an uncomfortable amount of my brain is now devoted to elaborate anticapitalist overeadings of the mary poppins songs the kids insist on listening to every day.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
for example, "feed the birds" initially offers a fairly bland reading, that this is a song about kids having to choose between investing in dad bank and empire or giving the tuppance to the poor, which "the birds" sort of obviously represent
but then you notice what is WEIRD about the song which is the byzantine layers of mediation between the kids and the poor. it's a song where MP explains to the kids that that the old lady is urging you to give her money for bread crumbs for the birds which will they will use to feed their children
IN THIS SENSE it is a song exposing and exploring the nonprofit industry's problem that it wants to urge you to SAVE THE CHILDREN but in the end your money will be filtered through an elaborate complicated network both giving you access to the poor but also distancing you from them
ONE CANNOT SIMPLY GIVE THE BIRDS A TUPPANCE the song explains. AID REQUIRES A DELIVERY MECHANISM which is an ambiguously transformative social infrastructure
"feed the birds, that what she says" Mary explains to us, puncturing the alluring dream that with merely a tuppance the hungry would be fed. but she allows us--cunning pedagogue that she is--to adduce the next stage in the dialectic (that only global revolution will suffice)
in this sense, "my bags full of crumbs" are far less about the birds as such; they are really a story about the scraps from the capitalist class's table with which we are expected to be content, and our class consciousness is the target of her song.
I hope you will provide a corrective to the movie by reading the books, in which MP would not be caught dead offering spoonfuls of sugar and was tyrannical and at times sadistic
My only issue with this reading is that “tuppence” is slang for “two pence” and should therefore be used in the plural form. It does not denote a vague donation, but a precise and limited one. There’s perhaps something to be said on the prescription of a menial amount. Otherwise, carry on.
Meanwhile "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is about education's relationship to stratification (who gets to be "precocious"), discipline, and class mobility
No liberal feminism as supposed threat to (but actual supporter of) the capitalist order via "Sister Suffragette"? (Probably don't hear it much because it's not a good song.)
Holy balls this thread blew my mind. Timely it is, as I was just cast as Mrs Brill in our local community theater production and sang “Feed the Birds” for callbacks. This has given me some good stuff to ruminate on!
Maybe you have a point considering how the sequel completely denied the song and went like yes the tuppance actually went to the bank and turned out to be a good investment, fuck the bird woman. I've no idea whether the new writers hated the original or was dense and thought they were being clever.
Comments
😁☂️
As a child, I didn’t get the depth of it, but I got the point. I think a lot of kids did.