Recently I (finally) watched Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the new Fred Rogers documentary on his time doing Mister Rogers Neighborhood. It’s a beautiful, enlightening portrayal of a man and show that many of us grew up watching, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone. There were some truths Fred Rogers spoke of that resonated with me outside the context of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and I want to begin a series of speaking about them, starting here. 

At one point during the film, Fred Rogers states, “What we see and hear on the screen is part of who we become.” 

He’s talking about how content creators have a responsibility to the public to create good and meaningful content that teaches instead of dumbs us down; elevates us instead of demoralizing us. Has good lessons to follow, good characters to emulate, rather than drama-heavy, clichéd plot devices that serve only to keep us in front of the screen.

I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS. 

For years, I’ve been ingesting and absorbing storytelling advice, and a large part of that is “conflict is key.” Which is absolutely true; you can’t have a story without obstacles. But what I most often see in series television, especially, is lazy conflict. 

“Oh, we got the will-they-won’t-they couple together too early? Let’s break them up, again and again, for increasingly inane reasons, instead of exploring the struggles of what even a good relationship go through.”

“We finally got that couple married? Of course, everything about them changes to focus on “married life” things, like tending to a home and having a baby. They don’t need to keep their individual personalities or interests.”

And one of my favorites, for the upcoming generations:

“In order to have our children be the savior in their own story, we need to make the parents dumb-as-doornails so they’re justified in not listening to them.”

EXCUSE ME?! How exactly do you think we get entitled little brats for children, to then turn into entitled big adults? We give them this narrative, over and over again. (Not saying everyone, and definitely not a generalized “entire generation” issue here. Just, you know, some less-than-great people.) 

How do you think we get couples who don’t know how to work through problems, who think fights mean breaking up? We give them couple-after-onscreen-couple who do exactly that.

It’s. Infuriating.

At some point, the reality changes from, “This is what people want to see, so we’re giving it to them” to “This is what people know because this is all we’re showing them.” This is incredibly injurious to society. We need different stories. We need good stories, about real love, and struggle, and strife, and overcoming the odds. We need adults who are inspiring children to grow and become adults like them. We need couples working through the problems in their relationship, not just giving up. We need creators who take responsibility for the types of stories they’re telling and the lessons that people receive from them.

Creators shape society. We shape culture. It’s a vitally important thing that we do, because our messages get heard above all others. Our messages get reread, rewatched, repeated all the time. What messages are you sharing?

Are you accountable to your art? To your audience? To your world?