An “adult” viewing of the time honored Mary Poppins reveals many things previously unseen. My childhood self learned the catchy songs without much thought as to what any of it actually meant. Plot was secondary as I anxiously awaited the moment where the Banks children would jump into the cartoon world. Most of the plot can be boiled down to one of the most notable quotes, “let’s go fly a kite”. If you approach life in a jovial, and carefree manner, life will give the same joy back to you. It will send your spirits soaring. But as I reflect on it now, that message is still there, but in the background are much deeper discussions of gender, class, and inequity. This interplay between innocent playfulness and a broader sense of the political turbulence would not have been inappropriate for a children’s movie of the 1960’s, when it would not have been unusual for a child to come inside from a game of tag to snippets of a news bulletin covering explosions in Black churches or riots in the cities. Mary Poppins, likewise, placed in the periphery of its fancy-free adventure marks the deeply seated gender and economic conditions of the day.
The gender politics of the day can be viewed through the lens of the two Banks parents. Mrs. Banks carries the same marked aloofness from the text into the film, at the start she lost her two children and decided to do nothing about it. Additionally, she declares her own perceived inadequacy to her husband that if she had to find the new nanny she would have, “muddled the whole thing”. However she is brought into the 1960’s by being molded into a passionate suffragette. She croons a rather Me-Too era lyric, “though we adore men individually we agree that as a group they're rather stupid!” Though she is fighting for women to have power in broader society, Mr. Banks still holds absolute power of the Banks family. He, misogynistically, declares, “It's the age of men! I'm the lord of my castle the sov'reign, the liege! I treat my subjects: servants, children, wife with a firm but gentle hand. Noblesse oblige!” He demands that the same order that dictates his work should permeate his home life. This sternness sets up a stark contrast with Mary Poppins’ sunny disposition. Mary Poppins would not seem so cheery if Mr. Banks was not so stern.
Additionally, furthering the notion that Disney movies are a broad social commentary, there is also the notion of class inequity. To Disneyfy Travers’s darker Poppins, the Banks’ financial struggle is erased in the film—“erased” may be a bit extreme, more like elevated from middle class struggles to upper class ones.Their house is beautifully decorated and the Banks children are dressed immaculately. Mr. Banks’s eventual discharge from the bank could threaten this comfortable-bordering-on-fancy lifestyle. This, in contrast with, perhaps Mary Poppins’s greatest ally, Bert’s more ragged appearance and begging for any loose change displays vast economic inequity.
Having now become acquainted with the book on which the movie is based as well as the life of its author, P. L. Travers, I can see how this sort of dark cloud surrounding the movie would exist. Travers’s Poppins was a much harsher nanny, less magical and more domineering. Travers struggled with being a female writer in a male-dominated publishing industry, and she experienced the same sort of marginalization as her consulting work on the Disney film was casually dismissed. Disney, of course, tried its best to purge Travers’s work of any of its darker elements, but the dissatisfaction with the world was woven into the fabric of the text. So, in a sense, Disney was the sugar to Travers’s medicine for her pessimistic worldview due to the emptiness of her childhood, and the sugar certainly helped the medicine go down.
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