Talk:Mr Rogers Talks about Conflict/@comment-27640161-20160119150708

I just wanted to respond to the baffled nature of the post above. You seemd confused aboiut why these programs would be made to terrify younger viewers. In actuality, these episodes were carefully scripted in response to a big event on network TV. At the time, tensions between the US and USSR were running very high. To educate the public that nuclear war would be a catclysmic disaster, not a cool Mad Max movie, ABC broadcast a 2-part miniseries called The Day After. The film accurately depicted a full U.S./Soviet nuclear exchange, including the injuries, sickness, and climatic consequences that would result. At the time, there were not as many TV channels as there are now, very little internet to speak of and equally little videogaming. TV viewing was more of a family experience and viewing figures clustered around the three or four big networks. So a lot of people saw The Day After - something like 100 million viewers. That's about 40% of the entire country, and that means a lot of children saw it, or saw commercials for it, or heard their parents talking about it. Many adults can't really comprehend what such a war would truly be like, so you can imagine that the children who felt this in the zeitgeist were confused, scared, and had many questions which they might not have even been able to articulate. These episodes were Fred Rogers' attempt to discuss war in a way that children ages 4-7 could understand. He shows soldiers doing helpful things that kids can understand (delivering food and supplies). He shows that paranoia and a lack of dialogue can lead to fear. And his characters in Make Believe even discuss that war is a reality. I think that shows the maturity of Rogers' writing - he doesn't deny that war exists, or pretend everything is all flowers. What he did with these episodes was to show that there are people in the world - soldiers, parents, negotiators, kings - who will always try to do everything they can to keep their children safe. I'd say that was quite a gift.