Mary Poppins branded racist by US academic - for 'blacking up' in iconic sweeps' rooftop scene
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Dame Julie Andrews’ performance as Mary Poppins is racist, says a US academic who accuses her of ‘blacking up’ when her face is covered with soot as she dances with chimney sweeps.
The scene in which Poppins joins Dick Van Dyke’s Bert and his fellow sweeps on a rooftop for the song Step In Time is one of the best-loved moments in the 1964 Disney classic.
But writing in the New York Times under the headline ‘Mary Poppins, and a Nanny’s Shameful Flirting With Blackface,’ Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner attacks the scene. Not surprisingly, the film’s legions of devoted fans have reacted with disbelief.
But he writes: ‘Her face gets covered with soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks and gets even blacker.’
He also links the scene to racism in the books by PL Travers, particularly in the 1943 novel Mary Poppins Opens The Door when a housemaid screams at a sweep: ‘Don’t touch me, you black heathen.’
He writes: ‘The 1964 film replays this racial panic in a farcical key. When the dark figures of the chimney Step in Time on a roof, a naval buffoon, Admiral Boom shouts, “We’re being attacked by Hottentots!” and orders his cannon to be fired at the “cheeky devils”.
We’re in on the joke, such as it is: These aren’t really black Africans; they’re grinning white dancers in blackface. It’s a parody of black menace; it’s even posted on a white nationalist website as evidence of the film’s racial hierarchy.’
Extraordinarily, Pollack-Pelzner has even found fault with the recently released sequel Mary Poppins Returns, starring Emily Blunt.
He said he was surprised by the song A Cover Is Not The Book because of its reference to a wealthy widow called Hyacinth Macaw, who wears ‘only a smile’ plus ‘two feathers and a leaf’.
In the original 1934 book Mary Poppins, the character is a ‘scantily clad negro lady’ who addressed the nanny in a ‘minstrel dialect.’ The racial references were removed in a 1981 revision of the book.
Fans online have reacted with fury to the professor’s views. One derided the piece as ‘a candidate for the stupidest New York Times article for some time’.
Another said: ‘Mary Poppins wasn’t flirting with face! It was soot in their faces from being up a chimney!!!! Stop spreading racism claims on non-racist things like this.’ A third wrote: ‘Come on now, leave Mary Poppins out of this! Chimney sweeps in London DID have coal dust on their faces. Didn’t make them, or Mary for that matter, racist.’
Last night, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, who collaborated on a 2004 stage adaptation of Mary Poppins that returns to the West End later this year, said the scene when the nanny puts soot on her face is meant to be a gesture of support for the sweeps.
‘All she wants to do is join the sweeps and show them she isn’t standing apart – that she wants to belong to that group. It’s a touching scene and it displays a warm friendliness towards the sweeps.
‘One of the subtexts of the whole thing is that the sweeps are these marvellous people, which is Travers’s way of saying there is no such thing as an ordinary man and woman.’
The film remains one of the most successful ever made and picked up five Oscars, including Best Actress for Dame Julie.
The sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, which features cameos from Meryl Streep and Van Dyke, has taken £245 million worldwide.
Last night, Dr Pollack-Pelzner, who is based at Linfield College, Oregon, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I don’t like hearing that something I loved and that something that was important to me in my childhood might be more troubling than I assumed. So I appreciate the strength of the reaction.
‘I just hope some of that energy can go to Disney as well and ask them to think a little bit more about how their new movies connect with the past.’
Dame Julie was unavailable for comment last night.
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Oh give me a freakin' break. This "professor" is another example of a snowflake.
Why is this even newsworthy? One stupid professor from some little liberal arts school says something and the world freaks out?
There are many topics in the news that aren't "newsworthy", yet they remain on front pages for weeks. That's life. And, I haven't seen anyone freak out.
When you start to criticize Trump you will have a shred of believability.
I'm not sure what the basis is for you to decry the state of the news media.
This story is on the front of many papers (even British ones) and trending on Twitter.
BF you are complaining about the media not being accurate. We have a White House that lies many times every day. Yet you never say a word about it. It is incongruous.
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[other members are not the topic...]
There are some of us who remember true journalism when it was based upon facts.
For the most part, what presents itself as journalism today is nothing more than (some) facts interspersed with biased opinion. That's why I feel that it's extremely important to read ALL sides of each issue before forming an opinion. Unfortunately, critical thinking and reading skills are no longer encouraged in much of academia, and the failure starts in grammar school.
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You should embrace facts instead of creating a strawman army,
Sorry, but Snopes and Politifact are well know far left biased "non" fact checking sites.
I posted a meme to have a visual of the lunacy of the left and who the face of that left is. Nowhere in that meme did it try to prove or disprove anything about Uranium.
Get over it...
Is NPR also liberally biased?
Yes...very much so.
Again, I did not post the meme to prove or disprove anything, only to show the lunacy of the left, the face of that left, and how THEY will try and tie anything to Trump, displaying chronic TDS.
Again, get over it.
Yes.
Doesn't matter that some push a lie, everything used to prove it is a lie is liberally biased.
Some think they can get away with pushing whatever narrative they want using the excuse that everyone is against them to begin with.
Just like trump pushing the fake news narrative, some eat it up and believe it as gospel.
Is NPR also liberally biased?
You are beating your head against a brick wall by patronizing these rwnjs. It is plain reality that the right routinely find themselves on the side that any rational thinking person finds socially loathsome (like supporting our adversaries, caging children, further enriching the obscenely wealthy, etc.). That a news agency would end up alluding to this reality in the body of their reporting is inevitable and expected.
