"As I expected, Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way."
It’s one of the most iconic film images of all time:
Mary Poppins arriving at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, gracefully windswept into our lives.
"Perhaps it's a witch!"
"Of course not, witches have brooms!"
Mary Poppins arrives because the Banks family --
like most of the human race --
is in trouble.
Mary is here to save us.
And it’s not just the children who need rescuing,
but the grown-ups most of all.
"What's wrong with her?"
"She's as happy as a cricket.
As a matter of fact, since you hired Mary Poppins,
the most extraordinary thing has come over the household."
Mary Poppins is really a kind of nanny of the soul.
"Everything is possible.
Even the impossible."
With each song-centered adventure,
she imparts a deeper lesson about perspective, wisdom and spirituality.
"Enough is as good as a feast."
Fundamentally, Mary teaches us to stop being so adult about everything --
she reveals that logic can only take us so far,
and we’ve been brainwashed by our grown-up world
into forgetting all of the most important things.
Mary helps us re-learn those truths we were born knowing --
and see the world like a child does.
"Don’t we all need to be reminded of magic in life?
We all need that.
We all need a Mary Poppins in our life."
So here’s our take on the deeper philosophy of Mary Poppins
and why we all need this super-nanny to wake us from our sleepwalking existence.
"You know what I think?
It's that woman, Mary Poppins.
From the moment she steps into this house, things began to happen to me!"
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Mary Poppins’ deeper purpose is to make us see that we’re actually asleep.
In the book by P.L.
Travers, babies are born knowing everything.
They know how to listen to the wind and speak with the birds.
But as they grow older, they forget everything important.
"Why on earth did we save this old... broken thing?"
"Don't you remember that kite?
We used to love flying that with mother and father."
"But it won't fly anymore."
Mary Poppins is called “The Great Exception”
because she’s the only adult who remembers the magical knowledge of infants.
To understand Mary Poppins, we have to look at her creator, Pamela Travers.
Travers was a believer in mysticism, and a follower of a guru named G.I.
Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff believed mankind lived in a state of sleep.
And he taught that most people behave like unconscious automatons,
only seeing the world through their limited, daily lives.
"Sometimes a person we love, through no fault of his own,
can't see past the end of his nose."
Mr. Banks believes his life is in order,
"I run my home precisely on schedule."
but he barely participates in his life at all.
"Dear, it's about the children."
"Yes, yes, yes."
He helps the nanny with her suitcase, but he doesn’t realize she’s leaving.
"Oh?
She's left us, hasn't she?"
"Yes dear, only just."
When Admiral Boom blows his cannon, the Banks' house erupts with chaos.
But Mr. Banks either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care.
Mr. Banks is trapped.
"Father in a cage?"
"He makes cages in all sizes and shapes, you know.
Bank-shaped, some of them."
Mary Poppins comes to 17 Cherry Tree Lane not just for the children --
but, primarily, to wake up the parents.
"However did you manage it?"
"Manage what?"
"You must have put the idea in his head somehow."
She teaches them to widen their perspective --
to see more of life.
In Mary Poppins Returns, Jane and Michael are the grown ups,
and now they believe they imagined their magical adventures
with their flying caretaker.
Michael is a widower with three kids of his own,
but the hardships of the Great Depression have made his two eldest children far too
grown-up --
"We have grown up a good deal in the past year."
"Well, we'll have to see what can be done about that."
so they need Mary Poppins to help them re-access the power of a child’s perspective.
Mary Poppins flies over daily concerns and sees the world from above.
She teaches the kids not to take life too seriously,
[Singing] "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
and that anything is possible.
[Singing] "Can you imagine that?"
Mary isn’t restricted by the rules of physics as we know them.
Her magical abilities suggest that,
if we could free our minds from these false restrictions --
we too could unlock the power to fly, turn back time, or see the future.
[Singing] "I suspect, and I'm never incorrect,
that you're far too old to give in to imagination."
[Dolphin clicks] "No, not yet."
When we think of Mary Poppins, the image that springs to mind
is a smiling, singing, charming woman.
[Singing] "No wonder that it's Mary that we love."
But the original character, at her core, is actually pretty dark.
P.L.
