Posted on 08/01/2018 11:59:29 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Many who saw Mary Poppins as children may remember only chimney sweeps dancing precariously on the rooftops of London, or birds flapping their wings around the cathedral, or the image of Dick Van Dyke dancing madly with those animated penguins.
But there is more to Walt Disney’s 1964 masterpiece than meets the eye.
Ostensibly a fantastical children’s story about the George Banks family and the nanny (Julie Andrews) who brings songs and magic to their London home (Number 10, Cherry Tree Lane), Mary Poppins has a powerful subtext that connects deeply with those ill-at-ease in the modern world.
The Bank versus the Cathedral
All the Disney animated classics share a Romantic, anti-modernist worldview. Threads of dissent from the mechanistic, impersonal, and industrial nature of the modern world run through these films and give them, in spite of their differences, a sense of unity. Each offers escape into another world, one where the worst of the modern world is replaced with lush visuals and magic that ensure a happy ending.
In most of the early animated Disney films, the tension between the harsh modern world and this other, more hospitable one is quiet. But in Mary Poppins it’s a full-blown critique.
George Banks (David Tomlinson) is pulled between these two worlds. He is, unknowingly, in a battle. His family and soul are at stake. When the film opens, Mr. Banks is consumed both by the pursuit of profit and also by a vision of rational order that extends first to the members of his household and then, via the British Empire, to the whole world. He is a thoroughly modern man. By the end of the film, however, Banks is someone else—a man who has surrendered worldly ambitions in order to turn his attention toward family, a man open to serendipity and to wonder.
Yet none of these changes comes as a result of his choice. Rather, Mr. Banks is transformed by a series of events, beginning with the arrival of the mysterious Poppins and ending with his dismissal from the bank. The bank here is no mere employer. It is a symbol for the modern world: the world of buying and selling, the world of selfish pursuit, the world that—despite his service to it—ultimately expels Mr. Banks without regret.
Mary Poppins consistently contrasts the bank with another symbol: the cathedral. In the world of the story, the cathedral is conveniently located directly across the street from the bank. It represents the other world, with all its opposing values. It is no accident that when Mr. Banks finally takes his son Michael (Matthew Garber) to work with him, Michael wants desperately to go to the cathedral instead. Nor is it an accident that Mr. Banks, on his way to be fired from his job, first goes alone to the cathedral.
His choice at that crucial moment reveals Mr. Banks as a sort of symbol. He represents all of us who feel the emptiness of modern life and, where we are able, resist its totalizing and pernicious influence. All of us, torn between the forces of the bank and the cathedral, are, in our own ways, Mr. Banks.
Victory for the Better World
No one can imagine a Mary Poppins in which Mr. Banks stays firmly within the clutches of the bank. Such a film would be a tragedy. But the story is not a tragedy. It’s the story of how mysterious, beneficent forces work to free a man from the bondage that serves as both foundation and purpose for so many modern institutions.
When Mr. Banks is finally freed, the victory is decisive. The other, better world has won: the world of preferring family over wealth, of shoring up one’s little platoon over furthering the aims of the empire, of humane values over the impersonal forces of commerce and efficiency. As viewers we share, however fleetingly, in that triumph.
Mary Poppins is a film with a happy ending because the right side, the side for which every modern heart roots, wins.
I always thought it was a dumb movie.
One does not have to scratch very hard at the paint job on Mary Poppins to see that it is selling socialism.
Seems like there’s a common them to almost every Disney movie, children rebelling against their parents.
them=theme
Also recall that Mrs. Banks (Jane and Michael’s mom) was a suffragette, appearing in an early scene with a suffragette ribbon (bearing the words “votes for women”), on her way to a womens’ suffrage meeting; kind of an early example of an “activist,” a prototype for things to come.
She has no time for her children because she’s making the world a better place.
I never thought about that until you mentioned it.
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
—Mark Twain
Here On The Island - by Lewis Napper
A Scholarly Critique of the Style, Symbolism and Sociopolitical Relevance of Gilligan’s Island
http://www.fightthebias.com/Resources/Humor/island.htm
I think that's going too far. Walt Disney was directly involved in making Marry Poppins, and I don't think there's any evidence that he was a lefty.
He fired a cartoonist on Fantasia because the guy was a union activist who personally attacked him. His name was Art Babbitt, and he animated the mushrooms (and many other things).
bookmark
Perhaps, but in Pollyanna the child in question pays a pretty heavy price for rebelling.
I would agree that there's a common theme of children undergoing the process of discovering that they have minds of their own and can explore the world in their own ways, but that's just life.
I suppose one could argue that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are about children rebelling against authority, also.
In Mary Poppins, the children discover that their father is not the perfect tower of strength they had thought he was; we see Mr. Banks as a man who is reluctantly but resignedly taking on the pressures and responsibilities of adulthood and fatherhood, but within whom still lives a boy, who wishes he could enjoy his own children as playmates for a time, but cannot, due to the need to earn a living and keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
There’s frequently a dead mother in there, too.
Saving Mr. Banks is a very good account of how Mary Poppins was made in spite of the author P.L. Travers' objections to Disney and her own deep seeded issues with a failed father. In her case an alcoholic bank manager, fired from his job out in an isolated country town in Australia.
Yep.
At the end, doesn't Mr. Banks end up restored to his position at the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank - or possibly even promoted? Did Mary Poppins enable him to "climb the corporate ladder"?
They must feel the thrill of totting up a balanced book
A thousand ciphers neatly in a row...
Those words, sung by Mary Poppins, have always struck me a clever and droll joke, when you realize that "cipher" is another word for "zero."
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