Scooby Doo & Fall Among Evergreens
Growing up, one of my favorite movies to watch and rewatch over and over again was Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, undoubtedly annoying my parents to death. I was always very attracted to movies set around Halloween. Jack o’ lanterns. Barren trees. Orange brown foliage engulfing the ground. It all reeled me in hook line and sinker as a child.
Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost is entirely set during the fall in Massachusetts, with the changing of the leaves being a major identifier for that particular season and setting overlaid in the background throughout the film. My fascination with Halloween and fall-related media content, with this movie front and center, was due in part to a longing for a particular romantic image I never received in my personal life.
As someone from the Seattle area, I always felt a sense of pride in Washington’s status as the Evergreen State. We hold this nickname because of the abundance of evergreen trees that never change their color from green to orange or brown during the autumnal season. I recall the six giant evergreens that would tower over my backyard, feeling a strong affinity for the greenness that is so intrinsically connected to where I grew up. I always felt their warmth and protection knowing that their leaves would never fall and the trees would live an eternity longer than anyone I could ever know.
I am sure my childhood infatuation with fall media stems from a longing for those fall colors I never quite saw in my own life. Plant life has the powerful ability to engulf and become inextricably linked to the physical landscape around us. And media depicting that landscape can indirectly display the natural condition of plants within it. Watching a film allowed me to escape into the unknown world of dead leaves that crunched when you stepped on them. I remember my walk to school featuring a small stretch of trees that did in fact change color, but it was never something I was entirely surrounded or enveloped by as was in the case in Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost and other movies and shows I loved to watch during those months at the start of every new school year, when fall was supposed to be raging on throughout the rest of the country.
Come to think of it, having moved from the suburbs of Seattle to the concrete jungle of Philadelphia to now the deserts of Los Angeles, I have never experienced a true fall season in my life. Every year when Boston is ripe with orange brown foliage, I get slightly colder days but no real landscape changes living in LA. Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost will always have that association for me with those famous New England fall colors that I hope to experience for myself one day. Perhaps a long overdue trip to Boston should be next on my travel itinerary.
