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HUMMEL: Mister Rogers Biopic Continues Hollywood Whitewashing Of Faith

   DailyWire.com
Portrait of American educator and television personality Fred Rogers (1928 - 2003) of the television series 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,' circa 1980s.
Fotos International/Courtesy of Getty Images

Hollywood is no great fan of Christianity. On most days, the film industry is either apathetic about or actively hostile towards the world’s largest religion. It’s not hard to see why. Christianity stands in stark contrast to the intersectional Left, whose goals include the reconstruction of all traditional institutions in the name of fighting nigh-omnipotent oppression that exists at all levels of society.

What happens though when you have a story that’s too great not to be told, but is deeply rooted in Christianity? Simply put, you disregard it.

This is nothing new. Hollywood actively downplays the faith of religious characters all the time. Even Vox, of all places, pointed this out in its review of 2018’s largely forgotten adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time.”

“’A Wrinkle in Time’ is deeply informed by its author’s Episcopal Christianity, But the irony is that despite its supernatural figures, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ is a deeply Christian book, informed by not just L’Engle’s spirituality, but her specifically Episcopalian background,”  of Vox wrote. “For most of her life, L’Engle was a devoted Christian (she served as librarian and writer in residence at New York City’s St. John the Divine church) and her specific vision of Christianity was central to ‘A Wrinkle in Time’’s climax.”

In that case, director Ava DuVernay (“Selma, When They See Us”) washed the book’s religious themes out in favor of Oprah-esque new-aged spirituality.

In the past year, Hollywood has struggled to properly depict the faith of one of the 20th century’s most beloved American ministers. The late PBS Star Fred Rogers is well known as the star of the children series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which ran on television off and on between 1968 and 2001.

Because of the immense gentleness and power of his message, there’s been a renewed interest in his life over the past two years that’s been explored in a pair of excellent films. Morgan Neville’s documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and Marille Heller’s biopic “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” both explore the same concepts of how someone as enigmatic and gentle as Mr. Rogers can arise in a world as divided, cynical, and exhausting as ours.

But neither film truly comes to a full conclusion on Fred Rogers. Both tacitly mention his faith, but they both sideline it in favor of merely treating his otherworldly kindness as an enigma worth viewing at a distance. They sparsely consider the possibility that kindness actually stems from his religion. Unfortunately, such distance seems to have fundamentally alienated anyone who might’ve learned something from Mr. Rogers.

In BirthMoviesDeath’s review of the film by Britt Hayes, Hayes praised Rogers’ kindness and immediately stated that it is impossible to actually live out such kindness.

“I won’t pretend that I’ve successfully practiced empathy throughout my life, despite the early and frequent teachings of Mister Rogers, a man who had to practice his patience and compassion every single day.” Hayes wrote. “Like most people, I struggle with the limits of that empathy. Nazis, Trump, perpetrators of hate crimes, rapists — they’re all on the list of people who, in my estimation, don’t deserve such kindness and understanding. It’s just too difficult and laborious (and perhaps generous) to extend them that kindness, not that they’re likely to accept it or be changed by it in any fundamental way.”

Such incredible kindness and gentleness is unobtainable if we as a society are unwilling to consider the radical idea that it was born of his religious beliefs. In the worst moments of these films, Fred Rogers’ kindness just becomes a cudgel against the broader Right. The most irritating scenes of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” come when the movie takes potshots at Fox News for its criticism of Mr. Rogers. These barely register as anything more than a sanctimonious dog whistle.

This shyness on the subject of faith is ironically not shared by another film that shared the same release date as “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” “Frozen II” carries an overtly proud neo-pagan aesthetic that borrows heavily from medieval European spirits and mysticism. In the film, those spirits teach the main character that the foundational myth of Elsa’s family was a lie, that widespread human technological development hurts nature, and that the only method of creating peace with nature comes with a radical desire to destroy our technological achievements. Only in doing so can we pray that nature forgives us of our sins.

The progressive worldview can’t overcome the notion that joy, meaning, and truth are found in the destruction of classical institutions and not in their preservation. Neo-paganism does not upset the whims of the progressive Left and can easily be twisted to its means more readily than can Christianity. As the success of Christian films like “Unplanned” and Kanye West’s recent Gospel album “Jesus is King” show, there is a huge market for these values in Hollywood films that is currently being largely ignored.

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