Travers describes Poppins in her novels as a severe mentor
who "never wastes time being nice."
In the book, she doesn't glide smoothly toward the Banks house;
the wind flings her violently against it.
Julie Andrews and Emily Blunt portray a much kinder Mary,
who graces us with smiles,
but this tough love approach is still apparent in the films.
"My goodness, Annabel.
What have you done to your clothes?
You could grow a garden in that much soil.
And John -- yes, just as filthy."
When she meets the Banks children, she begins by criticizing their manners.
"Close your mouth, please, Michael, we are not a codfish."
"Close your mouth, please, Michael, we are still not a codfish."
In the film Saving Mr. Banks, Travers tells her driver, Ralph,
that she cares more for rain than sun.
"I'd so much rather be accountable for the rain."
"Oh, that's sad."
"Sad is entirely the wrong emotion."
The deeper symbolism behind Travers’ fondness for rain
is that the difficulties in our lives make us grow.
So, we shouldn’t be afraid of storms in our lives
or try to avoid feeling pain, because this makes us alive.
At the same time, after Travers articulates her philosophy in Saving Mr. Banks,
"The rain brings life."
Ralph responds,
"So does the sun."
And this understanding, that rain and sun are needed to make flowers grow,
is what underpins Disney’s version of Mary.
The character, as brought to life by Andrews and Blunt,
certainly maintains some of the original character’s rainy disposition
--
"You seem hardly to have aged at all."
"Really?
How incredible rude.
One never discusses a woman's age, Michael."
and she comes to us via London’s foggy sky.
"You need to be more careful,
when the wind rises, George, you nearly lost your kite.
And you two nearly lost your Georgie.
He might have got away completely
had I not been holding on to the other end of that string."
But underneath that demeanor, she brings sunshine.
So Mary Poppins is full of contradictions.
"I am kind but extremely firm."
She’s at once the image of the firm, strict nanny that Mr. Banks wants,
[Singing] "Tradition discipline and rules must be the tools."
the epitome of British manners and propriety.
"I have no intention of making a spectacle of myself, thank you."
"Oh, no, I couldn't possibly -- D-flat major."
And at the same time, underneath this disciplinarian exterior,
she’s a kid’s dream nanny,
opening them up to a free-wheeling world of adventure.
"It is wonderful to see you."
"Yes, it is, isn't it?"
"Our first lesson is called 'well-begun is half-done.'"
"I don't like the sound of that."
"Otherwise entitled 'let's tidy up the nursery.'"
Like the best instructors, Mary teaches without making us feel we’re learning.
"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.
You find the fun, and... snap!
The job's a game!"
She’s the master of the metaphorical spoonful of sugar.
[Singing] "Helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way."
In fact, most of Mary’s lessons are taught through songs.
In Mary Poppins Returns, each musical number contains a deep life lesson:
like to embrace imagination, not to judge a book by its cover,
"Never just things by their appearance."
to turn our usual perspective upside down,
and to remember that the people we love are never lost,
[Singing] "Nothing's gone forever, only out of place."
but always inside of us.
It’s a well-known truth that children do learn better through music.
Mary uses songs to control the children,
coaxing them to clean the nursery or go to sleep.
She uses music to manipulate Mr. Banks as well,
"It's time they learned to walk in your steps."
"Footsteps?"
hijacking his own song to trick him into taking an outing with the children.
"At my side, where are we going?"
"To the banks, of course, exactly as you proposed."
"I proposed?"
"Of course."
But symbolically, Mary’s education through singing also reminds us
that learning shouldn’t be a chore -- gaining wisdom is a joyful experience.
Another trait that makes Mary a great teacher is
that she doesn’t step in and solve problems for her charges.
"What an impertinent thing to say!
Me, putting ideas into people's heads?
Really?"
Crucially, Mary never explains.
"I never explain anything."
"How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
What seems at first to be a stubborn attitude,
actually reflects Mary’s skills as an instructor --
she lets people find their way without too much interference.
In Mary Poppins Returns, she allows the children to become lost in the fog,
so that they can feel what it is to be lost.
Far from teaching Mr. Banks’s logic-ruled philosophy of the world,
Mary Poppins prefers nonsense.
