How Disney Turned Violent Protesters Women And Children Into Useless Junks
Posted by Joshua Tyler | Published
People often think of the 1960s as the family-friendly golden age of the Walt Disney Company. Those films are considered to represent what entertainment can be like when it doesn’t push an agenda or try to trick the audience into accepting some kind of challenging belief. Anyone who thinks they won’t be very wrong.
The 1960s were a time of great cultural change in the United States, and ideas such as the hippie movement and the women’s movement, although not popular in the mainstream, were already being quietly embraced by artists and creators who made Disney films. So when Walt Disney put together a team he would do it Mary Poppins in 1963, whether he knew it or not, his family-friendly film about a magical nanny became one of the first films to wash away a secular audience in favor of the rising tide of counterculture beliefs.
cleaned the screen (adjective) — When something seen on the screen completely changes the way a person thinks or feels, as if his old beliefs have been erased and replaced by what he just saw.
This is the story of how Mary Poppins it filtered America’s children to share in an ideology that their parents already rejected, and in the process created the tragedies of the modern world.
Mary Poppins Is A Character Completely Different From Books
Mary Poppins adapted from a book by author PL Travers. If you’ve read the Travers books, you’ve probably noticed that they bear little resemblance to the iconic Disney film.
Travers’ story is strange, intense, and sometimes uncomfortable. The Disney version rewrites it into something softer, shinier, and more concept-driven. PL Travers hated everything about the Disney film and strongly opposed it, vocally stating that it completely destroyed and misrepresented the values he was trying to teach children in his books.
The changes begin with Mary Poppins herself, who is not a happy, funny character who lives her life indulging in children’s imaginations. Travers’ version of the character is stern, impatient, and distant. He’s not very good most of the time, and he’s incredibly tough. He never feeds; he only corrects. Her goal is to help the children in her care become better adults.
The film version takes a different approach. He prioritizes the front, but in the end he gives himself up and encourages waking and dreaming. He undermines efficiency and uses shortcuts like magic to help kids avoid doing real work. The film itself scoffs at anything that isn’t just fun and goes out of its way to push the idea to the audience that a child’s life should be more than dancing on the roof.
Disney Turns Dad Into The Ultimate Villain
Disney’s approach to Mary Poppins made the movie villain mr. Banks. In the books he is not a criminal. He is a typical father and is treated as an important member of the family and the leader of the family.
In the film, Mr. Banks is treated like a monster, and the film ends with him telling her to go fly a kite.
On paper, there is nothing wrong with what Mr. Banks. Sometimes he suggests that his wife should take her family responsibilities seriously, after she has literally lost the children and seems indifferent. He wants his children to be well behaved and respectable. He wants to take his son to work and teach him to find a job. She is trying to help her children learn the value of money, and wants to open a savings account for themselves.
These basic, normal, good ideas of parenting are all treated by the film as pure stupidity. It’s Mary Poppins’ job to teach the family how to break Mr. Poppins’ practical advice. Banks.
Feed the Birds, Or Something
This film makes practical practical advice come true for the audience by using a well-known technique called source poison. Poisoning the source is what happens when an idea is destroyed by attacking the source of the idea, rather than the idea itself.
So, if you have a bad person say something that makes sense, and then you make everyone pretend that those ideas are as bad as the person saying them, then people will associate those ideas with evil. It doesn’t matter how reasonable or rational those ideas are.
The famous “Put the Birds” moment has arrived Mary Poppins it is the twist of a large, very treacherous knife. And it’s all set up like a Mary Poppins trap.
The children’s father tells Mary Poppins that he wants to go with the children to the bank tomorrow, to open a savings account. Mary Poppins agrees, she knows which way to go to the bank.
That night, Mary Poppins sings a magical song about a homeless woman who feeds the birds, and tells the children that they must give her money if they want the saints to look at them kindly. Mary knows full well that they will pass this woman on the way to the bank, even though the children believe it is just a good story.
