Mr. Rogers and your priest

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Me too. I also know kindergarten teachers who have been told to knock it off because they are stunting their student’s vocabulary by “dumbing down” their speech. I’ve also known teachers to be told to go back to “dumbign down” their speech because a student didn’t understand something said, assumed the worst, and went home and told their parents that their teacher said something they didn’t actually say. It’s a controversial issue, I guess.
 
A fair point, though I think he feels a millisecond slower with the kids. Maybe what I’m picking up on isn’t his speed but the more sophisticated language and concepts he uses with adults (rather than his tone or speed—which you’re probably right, are the same between kids and adults)
 
ontheway1 said:
As I listened to the sermon today I was struck by the sound of my priest’s voice. Yes. I heard Mr. Rogers delivering the sermon. The same monotone. The same lack of emotion. Don’t know if this is good or bad.
Any of you have a similar experience?
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My home diocese once had a bishop who sounded almost exactly like Burl Ives. When he sang, we had to keep from chuckling at times haha
 
Reminds me of another old skit where Big Bird brought avian influenza to Sesame Street and everybody died.
 
I am stunned that an adult could be so offended by interaction with puppets, as if Fred Rogers were the only personality in media history to do so. Edgar Bergen, Paul Winchell, Jay Johnson, Shari Lewis, Bob Keeshan, Fran Allison, Bob Smith, all adult cast members of Sesame Street, countless local children’s show hosts–the list is endless. What a pathology to have.
 
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Puppeteering has been a form of entertainment for centuries. When I was a kid, puppets scared me to death!!
 
Actually, if you reread my post, I wasn’t describing my reaction as an adult. I was describing my reaction as a child. In fact, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood hasn’t been broadcast during my adult life, much less filmed. I’m fairly secure in my alphabet skills, so I haven’t really felt the need to watch PBS for several decades and have only revisited it in the past three years due to my own children. I don’t really know who most of those performers are, however, I would argue that there is a significant difference between Jim Henson’s Muppets and Lambchop and the puppets used by Mr. Rogers. First of all, Lambchop was cute and cuddly. Grover was fluffy and friendly. Big Bird was slightly neurotic but at least soft and covered with feathers. All had operating mouths and facial features. Meanwhile, the death-stare of this lifeless character is another story.
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And this one looks like a minion of the anti-Christ.
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Those puppets are intentionally designed to be flipping terrifying.

Secondly, the Muppet puppets and Lambchop were utilized entirely as a component in the story telling. They were funny characters and not an attempt to be therapeutic. They weren’t prying into the intimate details of one another’s feelings, which is much more serious and intimate than telling a story about Bert’s lost prized paperclip or singing a song about bathtime. I found it creepy when adults spent time talking to lifeless, dead-eyed, monotoned, inanimate objects about things that serious and intimate.
 
Fuzzy and blue! Not scary! Fuzzy and blue! Even the orange one is less scary than King Friday’s demonic sis!


Of course, not all the Muppets were so cute. Admittedly, this one gave me a bad dream once.


Whats the matter Smokey? That “U” just wants to talk about your feelings!
 
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I think puppets intimidate more people than care to admit it. Even if they ultimately decide they think they are funny or cool, they have a initially disturbing aspect to them, especially for really young kids who are trying to figure out what is real and not real, or alive or not alive. I remember a baby sitter we went to had a daughter who had an “Animal” Muppet puppet. It sat around forever and no one picked it up, but one day she did and showed us how it’s mouth and eyebrows moved and my brother, who was probably two at the time, became hysterical. He would never again be in a room with that puppet without screaming until it was taken away. It’s weird to me that a person would need to communicate through something that isn’t alive in order to be comfortable expressing their feelings. To me, THAT is the pathology.
 
Puppets, some people do fear them, I did when I was a kid. All of the other kids around me were enthralled by them.

For centuries puppets have been entertaining people around the world, and puppets in therapy are well established. Many children feel more comfortable telling things to a puppet than to a person.
 
