Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

It was song­writer Michael Mass­er who famous­ly wrote the lyrics ​“I believe the chil­dren are our are future / Teach them well and let them lead the way”. The song ​‘The Great­est Love of All’ become most wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Whit­ney Hous­ton, who cov­ered it in 1985, but these lines of lyrics could just as eas­i­ly sum­marise the phi­los­o­phy of anoth­er Amer­i­can icon with an unwa­ver­ing faith in The Youth: the unas­sum­ing, soft­ly-spo­ken, cardi­gan-wear­ing Mis­ter Fred Rogers.

A main­stay of America’s Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice, Rogers was instru­men­tal in con­vinc­ing con­gress to fund the tele­vi­sion sta­tion dur­ing its incep­tion, and for over 30 years was the mas­ter­mind behind and star of its flag­ship pro­gramme, Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood – a charm­ing, unchang­ing children’s tele­vi­sion show which ran for an impres­sive 912 episodes. The show shaped the lives of many view­ers, and turned Rogers into an unlike­ly pop cul­ture icon, beloved across the coun­try by peo­ple from all walks of life due to his sooth­ing pres­ence and gen­uine inter­est in teach­ing chil­dren about the world through the medi­um of television.

It’s sur­pris­ing that it’s tak­en so long for Rogers (who passed away in 2003) to receive a glossy doc­u­men­tary eval­u­a­tion, but there’s a sense that Mor­gan Neville – mae­stro behind 20 Feet From Star­dom and new Orson Welles biopic They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead – is the right man for the job. His inter­vie­wees include those who knew Rogers best – among them his wife Joan­na, his sons Jim and John, co-star François Clem­mons, jour­nal­ist Tom Jun­od, and good friend YoYo Ma – as well as some of the ordi­nary peo­ple who were touched by Rogers’ work. Their insights paint a pic­ture of Rogers as a thor­ough­ly decent man with a sin­gu­lar vision of his pur­pose, inter­wo­ven with Neville’s lin­ear explo­ration of his career.

One sur­pris­ing nar­ra­tive device comes in the form of ani­ma­tion, as Neville imag­ines Rogers in car­toon form as his alter-ego, a small, ner­vous watch-wear­ing tiger named Daniel. Such a flour­ish could seem twee, but ren­dered in sweet detail it instead feels like a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of Rogers’ own sim­plis­tic style which saw Mr Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood vir­tu­al­ly unchanged dur­ing its entire runtime.

Yet there’s a sense that Neville is reluc­tant to dig deep in some places – Rogers’ life-long mem­ber­ship of the Repub­li­can par­ty only war­rants a sin­gle line, as does the fact he asked friend and co-star François Clem­mons to hide his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in order to avoid the poten­tial fall­out for the show. Sim­i­lar­ly the con­ser­v­a­tive atti­tude Rogers had to the chang­ing face of tele­vi­sion (par­tic­u­lar­ly children’s tele­vi­sion) feels smoothed over, as if Neville et al. are afraid to speak ill of the dead. Rogers was rad­i­cal in decid­ing to use his plat­form to teach chil­dren about real-world tragedies (the film shows a clip of him speak­ing about Robert Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, and the show was revived for a spe­cial episode about ⁹⁄₁₁) but his pri­vate life doesn’t seem to quite match up.

Even so, there’s no doubt­ing that Rogers was a remark­able man with an uncom­mon abil­i­ty to empathise with oth­ers. What comes across most in this whole­some doc is his belief in kind­ness, and the neces­si­ty of teach­ing chil­dren to love them­selves. It may well res­onate most with those who grew up turn­ing to Rogers for guid­ance, but for those unfa­mil­iar with his work, there’s a lot to enjoy too – not least the feel­ing that this is a love let­ter craft­ed out of images, a form of col­lec­tive cathar­sis which res­onates dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times.