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Saving Mr. Disney: A Lesbian Perspective
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Bear with me... I'm going to take a few paragraphs to work up to my central theme...
As a marginalized writer of lesbian-feminist plays, I used to wonder what it would be like if one of my plays achieved first-class production (which is the industry lingo for “Broadway-level”). My question was answered when a Brazilian film and television star ran across a collection of my plays in a bookstore near Union Square, read my play about Joan of Arc, and decided to produce and star in it. In Brazil, of course. First-class production!
A word about the play: It was a one-woman show dealing with Joan of Arc as a teenaged, lesbian, butch runaway who was returning from the grave with a searing radical feminist critique of her experiences and those responsible for them. She is returning with a mission to warn contemporary women that they are facing the same enemies and that they need to understand this and to fight.
In other words, an unlikely candidate for first-class production.
As a marginalized writer of lesbian-feminist plays, I used to wonder what it would be like if one of my plays achieved first-class production (which is the industry lingo for “Broadway-level”). My question was answered when a Brazilian film and television star ran across a collection of my plays in a bookstore near Union Square, read my play about Joan of Arc, and decided to produce and star in it. In Brazil, of course. First-class production!
A word about the play: It was a one-woman show dealing with Joan of Arc as a teenaged, lesbian, butch runaway who was returning from the grave with a searing radical feminist critique of her experiences and those responsible for them. She is returning with a mission to warn contemporary women that they are facing the same enemies and that they need to understand this and to fight.
In other words, an unlikely candidate for first-class production.
But, you know what? The show was the top-selling commercial production of the season in both São Paulo and Rio. And then it went on to tour all the other major cities in Brazil. It was a smash hit.
Is Brazil a nation of lesbian feminists? What could possibly explain this?
Well… For starts, this one-woman show featured four really beefy, macho men. They rode motorcycles onto the stage, making a lot of noise, but no “lines” per se. This enabled the producer to designate them “scenic elements,” not added characters… which would have been a violation of my contract.
These four Hell’s Angels would circle Joan, maul her, cradle her, drive her on the back of their motorcycles… In other words, come constantly between her and the audience. And the butch thing was gone, completely. Joan wore enough eye makeup to put Theda Bara to shame, and she was dressed in tights.
And then there was the rape.
Joan was raped in her prison cell in a situation that was clearly engineered to make her prefer death to life. And it worked. She recanted her recantation and was burned at the stake.
Now, lots of playwrights have written about Joan.. Bernard Shaw, Jean Anouihl, Eva Le Gallienne... and they end at the stake. I didn’t want to do that. In my play she is returning from the dead. The stake is in the past. We are looking to the future. I wanted to respect and protect the survivors in my audience who did not need to have their trauma memories restimulated. I did not want to write a play where, once again, the boys win.
In the Brazilian production, there was no such sensitivity. The four “scenic elements” stripped down to full frontal nudity and performed the assault on the stage. They raped my character. They raped my play. The play I had crafted to empower and inspire survivors became one more traumatic encounter reinforcing the helplessness of women, always outnumbered by the machine of patriarchy.
And they screwed me financially. Of course. It took more than three years to recover my royalty, and the amount was not commensurate with the success of the work.
Is Brazil a nation of lesbian feminists? What could possibly explain this?
Well… For starts, this one-woman show featured four really beefy, macho men. They rode motorcycles onto the stage, making a lot of noise, but no “lines” per se. This enabled the producer to designate them “scenic elements,” not added characters… which would have been a violation of my contract.
These four Hell’s Angels would circle Joan, maul her, cradle her, drive her on the back of their motorcycles… In other words, come constantly between her and the audience. And the butch thing was gone, completely. Joan wore enough eye makeup to put Theda Bara to shame, and she was dressed in tights.
And then there was the rape.
Joan was raped in her prison cell in a situation that was clearly engineered to make her prefer death to life. And it worked. She recanted her recantation and was burned at the stake.
Now, lots of playwrights have written about Joan.. Bernard Shaw, Jean Anouihl, Eva Le Gallienne... and they end at the stake. I didn’t want to do that. In my play she is returning from the dead. The stake is in the past. We are looking to the future. I wanted to respect and protect the survivors in my audience who did not need to have their trauma memories restimulated. I did not want to write a play where, once again, the boys win.
