‘Who gives a tuppence?!’ Life Principles by Mary Poppins

If not consumed by constant busy-ness, the Christmas and New Year break from routine that the offers time for reflection. Inspiration can sometimes come from unexpected quarters – this year the festive film favourite Mary Poppins provided me with some unexpected inspiration!

We all know and love (or hate) this film – a traditional family favourite, which my sister used to love, and partly I think for that reason I used to dismiss as silly or childish, with its old-style blend of animation and live action, catchy but annoying songs, and sentimental, if not cloying tone.

This year, however, without company on New Year’s Day, and tired from travelling the day before, I found myself drawn in to the magical whimsicality of the film, and was struck by the quality of its song writing, animation and visual imagination, but also by its surprising moral depth as a critique of Western modernity. I also noticed several spiritual, if not biblical themes in the film, particularly the redemptive power of Joy in the here and now.

We all think we know the story of the film. The Wind Changes and a magical nanny, Mary Poppins, miraculously descends into two unhappy and unruly children’s lives, putting right what is wrong through a series of magical adventures that inspire the children to change their ways, through Mary Poppin’s blend of firmness, kindness and generosity of spirit.

This is alright as an exposition far as it goes, but belies the fact that as so often in families, what is ‘wrong’ with the children is actually what is wrong with the parents. Although they care about the children, Michael and Jane’s parents are distracted in their mother’s case by campaigning for ‘votes for women’, and in their father’s by the demands of his job at a prestigious bank.

The mother’s distraction and preoccupation by campaigning, is a reminder that even work for worthwhile and progressive causes, such as women’s suffrage, can detract from the love and attention required to maintain harmonious relationships, particularly within the family.

It is the father’s, Mr. Banks, redemptive arc from a strict sense of discipline and fiduciary duty, towards the spontaneous joy of being alive, however, that I feel actually forms the moral heart of the film. Mr Banks represents a worldview rooted in financial ambition and institutional security. As a banker, he is consumed by the belief that wealth, investment and financial stability are the goals ultimately worth pursuing.

When Michael innocently considers spending his tuppence to ‘Feed the Birds’ as suggested by Poppins, instead of depositing it into the bank as desired by his father, a dramatic and musical confrontation ensues, embodied in the contrast between the songs, A British Bank sung by David Tomlinson, who plays Mr Banks, Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag) sung by Julie Andrews, and Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, which reprises the earlier theme. Mr. Banks sings this song in an attempt to convince his son Michael to invest a tuppence in his bank rather than on the frivolous and childish ideal of feeding birds. The song’s words include this section;

Railways through Africa
Dams across the Nile
Fleets of ocean greyhounds
Majestic, self-amortizing canals

Plantations of ripening tea

and actually have their origins in a passage from an essay by C. C. Turner, titled Money London, which goes as follows, ‘It is impossible to realise without much thought the industrial power that is wrapped up in money London. Railways through Africa, dams across the Nile, fleets of ocean greyhounds, great canals, leagues of ripening corn – London holds the key to all of these, and who can reckon up what beside.’

Reading this list, I am reminded of Michael Northcott’s writing on the ethical abstraction represented by financial investment, where the investor is automatically distanced and insulated both physically and morally from the effects of the investment, whether good or bad. It is notable that the Money London list of investments above are all in projects that would have supported British colonial exploitation.

By contrast, the investment Michael wishes to make in feeding the birds is one both tangible and immediate. The elderly ‘bird woman’ would have benefited from selling the bag to Michael, as well as the birds themselves who would not have gone hungry. But Michael himself would have also benefited from the simple joy of feeding the birds himself, in an act that would have connected him rather than distanced him from the natural world.

It is perhaps not coincidental that the Bird Woman sells her bags of bird food on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral, implying a religious dimension to the offer she is making. No doubt a marginalised figure herself, her offer and personage invite a comparison to the parable of The Widow’s Mite. We remember the widow was honoured by God, not by the size of her gift to the synagogue, but by the fact that she ‘gave everything she had’. Similarly, in the eyes of God, a child’s tuppence spent on ‘bird food’, may be worth far more than the largest of investments in, ‘plantations of ripening tea’, (particularly, we might wonder, when they exploit their workers, and destroy natural ecosystems.)

For these are birds that are not neglected – not one falls to the ground without God’s care (Matt 10), and although they, ‘do not sow or reap or store away in barns, your heavenly Father feeds them.’ (Matt 6).

There is also another dimension to the parabolic nature of the film. It is Michael’s public act of defiance in the face of authority that leads to a run on his father’s bank, his father’s disgrace when summoned by the bank’s board and consequent epiphany that there is more to life than the rigour, discipline and complexity of a career in international investment.

By contrast, there is also the simple joy of being alive, surrounded by those who care about you, engaging in fun, inexpensive activities – e.g. by flying a kite.

With tuppence for paper and strings,
You can have your own set of wings.

It is through Bank’s humbling, leading to the realisation of the error of his ways, that the Banks family is healed, and Mary Poppins’ work is complete. The Wind (that could be seen as an analogue of the Holy Spirit that ‘blows where it will’) has changed again, and this disruptive and yet – strangely – restorative force must be at work elsewhere.

But this is the same wind that holds aloft the simply and cheaply constructed kites that the Banks’ and everyone else in the park are en-joying together (including by this point the bankers themselves) – a lesson for all of us, perhaps, as we count the cost of another complicated and consumeristic Christmas, and look for simpler ways of working and being together in the New Year.

By Damian J. Hursey