Won't You Be My Neighbor? tells an amazing story
What is there to say about Fred Rogers? An entire generation grew up watching him change his shoes and feed his fish. We all traveled to the land of make believe with his trolley. Each one of us received packages from Mr. McFeely.
There’s a certain wistful regret that my son never became familiar with his show, instead watching the occasional (and inferior) Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood before getting distracted by one of the other myriad educational programs for young children that dot the television landscape.
It’s true that television has changed—there’s more of it and each episode of every show is available immediately, whenever the child requests it. Other characters have taken root in the collective consciousness of today’s children. I can’t tell you the number of times 6th graders have broken out into song in the hallways with refrains of the Little Einsteins theme song.
But there’s something missing from each of these shows—and I watched them all as my son progressed through his early childhood. There’s a heart and a love that isn’t as apparent. Fred Rogers cared about you. He told you every day. He was more real than any animated cartoon show teaching lessons about friendship and teamwork. There is definitely something missing in television. It’s been missing for a long time.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is a wonderful documentary about a wonderful man. I think any reviewer would be hard pressed to dislike what is found in this film. Mr. Rogers has for a long time been more of a legend than a person. This was true even before his death in 2003. The challenge for most films about legends is humanizing the subject.
Legends are larger than life, often not relatable figures for the everyday American. Fred Rogers, however, is almost too relatable. Everyone knows him. Everyone has seen him. And, by all accounts, everyone who was close to him says his on screen persona was who he was all the time.
The challenge, then, for the filmmakers is to make Rogers more real than even he showed us. This is found in the interviews, of course, but also in the access to personal journals and letters Rogers wrote for himself.
What is revealed is a man like any other, conflicted about his place in the world, about his impact, about his ability to do what he feels is necessary.
It’s important for audiences to see this self-doubt, to see certain missteps. Doing so allows Rogers to continue his work of encouraging others to experience and accept failure.The film also dives deep into the type of shows that Rogers wanted to do. These topics and songs were deeply personal and important.
It’s easy to forget, especially for those of us that were born much later in the show’s run, that Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was on during the end of the Vietnam War, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, during the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, during the resignation of Richard Nixon.
Rogers understood that children should not be ignored during these times, that they experienced the same deep and complex emotions as adults but lacked the experience or vocabulary to discuss them.
Mr. Rogers was about more than routines—it was about managing emotions, about learning your importance, and ultimately, about loving everyone for who they are.
On that front, it seems that Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was a failure. Or, should I say, the viewers of his show failed him. As bad as things were during the run of the show, it seems now that world is objectively worse. No one learned his lessons—or no one heeded them. Still, there’s something about watching Fred Rogers interact with children. There’s something about seeing those children respond to the man in the sweater.
Rogers said that “a child is appreciated for what he will be”, indicating that children are never looked at for what they are. Common knowledge dictates that children grow into adults and those adults are the fully formed person. But maybe it’s not that way at all. Maybe we are all the same confused children we always were. Maybe if we’d see each other as children we’d be less likely to hurt each other.
Fred Rogers might agree with me. I sure wish I could ask him.