At one point Mary, joins the dance and dazzles everyone with her ability to spin around weightlessly in mid-air. “Step in Time” is a wonderful piece of choreography. All of the sweeps are actually stepping in time with one another, their dance is orderly, but it changes and seems to self-organize spontaneously. However, to Admiral Boom, viewing it from afar, nothing but chaos is evident, and he thinks that the Hottentots are invading. Hottentots are aboriginal African people, and this racially insensitive comment alludes to the shadow.

Bert, as we have seen is all that George is not. He can be viewed as George’s shadow, for the shadow can contain beneficial as well as troubling aspects. Bert and his fellow sweeps symbolize this. Like Mary, Bert is a trickster and Jung (1954/1990) saw the trickster as a shadow figure. Hynes explains that Jung saw the trickster as

“a primitive cosmic being of divine-animal nature, on the one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his unreason and unconsciousness.” (Jung, 1955:203-4). Jung considers the trickster to be a “shadow” that brings to the surface or the underside or reverse of dominant values. Breaking through into the world of normalcy and order, the trickster plays out subterranean forbiddens in dreamlike fashion. For Jung this process represents both the ongoing fugue between the personal consciousness and the more trans-personal unconsciousness, as well as the dynamic byplay between the civilized and the primitive. As a civilization rises to consciousness it may attempt to clean up or repress the trickster altogether (Jung, 1955: 202-209), yet even as civilization constructs a shared conscious order of beliefs, the pesky trickster disrupts all such orderings with reminders of a shared disorder or collective unconsciousness (Neumann, 1954: 8). (Hynes, 1993, pp. 209-10)

These chaotic sweeps are seen by the Admiral as a disruptive element, and so he launches a colorful fireworks attack on them: “Cheeky devils, let’s give’em what for.” The explosions of this skyrocket attack beautifully light up the sky but cause the sweeps to chaotically scatter and true chaos ensues momentarily, while they make their escape. Bert even uses his brush as a bat and sends a rocket back to Admiral Boom, who momentarily forgetting himself, remarks “Good shot,” before remembering himself and ducking. All of the sweeps, along with Bert, Mary, and the children go down the Banks’s chimney, the same chimney that the children’s advertisement ascended earlier. They end up back in the drawing room—the scene of the competing advertisements, Mary Poppins’s interview, and George’s decision (induced by Mary Poppins) to take the children on an outing.

Once inside the house, the sweeps begin chaotically dancing around. The cook spots them and shrieks “They’re at it again.” At first she waves them off with a frying pan, but the sweeps take up this call and add it into their song, taking the cook into their dance. Next, Ellen gets involved, as she shrieks “Ow” which the sweeps also incorporate into the dance along with her, reminsicent of the taffy puller in the chaos theory discussion in the "Cosmic Game" chapter [link]. Mrs. Banks arrives and spontaneously, upon seeing her sash, they begin to shout: “Votes for women, step in time.” Although hesitating at first, Winifred cheerfully joins in and they all march around in formation to the “Sister Suffragette” theme. Ellen, in mid-dance, notices that Mr. Banks has arrived and shrieks “it’s the master,” and then all the chimney sweeps do likewise, changing their song to reflect this new utterance as they continue dancing. George walks into the middle of the chaos, asking “What’s all this,” and the sweeps then reiterate his call as well, and sort of reel him in, passing and turning him around down the line, and into the kitchen. Although the scene is chaotic, it is well-orchestrated self-organizing chaos. George is not participating with them like the others, but gets caught up in the chaos anyway.

The sweeps are delightfully demonstrating deterministic self-organizing chaos from which a higher order eventually arises. Each of the different tunes that the sweeps embrace are similar to strange attractors, around which they organize themselves as they adopt different patterns, via their steps, vocalizations, and the different tunes that are played in the background. Here the sweeps, led by Bert represent the creative chaos aspect of the trickster. Hynes (1993) notes that:

In Jungian interpretation, the trickster as shadow can therefore serve as a breakthrough point for the surfacing of repressed values. At a deeper level he remains a creative mediator between that which is differentiated, ordered, predictable, and distinct, on the one hand, and that which is undifferentiated, unordered, spontaneous, and whole, on the other. In this way, the trickster may be understood as the embodiment of such productive chaos as creativity, play, spontaneity, inventiveness, ingenuity, and adventure. The trickster not only helps us encounter these yet-to-be focused energies but also ventures forth in an ongoing exploration and charting of the inchoate, the “otherness” that always resurges to challenge our neat and organized sense of personal control. (pp. 209-210)

Mary Poppins, upon seeing that George has arrived, has Bert call the chaos to an end. All the sweeps then depart, shaking hands with George on the way out. George is dazed by the entire episode, but when Michael attempts to sneak out as one of the sweeps, his father pulls him aside. The sweeps then dance down the street toward the park entrance, in the same direction that the nannies blew away at the beginning of the movie. After the sweeps have left, the children remark that their father is very lucky because every one of the sweeps shook his hand. George then asks Mary Poppins to explain:

George: Mary Poppins, what is the meaning of this outrage?

Mary: I beg your pardon?

George: Would you be kind enough to explain all this?

Mary: First of all I would like to make one thing quite clear,

George: Yes?

Mary: I never explain anything.

