I was brought up on edgy kids’ shows like Soupy Sales, so the warm and fuzzy children’s television of a later generation, like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, or Barney and Friends, creeps me out a bit (I still want to put my fist through the television screen whenever I see that unctuous purple dinosaur). I’m always surprised to find some younger adults who absolutely loved not only Mr. Rogers, but Barney.
Nevertheless, Fred Rogers (an ordained Presbyterian minister) was a friend of my uncle (a Pittsburgh Jew), and so I feel a wee bit of fealty to the show. I like to think that this remixed video conveys a Feynman-esque message of curiosity and rationality. But maybe it’s just weird.
His phenotype reminds me a bit of E. O. Wilson.
From the YouTube notes:
Mister Rogers remixed by Symphony of Science’s John Boswell for PBS Digital Studios.
(Headphones highly recommended!)
When we discovered video mash-up artist John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, on YouTube, we immediately wanted to work together. Turns out that he is a huge Mister Rogers Neighborhood fan, and was thrilled at the chance to pay tribute to one of our heroes. Both PBS and the Fred Rogers Company hope you like John’s celebration of Fred Rogers’ message.
I never understand what it is that people like about these Symfony of Science videos. Can’t stand watching them and it’s not because of the science.
I do not usually duplicate my comments but I will because I am actually moved by this video.This is my comment from Facebook. “Soupy Sales and Mr.Rogers were also my heroes when I was growing up. The Garden of Your Mind is a brilliant mash-up and one of the best I have seen. It far exceeds the symphony of science videos which I do find boring. This touching and inspiring. Thumbs up, Jerry.”
I hated Mr. Rogers when I was young (I was 13 when the show began), but my children liked him when they were very young. That was the key I think – by the time a kid is older than 5 or 6, Mr. Rogers is nauseating.
The sound of this thing really annoys me.
Creepy.
Good grief, Mr. Rogers has been Songified!
Mister Rogers was quiet and dignified while most other kids shows scream and yell. Rogers spoke TOO kids, not at them or lecture them. He was also willing to deal with the tough stuff like death and divorce.
As a kid I found Mister Rogers a little creepy, but mostly just boring. However, I certainly don’t think my few childhood memories / impressions of the show are enough information for me to make any judgments about.
As an adult I found Barney the purple dinosaur to be indescribably irritating and obnoxious. I’ve got enough information to make some judgments about this one. After working with Universal Studios to create The Barney Attraction, and watching some shows, I swore that if I ever had kids I would treat them with the respect they deserve and never introduce them to that show.
Lucky for me neither of my children had any interest in the show. They never learned of it at home, but from friends and school.
Children are perfectly capable of learning at young ages without dumbing it down to the level of an oyster.
Well said. Those programs were patronizing and obnoxious. And yes, creepy. Oh, and boring too.
I’ll take Johnny Quest anyday.
Loved Johnny Quest.
I shared this on Facebook and a friend came up with this:
15 Reasons Mister Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/5943
Here is item 1 on the list:
1. Even Koko the Gorilla Loved Him.
(fred-and-Koko.jpg)
Most people have heard of Koko, the Stanford-educated gorilla who could speak about 1000 words in American Sign Language, and understand about 2000 in English. What most people don’t know, however, is that Koko was an avid Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fan. As Esquire reported, when Fred Rogers took a trip out to meet Koko for his show, not only did she immediately wrap her arms around him and embrace him, she did what she’d always seen him do onscreen: she proceeded to take his shoes off!
That is awesome.
Johnny Costa, Mr. Rogers’ keyboard player / musical director was no slouch, either. I was too old for the show when it came to our PBS affiliate in Anchorage AK, but my 6-years-younger little sister was hooked.
That precision arpeggiated riff at the show’s beginning (just before Fred sings) knocks me out to this day. All the auto-tuned computo-cheese tributes… not so much.
too-zeech-too-zone, as my grandma used to say.
I still get a kick out of Fred Rogers impersonator, Christopher Guest, though.
Love Christopher Guest!
“These go to eleven…”
Ah … I wonder if that Maelstrom mutant “Barney Blaster” still exists. I could never watch Rogers because he was nothing like the people around me – even Sesame Street was far more believable. My dad used to complain about how bad kid’s TV was way back then – ha – today’s kids TV is nothing but Orwellian reeducation.
I love him!
As a young miscreant, I and a few friends created a parody of Mr. Rogers – specifically the opening sequence in which he removes his jacket, shoes, etc.
We thought it would be hilarious if he just kept going, singing and smiling the whole time: shirt, pants, underpants…
Beautiful! Satire is great at any age, isn’t it? The first outright belly-laugh I got from my older brother was when I was about 11 years old. We were watching Merv Griffin I think, and he was making some sort of gushing intro for his next guest. “…and now,” he said, “please help me welcome the beautiful, talented and multifaceted, Joan Suchandso!” Rather unimpressed, I just blankly stared back at the Packard Bell and said, “Yeah. Go ahead Joan, show us one of your facets!” And how the milk did gush forth from my brothers nostrils. It was at that point I knew I had the power.
