Was Mary Poppins an attack on fatherhood
(youtu.be)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (12)
sorted by:
I watched this movie way too much as a kid. It's the opposite, the movie is a cautionary tale about missing parenthood. This is just clickbait video essay slop.
Both parents are too busy for their kids, the father cares more about the bank and when he finally spends time with them its to teach his kids about the bank. The mother is too busy being a suffragette to spend any time with the kids, so they need a nanny to keep them locked up.
Mary Poppins enters as the nanny and shows the kids fun, adventure, and excitement. The father disapproves because the kids aren't learning to be bankers like him. When Mary Poppins gets him to take the kids to the bank with him, he learns why the bank is no place for children and gets in a ton of trouble. Before the long walk to his firing, Bert teaches the father about fatherhood and how he can connect with his children.
On the long walk, the father reflects on all he has learned. By the time he actually gets fired, he is overjoyed because now he gets to spend more time with his children.
At the end Mary Poppins sees a father finally stepping up and being a father, her work done, she moves on.
As a bonus, after the father's joy rubs off on the bankers, he gets reinstated. The father comes away still employed and able to provide for his family, with a brand new outlook on fatherhood and excitement for his children.
In the process of my own reply I also remembered this bit where Bert catches up to the kids after the fracas at the bank. The entire speech is sympathetic to a father's lot as a hard worker and a man's role as a silent sufferer and final fallback.
This part stuck somewhere in my psyche through the years and remains a good description of manhood, so this movie can't be all that subversive. It even starts playing George's song motif in the background on this bit. Highly sympathetic.
I don't remember the movie, but I do find it interesting how there were so few mentions of the mother throughout your summary. It makes it seems like she is constantly absentee and useless for the well-being of her own family. Is she even present during the finale, or during any time while George is unemployed? Was there any indication whatsoever that she could serve as a pillar while her husband was unable to be one?
It really does sound like an interesting portrayal of a female character, at least. Not something you'd often see in modern media.
she really is a side character. She hardly shows up and is just as absent as the father too busy being a suffragette. Only she doesn't get the redemption arc the father does.
The fact that the mother's absenteeism requires the hiring of a nanny is an oddity that goes just as unexamined in the movie as in Heretic's post, funnily enough. In retrospect, I guess this came out at a time when the idea of criticising a suffragette for being a suffragette was absolutely out of the question. Still, I think the absence of any implied criticism for the mother is not necessarily support for her lifestyle. I maintain she is depicted as faintly stupid and ridiculous: 'We are all going to throw things at the prime minister!' 'I am off to lead my imprisoned sisters in song...!' ...These are the daily activities that keep her from her children.
Still, there's a part in the dad's song where she says to him 'the children are missing!' and he just responds 'splendid, splendid' because he's too preoccupied singing his own song about his life. But a similar example happens in her own song about votes for women, where the (old) nanny tells her the kids are missing and she ignores it.
She is present in the finale, where the family have an outing together at the park to fly a kite, in a song which is once again led by the father George. I had forgotten that George even gets his job back in this scene. As Heretic says it really seems more like the message is about family cohesion. EDIT: holy shit, she even takes her 'Votes For Women' sash and uses it as the improvised tail for the kite... I mean if we're talking messages... Or maybe she thinks it's good feminist advertising, idk, but it's obviously unreadable once the kite is in the air.
A reminder this manifests in the elder banker literally dying from laughter after Banks tells him the joke about the wooden leg named Smith. Elder banker was also played by Dick Van Dyke.