Wednesday morning, I criticized an absurd Arizona Republic op-ed titled, “Phoenix restaurant says this is a photo of coal miners. But I see offensive blackface.”
The target of my criticism, Rashaad Thomas, argued that a Phoenix-area restaurant displaying a nearly 100-year-old photo of soot-covered, beer-swilling Welsh coal miners is tantamount to the restaurant telling its minority patrons “whites only.” That’s a funny thing for him to say, considering he only saw the photo because he was inside the restaurant as the attendee of a holiday party.
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“For me, the coal miners disappeared and a film honored for its artistic merit, despite being the most racist propaganda films ever, D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ (1915) surfaces, in which white actors appeared in blackface,” the author wrote. “At the downtown Phoenix restaurant, my concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were ignored.”
In my article, I joked that we’re maybe one article away from someone writing about the tyranny of chimney sweeps. Roughly one hour after my brief critique of Thomas’ op-ed went live, a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article published on Jan. 28 titled, “‘Mary Poppins,’ and a Nanny’s Shameful Flirting With Blackface.”
Come on, I had only been kidding!
The author of the Times op-ed, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, writes that “one of the more indelible images from the 1964 film” is when Mary Poppins gamely applies soot to her face for a dance number involving her wards, the soot-covered Jane and Michael, and group of similarly soot-covered chimney sweeps.
Then we get to the meat of the article:
The 1964 film replays this racial panic in a farcical key. When the dark figures of the chimney sweeps step in time on a roof, a naval buffoon, Admiral Boom, shouts, “We’re being attacked by Hottentots!” and orders his cannon to be fired at the “cheeky devils.” We’re in on the joke, such as it is: These aren’t really black Africans; they’re grinning white dancers in blackface. It’s a parody of black menace; it’s even posted on a white nationalist website as evidence of the film’s racial hierarchy.
He goes on like that for some time, arguing that Disney’s “Mary Poppins” reboot likewise suffers from problematic racial stereotypes. He also posits that “Disney has long evoked minstrelsy for its topsy-turvy entertainments — a nanny blacking up, chimney sweeps mocking the upper classes, grinning lamplighters turning work into song.”
There’s a lot going on here, but the article is mostly a collection of supplemental data points used to make the larger argument that Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke covering their faces in soot for a song-and-dance number with grimy, working-class chimney sweeps is, at the heart of it, “blackface.”
One problem with this argument is that it relies a great deal on materials that are not found in the movie itself. Pollack-Pelzner asks that we consider several outside examples of so-called “problematic” (ugh) incidents found only in the Mary Poppins books. He also asks that we consider similarly “problematic” materials found in separate Disney properties, such as old Mickey Mouse cartoons. From these considerations, the author asks that we accept that the “Step in Time” bit from the 1964 movie is a cockney’d-up minstrel show.
That’s a big ask. And it never occurs to Pollack-Pelzner to ask himself whether the fun isn’t just truly innocent, or whether logical stretches and guilt by association are perhaps not the best determiners of whether a thing is, in fact, racist.
Now, to be fair, Pollack-Pelzner does make a good point when he cites the admiral shouting in the film, “We’re being attacked by Hottentots!” That’s a clear homage to the exact sort of problems the author highlights in the film’s source material. But to refer to Julie Andrews daintily applying soot to her face while dancing with chimney sweeps as “blacking up”? Come on. What next, will chimneys be considered racist?
Perhaps the better argument would be to stop ruining good fun that isn’t racist, and instead point to the things that really are, like those very old Mickey Mouse cartoons.
At any rate, if there’s anyone who should feel aggrieved by the 1964 movie, it’s the British. Never before have a people been so poorly imitated.
