Ask Adequacy: What's with two masks?

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Votes: 11

Ask Adequacy: What's with two masks?

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Nov 30, 2001

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2

Everybody will agree that Scooby Doo is the greatest work of film noir ever to exist, despite its shameless similarity to The Matrix. It has even spawned a highly anticipated movie that will star the contraversial couple, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prince Jr. I will not deny its contribution to society, but there has been something that has bothered me since the beginning of man: why do some of the villians wear two disguises?

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I have never understood this. I understand why a villian would impersonate another person and pretend to be a ghost, but wearing both costumes at the same time would not only be uncomfortable, but trivial. When they are arrested, do they expect the police to free them and arrest the people they impersonate? Unable to find an answer anywhere else, I now ask you, the fine folks at Adequacy if you can explain this mystery.

	It's an existentialist metaphor (5.00 / 1) (#1)
	by Anonymous Reader on Fri Nov 30th, 2001 at 10:55:54 PM PST

	The use of masks in Scooby-Doo is a reference to the subjective experience of consciousness (being-for-itself). The two-masked villain is meant to be a figure of absurdity symbolizing the inifnite regression one falls into when attmpting to see oneself "from outside" (i.e., as being-in-itself), since there is always another "self" visualizing the "self", etc. Note that the two-masks metaphor is seen only in the darker, heavier Scooby episodes. These are known to have been based on French-influenced films noir such as Build My Gallows High.

	It's very simple (none / 0) (#2)
	by theboz on Sat Dec 1st, 2001 at 07:00:55 AM PST

	They wear two masks because they want to frame the person they are wearing the mask of. They didn't intend to get caught by the police, but they may have had plans to take it off in front of Scooby Doo and friends while pretending to not notice that they were there. That way, the grounds keeper who is actually the FBI, will get in trouble and it would cause confusions so they can keep smuggling diamonds through crates of fish sticks. The way their plan always backfires though, is that the main characters from Scooby Doo are inadequate when it comes to the art of stealthy observation. Their idea of hiding from their enemies involves dressing up as a barber in a haunted mansion, or some other disguise. When they do hide, it's always in an obvious place like two of the three barrels at the end of a hallway, or a filing cabinet. Because of this, the Evil Doers(TM G.W. Bush) never have a chance to pretend that they do not notice Scooby and Shaggy. Unfortunately, it's difficult to pretend you don't see someone when they're screaming and running away. [Reply]

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