Mr. Banks vs. Mary Poppins

As one may have discovered by reading this here blog on occasion, I sometimes go by the nickname Mary Poppins. I like to think this is because I am “practically perfect in every way,” but really it was just that some friends thought I looked like her one day while wearing my glasses. “But Mary Poppins doesn’t wear glasses!” you might say. And you would be correct. But that’s not the point of the story.

The point of the story is this: while I was in the US in December I was able to see the movie Saving Mr. Banks (SMB)—the story of the transformation of PL Travers’s book Mary Poppins (MPB) into Disney’s classic film Marry Poppins (MPF). 

I have written before about MPF, so this blog began as a simple review of SMB. Had it ended that way it probably would have been much like this review from Jerry Griswold.

“The odd thing about Saving Mr. Banks is that in this contest between the creative side and the corporate side, we’re supposed to sympathize with corporate. We’re supposed to join in patronizing the writer. Over all, someone seeing the film would reasonably conclude that Travers was an extraordinarily difficult person and Disney a nice guy. And alas, given their reach, it may be the Disney folks who get the last word.”

But what seeing the movie really inspired in me was a desire to go back to the original. And so, I read the book.

What really struck me was that the things that I truly loved about the movie were absent. To me, the character of Mary Poppins in the film represents a critique of capitalism. She is creative without relying on money. She fraternizes with and is part of the working class. Yet she is the one who holds the power over Mr. Banks. And in the end, she teaches both the children and Mr. Banks that money, capitalism, banks, and hierarchy are not what lead to happiness.

Given that the SMB takes as one of its main themes the fact that Travers’s father taught her that money was not the most important thing in life, I expected the book to reflect this more. And yet, the book barely takes issue with money. Mr. Banks indeed works in a bank. But there is no ugly scene in MPB in which he tries to force his children to open an account. He is not fired from his job. He does not disrupt the ____ of the bank. “Saving Mr. Banks” could easily be read as the act of saving him from his deep entrenchment in material wealth. And yet the book clearly states that the family is of modest means, and does not portray Mr. Banks at all as being obsessed with or really interested in money outside of his job.

So then, I’m left to feel as if, given all this information, perhaps it was the Disney writers who were the ones who spun MPB into the magic tale that I love so much. They are the ones who wrote “Fidelity Fiduciary Bank” in which Mr. Banks pressures his son to invest his tuppence with lines like:

If you invest your tuppence

Wisely in the bank

Safe and sound

Soon that tuppence, 

Safely invested in the bank,

Will compound

And you'll achieve that sense of conquest

As your affluence expands

In the hands of the directors

Who invest as propriety demands

and

Now, Michael, 

When you deposit tuppence in a bank account

Soon you'll see

That it blooms into credit of a generous amount

Semiannually

And you'll achieve that sense of stature

As your influence expands

To the high financial strata

That established credit now commands

The song is both haunting and parodic, giving the viewer (at least a viewer like me) a sense that capitalism is ridiculous and scary. Michael’s refusal sends bank customers into a panic resulting in a run on the bank, and to me this indicates the very delicate construction, indeed the simulacrum, which is currency itself.

Shortly after, when he is fired for the run on the bank, Mr. Banks seems to recognize the ridiculousness, and is overcome by a fit of laugher, only managing to say “Supercalifragilisticexpedalidoucous” when Mr. Dawes, bank owner declares that the word doesn’t exist, Mr. Banks replies to he, Mr. Dawes, does not in fact exist. The man, the institution, the currency is a spectre, he declares, by my interpretation.

And then there is what I think is the subtlest, yet most critically nuanced piece of the film—suffragette Mrs. Banks’s song, Sister Suffragette. She insists that her domestic workers join in, when clearly the lyrics reflect the experience of white women of means (not to mention other forms of privilege).

No more the meek and mild subservients we!

We're fighting for our rights, militantly!

Never you fear!

So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!

Our daughters' daughters will adore us

And they'll sign in grateful chorus

"Well done! Well done! 

Well done Sister Suffragette!"

As SMB tells the story, Travers was opposed to the idea of Mrs. Banks as a suffragette. Thus, this critical aspect I attribute to Disney employees as well.

So then, we are left with this: Travers told tales of a magical nanny. Yet it was Disney and his employees, those who were on the “corporate” side that made the film into what I read as an imaginative and savvy critique of capitalism and class stratification. This goes far beyond a reading of “Travers as an extraordinarily difficult person and Disney a nice guy.” It is confounding given what I know of the Disney corporation today. So, in sum, what I must say about that film is that I am disappointed. I hoped it would shed light on how such a company would promote these ideals in film, but I walked away (from the film and the book) feeling even more utterly confused as to how this film took the form it did.

And even after reading the book, I still just don't get what's up with Admiral Boom.