From the beginning, Mary has shown that she can step outside the box of George’s way of being and assume her own authority. She is a hermeneut who helps George eventually construct his own construct, and not merely remain in the traditionally, socially imposed one:

Tricksters are agents of creativity who transcend the constrictions of monoculturity . . . . There is a more subtle, deeper and broader meta-affirmation that life is much more than the sum of its social or religious constructs. Beyond all mere “scouting out” of possible alternative personal or social constructs, the trickster reminds us that every construct is constructed. Not only is someone not confined to a single construct or system of order, she is not confined to a choice among alternative constructs. (Hynes, 1993, p. 213) ∆RC[mp38]

This scene has shown the powerful potential for creativity in chaos, that allows for rebirth to occur. Old patterns die and are replaced by new ones. Mary as hermeneut is a polymorphous, Plutonic player.

The hermeneut puts us in contact with the sources of creativity from which we can be empowered to construct our own construct. The trickster’s constant chatterings and antics remind us that life is endlessly narrative, prolific, and open-ended.… just as the presence of a child reminds adults how rigidly they have taken on a certain kind of order, the trickster reminds us that there is no single way to play. “Thus the trickster incarnates in every culture the oxymoronic imagination at play, literally “fooling around” to discover new paradigms and even new logics. As such, he reveals man’s freedom to shape the world just because it actively offers itself to him—even if he must trick it to make it come across" (Pelton 1980: 272) . . . .

At one end of the scale of social cosequences, the trickster offers ritual rebellion in lieu of actul rebellion . . . . But at the other end of ths scle of social consequences, however, the trickster may prepare the way for adaptation, change or even total replacement of the belief system—the very process of registering and sharing social complaints can initiate movement toward a new consensus. In fact, the system is reopened to its own inward resource of power where imaginative alternatives are glimpsed. (Hynes, 1993, pp. 212-213)

Mary through her unexpected Uranian actions is able to help those around her to transform. Her unique ways of seeing and doing things upset the established order which allows for new things to happen, and for new ideas and views to appear in the cultural clearing or horizon. Bert and his chimney sweep friends show us the Plutonian power and richness of chaos and liminality.

Victor Turner reminds us that the liminal figure of the trickster breaks “ the cake of custom and enfranchises speculation” so that there is a “promiscuous intermingling and juxtaposing of the categories” (Turner, 1969: 106). Furthermore, this promiscuous intermingling may engender new progeny, never of a type previously envisioned: “Such creative negations remind us of the need to reinvest the clean with the filthy, the rational with the animalistic, the ceremonial with the carnivalesque in order to maintain cultural vitality. And they confirm the endless potentiality of dirt and the pure potentiality of liminality. The mundus inversus [inverted world] does more than simply mock our desire to live ccording to our usual orders and norms; it reinvests life with a vigor and a Spielraum [an arena of playful inventiveness] attainable (it would seem) in no other way.” (Babcock-Abrahams 1978: 32)

This liminal chaotic adventure has taken place in the surrounds of the hearth, representing the cultural center of the family, and alludes to the Trickster as culture bringer.

Thus the trickster’s breaking and reaffirming the rules represents a move beyond order and disorder to transformed order significantly revitalized and repopulated with a wider breath of options. (Pelton, 1979: 8).

As an agent of creativity, the trickster is often associated with activities that center upon human creativity: the bringing of culture, laughter, business transactions as well as opening the doors of perception . . . the trickster’s association with creativity parallels his common linkage with creation and innovation: the creative process mimics the creation process itself. Tricksters in their own way counter the Stoic argument that the trait that we have in common with God and the universe is logos: word, logic and order. Tricksters argue that the common trait is creativity, imagination, invention and experimentation. (Hynes, 1993, p. 213)

Bert and Mary have demonstrated play’s transformative power, at once destructive and creative. Play has the power to create the world anew, to cleanse the doors of perception, yet at this point, all George can see is chaos and ruin everywhere. He has left the chaos of the bank to come home to even more chaos. George is deeply in the third matrix, BPM III, in a seeming life or death struggle, as his previously well-ordered routine lies in ruin all around him. His structures and schedules are all in shambles—tradition, discipline, and rules have all vanished, leaving what appears to be “a ghastly mess.” His old way of being seems to be as good as dead. The disastrous outing will probably result in his ousting from the bank, since his job is almost certainly in jeopardy.

George Gets It

A Call From The Bank

George receives phone call from the bank and is requested to report back there at 9:00 pm. The matter is "extremely serious," and we learn that not only has George been with the bank for years, but that his father was also a banker. Jane and Michael overhear the conversation from the stairs above and then go up to the nursery. George dejectedly goes into the drawing room, next to the hearth. This is an appropriate placement for the song, since the fireplace or hearth, is a symbol of “community, of home, the center of life,” and in many traditions functions as the center or navel of the world (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, 1996, p. 483). The hearth is associated with Hestia, Hermes’s Olympian counterpart. Bert is still here, packing up his brushes and will show us his Hermes-like nature, as he acts as a sly psychopomp for George:

Because he is at the “pivot point” between the transformations from life to death and back again, Hermes is at just that psychological nexus where transformation occurs, where for example as we are changed by new facts or experience, we undergo a transformation into a different person—symbolic death and rebirth. (Combs & Holland 2001, pp. 83-84)

George starts to sing “A Man Has Dreams” to the tune of “The Life I Lead,” but its tone is much more somber, defeated, and almost funereal—perhaps alluding to the death of his job and hence persona: “A man has dreams of waking with giants, to carve his niche in the edifice of time,” again, all Saturnian themes. As George laments his fate, Bert, collecting his brushes, gets a queer tricksterish look on his face—the familiar dark smile of Hermes.

Continued on page 11