Allegra said:
I think puppets intimidate more people than care to admit it. Even if they ultimately decide they think they are funny or cool, they have a initially disturbing aspect to them, especially for really young kids who are trying to figure out what is real and not real, or alive or not alive. I remember a baby sitter we went to had a daughter who had an “Animal” Muppet puppet. It sat around forever and no one picked it up, but one day she did and showed us how it’s mouth and eyebrows moved and my brother, who was probably two at the time, became hysterical. He would never again be in a room with that puppet without screaming until it was taken away. It’s weird to me that a person would need to communicate through something that isn’t alive in order to be comfortable expressing their feelings. To me, THAT is the pathology.
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Think of it this way. Kids like cartoons and stories, and those characters can be used to illustrate situations a child might encounter and demonstrate productive ways a child can deal with problems. For example: the Daniel Tiger cartoon.

Puppets can be used for the exact same purpose, and on a 1960s public television budget, are much cheaper than hiring a bunch of actors and illustrators. Fred Rogers himself cites two minutes of cartoons costing $6,000, which was far greater than his budget.

There’s nothing inherently perverse here. And saying King Friday has a “death stare,” if you’re being serious and not just making jokes, is just absurd.
 
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I didn’t say “inherently perverse”, I said “creepy”. There’s a big difference between the two. I posted a photo of the King Friday puppet. If you don’t call that a “death state”, I don’t know what you would call it. It certainly isn’t anyone’s description of friendly, particularly since it was permanently frozen in that expression. Not one of those puppets had an expression that could even be called “engaged”, much less “happy”, “pleasant”, or “cheerful”. If you encountered a person with an expression that was permanently fixed in a blank stare, I think you would find it creepy too. King Friday’s expression is particularly grim, and no that is not “absurd”.
 
Probably for the same reason though. It’s the “fakeness” of the face and the voice I think people find disturbing. Consider the marionette scene from The Sound of Music. Every one of those puppets was beautifully painted and designed to be happy and lively, yet they still managed to creep a lot of people out. Even the angelic tones of Julie Andrews, who it’s been proven is impossible not to like, and seven gorgeous Hollywood children couldn’t erase all the weirdness from those puppets.

Then there’s this example of a perfectly healthy, normal, human-puppet relationship.
The film ends with a lovely Leslie Carron ballet as the slightly suicidal, infantile woman and depressed, cranky older man who can only communicate with each other through puppets prance off into a sunset of lunacy, along with mascot-sized versions of the puppets they probably got a little to close to.
 
Allegra said:
I didn’t say “inherently perverse”, I said “creepy”. There’s a big difference between the two. I posted a photo of the King Friday puppet. If you don’t call that a “death state”, I don’t know what you would call it. It certainly isn’t anyone’s description of friendly, particularly since it was permanently frozen in that expression. Not one of those puppets had an expression that could even be called “engaged”, much less “happy”, “pleasant”, or “cheerful”. If you encountered a person with an expression that was permanently fixed in a blank stare, I think you would find it creepy too. King Friday’s expression is particularly grim, and no that is not “absurd”.
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That’s… just puppets. Not people.
 
I’m not sure what you mean by that. No one’s arguing that people’s natural faces are creepy, only if their faces are permanently frozen in a lifeless expression, or in the case of some of those puppets, a particularly unpleasant one. That’s kind of the point.
 
All dolls, statues, paintings have permanently frozen lifeless faces. Honestly, I find doll collections to be unnerving!
 
Don’t go to House on the Rock! There’s zillions of dolls there! I don’t usually find a single doll or even a couple of dolls to be spooky, particularly if they have a pleasant or expressive face, but a whole wall of dolls staring you down…

At least they aren’t talking to me though.
 
I think when Mr. Rogers does King Friday XIII, he is actually quite funny! When Fred Rogers did his voice, he was a mix of imperious and goofy and it was great.
 
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