Barry poppins Is a Subversive.
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.
You know, maybe I’m not as smart as some of the rest of the FReepers around here, but I liked the music, I liked the dancing, I liked the songs, I liked the MAGIC of it all.
And I will LOVE Julie Andrews until the day I die. :)
Maybe when I saw it first (as a kid) I was just enthralled that someone that MAGICAL could come into my life; not that I had a horrible childhood or anything, because I didn’t, but still - what a Kids’ Dream Come True!
Indeed. I wonder what he'd make of "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success"?
Aw, c’mon...it’s a sweet movie and Dick Van Dyke is adorable. Just have fun, for goodness sakes.
Roses LIKE ashes...and spent coffee grounds. ;)
It was the first movie I remember seeing. My Dad took me.
We went to the local theater that you had to walk through the popcorn stand then through the back alley and into the next building to see the movie.
My FIL did the rising specters in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence.
I did not like it, and still do not, though I like both DVD and JA.
That is irrelevant. Enjoy what you enjoy, as long as it is not inherently evil. You are entitled, and it really of itself says nothing about your intellectual or philosophical propensities (and if it did, so what?)
I love John Wayne movies. I used to read comic books. Many have looked down on me for each, saying they are beneath a man of my intellect (genius IQ).
There is room for much more in life than many of us think: If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.
I became a huge Tolkien fan around age 11. At 16 I was invited to a pastoral conference because I was being groomed for the ministry. I was both amazed and dismayed to hear both Tolkien and Lewis generally denounced as inappropriate reading fare for Christian adolescents.
As Tolkien might say to such critics: That is all right; I think the same way about what you like.
I was so struck by that section of Fantasia that I tried to draw the monster myself, when I was seven or eight years old. Your FIL contributed to the memories of millions of children.
Step in time!
Hmmm...The essay writer argues rather, that the Disney version at least is subtly pointing to Christian charity, and to childlike faith and wonder - rather than secular Marxism as the antidote to the soul-killing ways of modernity and unbridled capitalism. Hence the central role of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Bird Lady, and the lyrics of the classic song "Feed the Birds" - which was known to be Walt Disney's favorite of all time.
All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can't see it,
You know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares
I have not read the original novel by PL Travers, but I get the sense the writing is in keeping with the spirit of earlier peers like Charles Dickens and the morality behind "A Christmas Carol."
The best lies are 99% true.
-PJ
Like pushing snow, returning to the screen this December.
LOL I didn’t see that no. haha. But I don’t want to equate the modern day secular-3rd wave feminists with the suffragists of the past — who were a diverse bunch, and made up of many noble Christian women as well. :)
FYI
I don’t care for Pooh Bear either, as fine a moral example he may be.
I tried some Turkish delight once. It was kind of weird, but oddly tasty at the same time. Sadly, it didn’t coincide with a trip to Narnia.
I don’t think you would want to equate the suffragettes with the second-wave feminists like Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir, either, especially when the latter were Marxists in all but name.
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