Respond to these rapid questions in our Won T You Be My Neighbor quiz and we will tell you which Won T You Be My Neighbor character you are. Play it now.
Fred McFeely Rogers was a Presbyterian minister, children’s advocate, and the most beloved Republican since Abraham Lincoln. The documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” tells the story of his life. In the same way that Honest Abe was known for wearing a specific article of clothing, Mr. Rogers was also known for his ability to sweet talk a Congressman or two. From 1968 to 2001, Mr. Rogers kept millions of children out of their parents’ hair by broadcasting a half-hour program that was designed to counter the cartoon violence and frenetic pacing of virtually every other children’s show on television during that time period. I grew up watching him perform on PBS. He sang, gave advice, and worked with a cat puppet, whose feline vocal tic drove my mother absolutely insane. Fred Rogers’ heroic deeds are finally being recognized on the big screen, 15 years after his untimely passing.
In Morgan Neville’s enchanting documentary, one of the many “stand up and cheer” moments comes when cellist Yo-Yo Ma describes his first meeting with the man who will forever be known as the proprietor of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” “He scared the living daylights out of me,” Ma recalls. I felt vindicated because, as a child, Mr. Rogers was a source of terror for me as well. Because of his presence, I became nervous, which was exacerbated when my cousin informed me that he was in fact a serial killer. According to her, Mr. Rogers enticed people to his show and then decapitated them with the Museum-Go-Round after they got too close to the action.
It didn’t matter what Mr. Rogers was up to; watching his show made me feel uneasy because he was just a little too mild-mannered, quiet, and calm. Because my upbringing was anything but calm and quiet, I found it strange that this should be the case. My sister, on the other hand, thought he was magical, proving the old adage about girls being able to figure things out much sooner than boys. When I finally accepted her point of view, it only took me 24 years to realize what it was that made Mr. Rogers so well-liked and effective.
More on that in a moment. A new documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” puts an end to many of the most persistent rumors about Mr. Rogers. It does so in the same straightforward yet understated manner in which its subject provided information to children. When Mr. Rogers is shown swimming his daily mile in the local pool, the rumor of him having a “torso full of tattoos” is addressed. I was disappointed to learn that there is no mention of on-set violence involving structures from the Land of Make Believe, but the film makes up for it by revealing the inspiration for the puppet who lived inside the Museum of Make Believe’s go-round. It’s a hilarious moment that demonstrates that Mr. Rogers, despite his reputation, could be mischievous—and petty!
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A few people who are close to Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood are featured in “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” rather than relying on celebrities or viewers to express their feelings about the man and his neighborhood. The cast members David “Mr. McFeely,” François “Officer Clemmons,” and Joe “Handyman” Negri, as well as his wife Joanne and their children, are among those who have paid tribute to him. Everybody believes Mr. Rogers was a true radical who lived beneath his sweet exterior. Negri, in particular, exaggerates the riotous nature of the neighborhood set, but the entire cast believes it. In addition, there may be a clairvoyant: King Friday XIII, the “benevolent monarch” of the Land of Make Believe, issues a proclamation to build a wall to keep “undesirables” out in this clip from the Neighborhood’s first week on the air!
The song “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” lends credibility to the notion that he is a radical. After all, the title song, which Mr. Rogers sang to the children at the beginning of each show, contained a potentially dangerous concept. Here was a White man who was inviting everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, to live in his neighborhood. It was a sentiment that wasn’t shared by most Americans during the time when “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” first aired, when segregation was still prevalent in the country, when the show premiered. ) (Eddie Murphy’s brilliant parody, “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood,” which is excerpted here in a brief clip, takes advantage of this “Fear of a Black Neighbor” concept and runs with it.) But the true genius of Mr. Rogers could be seen in his example, as Neville points out in two particularly memorable instances.
Won T You Be My Neighbor Quiz
It is the first that comes to mind: Mr. Rogers’ early appearance before Congress in support of funding for President Johnson’s newest creation, the Public Broadcasting System. When confronted with an adversarial Senator Pastore, who had already made up his mind to criticize public television, Mr. Rogers makes his case by simply reciting the lyrics to a song he had written for his show. Pastore submits his resignation immediately. Then he tells her, “You’ve just earned your $20 million.” Even though you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it in a Jimmy Stewart film—and God help us if something like this happened in today’s Washington, D.C.—you can find this fascinating footage on YouTube.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Won T You Be My Neighbor quiz.
