{"id":9123,"date":"2018-06-10T14:19:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-10T21:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=9123"},"modified":"2018-06-10T16:25:18","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T23:25:18","slug":"wont-you-be-my-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2018\/06\/10\/wont-you-be-my-neighbor\/","title":{"rendered":"Won&#8217;t You Be My Neighbor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/2018\/06\/04\/wont-you-be-my-neighbor-and-mr-rogers-insist-humanity-can-be-better-than-this\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>from The Village Voice<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h1 class=\"c-sHeader__title u-center u-tac\">\u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?\u201d and Mister Rogers Insist Humanity Can Be Better Than This<\/h1>\n<p class=\"c-sHeader__author u-tac\">by <span class=\"u-ttu\"><a class=\"author url fn u-skip\" title=\"Posts by Lara Zarum\" href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/author\/lara-zarum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"author noopener\">LARA ZARUM<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FhwktRDG_aQ\" width=\"480\" height=\"292\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">If your cold, cold heart doesn\u2019t melt at some point during <i>Won\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?<\/i>, the documentary about Fred \u201cMister\u201d Rogers, well, I don\u2019t know what to do for you. Watching this movie is like freebasing sincerity \u2014 a scarce resource in our current entertainment hellscape. It\u2019ll give you warm fuzzies for days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>Won\u2019t You Be My Neighbor? <\/i>takes us back to an honest-to-God simpler time, when the idea of a minister with an \u201cabiding interest in children,\u201d as one newscaster describes Rogers in the doc, didn\u2019t immediately raise eyebrows. Early in the film, the late Rogers \u2014 whose legendary children\u2019s show, <i>Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood<\/i>,<i> <\/i>aired for more than thirty years starting in 1968 \u2014 expresses his desire to help children make sense of the world \u201cthrough the mass media.\u201d He made this comment back when television was still a fairly newfangled technology, and when a few well-intentioned folks like Mister Rogers thought to use \u201cmass media\u201d to spread wholesome education rather than dogged consumerism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Through archival footage of Rogers both on and off the set of his iconic show, as well as interviews with his family, friends, and former crew members, <i>Won\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?<\/i> draws a flattering yet complex portrait of its subject, who died of cancer in 2003. What is most remarkable is Rogers\u2019s grasp, even in the medium\u2019s nascent years, of how television can shape young minds. \u201cWhat we see and hear on the screen is part of who we become,\u201d he insisted. Rogers understood, earlier than most, that television \u2014 that oh-so-intimate medium that catches us at home, unguarded, the screen perhaps just inches away from our faces \u2014 profoundly alters the way we see one another and ourselves. \u201cTelevision,\u201d young Rogers argued, \u201chas the chance of building a real community out of an entire country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/2018\/06\/04\/wont-you-be-my-neighbor-and-mr-rogers-insist-humanity-can-be-better-than-this\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click to continue reading at The Village Voice<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Village Voice \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?\u201d and Mister Rogers Insist Humanity Can Be Better Than This by LARA ZARUM If your cold, cold heart doesn\u2019t melt at some point during Won\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?, the documentary about Fred \u201cMister\u201d Rogers, well, I don\u2019t know what to do for you. Watching this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}