Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

National Review, Sept 20, 1985 by Aram Bakshian, Jr.

SEE MR. ROGERS. See Mr. Rogers run. See Mr. Rogers run at the mouth. It is mid-afternoon on public-television channels across the country; the wimping hour--half-hour, actually--is at hadn. At this time of day, while housewives are engrossed by soaps and game shows, while their teenage offspring are out shooting baskets or dope, and while most of us are still at the office, millions of pre-school and grade-school kids pay their daily television visit to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

As neighborhoods go, I suppose it could be worse. It is virtually crime-and pollution-free, and, since most of the puppets and humanoids inhabiting it exude androgyny, nary an X-rated note jars the afternoon airwaves. For the average, semi-cretinous American kid uninterested in reading or writing, the place is as safe as it is insipid. Few adults have ever visited it; having spent a week there, I now understand why. Like its creator, Mr. Rogers (who, as Phyllis says of the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, can most charitably be described as "a very clean old gentleman"), the neighborhood that provides the backdrop for one of television's longest-running kiddie shows is cloyingly wholesome, mildly instructional, and overpoweringly dull.

Mr. rogers is the perfect neutral babysitter. A kindly, chinless person with grey hair, grey jacket, grey sweater, grey trousers, and, for all I know, grey undergarments, he addresses his youthful charges in a nasal bleat that makes George McGovern sound like Macho Man by comparison. Since he also dubs voice-overs for all of the puppet characters, the aural impression, like his personal color scheme, is uniformly bland. The premise of the show, shaped in part by two "phychological consultants" whose names are run with the credits, seems to be that hyperactive young Americans need nothing so much as a daily aerial lobotomy, presided over by an unmenacing Ma-Bap figure embodying the virtues of a kindly granddad and a particularly unassertive schoolmarm. Maybe they're right, given the flood of animated monster tales, mindless shootouts, and car chases that most kids choose when viewing commercial programming.

Fair enough, and to do Fred Rogers justice, he sugars the tranquilizing pill with informative glimpses at everything from tropical fish and diamond-cutting to tips on good manners and entry-level music lessons. Sears Roebuck, which bankrolls the show, has certainly inflicted no harm on its infantile audience, and may actually have done some marginal good. The mood, while it lasts, is benevolent, but in such a milksop way. Couldn't the same good effects be achieved with a more vigorous role model at the helm? By the time Mr. Rogers discards his tennis shoes and sweater, and heads for the door at the end of each thirty-minute installment, one can't help suspecting that the brighter kids in the audience breathe a sigh of relief, refreshed with the certainty that, for a merciful 24-hour interlude, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood has gone with the wimp.

Kids, after all, are people, drawn to and taught by struggle as well as security blankets. Thrills, adventure, travel into the past and future--to Never-Never Lands teeming with pirates, Indians, and crocodiles, or space bandits and space sheriffs--give far more range to the youthful imagination. And, in their own highly stylized way, they offer clearer examples of applied ethics and social standards.

Given a generous regimen of hormone injections and a spine transplant, Fred Rogers might manage to give his tiny but far from inert wards the bes of both worlds. Until then, at least he isn't doing them any damage.