Mary, Pop Off

If your most hated movie of all time is "Mary Poppins," what does this mean about you as a mother?

Nothing good, I imagine.

I detest that film with every fiber of my being.  I always object to musicals with no decent songs, but this movie manages to sink lower than its music.  The music is supercalifragilistic specially atrocious.  "I love to laugh, yuk yuk yuk yuk. . ."feed the birds, tuppence a bag". . ."Good luck will rub orf when I shakes 'ands with you". . .

The only good songs in "Mary Poppins" are the ones sung by Mr. Banks about how a proper British home should be run (until Mary butts in), and the highly enjoyable one about the "Tuppence, patiently, cautiously trustingly invested in the, to be specific, in the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs, Fidelity Fiduciary Bank!"  Now that's good stuff.  You can get a ringtone on your cell phone about the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, and I'm seriously considering it.  But these are brief ditties, partly spoken rather than sung, because stuffy old unreformed Dad is one of the villains of the picture.  90% of the film is spent on songs that just honestly suck.

And if crappy music weren't bad enough, the overall message of "Mary Poppins" is that Jane and Michael have such rotten parents that they need a magical woman with a flying umbrella to be their substitute parent until their real parents wake up and smell the medicine in a spoonful of sugar.  And Mary certainly put the "loco" in the in loco parentis.

However, the real problem with Jane and Michael is not that they have one parent with a life, because Mary Poppins would probably stay in the sky if their father worked long hours at the bank and their mother stayed in the nursery entertaining them all the time.  Jane and Michael's real problem is that they have a feminist for a mother, and thus, no "real" parents at all.  Crusading feminist mothers are no fun, and kids have a right to fun parents, so Mary Poppins pops in to bring some fun to the dull and neglected lives of these flaxen-haired little darlings.

And what does Mary do first?  She uses her magic, and everything that the kids have strewn all over the house begins dancing around to put itself away.  My kids would love that.  The fun job, Mary teaches, is the job that gets done without any effort from you.  Now if I were Jane and Michael's new nanny, I would show up and say, "Your mother is out demonstrating so that Jane here will not be a second-class citizen.  Now get your girly little pinafores in another gear (you too, Mikey) and pick up this mess and have her some hot cocoa waiting when she gets home.  Double time, now, MOVE MOVE MOVE!"

But Mary spoils the kids rotten, and takes them out on roofs to dance with some very dirty men, with one of whom, Bert, she has some kind of undefined attachment, although one of the lousy songs assures us that:

"You'd never think of pressing
Your advantage
Forbearance is the hallmark
Of your creed
A lady needn't fear
When you are near
Your sweet gentility is crystal clear!"

Uh-huh.  I'll admit most guys who can hoof it like ol' Bert and spend lots of time on sidewalk art give the ladies no cause for alarm, but it ain't because they're so forbearing. Sometimes Mary and Bert's jolly holidays are even animated, lest you miss the fact that these two really, really enjoy each other's company.  All in perfect Disnocence, of course.  All Bert wants is to jump in and out of chalk drawings—nice ones!—with Mary once in a while.  In Bert's defense, his topnotch dancing and art, combined with Mary's first- rate singing skills, probably beats an afternoon at the movies to give the Banks bambinos a little culture.

Bert, Mary, and the kids—our makeshift substitute family unit—also ride merry-go-round animals through parks (maybe a flash-forward of Jane's future career as a pole dancer if her mother is unsuccessful as a suffragette?), when the kids are not floating on the ceiling with Mary's obviously drunk uncle.  Mary also feeds them lots of sugar, especially with their medicine.  Is that on the label?  Are those the pediatrician's dosage recommendations?  Oh well, at any rate, a good, magical time is had by all.

But wait!  That Bert and Mary make much better parents is not supposed to be the point of this movie, otherwise it would be blatantly anti-family, and that just ain't Disney.  After demonstrating her magical superiority as caregiver, Mary is supposed to make peace between children and parents, so that she can consider her mission completed, grab her umbrella and go frolic in the park with Bert and the dancing penguins. 

Instead, Mary cleverly rigs things so that the children will go with Mr. Banks to his bank job (yes, his name is Banks and he works at a bank where he also banks, a real crass capitalist pig of a guy) and, slick old Mary simultaneously manipulates the kiddies so that the outing with daddy will be a complete disaster.  This part of the movie makes no sense to me—some weird thing about a crazy old beggar of a bird woman.  Mary sings that the saints and apostles actually smile on this woman and on all those who give her money for birdseed. In the awful scene that ensues, sound financial advice about compound interest becomes child abuse, London's curse of a pigeon population gets fed, and Mr. Banks gets fired.

Way to go, Mary.  I guess now that Dad is unemployed, the kids can always eat medicine and sugar, or go get full of hot air with your nutcase uncle.
 
If we're having Take the Kids to Work Day, why can't Jane go march with her mother?  It would be much more educational than hanging out on roofs with chimney sweeps. Sending the kids to work with Dad is an acknowledgement that what Dad does with his life is at least marginally important, whereas Mary never makes a single mention of what Mrs. Banks does, as if being a suffragette is something shameful.  Maybe Mary has voting rights already in the animated world, or is simply above such paltry concerns.  Mrs. Banks is clearly, like most leading suffragettes of the time, a brain-dead ditz who has difficulty speaking in complete sentences and whose stock answer to her husband is "whatever you say, dear."

By the end of the movie, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Banks have decided to turn over a new leaf and be more fun, involved parents.  However, Mr. Banks gets his job back but Mrs. Banks repudiates the cause of Votes for Women.  She takes off her suffragette banner and grabs a kite.  Who cares whether Jane ever gets the vote?  You ought to see her fly a kite!  Plus, she's such an attentive mother that she would never dream of nannies, nurseries, or day care! 

Gag me.  Did I mention that the book Mary Poppins, by P. L. Travers, is actually good?  It's genuinely charming, not roll-your-eyes corny.  The classic book 101 Dalmatians is also quite wonderful, and now that story is all about Glen Close slopping through goop in fright wigs.  And in The Swiss Family Robinson the book, the mother works alongside her husband and sons instead of sitting around under a pink parasol.  Let's hear it for Disneyfication.  At least they did justice to Narnia, in the first movie anyhow.