In the Brazilian production, there was no such sensitivity. The four “scenic elements” stripped down to full frontal nudity and performed the assault on the stage. They raped my character. They raped my play. The play I had crafted to empower and inspire survivors became one more traumatic encounter reinforcing the helplessness of women, always outnumbered by the machine of patriarchy.
And they screwed me financially. Of course. It took more than three years to recover my royalty, and the amount was not commensurate with the success of the work.
Why am I telling you this in an article about Saving Mr. Banks?
Because I am a lesbian writer whose beloved lesbian protagonist was hideously mangled by the machinery of patriarchal theatre, and I was angry about that. Really, really angry. Still am, because the pain of that experience never goes away. And I believe that PL Travers was a lesbian writer whose beloved lesbian protagonist was hideously mangled by the machinery of patriarchal Hollywood, and that she was angry about that. Really, really angry. And now the world is invited to come and mock this thoroughly unpleasant woman.
I come to celebrate her.
Was PL Travers a lesbian? Duh.
Some insist that she was bisexual, but the evidence for that is very sketchy. Aggressively pursuing publication, Travers went to Dublin to meet the editor Æ (aka George Russell), who had sent her an encouraging letter about her poems. He was married and twice her age, with a penchant for encouraging young writers. Travers’ biographer characterizes their friendship as “filial, intellectual, and marked by romantic gestures.” In other words, he flirted. But more to the point, he insisted that she get together with Madge Burnand. She did indeed get together with Madge, moved in with her, wrote the first Mary Poppins book in a cottage with her, and continued to live with her for ten years in a relationship that her biographer characterizes as “intense.” Duh.
Because I am a lesbian writer whose beloved lesbian protagonist was hideously mangled by the machinery of patriarchal theatre, and I was angry about that. Really, really angry. Still am, because the pain of that experience never goes away. And I believe that PL Travers was a lesbian writer whose beloved lesbian protagonist was hideously mangled by the machinery of patriarchal Hollywood, and that she was angry about that. Really, really angry. And now the world is invited to come and mock this thoroughly unpleasant woman.
I come to celebrate her.
Was PL Travers a lesbian? Duh.
Some insist that she was bisexual, but the evidence for that is very sketchy. Aggressively pursuing publication, Travers went to Dublin to meet the editor Æ (aka George Russell), who had sent her an encouraging letter about her poems. He was married and twice her age, with a penchant for encouraging young writers. Travers’ biographer characterizes their friendship as “filial, intellectual, and marked by romantic gestures.” In other words, he flirted. But more to the point, he insisted that she get together with Madge Burnand. She did indeed get together with Madge, moved in with her, wrote the first Mary Poppins book in a cottage with her, and continued to live with her for ten years in a relationship that her biographer characterizes as “intense.” Duh.
Æ would also introduce Travers to the teachings of Gurdjieff, a charismatic and influential spiritual teacher. Travers’ involvement with the community of Gurdjieff’s followers in the 1930’s should be of special interest to lesbian scholars. In spite of Gurdjieff’s professed advocacy of rigid gender roles, he created a women-only group in the 1920’s known as “The Rope.” The members of this group were all strong, successful women—mostly lesbian—who did not subscribe to traditional gender roles. One of these women, Jessie Orage, became lovers with Travers. Orage had scandalized the Gurdjieff community a decade earlier by wearing men’s trousers and smoking cigarettes. She documents the affair with Travers in the pages of her diary.
So what about this Mary Poppins? Was she a lesbian? Well, I will argue—as did Travers—that heterosexual romance was not for her. Travers had first introduced the character in 1926, when she wrote a series of stories about children and their dreams. This collection became the basis for the first Mary Poppins book. On November 13, 1926, the Christchurch Sun published “Mary Poppins and the Match Man,” a short story about Mary Poppins’ day off with her boyfriend Bert.
