mary poppins

interesting interpretation of mary poppins...coutesy of wikipedia... Several film scholars have written interpretations of the film, including several attempts by structuralist semiologists suggesting that the film has a subliminal and symbolic subtext, intended to prepare America's youth for the political radicalism of the 1960s. Such analysis generally points to politically progressive or radical themes touched on in the film, including women's suffrage, the plight of the homeless, and animal rights, as well its mockery of British Naval militarism, and the anti-Capitalist implications of the Banks' children fomenting a panic at their father's bank. The scholars' analyses also suggest that the children's list of requirements for a new nanny can be viewed as a sort of seminal political document (similar to the Magna Carta or Declaration of Independence) and Mary Poppins "pops in" as a sort of anarchist mentor, who consorts with chimney sweep Bert and his friends, iconoclastic representatives of a blighted urban proletariat, in an Edwardian London fattened by imperialism in its final days before World War I. This progressiveness theory is undercut or countered somewhat at the end of the film, when Glynis Johns throws away her suffragist banner and joins husband and children in the family kite-flying get-together. By far the strongest message at the film finale seems to be the very conservative ideal of 'family first'. Both parents had been neglecting their children as they pursued their own presumably self-involved activities. In this alternate viewpoint, far from being an anarchist mentor, Mary Poppins is arguably an angel or a God-figure, sent to rescue the family from itself, as it were. Mrs. Banks' tying her banner to the kite at the end of the film could have also represented Mr. Banks' acceptance of her women's suffrage cause, foreshadowing his becoming a very progressive-minded man, while at the same time suggesting that both he and Mrs. Banks will put their children first.