How Disney Turned Women into Violent Protesters and Children into Useless Junkies
By Joshua Taylor | Published
The 1960s are often considered the golden age of the family for the Walt Disney Company. These films are seen as representative of what entertainment can be like when it’s not pushing an agenda or trying to trick the audience into accepting some fringe belief. Anyone who thinks so is dead wrong.
The 1960s were ground zero for a massive cultural shift in the United States, with ideas such as the hippie movement and the feminist movement, although not popular in the mainstream, quietly being embraced by the artists and creatives who made Disney films. So when Walt Disney assembled a team to make Mary Poppins In 1963, whether he realized it or not, his family-friendly film about a magical nanny became one of the first films to screenwash a resistant audience in support of a rising tide of countercultural beliefs.
Screen washed (adjective) — When something seen on the screen completely changes how someone thinks or feels, as if their old beliefs were erased and replaced by what they just saw.
What a story this is Mary Poppins Screenwashing American children into joining an ideology their parents already rejected, and in the process causing the catastrophe of the modern world.
Mary Poppins is a completely different character in the book
Mary Poppins Adapted from the book by author PL Travers. If you’ve read Travers’ books, you may have noticed that they are almost completely different from the iconic Disney movies.
Travers’ stories are strange, demanding, and sometimes uncomfortable. Disney’s version rewrote it into something softer, shinier, and more ideologically driven. PL Travers hated everything about Disney movies and vehemently opposed it, loudly claiming that it completely subverted and misrepresented the values she was trying to teach children in her books.
The changes begin with Mary Poppins herself, who is not a fun, whimsical character in the books, living a life indulging in children’s fantasies. Travers’s character is stern, impatient, and distant. She is not very friendly most of the time and is very strict. She never nurtures; she only corrects. Her goal is to help the children in her care become better adults.
The movie version takes the opposite approach. She is stern on the surface, but ultimately she indulges and encourages whims and fantasies. She disdained practicality and used magic shortcuts to help children avoid doing the actual work. The film itself scoffs at anything that isn’t purely funny and goes to great lengths to sell viewers the idea that a child’s life should be nothing more than dancing on the ceiling.
Disney turns dad into the ultimate villain
Disney’s approach Mary Poppins Become the movie’s villain, Mr. Banks. In the book, he’s not a bad guy. He is an ordinary father who is considered an important member of the family and the leader of the family.
In the movie, Mr. Banks is treated as a monster and the end of the movie actually tells him to fly a kite.
On the surface, there is nothing sinister about what Mr. Banks did. He would occasionally suggest that his wife should take her family responsibilities more seriously since she did lose her child and didn’t seem to care. He wants his children to be polite and respectful to each other. He wanted to take his son to work and teach him how to find a job. He was trying to help his children understand the value of money and wanted to open a savings account for them.
These basic, standard, and good parenting concepts are regarded as pure villains in the movie. Mary Poppins’ job is to teach the family how to subvert Mr. Banks’ practical advice.
Feed the birds, or something else
The film provides viewers with practical advice for ridicule by using a well-known propaganda technique called the “Poison Well.” “Poisoning the well” occurs when an idea is viewed with suspicion by attacking its source rather than the idea itself.
So if you have an evil person say something reasonable and then have everyone act as evil as those thoughts and the person who said those thoughts, then people will associate those thoughts with evil. It doesn’t matter how reasonable or logical the ideas are.
The famous “feeding the birds” moment Mary Poppins It’s the biggest, most manipulative emotional knife-twist ever. This is all a trap set by Mary Poppins.
The children’s father told Mary Poppins that he wanted to take the children to the bank tomorrow to open a savings account. Mary Poppins agreed because she knew his route to the bank.
That night, Mary Poppins sang a magical song about a homeless woman who fed the birds and told the children that if they wanted the saint to be kind to them, they should give her money. Mary was well aware that they would pass this woman on their way to the bank, although the children thought it was just a fantasy story.
The next day, on their way to the bank, Mr. Banks and the children encounter a homeless bird feeder. After a night of pre-programming with Mary Poppins, the children want to help her by giving her the money Mr. Banks wants them to deposit in the bank.
