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On November 22, 2019, legendary actor Tom Hanks will don a red cardigan, immaculate tie, and blue Sperry sneakers to portray a fictionalized version of the beloved Mr. Rogers. Famed for his devotion to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, a show which he dedicated to teaching young minds about the affirming nature of human compassion. Hollywood may be a place where people who really existed are depicted in sensationalized, picture-perfect vignettes. Yet, when it comes to the actual life of Mr. Rogers, truth is better than fiction in what we know about this man who challenged a number of societal stereotypes about masculinity.
One of the most obvious forums of social approval for males is in the arena of sports. Throughout the year, a host of athletes across various disciplines vying for personal and team glory in front of millions of spectators and viewers. For their efforts, they are placed on societal pedestals and offered millions of dollars in salary and endorsements. Yet, between Super Bowl and Stanley Cup, what room does society leave for the concept that masculinity can be at once gentle and emotionally edifying?
A number of journalists have written about just how adverse men are to tying their masculinity to the (perceived) emasculating philosophy of Mr. Rogers. Yet, as Mr. Roger’s regular David Newell contends, anyone who could have stayed on television for thirty-one seasons must-have “a backbone of steel,” affirming that being gentle and emotionally intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing one’s convictions. Rather than waiting for the fictionalized version of a segment of Mr. Roger’s version, it is worth revisiting the poignant documentary that framed the nuances that make men like Mr. Rogers a worthy paragon of modern masculinity.
In modern-day America, you’d be forgiven for thinking that despite an explosion of suburban living, people are becoming less and less “familiar” with the family two blocks down. While building our homes closer together, there is an uneasy sense that citizens are increasingly retreating into their four walls, revealing something distorted in the idea of neighborly love. Enter Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a treatise on just that idea, which chronicles the life of a certain Fred Rogers, rendered immortal on the small screen as Mr. Rogers, and it feels as prescient as any film is going to get this year at confronting our collective, contemporary woes.
Directed by Morgan Neville, the film presents itself in a loose chronological telling of the situations that made a man into a television icon. As a former student of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Fred Rogers’s road to the hearts of the American public ostensibly started with an earnest attempt at changing their souls. Yet, from the very moment he witnesses the dangerous ways in which television media jockeyed for the children’s market – for Rogers, it’s the scandalous classic pie-in-the-face gag but hey, it was the 1950s after all – he decides that to devote himself to capturing young minds through the fun that is nurturing and caring. Mirroring the show’s cultural impact, Neville gorgeously overlays real-world events that informed Rogers’s poignantly honest dictums that sustained the show’s improbable run of 1,765 episodes.
Yet, for all of the personal footage of Rogers himself discussing the intimate details of his television world and those who came to inhabit it, it’s hard not to find the human failings of the man impossibly poetic and beatified. Incredibly, in 93 minutes, not an overt slight (save for some mainstream media dunderheads and the aberrational whackos of Westboro “Baptist Church”) is leveled at the character of Mr. Rogers, a lifelong Republican, teetotaler, and family man who loved his neighbor as himself. Though François Clemmons, the gay, African-American male who played Officer Clemmons, feels that Rogers stance ongoing public with his sexuality affected him personally, it’s hard not to see where the show’s leader was coming from, at a time when both Clemmons’s color and lifestyle could spell disaster for the whole Neighborhood. Indeed, how Rogers ultimately proves his love for his co-star belies any aspersions about the cardigan-adorned character, and the movie represents the making of a man who lived his words of what it meant to be a true neighbor: acceptance, tolerance, and love.
As Neville’s directing shows, all of the above themes both demonstrate the best of Mr. Rogers and the deeper worries of his heart. One of the recurring themes when discussing men’s health issues today is that of deteriorating mental health across male demographics. Here, the film narrates Roger’s struggle to overcome feelings of not being accepted and loneliness over a lovely animated sequence of beloved neighborhood puppet, Daniel Stripèd Tiger. It’s hard not to identify with these all-too-human traits of the man who became a myth. Men are reportedly less likely to seek out help for mental health issues, and the fact that men make up seventy-five percent of suicide victims in the United States should alarm us all as to how important it is – as Mr. Rogers showed – to speak with another person or seek the appropriate help when necessary.
From time to time in the film, the viewer may be arrested by pangs of nostalgia for a time when entertainment was simple yet effective. Yet, what has come before can serve as nothing more than an example of how we ought to form our current and future worlds. As a film, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? certainly packs in black-and-white vignettes that are so idyllic they can feel “Cleaver-esque.” Yet, in terms of discussing masculinity, a work such as this one offers an important historical exemplar as to how men of today can approach the challenges of modern life while being a good neighbor to all.
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Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
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Photo courtesy iStock.
