“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”-Jesus, Matthew 19:14
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is a documentary by Morgan Neville, who is best known for 20 Feet From Stardom, about Fred Rogers, aka Mister Rogers. If you are a human being, you should probably see it, but if you knew and loved Mister Rogers, then you should be prepared to cry throughout the movie. There are two uses of profanity, “ass” and “dick,” which are fairly mild, and one image of someone mooning the camera in a photograph to play a practical joke on Mister Rogers, which he took in stride so I think that it is a perfect movie to bring your family. Can someone make Presidon’t see it?
I love Mister Rogers. Usually when I say that I love someone that I don’t actually know, I’m usually referring to his or her work, but I think that I actually love Mister Rogers. When I was a child, he lived in my world, not some world that I did not feel like a part of because it was in a suburb or belonged to a nuclear family. The divorce episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood had the greatest impact on me. No one talked about divorce when I was a kid, and it was implicit that it made you different in a way that was bad whereas being the target of racism or sexism made the other person bad. When you are raised in a fundamentalist culture, the message is clear about children of single parent families. We, the children of divorce, were a dysfunctional virus that would infect and destroy whatever group contained us so it would be better to isolate us so we didn’t destroy intact families and bring crime to neighborhoods. You are also not permitted to watch much television, but my mom allowed me to watch anything on PBS. Other than her, the only other person who tried to convince me that these ideas about me were wrong was Mister Rogers. This episode is briefly featured in Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
I think and wonder about all the ways that he influenced me. Do I like cats so much because of Henrietta Pussycat and Daniel The Tiger? When I hear how I talk to my cats, I realize that the way that I compliment them mirrors the way that he talked to kids. I have transition points of inside and outside sweaters. Mister Rogers was proof that men could be good, and Christianity did not have to feel like an onerous, boring chore. He was a minister, but he did not go on for ages! It was only a half hour show, and when it ended, I wanted more. He never wanted anything from people. He was fun! He used his time wisely. The entire half hour did not consist of all the ways that people sucked, which they did, or how wrong and awful we were. If heaven were less like a fundamentalist church and more like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, then maybe eternity would not feel so dauntingly long like most services did when I was a kid. Maybe it was possible to not hate being saved?
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? helped me to revisit this person from my childhood and unlike most people, Mister Rogers holds up in retrospect. Not many people live for seventy-four years, face scrutiny after death and emerge better than I remembered. One of the episodes from his first week feature King Friday the 13th in the Land of Make Believe decreeing to make a border wall because he hates change “because we’re on top.” Whaaaaaaaat? The documentary suggests that it was in reaction to the Vietnam War, but that never involved a wall. It could possibly be a reaction to the Soviet Communist encroachment on Western Europe, specifically the Berlin Wall. Either that or he was a prophet of the Lord (I’m not joking)! At any rate, it is intensely relevant today.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? provides viewers with an alternate image of resistance. Here is a rich (as described by the people who knew him well), Republican (in the original historical intent of the party of Lincoln) white man who sees his party and country embrace the values of Nixon with racist dog whistles and seeking to destroy PBS because it is something created by a Democratic administration, and he stands against these forces by standing for what they oppose. He does so by modeling the behavior that he wants from them, saying that he will trust them, treating them gently and talking to him directly and earnestly. Initially the recipient wants to treat him roughly, but the intensity and gentleness of Mister Rogers truly changes the energy of any room. While I may not think that civility is a tool that should be forced into the hands of people unless they think that they can wield it effectively, it worked for Mister Rogers because it was a countercultural image to what men like him were accustomed to being because they did not have to be like he was. One of his sons described him as “the second Christ,” which may sound blasphemous to those unfamiliar with him, but sounds accurate to me.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? gives men, specifically white men, an antidote to the toxic masculinity that infects and damages people. Men can be good with children. They can have and express their feelings. They don’t have to be serious and can play. They can be welcoming of all races, genders, sexual orientations (eventually) and differently abled. They can treat people with dignity and recognize that they have inherent value. He used his anger and intensity to defend people. Mister Rogers believed that the greatest evil was when someone “makes you feel less than you are.” He encouraged us to be “repairers of creation.” He explained that, “Television has a real chance of building a community out of the whole nation.” He loved people not because they earned it, but because they existed.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? does reveal that there are people who disapprove and denounce Mister Rogers. I won’t spoil for you who those people are. You won’t be surprised. It is a kind of litmus test to see if people who they say they are. I don’t see how you can be a Christian and deride Mister Rogers’ Christlike values. If you end up opposing him, get help.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? seems like a quick summary of Luke 10 or Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, which provides Bible readers with the image of how you can tell someone is a good neighbor. It isn’t the person with the better status who knows the scriptures, but the guy with the dubious status who doesn’t fully belong in his community who cares for a guy unconditionally with his time, money and work. Mister Rogers took Jesus’ instructions literally and saved us all, even the ones that don’t get him.