How Disney Accidentally Made A Socialist Masterpiece With ‘Mary Poppins’
Partway through Mary Poppins, a piece of mass-market entertainment created and distributed by one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world, a young boy demonstrates the fragile nature of global capitalism.
His name is Michael Banks, and he is the film’s cherubic hero, a well-meaning but chaotic lad who finds himself in possession of a tuppence. He wants to spend the money on a bag of seed to feed to the pigeons, but his father, the stern Mr Banks, has other ideas, and takes him to the bank at which he works. There, Mr Banks says, the boy will learn the importance of saving, of interest, and of the financial concerns that keep the wheels of the British Empire turning.
But the bank is no shining example of the British spirit. As depicted by director Robert Stevenson, the place is a kind of bureaucratic hell, populated by powerful old men who are virtually indistinguishable from one another. The oldest and most powerful of the men, Mr Dawes, played under heavy prosthetics by Dick Van Dyke, can barely support himself without the aid of a cane. When his attention is called to the Banks boy’s tuppence, he becomes obsessed by it, snatching the coin from his hands.
In his age, and in his greed, Dawes is capitalism. And, like capitalism, his power is illusory. When he is challenged by the young Banks boy, he has no method of recourse — as Michael begs for his coin back, other bank customers hear him. Fearing that the system of the bank is failing, they desperately begin to withdraw their money, prompting a mass bank run, in turn actualising the very failure that they feared. The once clean and sterile world of the bank becomes a mass of screaming customers, papers flying, notes fluttering to the floor.
The financial system of the bank dissipates not through force. It dissipates because people stop believing in it. In that way, the scene calls to mind the words of anarchist David Graeber: that the secret truth of the world is that we have made it, and can remake it however we want. All it takes to unpick a system that has become so ubiquitous to seem totally lacking in alternatives is one young boy, begging for the return of his tuppence.
Class Consciousness And Spoonfuls of Sugar
The scene is not an anomaly. A similarly subversive piece of social commentary occurs early on, when we meet Mrs Banks, the film’s matriarch and an active member of the women’s liberation movement. Dressed in a sash, singing about the activism of Emmeline Pankhurst, she claims to love men “individually”, but to distrust their power structurally.
The depiction of Mrs Banks’ activism alone is a daring position for a film to have taken in 1964, but Mary Poppins goes further. Though devoted to the cause of liberation, Mrs Banks still relies on housekeepers, a team of maids and cooks. When she convinces them to sing along with her about the need to further equality, they roll their eyes. They understand, as the film does, that Mrs Banks’ activism lacks class consciousness.
THE DEPICTION OF MRS BANKS’ ACTIVISM ALONE IS A DARING POSITION FOR A FILM TO HAVE TAKEN IN 1964.
Her calls for equality are narrow in scope — she wants the vote, but she has not yet analysed her own role in the systems that oppress and undermine authority. Singing is all well and good, but it means nothing if it isn’t backed up with an understanding of the way capital subjugates. And when the song is over, Mrs Banks triumphant, the cause seemingly furthered, the ignored maids scuttle back to the kitchen, their needs not considered, let alone met.
The End Of The Ideological Blockbuster
Of course, Mary Poppins is an imperfect film, at least ideologically. Though the titular hero teaches Mr Banks that work isn’t everything, she still believes that it is something — her call is for one of balance, not the destruction of the systems of power that subjugate. The film ends on a note of unity, yes, but the unity of the nuclear family, one still deeply coded with the values of the patriarchy and the capitalistic work ethic.
And yet there is still something miraculous about Mary Poppins‘ social messaging, even if it comes through only in fits and bursts. Indeed, it is not clear how the social subtext of Mary Poppins got past Disney at all; one gets the sense that the big-wigs may have simply failed to notice it.
What is clear is that in the years since the film’s release, the conglomerate has issued something of a course correction. Mary Poppins Returns, the ill-received sequel starring Emily Blunt, contains nothing in the way of the original’s class consciousness.
In the film, the bank is still a symbol of insidious power — Returns opens with the Banks family learning that they are in significant debt, and that their house may soon be repossessed — but this power is never challenged. Indeed, the film ends with the bank’s needs being fulfilled — not the Banks’ — as the house is saved by the very tuppence that young Michael invested all those years ago in the original film — the subversive coin that undid an entire system is now propping it back up.
Saving Mr Banks, a film about the making of Mary Poppins, goes even further. In that film, Walt Disney is depicted as a kindly benefactor. He is as rich as Mr Dawes, and as powerful, but there are no cracks in his suit of armour — only kindness. The systems of capital that he lords over are disguised as neon-tinted dreams of stardom and success.
Nor are Mary Poppins Returns and Saving Mr Banks anomalies. Fearing social backlash, Hollywood has become less adventurous in its social messaging. One need only look at the process of de-politicisation that takes place when Marvel comics are adapted for the screen; the stripping away of the subversive subtext of comic book writers like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore. Captain Marvel, a vision of Utopic equality, is now an advert for the American air force. Villains are now grand, uncomplicated titans, their roles in vast systems of capital and control rarely analysed.
Cinema doesn’t have to be like this. If Mary Poppins proves anything, it’s that mass-entertainment and ideological critique do not need to be pulled apart; that we can take our socially-conscious subversion with, if necessary, a spoonful of sugar to help it go down.
Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.
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