Eight years later, Travers published the first Mary Poppins book, and the most significant change between the 1926 version of the famous nanny and the 1934 one, had to do with Mary Poppins’ relationships with men. Bert is no longer a boyfriend, but a buddy… or, more accurately, a groupie. Mary Poppins has become what one writer calls “untouchable and distant,” but I would use the word “exalted.” She is morphing into archetypal forms. Æ suggested the goddess of destruction and empowerment, Kali—and Travers did not disagree. By 1934, the proper nanny of her earlier stories had begun to supercede the ineffectual mother Mrs. Banks. No one except Mr. Banks, according to Travers, could understand her.
Eight years later, Travers published the first Mary Poppins book, and the most significant change between the 1926 version of the famous nanny and the 1934 one, had to do with Mary Poppins’ relationships with men. Bert is no longer a boyfriend, but a buddy… or, more accurately, a groupie. Mary Poppins has become what one writer calls “untouchable and distant,” but I would use the word “exalted.” She is morphing into archetypal forms. Æ suggested the goddess of destruction and empowerment, Kali—and Travers did not disagree. By 1934, the proper nanny of her earlier stories had begun to supercede the ineffectual mother Mrs. Banks. No one except Mr. Banks, according to Travers, could understand her.
I believe what we are dealing with here is a lesbian butch. A guardian/ warrior archetype who combines military discipline with a Gurdjieffian mysticism that enables her to ascend to the stars and commune with the animals. A lesbian butch who cannot identify with a haplessly subordinate mother-figure and who identifies more solidly with the bread-winning father who must brave the rigors of a collapsing financial world.
Disney, by the way, turned Mrs. Banks into a "Suffragette," because in his mind, this was synonymous with bad mothering. PL Travers, no doubt aware of the heavy lesbian butch presence among the ranks of women militating for equal rights, was baffled and unhappy with his choice. Truly, her flighty and uber-feminine Mrs. Banks would have been terrified by the Suffragists.
But back to Mary Poppins. I know this archetype. I have been working with lesbian archetypes in my writing for thirty years. I find them in the writings of other lesbians, in their biographies, in our spiritual traditions and rituals, and in the lives of the women I love. And they are completely invisible—censored—in mainstream culture. Where they do surface, they are wildly misinterpreted, ridiculed, or demonized. As is the character of PL Travers in Saving Mr. Banks. Which is more like "Saving Mr. Disney."
Disney, by the way, turned Mrs. Banks into a "Suffragette," because in his mind, this was synonymous with bad mothering. PL Travers, no doubt aware of the heavy lesbian butch presence among the ranks of women militating for equal rights, was baffled and unhappy with his choice. Truly, her flighty and uber-feminine Mrs. Banks would have been terrified by the Suffragists.
But back to Mary Poppins. I know this archetype. I have been working with lesbian archetypes in my writing for thirty years. I find them in the writings of other lesbians, in their biographies, in our spiritual traditions and rituals, and in the lives of the women I love. And they are completely invisible—censored—in mainstream culture. Where they do surface, they are wildly misinterpreted, ridiculed, or demonized. As is the character of PL Travers in Saving Mr. Banks. Which is more like "Saving Mr. Disney."
Disney comes off like “Father Knows Best” in the film, but, in fact, he was a heavy-handed union-buster who, according to documents that surfaced under the Freedom of Information Act, served from 1940 until his death in 1966 as a secret informer (read “spy”) for the FBI.
And he was a misogynist, a fact reflected in his hiring practices... as well as his need to ridicule the movement for women's suffrage.The letter below spells out the Disney Studio's policy: "Women do not do any of the creative work..."
And he was a misogynist, a fact reflected in his hiring practices... as well as his need to ridicule the movement for women's suffrage.The letter below spells out the Disney Studio's policy: "Women do not do any of the creative work..."
He had pursued Travers for the rights to the Mary Poppins books for fifteen years, and he finally seduced her with a very unusual contract which contained two conditions upon which Travers refused to compromise: It could not be an animated film, and she was allowed rights of approval over the story treatment. These rights of approval were unprecedented at the Disney Studios… but note that it was approval over treatment only and not final shooting script.
PL Travers did not like the original script and traveled to Hollywood to consult. Walt met with her once and then took off for his ranch, leaving the creative team, with two days’ advance notice, to deal with her perfectly legitimate objections to the appropriation of her lifework.
