It struck me the first time I taught this book how much of the magic in it is simply story-telling--Mary Poppins tells the story of the Red Cow, Jane tells the story of the Bird Woman. In a book with only five chapters (if I recall correctly), that's a significant percentage. And it tells us something about the relationship between magic and story-telling, I think, and what it is that makes magic.
And DO NOT GET ME STARTED on Saving Mr. Banks. Just for starters, I find it so obnoxious that in discussing a story about a magical woman, a figure of the feminine divine if ever there was one (check out the illustration of Mary Poppins holding the snakeskin in the air and compare it to the figurines of what was thought of as the Minoan snake goddess/priestess), written by a woman, in which fathers are of no significance whatsoever, that movie somehow makes it all about the wisdom of the studio patriarch in divining that the story should really be about a patriarch.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-01-18 01:28 pm (UTC)And DO NOT GET ME STARTED on Saving Mr. Banks. Just for starters, I find it so obnoxious that in discussing a story about a magical woman, a figure of the feminine divine if ever there was one (check out the illustration of Mary Poppins holding the snakeskin in the air and compare it to the figurines of what was thought of as the Minoan snake goddess/priestess), written by a woman, in which fathers are of no significance whatsoever, that movie somehow makes it all about the wisdom of the studio patriarch in divining that the story should really be about a patriarch.