Hermione’s bottomless bag; Paddington’s hard stare; Nanny McPhee’s mysterious and magical personality; Yondu’s flying arrow. These seemingly unrelated characters, personality traits and magical belongings all merge under Mary Poppins’s umbrella. Australian-born P. L. Travers’s iconic English governess has been entertaining readers worldwide since 1934. Over time, the audience for Mary Poppins has only grown as a result of various film and stage adaptations (e.g., Disney’s Mary Poppins in 1964 and 2018). This book aims to inform those professionals who are eager to discover more about the connection between popular culture and children’s literature concerning Mary Poppins. It is the first to collect and introduce films, sitcoms and other books that have adapted Mary Poppins’s most characteristic personality traits (such as her bitter-sweet ironic mood), unusual teaching methods, and her use of magical accessories (such as her umbrella and carpet bag).

Mary Poppins returns to the Banks family in a rocket and involves the Banks children in more magical adventures including those with Peppermint Horses, the Marble Boy, and the Cat that Looked at the King.

Over the past century, Disney has grown from a small American animation studio into a multipronged global media giant. Today, the company’s annual revenue exceeds the GDP of over 100 countries, and its portfolio has grown to include Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ABC, and ESPN. With a company so diversified, is it still possible to identify a coherent Disney vision or message? Disney Culture proposes that there is still a unifying Disney ethos, one that can be traced back to the corporate philosophy that Walt Disney himself developed back in the 1920s. Yet, as cultural historian John Wills demonstrates, Disney’s values have also adapted to changing social climates. At the same time, the world of Disney has profoundly shaped how Americans view the world. Wills offers a nuanced take on the corporate ideologies running through animated and live-action Disney movies from Frozen to Fantasia, from Mary Poppins to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But Disney Culture encompasses much more than just movies as it explores the intersections between Disney’s business practices and its cultural mythmaking. Welcome to “the Disney Way.”

This volume examines Mary Poppins as a 1960s film reflecting and invested in its radically changing times, a largely but not unmitigatedly antiestablishment musical resonant with conditions and issues powerfully affecting baby boomers. Among the explosion of baby boomer films that rocked the 1960s, the most stirring early work was likely Mary Poppins. This 1964 film captivated young audiences, earning top-grossing ticket sales, multiple Oscars, and landmark status as a cultural phenomenon. The book illuminates Mary Poppins as a musical teeming with preoccupations of American youth in the early-to-mid-1960s, including antiestablishment desires, anxieties, and pleasures. Reading against the dominant grain, this book deciphers Mary Poppins as a mid-century reflection that spans the generation gap, dysfunctional nuclear family, youth unrest, activism including feminist advocacy, counterculturalism, capitalist imperialism, race relations, socially conscious music, and hallucinogenic consciousness expansion. Conjunctively, the book explores tensions inherent in this studio production as a mainstream Disney release evoking imperatives of 1960s American youth while sanitizing figures and values representing radical change. Further, examining the film’s collective authorship, this volume traces Mary Poppins’ origins in the writings and life of nonconformist author P.L. Travers as well as in Disney cinema and the studio’s adaptation processes. Analysis extends to diverse facets of Mary Poppins’ reception, including the shifting image of its star, Julie Andrews, the film’s influence on popular culture and controversy among some as an adaptation, its appropriation by drug culture, association with the teenpic, and status as cinema of social consciousness. This book is ideal for students, researchers, and scholars of cinema studies and youth culture.

Mary Poppins comes back on the end of a kite string, stays with the Banks family for a while, and then disappears on a merry-go-round horse.

Summary: Examines the tribute band phenomenon and its place within the global popular music industry. This book also looks at music industry attitudes towards imitation, including copyright issues and the use of multimedia performance techniques to deliver the authentic tribute experience.

Bridging feminist and cultural studies, the book shows how British and American women poets often operate as cultural insiders. Individual chapters reassess major figures (H.D., Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath), alternative modernist poets (Edith Sitwell, Stevie Smith), and contemporary poets (Ai, Carol Ann Duffy).