Mr. Banks kindly suggested that the money could be saved. The kids were so freaked out that they pouted and acted like monsters during the rest of their trip to the bank, eventually behaving so badly that their dad was fired.
The film depicts the entire sequence as a moral failure on Mr. Banks’ part. The camera lingers. Music starts. Audiences are trained to Feel Caution is cruelty, and Mr. Banks deserves everything he gets after he refuses to hand over money to a homeless woman.
How ‘Mary Poppins’ Turns Audiences Against Long-term Thinking
The real trick here is that the film, particularly the bird-feeding sequence, isn’t actually arguing against greed. This is against long term thinking. It redefines responsibility as emotional apathy. It quietly teaches kids, and the parents watching with them, that planning ahead is somehow less moral than impulsive generosity.
This was one of the core beliefs of the counterculture movement of the early 1960s. Hippies defined long-range planning as “submission to the system.” It’s no accident that this happens in a movie like Mary Poppins Returns . This is intentional conditioning.
But Mr. Banks is not wrong. He is right. save money yes Good advice. Teaching children that money has a future value is one of the most important lessons a parent can teach their children. but Mary Poppins This becomes a character flaw because the story delivers a series of subversive ideas.
‘Mary Poppins Returns’ Shames Responsible Fathers and Encourages Absent Mothers
This is the only reason Mr. Banks is in the movie. He instilled in his audience basic common-sense family values that were popular at the time. Values that people cannot be persuaded to abandon through honest debate.
In contrast to Mr. Banks, Mrs. Banks was virtually absent. She sent her children to political events, marches and meetings every day. The film does this oddly and admirably. Her absence was not considered an oversight; it is framed as liberation. After all she is doing important work. The job just so happens to require completely abandoning her children to a stranger with supernatural powers.
The film never asks the obvious question: Why is it okay for a mother to do something that doesn’t contribute anything to the family, but terrible for a father to be busy making money to support them?
This asymmetry is intentional. This movie wants you to feel angry at the man who pays the bill and indifferent to the woman who doesn’t come home. Responsibility is recoded as oppression. Absence is recoded as self-fulfillment.
Emotional reshaping to manipulate the audience
When “Mary Poppins Returns” arrives, she doesn’t replace her parents; cover them. She is more than just a nanny. She is a psychological balancer. She rewards emotional indulgence. She scoffed at discipline. She makes authority figures look stupid. She trains children to associate joy with breaking rules and resentment with structure.
This is classic emotional reframing.
emotional reconstruction is a persuasive technique in which characters, stories, or messages Changing how you feel about an idea without changing the fact of the idea itself.
“Mary Poppins” didn’t argue with Mr. Banks. she better than he. She didn’t prove him wrong, she made him look irrelevant. This is how propaganda works. You don’t counter the opposing view; you make it feel stale, uncool, and boring.
Even the bank itself is portrayed as a veritable monster. The pillars are like teeth and the employees are like drones. This is not a place that creates stability; This is a villain’s lair. Never mind that banks represent the system that keeps families afloat. Spectators are trained to cheer when the scene descends into chaos.
By the end of the film, Mr. Banks has been “repaired.” How is he fixed? Not verified. Not by being appreciated. But he became a whimsical, kite-flying man, completely abandoning seriousness.
Responsible adults must become irresponsible children to avoid becoming villains
This is the movie’s last resort: The father must become a child to be saved. He doesn’t get credit for being right. He was rewarded for giving up. His arc is not growth, but surrender. The film’s message is clear: duty must yield to emotion, or else it deserves to be ridiculed and exterminated.
Mary Poppins Teach children that adults with plans are villains, that mothers don’t need to be there, and that money is something you feel, not something you manage. It wraps this lesson in warmth and then dares you to question it without making yourself look like the bad guy.
This is what being screenwashed looks like. You walk in thinking you’re watching a harmless musical. You walk out trusting the most responsible person in the room which has always been the problem.
Enjoy your stalled development, kids, you’ve been screenwashed.
