I am going to admit that while I almost always like the book better than the movie, Mary Poppins has always been movie experience for me. When I read some of the books to our children when they were young, my daughter Alex, who had seen the movie, kept asking, "When does Mary Poppins get nice?"
When I finally saw the movie, I don't know if "Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)" registered much. I later learned that it was Walt's favorite song - he would ask the Sherman brothers, who wrote the songs, to come to his office and play it.
As I began to get more of a knack for literary analysis, which extended to my movie viewing, I began to realize that the song "Feed the Birds" was central to what the movie was about. The night before Jane and Michael are to accompany their father to the bank for the day, Mary Poppins sings it to put into Jane and Michael's heads the idea that using their tuppence to buy bird seed from the bird lady to feed the birds would be a very, very good idea. She notes that their father won't notice the bird lady because sometimes someone we love, through no fault of their own, can't see past the end of their nose. The song is almost a hymn to generosity, and its melody plays over key moments of the film when characters are struck with awe: when Bert, Mary, and the children watch the sunset over London, and as Mr. Banks, their father, looks at the steps of St. Paul's on his way to the bank late at night.
Mary Poppins seems very much to want the children to give the tuppence to the bird lady. Or does she?
What follows the next day is a conflict at the bank. Mr. Dawes, the bank's president, tries to take the tuppence from Michael in order to invest them. When Michael tries to get them back, yelling that he wanted to feed the birds, his shouts cause a run on the bank, which leads to Mr. Banks losing his job.
At home that evening, Michael gives the tuppence to his father to try to make everything right. His father takes them to the bank when he goes there to be dismissed. But as he's being fired, losing his job leads him to realize that he was too obsessed with work. He realizes that his children matter more than his career, but before he dances away from the bank singing "A Spoonful of Sugar" he plants those "fateful, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious tuppence" in Mr. Bank's hands, saying "guard them well." He goes to to mend his children's kite, becomes the father his children need him to be, and, incidentally, win back his job.
So Mary Poppins says to feed the birds using the tuppence, but they wind up going to Mr. Dawes, back to Michael, to Mr. Banks, and back to Mr. Dawes. The Bird Lady never sees those coins. This is a thematic conundrum. If feeding the birds was so important, why did the tuppence never end up in the Bird Woman's hands? Was Mary Poppins just messing with the children to cause a run on the bank when she sang "Feed the Birds"? Why is the music so soaring, the sense of symbolism and meaning so strong? But by the end of the movie, the tuppence go to the bank - and that's the last word.
Or it was - until now.
In last year's 54-years-in-the-making sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, we find that Mr. Dawes Jr. has invested those fateful tuppence and in the end they save the adult Michael and his three children from losing their house. So is the message pro-capitalism, anti-Bird Woman? Is it saying that Mary Poppins was wrong about giving the tuppence to the bird lady? Was she using reverse psychology?
If the tuppence are symbolic, they represent a troubling bit of symbolism.
When I love a work of art, I wanted to work on all levels, and I really wanted the symbolism to work out somehow. I loved the original movie and liked the new one a great deal - but those tuppence just didn't make sense. So I started thinking - what do the tuppence, and the Bird Woman really represent? It may be a sin to kill a mockingbird, but the novel isn't about mockingbirds. It may be a good thing to feed the birds, but the song is not really about the birds. Or the tuppence a bag.
The song seems to be about charity - and about how little an investment is needed to make someone else's life better. The Banks children need their father's time and attention - but he is withholding it from them in his oblivious obsession with his job and his orderly life. Mr. Banks himself is, as Burt says to the children, caged in at the bank by all the "cold heartless cash." Perhaps he himself needs some "investment," which Michael offers him in giving him the tuppence. And perhaps even old Mr. Dawes himself is a charity case for all his money. When Mr. Banks gives him the tuppence, he also gives him a joke he learned from his children - a joke that sends Mr. Dawes flying up to ceiling in laughter, and to a happy demise. Being rich in money doesn't mean being rich in joy.
So the tuppence aren't just about giving specifically to the bird lady, and they aren't really about the money. They are about the ways we invest in each other every day to bring more joy into each other's lives. It doesn't take a lot. It's a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down - not a whole pot of it.
We tend to be stingy with our time and attention. "Feed the Birds" reminds us to be generous. And with this symbolism in mind, when we innocently invest in trying to help someone else, as Michael does when he gives the tuppence back to his father, we never know when such generosity may be returned to us many-fold just when we need it most.
Mr. Banks wants his children to know that "life's a waging battle to be faced and fought." But in the end, he realizes that life is also going outside to fly a kite. Investments in joy are never lost.
Now about all those "Don't Feed the Birds" signs at the Disney theme parks...
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