Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a 2018 documentary about the life and career of famed children show host Fred Rogers.
If you were a kid in the last decades, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was probably playing on your TV sets every day. It’s host, Fred Rogers, was a famously mild mannered guy who, turns out, was rather radical for back then … and even now. He didn’t have to tell jokes or make a fool of himself to entertain kids. There was no cartoon shows or mascot to get children interested in watching him. It was his special brand of respected, how he didn’t talk down to youngsters, that made him an important figure in all our lives. He was a special friend we got to spend thirty minutes with each day with and we were the better for it.
Being a grown man, I haven’t seen the show in quite a while but was impressed he lasted from 1968 to 2001. That’s great staying power, akin maybe to The Simpsons, especially with cable TV and later the internet having so much influence. It must have been hard to compete with those forms of media and yet, it did.
Many might not have known that Mr. Rogers was a Republican and a conservative Christian before becoming involved with television, on his way to becoming a priest. However, his show had no such agenda, never pushing his politics or beliefs, always respecting everyone’s differences. It’s what defined the show, and I can’t help but wonder if he’d ever been asked to lean toward a special interest group, something that surely in these severe climates of political division, would seem impossible to avoid.
Rogers was a trailblazer on television and off, the first public host to share a swimming pool with an African American on air. He supported gay rights, and talked about issues few others would. He offered opinions on everything from death and divorce to war and assassination, and to children watching his show, these were valuable moments of insight, calm, and clarity. For Fred Rogers, no topic was off limits if it affected a child.
Director Morgan Neville expands on the persona we all have come to know, delivering a terrific film about some who I suspect me might ever ever have again on television or elsewhere. His devotion to children and the show’s unbiased and universal approach is a thing of the past, as nearly everything on TV now devotes more to selling things to its audience than teaching something meaningful. At least Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood is timeless and visiting often is what we all should to more often.