"You know, you can say it backwards, which is 'Dociousaliexpiistifragicalirupes,'
but that's going to be too far, don't you think?"
"Indubitably."
Nonsense -- that wisdom of children’s stories --
may seem to adults like gibberish,
"So you've been off filling the children's heads
with stuff of nonsense."
but is actually a subversive reversal of sense, and that’s at the heart Mary’s lessons.
"It is a game, isn't it, Mary Poppins?"
"Well, it depends on your point of view."
This prim, respectable nanny actually overturns the conventions of her society.
She presents herself as an extremely proper member of the social structure,
"A respectable person like me, in a horse race?
How dare you suggest such a thing."
which gets her hired as a nanny, without any references.
"Oh, I make it a point never to give references."
Then, in her role, she subtly undoes her pupils’ allegiance to restrictive norms.
"If we must we must."
There’s a class commentary embedded into the Mary Poppins story.
While we think of upper-middle class people like the Banks family
as being better off than working class folks like Bert,
it’s the nanny and the brotherhood of chimney sweeps,
or, in Mary Poppins Returns, lamplighters,
who really know what’s going on.
They live in a secret world above us, performing extraordinary feats,
while the upper classes are caged in their nice houses.
Mary teaches the children to respect people from all walks of life.
This lesson is embodied by one of the most epic conflicts
ever burned into celluloid: the battle for Michael’s tuppence.
While on an outing with his father, Michael wants to spend his money
to feed the birds, as Mary Poppins suggested.
[Singing] "Feed the birds."
But Mr. Banks is appalled.
"Waste your money on a lot of ragamuffin birds?!
Certainly not!"
To him, the birds are freeloading creatures who don’t contribute to British civilization.
Instead, he encourages Michael to entrust his money to the bank.
"You see, Michael?
You'll be part of Railways to Africa!"
The bankers admonish the boy.
"Feed the birds and what have you got?
Fat birds."
But remember, in this story, it’s the children who are wise
and the adults who are fools.
Michael isn’t taken in by abstract notions like building the British Empire --
he only sees a kind old woman surrounded by hungry birds.
So Mary helps the Banks family wake up by increasing their sympathy and respect for
others,
and the movie teaches that our bonds with the people we love
are what’s most valuable.
"Bert, do you think father really needs our help?"
"Well, not my place to say.
I only observed it a father can always do with a bit of help."
Being a nanny has several advantages for Mary Poppins’ educational agenda --
it’s one of the few respectable professions for a single woman of her era,
and allows her to move from home to home, helping as many children as possible.
But nannying also comes with a price.
A nanny raises children who can never be hers,
and eventually she has to cut ties.
Mary holds the children at arm’s length, so they won’t become too attached.
"She doesn't care what happens to us."
"She only promised to stay till the wind changed.
Isn't that right, Mary Poppins?"
"Will you bring my hatstand, please?"
And we sense this distance is for her own protection as well.
"And what would happen to me, may I ask, if I loved all the children I say goodbye
to?"
As soon as she’s restored the family’s happiness,
the wind has changed -- or the door has opened --
and it’s time for her to go.
"I shall stay until the wind changes."
So Mary’s role is one of sacrifice -- she never gets to enjoy the fruits of her
labor.
Still, this transience is, in a sense, not significant because --
in Mary’s and Travers’ philosophy -- we are all one.
As Travers writes in the book,
"We are all made of the same stuff... all moving to the same end.
Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child."
So -- for Travers and for Mary -- tapping into this magical oneness
allows us to open up to the greater mysteries, and gives us a deep inner peace.
"They think more of their father than they do of you."
"That's as it should be."
In our own lives, it’s easy to become short-sighted,
to focus solely on work and duty, and become automatons -- not really alive.
This is why we need Mary -- to wake us from our spiritual slumber --
to remind us of what we used to know, but have been gradually forgetting
since the day we were born.
She shows us that supposedly trivial things like dancing, nonsense, and flying kites
are what make life worthwhile.
That the world is alive with magic, and that, even if we lose everything else,
the people we love are all that we need.
In other words, to live a wakeful life, we pretty much just have to remember
how we feel when we watch Mary Poppins.
"Anything for you, Mary Poppins."
"You're our favourite person."
It's Debra.
And Susannah.
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