Intergenerational Dialogics in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Fan Letters

• In Event: Children, Adolescents, and Media: Research Escalator 1

Abstract

From the opening of each Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood program, its host, Fred Rogers, presents an invitation to conversation with his viewers. MRN fan letters demonstrate the efficacy of this invitational tone in the respectful, familiar, and conversational manner in which they address the program’s host. This paper examines fan letters written to Fred Rogers during the first fifteen years of MRN (1968-1983) from the perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical theorization of the conversational moment – a moment which “provokes an answer, anticipates it, and structures itself in the answer’s direction.” The abundance of fan letters written to Rogers during this period reveal a remarkable consistency in their collective thematic quality and constitute a field of study about the dialogical relationship between the program’s host, the historical Fred Rogers, and MRN’s audience.

Author

• Alexandra Castro Klaren, University of Pittsburgh