The Creeper

For those of you who don't know, the Creeper is a monster from the Scooby Doo series Where are you Scooby Doo? His first appearance was in the 1970 Season 2 Episode 4 where he apparently had the ability to walk through walls and would rob the Carswell bank. In the end it turned out to be the president of the bank, Mr. Carswell. The Creeper however, had a green appearance and a large stature. He moved relatively slow and only said two words in the entire episode, "Paper," and "No." Here the Creeper is clearly inspired by the Frankenstein monster from the 1931 film. But the monster from the film is portrayed differently than in the novel. The film portrays him as slow and primitive. I think this is done to display the Frankenstein monster as more realistic. In the 30's the general public was more learned in medicine than in the late 1800's. Also with the story being set in the 1800s, and reanimation of corpses not having been achieved yet, screenwriters displayed the monster as more incomplete. This representation caught on and had repercussions to later generations of writers taking notes from Frankenstein. But if you show someone a picture of this generalization, most people know it as Frankenstein, when in the book the monster is never named. This I believe comes from the fact that it was Victor Frankenstein's creation. Therefore, in a symbolic sense, Victor was a monster. He was crazy and had this outlandish idea of bringing back dead tissue. In an essence, he embodied his inner monster (possibly a fear of the unknown/death) and created a living, breathing monster. On top of this, to westerners, the name Frankenstein simply sounds monstrous. The name is very fitting to the image displayed by the monster.