Mary Poppins!. Spoiler alert: we both LOVE this movie. And we have complicated feelings about the books. Plus we strive to answer the burning questions: Was Winifred a joke? How many times will Kaylia tell the “cow story”? When is it ok to prank the actors? Just how vain was Mary Poppins? Is it ever ok to make a joke about stealing Jello from cancer patients? And will Kaylia be able to make it through the whole episode without singing? Join us!
Show Notes and Sources
Yes, Kaylia said “second person pronoun” but she clearly meant “second person perspective.” Oops!
FYI: First, second, and third person are ways of describing points of view. First person is the “I/we” perspective. Second person is the “you” perspective. Third person is the “he/she/it/they” perspective.
Also, YES we mixed up Edwardian and Victorian England… probably because neither of us are English and we were both so passionate about the movie that we got overexcited. Another… “oops!”
More Show Notes:
The untimely deaths of chimney sweeps
More info on the invention of buses than you probably wanted or needed.
More about “Bad Tuesday”: The revisions were written by Travers herself. In the original version, Mary Poppins and the children go round the work with a magical compass, encountering stereotypical Eskimos, Native Americans, blacks (who speak nonstandard English and eat watermelon), and Chinese people. In the 1981 version, Mary Poppins and the children instead encounter a Polar Bear, Macaws, a Panda Bear, and a Dolphin, who all speak standard English. Given the description of where the dolphin is and what it is doing, it should really have been a California sea lion…
Travers later defended her racial stereotypes and occasional bits of racist language in the books by commenting that the children who read the books never complained. That might be true, but it is equally possible that child readers didn’t understand what they were reading, or never thought to question an adult about it, or were unwilling to talk to an adult about it, or, like many readers or viewers today, chose to enjoy the books despite any problematic elements. It’s also true that these descriptions are one reason why some libraries continued to ban all of the Mary Poppins books even after the revised edition was released. Original Article Here
Other sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins_(book_series)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mary-Poppins-by-Travers
https://bookriot.com/2019/08/29/mary-poppins-film-versus-books/
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