PL Travers did not like the original script and traveled to Hollywood to consult. Walt met with her once and then took off for his ranch, leaving the creative team, with two days’ advance notice, to deal with her perfectly legitimate objections to the appropriation of her lifework.
By the time Travers arrived at the Studios, Mary Poppins, the inscrutable and intimidating disciplinarian, had been turned into the gracious, cheerful, idealized playmate for the children. And Bert had reverted to a love interest... something to which Travers took strenuous exception. The heroine of a 1930's Depression-Era bank crisis, wearing masculine suits with huge shoulder pads had morphed into a femmy 1910 Gibson Girl with a frilly parasol. Gone the butch. Gone the butch buddy. Gone the power. Gone the shadow side of mysticism.
And then there was the animation. When Travers signed her agreement, she never dreamed that Disney would be sneaking animation into a film with live actors. Technically, it was not an animated film. He was sticking to the letter of the agreement, but not the spirit. The animated dance sequence took up a remarkable fifteen minutes of screen time. Was he just rubbing it in?
Not surprisingly Travers raised hell.
No, Disney did not invite her to the opening. This was a professional insult. Resourceful dyke that she was, she shamed another Disney executive into sending her an invitation. Yes, she wept at the premiere, but they were tears of frustration and disappointment. The animation! At the after-party she confronted Disney. According to Richard Sherman, who co-wrote the music, she declared in a loud voice, “Well. The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney looked at her coolly and replied, “Pamela, the ship has sailed.” (She had asked him to call her Mrs. Travers.)
Most of the world would now equate Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews’ characterization. Travers' radical revisioning of parenting outside the box of traditional gender roles had been domesticated. And even the Suffragists had been trashed. Mr. Banks was saved. Mrs. Banks was saved. Bert and Mary were saved. And the lesbians were safely back in the closet, banished to a shadow world apart from the nuclear family and disallowed contact with the children.
I feel for Travers. I feel for her pain in fighting so hard for the real Mary Poppins, but lacking a language and a literature of archetypes to which she could point and say, “No, this is not that! Here is the frame of reference!” But that literature was as censored as her identity. She insisted on being called Mrs. Travers, but there was no husband. There never had been. "Travers" was her father’s first name. How could “Mrs. Travers” possibly, in 1960, advocate for all of the attributes, affinities, mythological referents that belong to our culture?
I feel for Travers. I feel for her pain in fighting so hard for the real Mary Poppins, but lacking a language and a literature of archetypes to which she could point and say, “No, this is not that! Here is the frame of reference!” But that literature was as censored as her identity. She insisted on being called Mrs. Travers, but there was no husband. There never had been. "Travers" was her father’s first name. How could “Mrs. Travers” possibly, in 1960, advocate for all of the attributes, affinities, mythological referents that belong to our culture?
Short answer: She couldn’t. But she did not pretend to be happy. She did not go gently into the heterotopia of Disneyland. She raised as much hell as she could, but she was outflanked, outmaneuvered, and outnumbered by the strike-breaking, Red-baiting, rabid McCarthy-ite spy who was dictating the so-called family values that would enshrine the patriarch and ensure the compliance of women.
Italian feminst Carla Lonzi has said, "Men use myth; women don’t have sufficient personal resources to create it. Women who have tried to do so by themselves have endured such stress that their lives have been shortened by it." But Travers beat the odds, living to be nearly a hundred. I submit that her fighting spirit, the very spirit so vilified in the movie, had a great deal to do with her longevity. Well-behaved women rarely make centenarians.
Saving Mr. Banks is a witch-burning. Make no mistake about that. Give me a film company and I will show you a film about a powerful, visionary, immanently reasonable lesbian fighting off an evil army of propagandists who are hell-bent on breaking the spirit of one of the greatest lesbian archetypes ever set on paper… a liberator of children, a goddess to the natural world, a harbinger of a new order in the wake of the collapse of capitalism. I invite you to imagine and inhabit that scenario, because, sisters, I promise you that it is the real story.
Like this blog? You'll probably enjoy my blog "Stealing the Herd" and the Butch Visibility Project.
