cry havoc

For some inexplicable reason (as in, no idea how I followed whatever links to end up there), this evening I ended up on a wiki page about the film, Mary Poppins. I have never liked this film, although as a kid I liked Julie Andrews well enough that she often saved films for me that I'd otherwise detest. But Mary Poppins, hm. And although CP calls this an example of a severe reinterpretation of the text (and one mostly unsupported by the text), it's still there, in my head, all these years later.

First, let's get this out of the way: Dick Van Dyke does the worst Cockney accent. Despite being born-and-raised American, when I finally saw Mary Poppins, I assumed he was from somewhere else in America, and not British (or Cockney, allegedly). This is because I'd already been to England and met several lovely elderly Cockneys while we were in London, and Dyke didn't talk anything like them. Plus, he was completely comprehensible, and right there, I knew he couldn't be really British, because you had to listen hard when someone from London spoke or else you couldn't figure out a word of it. Even the people in Aberdeen were easier to understand, with a little work, than the taxi drivers and bed/breakfast keepers we met in London.

So there's that level of a wrong note (so to speak), but there are deeper levels. One is that before I ever saw the film Mary Poppins, I'd read Kingsley's Water-Babies. (Later I saw some of the so-called filmic/animated adaptation of the book, and was disgusted with the fact that it was nothing like the book.) Water-Babies made a huge impact on me; while I was used to Dickens and his thorough applications of bathos for the sake of making his young protagonists (ie Oliver) sympathetic, Dickens also had later movies to deal with where Fagin and his crew were iffy and dirty but hardly, y'know, freaking terrifying like Oliver Reed. But Water-Babies pulls no punches about the life and tasks of its chimney sweep protagonist, and at the young age of maybe six or seven, trying to imagine a life of a chimney sweep came very close to giving me nightmares. If there is anything on this planet that I would never, ever, ever wish upon any child, it would be cleaning chimneys.

And then there's the song by Mrs Banks, about being a suffragette. I guess I was maybe nine or ten? when I finally saw Mary Poppins, and I already knew what suffragettes were. (Thank you, Mom, the feminist.) Except that in the movie -- relatively straightforward and crowd-rousing lyrics aside -- the movie-Mom wasn't treated like a hero. She was treated like a ditz who, I don't know, did suffragette-ing on the side, on Sunday afternoons, like a weekly hobby to keep herself busy between doing wash on Tuesdays and having other ladies over for high tea on Thursdays. And maybe some silver-polishing on Saturday morning. Or whatever upper-class British ladies did, which (in my admittedly young and inexperienced opinion) seemed to amount to a lot of dabbling. And looking ornamental.

But the film's pivotal role -- and the real bearer of any moral message -- is Mary Poppins herself, and she seems to treat (or so I recall) Mrs. Banks as though Mrs Banks is little more than a twittering ditz, and mostly useless. I knew my American history and that women fought for a long, long time before they got the vote, so I figured in Britain it was probably similar, and that (at the time) a lot of men saw women wanting the vote as something that should never happen, and would never amount to any good. So I completely expected Mr Banks' dismissive reaction to his wife's activism; it was Mary Poppins' dismissiveness that really baffled me, and then annoyed me. I mean, if Mary Poppins is supposed to be so smart, why would she a) treat another woman like she's stupid, and b) not respect and support a woman trying to make life better for all women?

( Thus I was already a bit iffy on the film, first time I watched it, but the clincher was the song, Chim Chim Cher-ee. )

I was never into superheroes, outside the exposure to the Wonder Woman television show and a handful of Saturday morning cartoons -- which I didn't much like, seeing how in her own show, Wonder Woman was pretty awesome, but in the Justice League getup, she mostly just flew around in her invisible/glass helicopter and, I don't know, made coffee the rest of the time. (At least, that was my impression as a kid.)

Awhile back CP and I were talking about one thing and it led (as it always does) to something else, and I finally confessed that for the majority of my childhood, I was convinced there was a really awesome superhero out there... but that not being very knowledgeable about superheroes and all that (and it didn't help that my parents discouraged comic book reading, and besides, the library didn't carry comic books), I never could find out where to read the superhero's stories.

See, at some point in 2nd or 3rd grade, I happened to see a poster, probably at the mall or something, at one of those shops where you could get everything from old posters to lava lamps to whoopie cushions. Bookending this particular poster was another I already knew:



This poster, along with posters for Superman, Batman, and even the little-known Captain America, all taught me How To Identify Superheroes: they were usually the ones standing front-and-center, and almost always had their legs shoulder-width apart, or wider (per Luke in the poster above). Superheroes didn't kneel at anyone's feet, and they didn't sit, either. The superhero's hands would be on his hips (or one hand, with the other holding his weapon of choice or brandishing a fist). Every now and then a superhero might have crossed arms, like Batman's laconic pose, or Wonder Woman showing off her bracelets.

