To anyone who grew up with the film version of Mary Poppins – which is to say, on the 60th anniversary of its release, several generations’ worth of one-time children – the idea of it once having been new is rather hard to imagine. Mary Poppins has felt like a staple for longer than it’s even technically been of “classic” age: having grown up in the VHS era of the 80s and 90s, I recall it as an oft-repeated go-to for classrooms, babysitters and festival TV programmers alike. (In South Africa, it alternated with The Sound of Music for the plum Christmas Day afternoon slot: as an emblem of the season, Julie Andrews was one step removed from Santa Claus.)
The film’s songs, images and lingo are firmly embedded in popular culture, its fairytale vision of a London accessorised with pink cherry blossom and black umbrellas still a tourist ideal. Small children, upon learning the word, have long puzzled out the spelling of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” as a challenge. At 41, I still find myself imitating Andrews’ brisk, clipped phrasing of “spit spot” when hurrying things along. Mary Poppins isn’t foremost in my mind when I do so; like so many fragments from the film, the phrase has just been absorbed into the fabric of everyday life. Can they really not have always been there?