Italian feminst Carla Lonzi has said, "Men use myth; women don’t have sufficient personal resources to create it. Women who have tried to do so by themselves have endured such stress that their lives have been shortened by it." But Travers beat the odds, living to be nearly a hundred. I submit that her fighting spirit, the very spirit so vilified in the movie, had a great deal to do with her longevity. Well-behaved women rarely make centenarians.
Saving Mr. Banks is a witch-burning. Make no mistake about that. Give me a film company and I will show you a film about a powerful, visionary, immanently reasonable lesbian fighting off an evil army of propagandists who are hell-bent on breaking the spirit of one of the greatest lesbian archetypes ever set on paper… a liberator of children, a goddess to the natural world, a harbinger of a new order in the wake of the collapse of capitalism. I invite you to imagine and inhabit that scenario, because, sisters, I promise you that it is the real story.
Like this blog? You'll probably enjoy my blog "Stealing the Herd" and the Butch Visibility Project.
I would love to see the butch heras, we have in california some characters, who drove the postal carriges through the canyons of the hills. Nobody knew she was a she untill she died.
Thanks your for your work Carolyne!
I just wanted to say that I enjoyed your article concerning the saving of Mr. Banks. I learned quite a bit about PL Travers, Mary Poppins and Walt Disney. I signed up on your blog. I hope to receive more informative reads such as this.
Thank You!
Very well done -- and thank you.
Br. Corey
in sisterhood
lynne miller
Else please keep writing plays, stories and novels about women who adventure.
I loved this piece! I am saddened (and of course angered) to hear what happened in Brazil to the brilliantly lesbian centered The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, and I am glad you are writing about the experience. How painful to have such pro womon pro lesbian creativity turned into pornographic entertainment. From my end, it kind of feels like hearing about men pissing on sacred text.
I am thrilled you wrote about Mary Poppins, and the recent Saving Mr. Banks film. I was disheartened to see a recent episode of Ellen in which Emma Thompson was interviewed about this film, and Ellen and Emma commiserated about how difficult and unlikeable PJ Travers was. I saw the film last week, and found myself repeatedly feeling as though Travers was being so unfairly maligned and that her "unlikeability" was actually her lesbian strength and willingness to take up space (i.e. things I admire). There were several examples of the twisting that kept percolating and disturbing me...she absolutely didn't want Dick Van Dyke, and Dick Van Dyke remained, she was adamant about no animation, and as you mentioned, there was so much animation!, she didn't want Mr. Banks to have a mustache, and of course, he had a mustache! She didn't want Mary Poppins to be traditionally feminine and domesticated, and that is much of how Julie Andrews portrayed her. And yet, it is she, and not Disney who is portrayed as inflexible, difficult and wily. Thanks so much for (as you so splendidly do) telling this story with the dyke sensibility at the center, instead of at the margins.
Many of them are still alive and more than willing to share their stories.
As for Travers, I'll let her words speak for themselves:
1st September [1964]
Dear Walt,
This is to say THANK YOU.
You will have known that my reason for coming to Hollywood was not only to see, and enjoy, the first showing of the picture but to make it clear that you and I were in accord, author and film-maker in harmony.
The whole picture is a splendid spectacle and I admire you for perceiving in Julie Andrews and actress who could play the part. Her performance as Mary Poppins is beautifully understated, which is what I would have asked for, anyway, and she is excellent in both roles. For I think the picture falls into two halves---the home scenes which keep some contact with the book and the musical comedy scenes which are Disney and Disney at his best! The character which to some extent holds both parts together is Mr Banks and I do think that David Tomlinson is absolutely right. I hope some time to have an opportunity of congratulating him. I liked the children, too, perhaps especially the little boy.
I know well that in translating a book to another medium something has to be lost---or perhaps undergo a change. The real Mary Poppins, inevitable, as it seems to me, must remain within the covers of the books. And naturally, as an author, it is my hope that your gay, generous, and wonderfully witty film will turn a new public towards them.
It was a wonderful premiere---far grander than anything we shall be able to do in England. Even so, it will probably be good and it is my hope the writers and the director as well as the actors will be there---perhaps even you!--
Please thank everybody from me and give them my congratulations, not least the musicians.
