I recently saw a trailer for a new documentary coming out next month on the life of Fred Rogers. Won’t You Be My Neighbor will chronicle how the Presbyterian minister developed the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood TV show and the cultural impact it had on generations of Americans.
There is no doubt that Rogers will be portrayed as a “social justice warrior” who championed the causes of the “under-represented, the repressed and the dis-enfranchised”. Make no mistake, Fred Rogers believed in equality and respect for everyone–but he got his message across in a much different–and much more effective way.
Mr. Rogers did not peddle guilt, assign blame or make veiled threats to get across his message to kids. In the trailer, Francois Clemmons–who is an African-American and who played a police officer that patrolled “the neighborhood”–talks about a scene where he and Mr Rogers share a pool (a kiddie pool actually, with the two cooling their feet from walking so much). The episode aired during a time when whites were not allowing their kids to share a public pool with black kids (and the trailer shows a white man dumping huge bottles of chlorine in a pool where blacks are swimming). But in that scene, Mr Rogers never says a thing about race. He doesn’t talk about how whites don’t want to swim with blacks. He doesn’t talk about blacks being the victim of racism for 200-years. He portrays Officer Clemons as his equal and shows kids that nothing bad happens if people of different colors simply share a pool.
The trailer also notes that Rogers wanted to present difficult topics like the assassinations of the late 1960’s, Vietnam and divorce as part of his show. That’s because Fred Rogers believed that children had an amazing capacity to handle adversity and would experience less fear if they were exposed to bad things–but were given guidance and explanations for what is happening. Mr Rogers Neighborhood was a “safe space”–but not because the kids there were never exposed to things that might make them uncomfortable.
I fear that the endless litany of talking heads taking part in the documentary will try to “modernize” Mr Rogers–claiming that he would be “fighting” for transgender people, the #metoo movement and gun control efforts if he were still alive and on TV today. Those topics would most certainly make their way into a current version of Mr Rogers–but there wouldn’t be an attitude of “us versus them” presented–where kids need to pick a side and be villainized by those in the other camp.
In a way, I wish Fred Rogers would be here for the “social media age”. I can guarantee that his posts would be supportive of all people, and that there would never be snarky replies to politicians, other celebrities or members of the media. Of course, he would probably have to turn off notifications and hire a full time staff to delete all of the replies to his own posts.
I hope that the public won’t be turned off by the term “documentary” to categorize Won’t You Be My Neighbor–since that all but assures it will be a box office flop. Because I think Fred Rogers still has plenty to teach all of us.