Using the character of Officer Clemmons, Mr. Rogers demonstrates a second instance of leading by example. As an African-American, Clemmons was initially hesitant to take on the role of a police officer on the show, but he now understands the importance of providing children of color with a friendly, familiar-looking face in law enforcement. Even more significantly, he takes part in a scene in which Mr. Rogers, in a very small wading pool, basically gives the finger to the idea of segregated swimming pools by inviting Clemmons to join him. When this scene from the show is shown, Neville cuts it to footage of White lifeguards pouring bleach into a pool where Black children were swimming.
Clemmons also plays a role in an incident in which Mr. Rogers wasn’t quite as enlightened as he should have been. Someone from the show discovered that Clemmons, who was at the time still closed off at work, had visited a gay bar. According to Clemmons, “I had a good time!” He was then informed that any future bar visits would result in his dismissal from the show. As for which Land of Make Believe puppet was tasked with informing Clemmons that Mister Roger’s Neighborhood did not contain a Castro District, I have no idea what it was. (“Meow meow gay bar,” I’m hoping it was Henrietta Pussycat, saying.) “meow meow nuh-uh meow meow nuh-uh meow meow fired!”) Clemmons does tell us, however, that Mr. Rogers “eventually came around” to accepting the homosexual lifestyle.
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A clip from the film opens with Mr. Rogers telling us that “love, or the lack of it,” is at the heart of everything. Fred Rogers, like his fellow puppeteer and PBS colleague Jim Henson, relied heavily on puppets to convey much of his message to audiences. As Mrs. Rogers notes, Daniel Striped Tiger, his first puppet, serves as an animated avatar between segments because Daniel was an evocation of her husband’s childhood feelings of insecurity and his need to be loved, and as a result, Daniel serves as an animated avatar between segments. It has been suggested that Mr. Rogers was bullied as a child because he was overweight—he was referred to as “fat Freddie” and picked on—which may have influenced his belief in adulthood that a child’s feelings were just as important as any adult’s. While many people believe Daniel represents innocence, Mr. Rogers also provides the voice of King Friday XIII, who clearly represents the adult desire to always have one’s way.
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It’s quite fascinating to watch “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” through the eyes of an adult. You’ll notice that there’s a clear distinction between imagination and reality—we’re never led to believe, for example, that the puppet segments are anything other than a hoax. Mr. Rogers never talks down to his viewers, and he never sugarcoats difficult topics like anger or death, which are often discussed on television. He’s very direct, and his demeanor was deliberate, constant, and repetitive throughout the conversation. The foregoing brings me to my Mr. Rogers-inspired epiphany.
I remember coming home from my Wall Street job in a state of great agitation and upset many years ago. I was completely exhausted, worn out, and miserable beyond measure at the time. I turned on the television and went into the kitchen without thinking, intending to prepare dinner. Due to an unknown reason, my television was tuned to PBS, and I could hear Mr. Rogers talking in the other room. Despite only paying half an ear’s worth of attention, I suddenly realized what it was that had earned Mr. Rogers the unwavering devotion of children like my sister: Mr. Rogers made you feel like someone cared about your well-being. He said you were one of a kind. He did not promise you success or glory, as the jackasses at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal claimed in heinous failure-blaming articles. He did not promise you anything. He simply told you that you were valuable, no matter how you appeared, how capable you were, or how much money you possessed at the time.
I was standing in my kitchen, listening to this message, which I should have recognized by now as an adult, and I burst into tears. The reason I’m telling you this is because I had the same reaction when the movie “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” ended. I sat in the critics’ screening room, my notepad propped up against my face so that no one would notice that I was crying. It’s hard to imagine what this film will do to someone who has always admired Mr. Rogers, but whose childhood memories of him include rumored mass murder sprees, would have such a negative reaction to the film. Bring a box of Kleenex. There’s a lot of it.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Strangers Prey At Night Quiz.