Yours, with a bouquet of flowers,
[signed] Pamela
I think the fact that Travers had originally conceived of Bert as a boyfriend makes it even more intriguing as to why she so repeatedly and strenuously objected to Disney's returning him to that role. Mary Poppins evolved tremendously from her original conception in that short story to the later books, where she began to assume archetypal goddess powers in her relationship between animals and the cosmos. She "un-boyfriended" Bert very consciously in the books, and clearly felt it was a significant violation of intention and character when Disney put it back. Her objections to animation are well-documented (see two paragraphs I inadvertently deleted in the original blog above about her agreement with Disney). This letter is consistent with a response that Alice Walker documented in her book The Same River Twice, where she talks about being on location with The Color Purple, repeatedly traumatized by Speilberg's (white male) appropriation of an African American woman's story... AND... how she came to terms with it, through a long, harrowing process... to a point where she could actually embrace the film as something completely different. In this letter, Travers makes the same point. That the real Mary Poppins is only accessible via the book. The staggering success of both films left these authors in a difficult position, and they both made their peace. Signiificantly, Travers refused any more film offers, and when she finally licensed a stage version it was with an explicit warning that Disney was to have nothing to do with it. I don't read capitulation or acknowledgement of bad behavior in this letter. Her conflicts with Disney were epic enough to inspire the making of a film.
However, I like to look at the situation from the "author is dead" standpoint. "The author is dead" is the idea that once a book is published the author's intentions are no more valuable than the reader's interpretations. Not everyone agrees to this notion, but I rather enjoy it because it allows me to freely interpret the work as I choose. If we follow the "author is dead" idea with the books of Mary Poppins then we see that Disney simply placed his own interpretation onto the screen bypassing Traver's wishes. This is not unusual for films to do simply because most books do not adapt directly to film. I'm not arguing whether what he did was right or wrong, but what I am arguing is that the Traver's version of Mary Poppins was unspoiled by the films. They are two completely separate works that should not be directly compared because the movie was simply an interpretation (however loosely based) on Traver's story. Her stories are beautiful and have delighted children and adults for many years. The Disney film cannot take that away.
I don't agree that "the playwright is dead". The playwright is an essential part of the production process, especially for a debut. I do find it unfortunate that your work was stripped away from you and I hope that you are able to find a director and producer that want to stage your show the way you wrote it.
Regarding the future of Mary Poppins, who know what awaits us? Maybe years from now a film studio will produce a more honest interpretation of the novels. We can only hope.
[Despite certain failings in the movie, perhaps one has] "to remain content in thinking over how... early difficulties with mothers can lead [one] to favor narratives where something pushy, obtuse, overwhelming, and baldly patriarchal, can disorient and dislodge a lone member of the feminine of higher sensitivities." I am pondering this. Have such childhood experiences been a wellspring for a faction of the feminist movement? Maybe it takes the coalescing of a number of less than healthy childhoods--something a little abnormal and mutation-like--to push against and break down that which was previously forbidden to girls and women.
Thanks,
Lynne
I just saw the film for the first time last night and I came away with a lot of questions. The whole movie centers on figuring out PL Travers and once Disney did, he won the rights to the film. As I walked out of the theater I just kept thinking there was so much more to the story than I had just seen and I thought, mrs. Travers was so obviously a lesbian, and she meant for Mary Poppins to be this wonderful lesbian heroine also. I am a Utah Mormon Mom and it was pretty obvious to me that is what she intended. So, after the movie ended I came home and googled to see if I was right and found your article. Well done. Too me, the reality of who Mrs. travers actually was makes her a more sympathetic character than what was portrayed in the movie and I felt sorry for a woman who was so misunderstood in life and now in death.
However, I thought the movie Saving Mr. Banks was about the journey of Traverse coming to terms with the loss of her father. What I gained by watching the movie was- from my perspective- the understanding of how Pamela as a little girl, wanted so much for someone to save her father, and that hope came in the form of her Aunt Ellen. Aunt Ellen sorted everything out. The lack of discipline. The dirty house. She could not save Pamela's father, but for a while until his death, she brought order-and hope.
Isn't the movie about coming to the realization-by Walt Disney and the viewers- that this Aunt Ellen is the basis for the character Mary Poppins, and that she was not there to save the children, but the father? Pamela's father?
