‘Mary Poppins Returns,’ with Socialist Subtext
Emily Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns (Courtesy Disney Enterprises, Inc.)
mary Poppins is returning, we are told, but only baby boomers will care. Roma provides the nanny that millennials can identify with. Who is this white British fool with a gathered coat and bumbershoot who orders around and associates with working class subordinates? No one asked about Mary Poppins’ return to modern consciousness, but her reappearance clearly proves that Hollywood boomers are desperately trying to justify their own mediocrity through feelings of nostalgia.
The nasty political undercurrent that prevents this new start from becoming escapist fun is also unmistakable. Take the new politically educational songs in Mary Poppins Returns. Sure, it’s the usual Marc Shaiman pastiche – clichéd Broadway compositions (from the composer of the lame musical Hairspray) that lack the unforgettable joy of Richard and Robert Sherman’s songs for the original 1964 Mary Poppins.
Incapable of charming tongue twisters or relatable texts about medicine in sugary spoons, Shaiman picks up the mood of resistance that has overtaken Broadway and Hollywood. Though pretending to be harmless family entertainment, the imitation tunes have a slightly repressive, pedantic touch, especially in Shaiman’s balloon song finale, “Nowhere to Go But Up.” To the attentive listener it sounds like showbiz Stalinism: “The past is the past / It lives on as history / Let the past make a bow / Forever is now.” Why should a family movie song recall the essence of the Soviet eradication of history?
That deletion also brings back memories of the first Mary Poppins film, in which a submissive female nanny who strangely appears out of nowhere supports the clumsy male boss of a stuffy British banking house. It maintained England’s class system almost supernaturally – or supercalifragilistically expialistically. Now Mary is returning for no better purpose than commercial repackaging. (Meanwhile, minor characters play a socialist subtext and advertise underpaid workers.)
MPReturns corrects outdated gender concepts by making the nanny inhumanly asexual – but enlightening. Actress Emily Blunt’s Mary embodies charmlessly fake emotions. (A British accent works wonders on Americans ‘inferiority complex.) Without Julie Andrews’ enigmatic, blue-eyed calm and genuinely lovely soprano like the original Mary, Blunt (named after a baton?) Seems little more than a schoolmouth martinet. She subjects her prepubescent household loads to a bubble bath fantasy – the visual climax of the film in the video game – which she neither individualizes nor enchants us. She even trots on stage when the filmmakers can’t think of a direct way to save their employers.
Andrews conveyed a magical strangeness for the only time in her career as Mary, suggesting a maternal Peter Pan – a strange goblin who encourages helpful idiosyncrasies to a new generation. Blunt never rises above the diligence of an out-of-town trial; it fits in with director Rob Marshall’s Chicago special casting for non-singers and non-dancers.
MPReturns hits rock bottom when Mary visits her cousin Topsy, played by Meryl Streep, who does upside-down acrobatics and a fake Russian accent (to suggest some kind of unholy collusion?). The political overtones of Streep’s show-offy twist (everything supposedly turned upside down in the Orange Man Bad era) suggest that Trump Derangement Syndrome damaged liberal showbiz. Like Blunt, Streep is a no-fun performer.
The appearance of Dick Van Dyke is a welcome surprise and a reminder of the first film, as is the absence of Julie Andrews. (It’s easy to imagine Andrews telling Disney Corp., “The only ROI I care about is taxes.”) Sure, Van Dyke still shows talent, if not enough to make millennial viewers like that to bring to care who this un-Scrooge-like stranger is. But more importantly, Van Dyke has warmth, unlike the rest of the mindless cast who make happy eunuch grimaces. In the original, Van Dyke played a chimney sweep – Lin-Manuel Miranda plays the role here as the street lamp lighter Jack. He is one of the many ethnically diverse Londoners in the film (the change of profession, from Van Dyke’s chimney sweep in the original, means that Miranda is sure to avoid any blackface).
Nothing in MPReturns matches the deep compassion of the original film’s “Feed the Birds” ballad. Everyone I know reacts deeply to this song – even people I don’t know, like the pop stars behind “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” the 1984 band Aid-Telethon for the Ethiopian Famine; Their refrain “Feed the World” is due to the original composition by Mary Poppins of the Sherman brothers. The Shermans lullaby awakened listeners to charity, not pc self-righteousness.
It’s a shame that the song “Nowhere to Go but Up” is not a camp self-parody. Bring kids to Mary Poppins Returns only if you want them to grow up aloof, loveless, and deaf antifa thugs.
Armond White, a cultural critic, writes about films for National review and is the author of New Position: The Prince Chronicles. His new book Make Spielberg Great Again: The Steven Spielberg Chronicles is available on Amazon. @ 3xstuhl