The next day, on their way to the bank, Mr. Banks and the children meet a homeless bird feeder. After the night of the previous Mary Poppins show, the children want to help her and give money to Mr. Poppins. Banks want to put it in the bank.
Mr. Banks kindly suggests that money may be saved. The children curse, growl, and act like monsters throughout their trip to the bank, eventually misbehaving to the point that they fire their father from his job.
The film presents this entire sequence as a failure of Mr. Banks. The camera slows down. The music is overflowing. The audience is trained to hear that intelligence is cruel and mr. Banks deserves whatever he gets after refusing to hand over money to a homeless woman.
How Mary Poppins Warps Audiences Against Long-Term Thinking
The real trick here is that the film and the Feed The Birds sequel in particular, is not anti-greed. It is controversial thinking for a long time. It reassigns responsibility as emotional coldness. It silently tells children, and the parents watching along with them, that planning ahead is somehow less good than giving on impulse.
This was also one of the main beliefs of the early 1960s counterculture movement. Long term planning was coined by the hippies as “moving to the system.” That’s not in a movie like Mary Poppins by accident. That is a deliberate stop.
Except that Mr. Banks is not wrong. You are right. Saving money is something good advice. Teaching a child that money has future benefits is one of the most important lessons a parent can give. But Mary Poppins it turns that into a character flaw, because the story has a bunch of twisted ideas going on.
Mary Poppins Blames Irresponsible Fathers and Encourages Absent Mothers
That is the only reason Mr. Banks was in the movie. He tests the audience against the basic, rational family values that were popular at the time. Values people won’t believe they can throw away in honest debate.
Contrary to Mr. Banks, Mrs. Banks is not working. He leaves the children every day to go to political rallies, marches and meetings. The film plays this off as weird and admirable. His absence is not treated as neglect; entered as freedom. You are doing an important job after all. A random job that requires her to completely abandon her children to a stranger with supernatural powers.
The film never asks the obvious question: why is it okay for the mother to go and do things that are not useful for the family, but what is strange is that the father is busy making money to support them?
That asymmetry is intentional. The movie wants you to be angry at the man who pays the bills and not care about the woman who doesn’t come home. Obligation is rewritten as oppression. Absence is rewritten as self-actualization.
Emotional Restructuring to Control Audiences
When Mary Poppins comes she doesn’t replace the parents, she does writes over see. He is not just a babysitter. He is a psychological counterweight. He rewards emotional indulgence. He scoffs at discipline. He makes the officials look foolish. He trains children to associate happiness with breaking the law and anger with structure.
This is a classic emotional rearrangement.
Emotional reorganization It is a method of persuasion where a person, story, or message it changes how you feel about an idea without changing the facts of the idea itself.
Mary Poppins does not disagree with Mr. Banks. He outside he. He doesn’t prove him wrong, he makes him look like an insignificant person. That’s how propaganda works. You are not arguing against an opposing view; it makes it feel old, uncool, and unhappy.
Even the bank itself is portrayed as a real monster. Columns like teeth, workers like drones. It is not a place where stability is created; it is a villain’s place. Don’t forget that the bank represents the very system that keeps the home running. The audience is trained to cheer when it breaks down into chaos.
When the movie ends, Mr. Banks has been “corrected.” And how are you prepared? Not for sure. Not for gratitude. But by being transformed into a sarcastic, kite-flying man who completely abandons integrity.
Responsible Adults Must Be Irresponsible Children To Avoid Becoming Criminals
That’s the last trick of the movie: the father must become a child to be redeemed. He gets no credit for being honest. You get a reward for quitting. His arc isn’t growth, it’s surrender. The message of the film is clear: responsibility must be matched with emotion, or it deserves to be ridiculed to death.
Mary Poppins it teaches children that adults who plan are bullies, that mothers don’t need to be there, and that money is something you feel about, not something you have. It wraps that lesson in warmth, and forces you to ask it without looking like a bad person yourself.
This is what screen cleaning looks like. You walk away thinking you’re watching harmless music. You come away believing that the responsible person in the room was the one who was the problem all along.
Enjoy your stunted growth, kids, screen-tested.
