Several 20th and 21st century trends that Disney’s Mary Poppins forecasted…
Mary Poppins! She was a clever’un that one. Tidying the nursery, distributing spoonfuls of sugar to help that medicine go down, family counselling. But did you know that the Disney film also contains elements of the financial crisis, anti-fox hunting, global warming, and even that 20th century fad Parkour? I didn’t, but on close examination I see that it is a very prophetic film indeed…
Northern Rock
What damage a loss of confidence in the banking system can cause! Mr Banks and his cronies sing:
“You’ll achieve that sense of conquest
As your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors
Who invest as propriety demands”
Wonderful Edwardian trust and faith in the banking system, but it just takes a small boy to damage confidence by shouting “give me back my money!” and a run on the bank ensues. Just like Northern Rock.
Parkour
Mary Poppins, Bert, and his gaggle of chimney sweeps were practitioners in Parkour years before David Belle turned it into a pretentious craze in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Running towards a high wall and using a foot to push off it? Tick. Vaulting over obstacles? Tick? Doing it in urban spaces and roof tops? Tick! But Bert does it while singing Step in Time in a terrible cockney accent and that is just so much better.
Global warming/freak weather
We’ve had some very weird weather, attributed to global warming, over time. The Kensal Green tornado is my favourite, sweeping through Kensal Green in 2006, injuring six people and causing around £10 million worth of damage. The 2003 heat wave also puzzled people. Long hot summer? In London? But we Londoners have yet to experience the wind changing to the East and bringing with it a flying nanny with an umbrella.
Getting high
The spirit of the 1960s is alive and well in Mary Poppins. Uncle Albert high on the ceiling, laughing his head off, and then the inevitable come down when he is very sad. You are a rascal Uncle Albert!
Animal welfare
In Edwardian times, few were sympathetic to the fox. Foxes were vermin, after your sheep and chickens, and hunting kept their numbers down. But Mary Poppins understood. That cartoon fox in the chalk drawing simply needed a break so Bert had a quick chat with him and gave him a ride on the nose of the merry go round horse. What a guy!
And lastly but not leastly, Mary Poppins has some eternal themes running throughout. Love, the capacity for people to change, women’s rights, particularly votes for women, all feature, But my true favourite is the bottomless capacity of a woman’s handbag to hold things. You go, Mary Poppins!
Red Chair 