There is a constant gaslighting and misinformation effort that place from the right here. I would call it a campaign but it is not organized. It is more of a desperate flailing that happens due to a lack of any better options for them when the truth lands so hard on them.
I'm sure most forums are having trouble dealing with this nonsense on such a constant basis.
and that poster constantly posts anti Trump rhetoric day in and day out, all because he's mad the President is a politician and lies, and he is not Hillary.
There....finished the sentence correctly for you.
You're welcome.
I guess that everyone can't be FoxNews. Everyone looks like a lefty when that is your center.
I'm fascinated with why liberals regularly bring up Fox News as though it's some badge of moral superiority. It seems to happen more often when they find themselves proven wrong.
Fox News is the junk food of media.
It's a shame that people listen to NPR.
Since the sources you cited are all progressive leftist biased, as you normally do when trying to refute others, of course you would use them. You want people to "embrace facts", perhaps try posting sources that are more equally balanced. As such, credibility is questionable and meaningless...
What's that saying? Truth has a liberal bias?
'What's that saying? Truth has a liberal bias?'
That, and reality.
Which are anathema to Rump and his supporters
What sources would you recommend?
Gotta disagree with ya a bit. Newsagencies like all businesses are driven by profit, partisan politics is the method by which those profits are obtained.
IMO such a news organization would go bankrupt in short order because it wouldn't appeal to the personal biases of consumers on either side of issues
This is why I lean toward the BBC/NPR for my news because they do not have editorial editorial bias driven by their advertisers. They are publically-owned and need to have high journalistic standards to keep their voluntary public support and public funding. This fact is born out by the number of journalism awards that they have earned.
You asked a question. You got an answer. You didn't like the answer, so you immediately started squawking "Fox News, Fox News" like it has anything to do with your original question.
Sadly, that has become an almost completely predictable response for liberals who get answers they don't like.
They have a shitload of competition in that space, including but not limited to CNN, NBC, MSNBC, HuffyPo and NYT. This is the problem. It is well documented. Yes, NPR is part of that problem. The larger problem is educated Americans who refuse to acknowledge bias as long as they agree with it.
The problem is pervasive (and perverse) enough that we now have supposedly mainstream media outlets attempting to defend their bias instead of denying or correcting it.
A media industry that cannot be trusted undermines democracy just as seriously as media wholly under government control.
Well spotted.
Reuters. Financial Times. The Economist. There is a whole list on the website you cited.
Perrie, I've looked and looked. I found a number of things about biased sources (or those someone with authority thinks are biased) and one small phrase about "speaking your mind", but I did not find one single word about newsworthiness. That's determined by the marketplace.
Sometimes an industry creates a marketplace.
It's simple. BF has an RSS feed set up to instantly report to him all instances of political correctness. If it has to do with race, all the better.
Bwahahahahaha!
Don't you know by now that every evil in the whole wide world is directly traceable to Trump?
TDS reigns supreme!!!
Where in that comment do you see the word Trump? Are you ok?
Where in my comment did I say that you said Trump? Are YOU okay?
BTFW, I am just fine, and thanks!
Are you going to comment on the topic?
You have an academic who writes a paper about his perception of racism. He uses as an example a character from the original 1934 book "Mary Poppins". Obviously this criticism is not really intended for a mass audience, it is meant for the intellectuals or pseudo intellectuals who read every article in the New York Times on Sundays.
In other words, the professor's deep dive into Mary Poppins is harmless. Is he right? Is he wrong? Who knows, who cares? unless you are immersed in academic discussions of 1934 novels.
But it is when such a story gets spread onto venues like this one that the story gains momentum and supposedly becomes "a thing".
It's a nothing burger.
Kinda like a high school kid smiling at an Indian drummer........
"says a US academic "
Academic (today) = "Idiot", "Bird-brain", "Silly-Billy", "Off ones rocker", "Jagoff", "Asshat", "Fucktard" ….. etc.... !
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You have to be deliberate dumb to race bait that hard. Or maybe virtue-signaling is the right term. Either way, very dumb.
And the New York Times published this. It's just sad.
Starting to wonder if political correctness is more dangerous than overpopulation
I think you're right
Me too!
What a nutcase.
Have any of you that responded to this seed read the NYT article that the professor wrote?
I did
well, I read most of it. It is rather hard to get through or care about.
From his laser focused perspective which is trained on historical allusions to racism in certain stories and movies from many years ago, the professor probably has a point. For example, in the Mary Poppins books and in the 1964 movie the soot faced dancers are referred to by another character as "Hottentots" , which is a name that colonialist Europeans gave to a particular group of black Africans.
So you could argue that there is a mocking of blacks in the book and the movie. I imagine the term is in the 1964 movie BECAUSE it was in the original book and the film makers wanted to stay true to the book. There are other examples similar in the professor's article, which is clearly based on a depth of research that the average Disney filmgoer won't have even the slightest interest in. When you simply watch these movies as a fan of family entertainment, the professor's concerns are rightly seen as way out in left field.
As I said in an earlier comment, no one cares about this , until social media gets it's teeth in it and we can hear again about "snowflakes" and p.c.
Until it got into the political right social media outrage machine, I bet you could fit every person in America that cared about this story on top of that roof in the movie.
No, he doesn't. Because his point is supposed to be that Dick Van Dyke, Julie Andrews, and everybody else involved in that movie was trying to give a bug FU to black Americans everywhere.
That's pretty a fucked up thing to allege.