(Steve Granitz / Contributor / Getty Images)
Remember that scene in Mary Poppins where Bert, Mary and the kids all get covered in soot while singing “Chim Chim Cher-ee”? Well, that’s racist and is really just blackface and a shameful minstrel show. Please immediately discard your “Mary Poppins” soundtracks and DVDs or the New York Times will be forced to out you as the KKK supporter that you are.
In a piece for the New York Times, Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, explains his theory:
“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).”
Isn’t it wonderful that we now have to parse through 50-60 year-old Disney films to find incidents of racism to whine about?
WIBC Tony Katz:
“You wanting to find offense in something doesn’t automatically make it offensive. What’s really offensive is that you think because you have an opinion, other people have to change.”
Click the link below to hear more from Tony:
