Devon Wolfe Disney's Mary Poppins (1964)

Disney's Mary Poppins (1964)

I always wondered how authors could possibly hate when their books are created into a movie – isn’t that every author’s dream, to have their work be so successful it is taken to the big screens? After watching Disney’s version of Mary Poppins, I now understand why. 

Travers’ book is not necessarily for children, as we spoke about in relation to her article “I Never Wrote for Children”; however, Disney’s production is just that – a nothing but entertaining, sweet, heartwarming, children’s film. Travers’ characters are far more complex, and while Julie Andrews is sweet, she is a simplified version of Mary Poppins, and representative of all that is lost from the book. In the book, Mary Poppins was strict, harsh, all while maintaining a mature level of magical powers; as a businessman, perhaps Walt Disney wanted to guarantee the protagonist of the film was likable, and therefore made Julia Andrews sweet and patient. I don’t necessarily blame him. However, it is unfortunate to see how there is so much lost in translation between the book and film. On a broader level, the stark differences between Travers’ Mary Poppins and Disney’s Mary Poppins have made me ask: when else have I read the washed-over version, the “fake” version? It seems, at least for me, that the only quality Mary Poppins retains in the film is her vanity and magical nanny powers. Julie Andrews is absolutely adorable and sweet to the bone, but this doesn’t at all align with the mannerisms of Travers’ Mary Poppins.

In addition, one of my favorite parts of Mary Poppins was the perfect balance between melancholy and fun, which is symbolic of childhood itself. The book consistently intertwines amusement, fantasy, realism, and fear, since childhood is all about learning about all these things. Yet Disney completely washes any depth and pessimistic spirit to the film; while this makes the songs and the film extremely light-hearted and joyful to watch (I mean there’s seriously something wrong with you if you didn’t smile during  the spoonful of sugar song), it simultaneously loses its uniqueness and complexity. The animations and entertainment are so in-your-face that the movie no longer honors the power of children and their all-encompassing wisdom and intelligence.

After watching the film, I can confidently say that if authors truly care about retaining their vision and story, then anyvisual production of their text is and dangerous. Books are meant to leave readers to imagine the story themselves; while one might say that Walt Disney just took his vision of Mary Poppins and ran with it, he also lost the essence of the story. Authors like Travers, who do not want the values and lessons they wrote about to be distorted, should not let their books be reproduced, and I don’t blame them. When you think about playing the game “telephone”, what is said on the other end rarely resembles what it started out as; therefore, when these stories are highly personal, any room for translation is harmful and offensive.