Rylee Bowen Disney's Mary Poppins

Disney's Mary Poppins was very different than I remember. It was heavily changed to make the values more "disney," but the story is still very controversial today. The movie seems to mock the suffragette movement and the traditional roles of males and females. Mrs. Banks seems almost scared of her husband and Mr. Banks even sings about how lucky he is to be a man. Mary Poppins is thrust into the "ideal" woman role and as Disney tries to make her a role model for women everywhere. It also seemed like Disney only incorporated the chalk scene to show off the animation. It felt very long, repetitive, and it didn't advance the story. 


In general, Mary Poppins seems a lot less vain and mean in the movie than the book, but she does have a few moments where she relates to her book character. For example, in the scene where Mary Poppins meets Mr. Banks, she lives up to how her character is portrayed in the book. She is extremely confident in her abilities and intentionally messes with Mr. Bank and his list. She even goes as far to question his strange behaviors when he tries to look for evidence that he ripped it up. To top of her show, she tells him that she will need a week to make sure she likes being a nanny for the Bank family. Another time she does this is when she is examining her room. She looks at the small mirror on her wall and replaces it with a huge mirror. She later pulls out another mirror just to glance at herself and calls herself "practically perfect in every way." Mary Poppins is very full of herself, but Disney made it nicer so the audience would like and respect her more, because vanity is viewed as a negative trait.

My favorite scene in the entire movie was the nanny scene at the beginning. First of all, why do so many women want to be nannies for this family? Also, when the wind actually blows them away, why don't they react??? The kids just stare down laughing at them until the music changes and we see Mary Poppins floating out of the sky. This scene was so ridiculous, I think it actually worked. It made me laugh.

Something that really surprised me was how drastically the male characters were changed. Mr. Banks and Bert were major characters in the movie, while they were secondary characters in the book. Disney tried to add a hint of romance to the movie between Mary Poppins and Bert, but it felt forced and showed that stories need a man to save the day. This of course is a major theme in Disney, but it felt heavily pushed in the movie.

I enjoyed watching this film. I thought it told a good story but really let me down with the strict gender themes.