But generally speaking, you knew it was a superhero if the character was larger than everyone else, and looked like someone who could hold their own, possibly even spell trouble for bad guys.

( Thus it made perfect sense to me, at that young age, that this was also a superhero. )

This is for taithe's amusement, but the rest of you are welcome to join in. Just imagine that the older half of the conversation is speaking in a coastal Mississippi accent. If you're not sure what that is, think something close to Holly Hunter's (Georgia) accent, but slower, and farther back in the throat. It's really a rather gentle accent, and for all that we fuss about non-Southerners thinking Southern accent means stupid, the Delta/coastal accent has definite connotations of elegance, if a friendly kind.

Anyway, in talking of the Civil War and Reconstruction, I was reminded of one of the few family stories that... well, it remains a mystery. My grandmother was, as befit many Southern women of her era, big into genealogy. Come to think of it, it's still a big thing, but we've got that whole thing about family, anyway. I grew up with stories of various people in the family, like the time she told me I had a however-many-greats-aunt who was -- drumroll, please -- Abraham Lincoln's stepmother.

Me, at tender age of ten: wasn't the reason Abraham Lincoln left home really young because he hated his step-mother?
Gramma: *handwave* Dear, we don't speak ill of the dead.

[ETA: many many thanks to wordweaverlynn (see comments) for enlightening me on this childhood misunderstanding, that childhood-me had it Completely Wrong. Wah!]

Anyway, the only other Civil-War related story of unexpected relatives was about a Southern General. When the South decided to secede from the Union, all ranking military officers who were residents of a seceding state were contacted by the newly-formed Confederacy. Each general was asked to convert his commission from the North/Federal govt to the South/Confederacy. Many didn't, many did. And then there was one general -- the one in my family -- who regretfully replied that he had -- really! -- only just discovered, like, within minutes of getting the invitational letter -- that he had inherited some form of madness.

Terrible, terrible thing, them late-in-life unexpected insanities. Kill you right off, if you weren't careful. Naturally, he had to listen to his doctors' advice, and promptly packed up his entire family and off they all go to a sanatorium in the South of France in hopes he might live out that what's left of his life, in peace. And, y'know, hope for a cure.

Me: What happened then, Gramma?
Gramma: Remarkably, he was only ill for foueeah yeeaahrs, and the sanatorium cured him completely, just in time for him to return home, on the tails of the South surrendering.
Me: ...
Gramma: *completely deadpan* The nick of time, really.
Me: That seems awfully convenient timing, Gramma.
Gramma: Gracious, I'm sure it was just a coincidence.
Me: Unh-hunh. So what was his name? Who was he?
Gramma: *handwave* Dear, it's not polite to speak ill of the dead.

(Like she didn't do it all the time. She just figured if she didn't name names, it wasn't really speaking ill of the dead because you hadn't said who exactly they were. At least, that's what I think she was thinking. She never did explain why not, only that... well, she had plenty to say about plenty in the family. Now I've got plenty of stories and no names to go with them. Except for the stories about my grandmother's step-grandfather's younger brother, who -- according to my mother -- really did run that wild. Not like running wild was all that much, considering my grandmother's aunt ran a boarding house, threw parties where the bathtub really was filled with gin, and had three pet house-pigs.)

I guess this just means temporary insanity runs in my family, or maybe -- to not speak ill of the dead -- just really good survival instincts.

Jump forward to about 3:30 and watch. The entire scene had me in hysterics. Exchange "frogs" for "pigs feet" and that's me and my sister on a family-visit when we were younger. Nothing like elderly cooks with good intentions to take years off your life. (Which, when you're 14 and 11, as we were, there aren't that many years to take.)


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(It's the younger girl, on the left, waving the food around as preface to not-so-stealthily trying to slip it into the older girl's rice bowl that really did me in. My sister tried that trick at least once every family visit.)

And a true one -- yet another fond memory of the years owning a bookstore. Since it's halloween, I figured no time like now for amusing folks with this recollection.

A and my business partner were evening-shift cooks in the two most popular restaurants in town, and she started coming by the shop to visit before work. She was a few years younger than me, and living in the house her great-grandfather built; her grandfather and her mother had been born in the house. When A was in her early teens or thereabouts, her mother died, and A's family moved out of state. An aunt was ostensibly the house's caretaker but for all practical purposes the house was abandoned, empty.

When A turned 18, she elected to come back. The house had been badly vandalized, and A and her aunt spent hours cleaning up and painting over graffiti, replacing busted-out window panes, getting working light fixtures.

( The house was wrecked except for one room which had a few broken windows but was otherwise untouched... and that's where this ghost story begins. )