NOT using
the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The
First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I WOULD
jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION
given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is
reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing
books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used
to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
I’ve
never read any of the Mary Poppins books, though I think I might take a stab at
it sometime in the near future, now that I’m retired. There’s a link to them
below, briefly summarizing them as well as talking about the number of media
presentations PL Travers’ books have been made into.
I’ll
be talking about the films here. The first MP was made in 1964. I was seven years
old, and my parents took me and my brothers and sister to see it at the TERRACE Theater in downtown Robbinsdale (sadly, it was bulldozed long ago...) It was also
the first movie I’d ever seen. It left a deep impression on me and when I saw
it several times afterward as a teen, young adult, and eventually a father and
grandfather, it had the same, profound effect on me: I was transported in time
and place to the world PL Travers had created.
Growing
up in the egalitarian and racist late 50s, 1960s, and 1970s, I knew nothing of
nannies or wealth or magic, really. My father was a construction worker and my
mother stayed home with us until my sister started kindergarten. I’m six years
older than my sister, so I was in 6th grade the fall my mother got a
job in the schools as a playground supervisor. Not that she didn’t work then, but
she certainly didn’t DRIVE until then!
At
any rate, my life was nothing like that of the British Banks children; and I
can guarantee that my life wasn’t magic in the least. In fact, I started to
read science fiction when I reached sixth grade (an event I detailed here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/09/possibly-irritating-essay-gateway.html
and here https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2012/11/possibly-irritating-essay-how-science.html).
I never really took to fantasy, except for LOTR and NARNIA, but the sense of “magic”
engendered by the SF books I read as a kid definitely drew me to a career as a
science teacher.
However,
it was the character of Mr. Banks that drew me as an adult. While my father was
a general laborer rather than a bank manager, he also had something of a drinking
problem, one incident in particular inspired me to being the teetotaler I am
today. There was something though about Banks and Dad that let me watch the
films with fascination; while the Banks of the movies was proper, my dad was…a
general laborer, rough, tumble, softball-playing, weekly bowling kind of guy.
He
was, however a reader, and what he often read was science fiction (though, come
to think of it, I never did ask him WHAT science fiction he read while I was growing
up.) He also watched STAR TREK, the original series, and as it turned out, we watched
it together.
In
addition to be being a man’s man, my dad was crazy about sports – he’d played football
and basketball and track as a high school kid, and as I said, he played
softball from the Over-30s League all the way through the Over-40s, and
Over-50s Leagues, eventually becoming the “coach” of the Bob’s Lookout Supper
Club’s team. The supper club opened in 1958, the year after I was born, and was
owned and operated by Bob Kinnan (https://www.lookoutbarandgrill.com/about-us/1958
) who was also one of Dad’s oldest friends. Mom would tell the story of how
they drove out through cow pastures in the dark (no lights on the roads in the
country in those days!) trying to find Bob’s Lookout. With me in her arms, she
told Dad he’d drive ten more minutes and it he didn’t find it by then, he could
take her home. Pronto! He found it, and the rest is history.
At
any rate, my dad’s consuming occupation was sports.
And
mine was reading. He never really understood that and my brothers and sister (and
even Mom, who’d done some fencing for the University of Minnesota(!) were all
jocks. And I emphatically was NOT a jock. (With one of the most embarrassing
questions in my life, I asked the pre-7th grade PE teacher who was
tasked with talking to us incipient adolescents and herding us into the wonders
of junior high PE, “What’s an athletic supporter?” I never forgot the responses
from the other boys in the room…)
At
any rate, while Dad and I were never close until his ultimate collision with
Alzheimer’s Disease, we shared STAR TREK; we shared at adventure in imagination
to which I am STILL addicted to this very moment!
The
genre helped me grow up; it gave me not only a place to hide, but it also gave
me a vision to look up and beyond the “present” of my mostly miserable
adolescence.
How
does all of this intersect with MARY POPPINS, MARY POPPINS RETURNS, and SAVING
MR. BANKS? Well, for me, all of the films are about redemption. Not only the
redemption of Mr. Banks, but of Michael, his son John, and Helen Lyndon Goff
(better known as PL Travers and whose father was Travers Robert Goff).
All
of them are eventually saved, not by their parents, but by Mary Poppins – even Helen
Goff is saved from despair by Mary Poppins, who in all of those lives didn’t work
MAGIC, but Human love. It was never about Magic, but about love. Michael Banks
remains deeply wounded and the death of his wife nearly crushes him – but in
the end, he, too is healed, just as HIS father was. He deals with his grief and
moves forward; as Mr. Banks did, as his son will, and as Helen Goff did – and she
succeeded in casting a profound influence (with the help of Walt Disney and BBC
Entertainment.)
And
along the way, PL Travers & Co even saved me a bit…
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/PL_Travers.jpg/220px-PL_Travers.jpg
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