Won't You be My Neighbor?

If You need A Hug, This Film Is for you

Originally printed in Compass, June 27, 2018.

As I sat at the matinee showing of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” Morgan Neville’s documentary on the life and work of  Fred Rogers, throat choking up in the dark, I thought about the myriad ways to discuss the subject of Mister Rogers, and if any of them would do a disservice to the film. It is a measured, self-assured account of a man with a vision who stuck to his principles. It left me with a feeling I’m sure Fred Rogers could have better articulated than I can. It was, after all, a feeling of childhood, of being so overwhelmed by a feeling you don’t know what to do. Was I uplifted or horribly depressed? Or simply deeply touched by such a rarity of kindness that I could not process what I was seeing?

At this point, revelations of abuse of all kinds are so frequent that I wonder if we will become a culture of constant, and rightful, suspicion. We know more about our public figures, and each other, than we ever hoped to know, and what is seen under the overturned rock is not so easily covered up. Hero-worship maybe become a fool-hardy notion of a naive past. Despite a sharp divide between the left public and the far-right evangelists, there’s still a kind of faith we have all experienced. At one point or another, we have all believed fully in another person, likely someone we never met and will never know. The teen idol whose good looks give way to an imagined romance so attentive and intuitive that no high school boy could compete. Or the singer whose precise lyrics, for a time at least, so fully capture the momentary lows of adjusting to life. The athlete who makes you feel like the bigger, faster version of you. It is a faith based devotion, whether you want to call it that or not. Then you grow up, and your heroes start to look, at best, rather dingy. At worst? Well, when famous names start trending on Twitter, I click with a hope they’ve simply died rather than learn some awful truth. 

What a pure thing it is that Fred Rogers was exactly who he always presented himself to be: a thoughtful man who took seriously the obstacles of childhood. He understood children possess the same strength of emotion as an adult, but do not always have the accessible framework to properly and productively sort through what they feel. 

As a child I was a devoted viewer of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” on PBS in the 1990s. Rogers’ ties, half-zip sweaters and side-parted hair were more or less my everyday depiction of docile, moneyed, older masculinity. What never occurred to me was that he was really a man of God. 

As Fred Rogers told many children, “I like you just the way you are.” What a powerful thing it is for a young person to feel they are seen clearly, and accepted.

“Mister Rogers’ Neigborhood” was perhaps not a religious show, but it reflected the best possible model that organized faith can achieve. It was a quiet time of reflection, centered on an uncompromisingly compassionate figure, that helped you feel more at ease with yourself, and kinder and more curious about the world and the different kinds of people that inhabit it. Fred Rogers is not more relevant today. He was always relevant. America has always been frightfully cruel. He guided children through the Vietnam War, through the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and washed his feet with François Scarborough Clemmons while news reports showed owners of public pools dumping chemicals into the water to chase off black swimmers. 

How would Mister Rogers have explained to viewers the treatment of the toddlers and children being held at border camps? What about the current expectation of gun violence at schools? Fred Rogers died just two years after he visibly struggled to explain the horror of 9/11 on screen. What would he have said to children of today? The Kingdom of Make Believe may have shut down, but there is plenty of room, if they are pure of intention, for someone new to take up the job. 

For now, Neville’s sensitively drawn portrait of Rogers further cements his legacy.