My dearest, darling Aim, do you happen any thoughts and/or comments about that new Velma show that just came out, because it just sounds horrific and I made the fatal error of watching about a minute of some cisgender white dude's critic of it on youtube and I'm more than a LITTLE FROTHY about how he was basically 'Welp, that's what happens when you try to shoehorn the remake of a classic show into being more ethnically diverse and it's like that because Mindy Kaling is dumpy and unattractive.'
::THE HEAVIEST OF SIGHS::
As a disclaimer before my comments: I have not watched it and I don't plan to watch it. Basically as soon as I saw the first trailer, I said, "This was not made for me, a person who loves Velma and Scooby-Doo."
Because that's the thing -- it was not made for people who love Velma and Scooby-Doo. It was made for people who don't think loving anything is cool, and specifically, who think "nostalgia poisoning" is a thing and want to "ruin your childhoods" because "it's time to grow up" or whatever. It exists in the same vein of humor as the last ten years of South Park, or Seth Macfarlane's whole career, where the only comedy thesis is, "If you care about anything, you're a rube."
Because it's not just Velma and Scooby-Doo that the new show takes potshots at. It's also true crime fans (who are pretty much only women), it's Other Girls (shown to be vapid "bitches" AKA Daphne), it's people with mental illness, it's adult cartoon watchers as a whole, it's people who genuinely want diversified television, it's the idea of friendship. And it's ALSO people who hate true crime fans, and people who hate Other Girls, and people who hate diversified television. Because there is no "right way" to watch the show. There's no underlying person you can be as an audience member and NOT be shit on by the show.
If you hate that they made Velma Desi, then the show is going to shit on you for it, but not because you're a bigoted loser -- but because you care about something.
If you hate that they made Velma an odious quasi-fascist with a serious streak of internalized misogyny, the show is going to shit on you -- because you care about something.
The only way to be "cool," in the vein of comedy that HBO Velma exists within, is to aggressively not care about anything. But don't Not Care too aggressively! Because that circles back around to caring about seeming cool, and that's not cool!
And I'm gonna be honest:
Mindy Kaling has always had a problem with desperately, desperately wanting to be seen as cool. (See title of autobiography, 'Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?')
In the 2000s, when she was in Hasty Pudding (iirc) and the youngest writer on The Office -- a show which DOES NOT HOLD UP in 2023; if you still think The Office is hilarious in 2023 I find you a DEEPLY suspicious person -- it seemed revolutionary and rebellious to openly be a non-thin, nerdy girl and say, "I really wish I were cool." And it was, for the time! That WAS revolutionary and rebellious! It's what built Mindy Kaling's career (and also Tina Fey's, another writer whose work Does Not Hold Up in 2023).
And in the 2010s, with The Mindy Project, being an adult woman who wrote frankly about desperately wanting to be cool was kind of fresh-ish, and the ways that Mindy's character undermined herself to try to get what she wanted felt if not relevant, then unfortunately relatable for a lot of people. But she also ends up with a dude character who, in the FIRST EPISODE, calls her fat. To her face. Many times. It's never addressed again, and it's not played as a dealbreaker... obviously. Because she ends up with someone who fundamentally doesn't respect or like her. But she ends up with somebody! And that's what matters! Because it's cool to have a boyfriend!
In the 2020s, Mindy's shtick is extremely outdated, at best, and is an active choice by Mindy to be harmful, at worst (and frankly, with Velma, most likely). Mindy's shtick is not, "Some girls aren't cool, and that's okay." It's literally, "If you're a girl who isn't cool, that's not okay."
And that's THE FUCKING OPPOSITE OF THE POINT OF VELMA DINKLEY.
I've seen a lot of posts that are either comparisons or contrasts with Netflix's Wednesday, and I don't really have a dog in that fight because like, I enjoyed the unintentional sapphic vibes of Wednesday a lot and I thought Jenna Ortega was great, but the show as a whole fundamentally misunderstands The Addams Family, so I'm overall like, "eh." BUT. What both the comparisons and the contrasts of Wednesday and Velma hinge on is this:
Neither show understands, or cares, why the characters they're based on are beloved in the first place. They don't actually want to interact with the source material, and they don't actually want to court fans of the source material. If anything, they want fans of the source material to avoid the show so that the streaming service they're on can have a young, hip demo tuning in.
And what they don't understand about Wednesday and Velma... is that the reason they're beloved... is that they like who they are.
Wednesday is macabre, but she's a happy kid. She likes what she likes. She gleefully electrocutes Pugsley not because she likes causing pain, but because it's fascinating to see what electrocution does. She beheads her dolls and then sleeps with both pieces in her arms. She studies the Bermuda Triangle because it's fucking interesting that whole-ass ships and planes disappear! She likes the things she likes. She likes who she is. She LIKES THINGS. She's not miserable or misanthropic or nihilist. The line that Wednesday most got right of Wednesday's dialogue was "no one gets to torture [Pugsley] except me," because she's a fierce protector and an Addams, first and foremost.
(Insert 96-paragraph rant here about how The Addams Family (2019) and The Addams Family: The Musical also fundamentally misunderstand this about Wednesday, the musical perhaps worst of all. Wednesday does not want to be normal. She just doesn't want to be perky.)
Velma is a nerd and a dork and a geek, and she could not be happier about it! She's gonna kick your ass at the science fair! She will correct the grammar of your 'kick me' sign on her back and return it with red pen! She's a skeptic not because she hates caring about things or hates belief, but because she loves learning and she loves evidence. The only girl that Velma has ever had any negative relationship with that I can recall is that she and Marcie Fleach had some tension because they were equally smart and smart people sometimes compete to be The Smartest, but then in the end THEY WERE IN LOVE AND GIANT LESBIANS. And then Marcie got murdered by a paranormally enhanced parrot, but whatever.
There's a REASON why there's never been -- until this HBO show -- a whiff of jealousy that Daphne is traditionally beautiful or that Fred adores her. (I mean, part of that is that Velma is a lesbian, but also VELMA DOESN'T WANT TO BE DAPHNE, SHE WANTS TO BE VELMA.) The only "love triangle" that the Scooby gang has ever had was literally INCLUDING THE DOG, because Velma does not hate anything about Daphne or who Daphne is. She celebrates who Daphne is. She loves who Daphne is. She would never, ever, ever call Daphne a bitch.
But here's the thing: I genuinely don't think that Mindy Kaling can conceive of a weird girl being happy with who they are.
I don't know if it's a generational, grew-up-in-the-80s thing, or an effect of racism she experienced as a Desi girl, or because she's frequently been the only woman in a comedy writers' room, or if she just as a defective personality.
But I think she looked at Velma and said, "This girl makes no sense unless she's miserable, angry, and maladjusted."
And I think Tim Burton looked at Wednesday and said the same thing. But I also think Tim Burton looks at literally all women always and says that, so whatever.
I think Mindy Kaling deeply, deeply hates herself. And she can't write female characters who don't also deeply hate themselves.
But that's not Velma.
