Is Mary Poppins a Racist Movie? Critical New York Times Op-Ed Sparks Heated Debate Maura Hohman .
An op-ed from The New York Times is challenging readers to see one of the most beloved scenes from 1964’s Mary Poppins in an entirely new light — but not everyone’s buying it.
The essay by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, an English professor at Linfield college, argues that the original book written by P. L. Travers has a history of racism, which is carried through in the first movie and also subtly in 2018’s sequel, starring Emily Blunt.
“One of the more indelible images from the 1964 film is of Mary Poppins blacking up,” Pollack-Pelzner writes in The Times. “When the magical nanny 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. Then she leads the children on a dancing exploration of London rooftops with Dick Van Dyke’s sooty chimney sweep, Bert.”
The writer claims that Travers’ novels “associate chimney sweeps’ blackened faces with racial caricature.”
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