Leave it to the New York Times to brand a kids movie “racist” because of soot that that covers Mary Poppins face as she “climbs up the chimney” is an insult to blacks or something. Seems the Brits, who themselves are leftists pansies on most issues don’t like the critique. Hey Brits, sorry if this offends you or whatever, but this is the American media in the twenty first century. You guys aren’t really much better.
| Mary Poppins now considered racist because of soot on the face by New York Times |
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A nanny blacking up. Chimney sweeps mocking the upper crust. Grinning lamplighters turning work into song. The many versions of "Mary Poppins" have long evoked minstrelsy. https://t.co/Fu3pw4a1f4
— New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) January 28, 2019
The classic family film Mary Poppins has been branded racist by a US academic who accuses Dame Julie Andrews of ‘blacking up’ with soot while dancing with chimney sweeps.
In a piece for the New York Times, Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner criticises one of the film’s iconic moments, when Mary Poppins joins Dick Van Dyke’s Bert to dance on a rooftop for the classic song Step in Time.
He writes: “When the magical nanny (played by Julie Andrews) accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, her face gets covered in soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks even blacker.”
“This might seem like an innocuous comic scene if Travers’s novels didn’t associate chimney sweeps’ blackened faces with racial caricature. “Don’t touch me, you black heathen,” a housemaid screams in “Mary Poppins Opens the Door” (1943).”
“When the dark figures of the chimney sweeps Step in Time on a roof, a naval buffoon, Admiral Boom shouts, “We’re being attacked by Hottentots!” and orders his cannon to be fired at the “cheeky devils”.