” . . . creeps me out a bit . . .”
“Creepy.”
” . . . a little creepy . . . .”
Enough “creepy” quotes. How creepy? Apparently more than a little, else why make mention of it?
Would it be creepy were a woman the host? Does the male host exist whom no one would consider “creepy”? Donald Trump? Gordon Ramsey? Bill Clinton? Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Herman Cain?
” . . . conveys a Feynman-esque message of curiosity and rationality. But maybe it’s just weird.”
It is Feynmanesque, and not weird. There is surely at least one scientifically and behaviorally illiterate Philistine out there who would consider Feynman “weird” or “odd” or “creepy.” Anyway, where does one go to divine the penultimate definitions of “weird,” “odd,” etc.?
“That precision arpeggiated riff at the show’s beginning (just before Fred sings) knocks me out to this day.”
Yes, which leads to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”?
The lyrics of “It’s You I Like” are worth contemplating:
“It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair
But it’s you I like;
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you,
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys_______
They’re just beside you,
But it’s you I like,
Every part of you,
You skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new,
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue,
Th it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you___________,
It’s You__ I___ like_____.”
But, perhaps for her/his own self-preservation the child should also listen to Joe South’s “Games People Play.”
While I don’t like I liked the show much, I certainly respect the man and the work he was trying to do.
There’s a video of Senator John Pastore grilling Fred Rogers over support for PBS. He starts out gruff and haughty, but gradually comes to realize he’s in the presence of a saint. John Pastore was famously rough, so it’s a pretty impressive transformation.
Both Barney and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood are
targeted towards very young audiences(3-ish for Barney and a little wider range for Mr. Rogers), so I find them hard to judge by an
adults’ esthetic standards. It would be interesting, though, to know how very young children respond to those shows.
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood came out when I was ten, so it was pretty much off my radar, but the more I’ve learned about Fred Rogers and what he was trying to do with his show, the more I admire him. The remix is nothing to write home about musically, but I still like it. Creepy is about the last word that comes to mind when I think of Mr. Rogers, but Barney, yeah, I can see how one could feel that way.
I actually had the opportunity to perform in a Barney video a few years ago, and I’ll admit that nothing I’d seen of the show had endeared Barney to me. I asked the producers why, when a show like Sesame Street is able to appeal to 5 year olds, parents and old folks, they chose to limit Barney’s appeal to such a specific and narrow age range. They told me that they knew they would lose their audience after the age of three years or so, but that they wanted to be sure to serve that market well, and to have the content be useful and age appropriate and not diluted by an attempt to appeal to everyone. How well they achieve that is subject to interpretation and debate, but I can respect their goals.
That said, I had a hard time sitting thru the video, because the character voices are grating to my ears, and probably also because I’m middle-aged and not three years old!
[Watching them rehearse was cool, though. The actor who played Barney would go thru his blocking without the costume, and he had a series of stylized movements that looked like a sort of Kabuki mime tai-chi. That was much more interesting to watch than when he was suited up!]
The Canadian contemporary of Mr. Rogers was the Friendly Giant, who I think was was a very reassuring figure. He actually formed a regular jazz trio with his friends Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe, the charm of which was way over my head when I was five years old.
Barney must be the most annoying thing I have ever seen on TV.
Jerry, if you happen to read this, I thought you might be interested in the documentation of nesting robins (in my back yard) that I just put together here: https://sites.google.com/site/springrobins03/
It includes footage from a webcam next to the nest.
Yep, I watched the video and saw all the pictures. Lovely documentation, which I recommend to all readers. I didn’t know their eggs were blue!
And I love the caption, “The three tenors.”
Thanks for putting this up.
This was weird to me, since this is the first time that I can really remember seeing Rogers and his show in colour – my parents didn’t get a colour TV until I was around 12 or something and I didn’t usually see PBS at friend’s places … (To put that in perspective: I watched a lot of the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation [!] in BW)
I prefer Eddie Murphy’s rendition from Saturday Night Live
Yep, the Xmas one is one of the best SNL sketches ever. It doesn’t seem to be on YT, tho, probably because it’s on a DVD collection. But there are a couple of them out there that I don’t remember. Here’s one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu0ZpE9bQGc
That was fantastic…thanks for posting
Fred Rogers did a lot to help public TV, and when he had the chance to take the show to NYC, he opted to stay in Pgh, thus becoming a local local icon.
But when I was a kid in the ’50’s, we had “Watch Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert)”, who resonated far more with me at the time than I think Mr. Rogers would have. I don’t recall Mr. Wizard ever being discussed here, and I’m sure many remember him, but for those that don’t, thanks to YT, here he is, in an early show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo4sqjcGUYo
I watched a lot of Mr. Rogers as a kid and I think it’s biggest weakness was the the Land of Make-Believe; it really lacking any sense of imagination beyond acting like toys were alive.