Personally I think the movie did PL Traverse, her books, and the movie Mary Poppins justice.
What I really came on for was to compliment a brilliant piece of writing by Gage
and the photos are fabulous to see
I'm so glad to read your criticism of "Saving Mr. Disney"! I'd like to correct an error in your article--you show a picture from one of the Mary Poppins books to support your suggestion that Mary Poppins wore "masculine suits with huge shoulder pads." But that illustration is actually from a chapter in which Mary Poppins gives her own "new white jacket, with the pink collar and the pink belt and the four pink buttons down the front" to the Marble Boy, and the (male) Park Keeper gives her his own uniform coat to wear home so that she doesn't get chilly. Mary Poppins's new outfit in this chapter was actually quite "feminine," not "butch"! I'm also interested by your claim that Jessie Orage's diary records her "affair" with P. L. Travers; according to Travers's biographer Valerie Lawson, the pages describing the relationship were removed from Orage's diary--have you actually seen them, or are you assuming that they must have said something Orage (or someone else) wanted to hide?
I am coming late to this discussion, two years later than most of the entrants, and I have enjoyed reading all your ideas.
I enjoyed Saving Mr. Banks much more than the Mary Poppins movie, which has been Disneyfied. Artificially sweetened too much for me, now in my 50s. Saving Mr. Banks, on the other hand, is a celebration of creativity. The creativity of P.L. Travers, of Disney, and of the Sherman Brothers.
Regarding the animated scene with the penguins:
Putting it into animation lets the viewer feel that she has entered into the magical realm of entering Bert's picture. In a movie, no other way to do this with the same impact.
As to Travers' stipulation that Bert and Mary should have no romance between them: Disney followed this, sort of. Nowhere in the movie do they embrace or kiss each other. Although they sing each other's praises in the song It's a Jolly Holiday. I guess Disney was tiptoeing right up to the edge of a romance here.
Saving Mr. Banks: a delightful celebration of Creativity. The only other movie I know of that celebrates creativity so grandly was 'Beauty and the Beast'. There must be something more than this provincial life.
The structure of the plot was very tricky and I felt it to be emotionally manipulative towards people like me, that is to say former children who were raised with Disney's version of Mary Poppins, who wholeheartedly loved and still love the movie and the characters as now part of our "old imaginary childhood friends", and it is soooo easy with such an already-won audience to play on their desire to see as an outcome the triumph of the version we love, which is simply the only version we know. Make a change to that now well-established mythology feels like a heresy for us... whereas Disneys Studios were the one desecrating the original story and characters created by Travers in the first place.
I learned 'Mary Poppins' wasn't an original creation of Disney Studios only a few years ago. That is to say, when I was already an adult and didn't take time anymore to look into children's literature and thought it wouldn't add much to my life to read it now. Yet, your portrayal of the true Mary Poppins makes me want to meet her and Travers's writing by myself. I don't know when I have the time to do so but... I have very serious reasons to do so now (working on something).
PS: I'm appalled by the awful appropriation and desecration of your Joan of Arc. I'm so sorry reading that. It made me think of a French male director's production of "Blasted" by Sarah Kane which left me in a state of shock not only because of the brutality of Kane's original play, but because of the perverse inversions of the director's "interpretation" of it.
First I'm so sorry for your Brazilian production debacle. Thank you so much for your PL Travers insights. Synchronicity strikes for me! Susan Huddis Koppelman shared your article on Facebook again and this time I found it at just the right moment to help me understand a character I'm writing in my next urban fantasy. My heroine's aunt who runs a kind of witness protection/underground railway for alien/human hybrids is described by the protagonist, who finds she has alien assassin DNA, feels betrayed by her aunt who shielded her growing up and who has moved on to a new rescue. Lashing out she calls her aunt "Mary Poppins for monsters." So that small seed begins to blossom as I want to focus on the aunt and her mission in the next book. Everything in your article helps! I found your article in some mystic way. How could I not have known that the character I created was a lesbian? It explains so much about her as I envision her. Maybe that's my incorrigibly hetero-ness blinding me, but my books all have fully layered gay characters, so do I try to see clearly. Thank you for the light you shed. May your work be treated with the respect it deserves in future.
Lynne Murray