He wrote: “The studio just kept watering it down and watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) and finally having a boyfriend (the sequel).”
Clips from the upcoming new movie, Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, look to be casting aside any ambiguity. The footage shows Velma going weak at the knees on encountering a European costume designer named Coco Diablo.
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Here we have to indulge the fevered analysis that now characterises pop-culture discourse. “I’ve said this before, but Velma in Mystery Incorporated is not bi. She’s gay,” Tony Cervone, supervising producer of the Mystery Incorporated series, helpfully explained. “We always planned on Velma acting a little off and out of character when she was dating Shaggy, because that relationship was wrong.”
Wait? What? Thelma has been dating Shaggy? This is much bigger news than any confirmation of already suspected sexual orientation. When did the team begin dating anyone? (Probably some time in the Clinton administration, you’ll tell me.) Cervone then goes on to discuss the “entire Marcie arc”. It seems that this Marcie and our Velma didn’t have “time to act on their feelings during the main timeline, but post reset, they are a couple”. Researches reveal that “Marcie” was voiced by Linda Cardellini, who played Velma in those live-action films discussed above. The head spins.
Where would Xena: Warrior Princess have been without the ambiguous relationship between title character and Gabrielle? The internet can hardly speculate on a longed-for passion if it is explicit in the screenplay
Anyway, Velma’s shuffle out of the closet could mean the beginning of the end for the great coded gay character. This would be a shame. Right? Where would Xena: Warrior Princess have been without the ambiguous relationship between title character and Gabrielle? The internet can hardly speculate on a longed-for passion if it is explicit in the screenplay. Doris Day’s Calamity Jane would have had less potency if audiences weren’t able to extract gay subtexts from the cleanest-cut of Eisenhower-era musicals.
Speaking of the former Doris Kappelhoff, among the most amusing character in her comedies with Rock Hudson – Pillow Talk, the most memorable – was Tony Randall’s buttoned-up, angst-ridden, often well-off pal. His replacement by the “gay best friend” in the millennial romcom added nothing but patronising cliché. Who doesn’t enjoy picking apart the vanilla disguise to reveal the more interesting homosexual within?
Implicit demonisation
The problem here is that the history of gay coding is, more often than not, one of implicit demonisation. Joseph L Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, released in 1950, has maintained a keen gay following despite cyphered representation that borders on homophobia. George Saunders’s Addison DeWitt, acerbic theatre critic, is afforded all the camp paraphernalia of the, ahem, “theatrical” type. Anne Baxter’s Eve envies Margo Channing – the immortal Bette Davis – with a hunger that borders on the sexual. “You’re an improbable person, Eve, and so am I,” Addison says in a speech marinated in subtext as they plot to destroy the more “probable” heterosexual couples.
Over the years, filmmakers have, in short, made liars, conmen, lunatics, thieves, murderers and general sneaks of their barely concealed gay characters
Dr Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein is a monster. Rosa Klebb is a ruthless killer in From Russia With Love. Dirk Bogarde plays a deranged, unmistakably camp working-class snob in The Servant. Hitchcock is coming down with “problematic” coded gay maniacs. Henchman Martin Landau is suspiciously interested in fashion in North by Northwest. Maniac Robert Walker plays related games in Strangers on a Train. John Dall and Farley Granger come close to unambiguous homosexuality in Rope. Little more needs to be said about the malign Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. Endless Disney villains are gay coded.
Over the years, filmmakers have, in short, made liars, conmen, lunatics, thieves, murderers and general sneaks of their barely concealed gay characters. The story is as much one of oblique prejudice as liberal subversion. Television has been kinder. So have comic books. But, if Velma really has killed off the coded gay figure, there will be reasons for both celebration and regret.
