The aim of our sense of humor is not to reduce us to a childish state of mind but to enliven our adulthood with injections of childishness. Once we have acquired the ability to take things seriously, we need to revive the ability to take them playfully. Once we have learned how to care, we have to remember how not to care. (Mindess, 1971, p. 121)

Much of what goes on at Uncle Albert’s is nonsense humor. Nonsense is important because it provides a “recess from rational thought” it confounds the intellect and beckons to the wealth of irrationality within us: “as human beings we are capable of visualizing things which cannot be, conjuring up both frightening and wondrous fantasies, dispensing with the boundaries of time and space, the law of cause and effect” (Mindess, 1971, p. 80). Nonsense humor allows us to shake off the bonds of sensibility and run free in the fields of our imagination. Reason, although providing a great many positive benefits also tones down and curtails joy, and is an agent of constriction. Nonsense, although frivolous and childish, is freeing and renewing, like Zen koans that give enlightenment. We enjoy nonsense so much because after a diet of logic, reason, and rational knowledge “we thirst for a refreshing sip of the absurd,” the irrational, the illogical (pp. 82-83). ∆RC[mp29]

Jokes Abound

Uncle Albert and Bert begin exchanging jokes, and in the end or rather near the end of the movie, it is a joke that sets George free. Jokes reveal the play in language, and, like play of which they are a part, jokes often link incongruent elements and take unexpected turns. Telling jokes entails surprise and release and is often aimed at areas of tension. The punch lines provide a moment of release. Jokes share qualities of surprise and fit, playing tricks on our expectations and jokes put their topics together in a novel manner:

The combination of these two characteristics—surprise and fit is common throughout the kingdom of humor. It occurs in many variations, but some form of confounding our preliminary expectations and putting the puzzle together in an unexpected pattern is what humor almost always does. (Mindess, 1971, pp. 150-151)

Many jokes are based on incongruity and Derrida notes that jokes aren’t static, they build up to “a crescendo, which is disrupted when the outcome is ‘nothing’” (Glenn, 2003, p. 20). The setup creates expectations, or a trajectory, for what is to follow; the punch line shifts frames and delivers “nothing.” Jokes have a sequential pattern: a mood is suggested, or a line of thought and then it is dispelled in a novel manner.

At the beginning, there is the set-up that gets us going in one direction, and then, unexpectedly, we veer off course, and end up somewhere else. While going down one train of thought, we are sidetracked and get taken on a tangent. It is just another kind of bricolage, and so it is very appropriate that Bert is the one who tells the joke that George will later repeat epiphanically at the bank.

Whenever we hear a joke, see a ludicrous image, or perceive the ridiculous aspect of a real life situation, our habitual mental operations are forestalled and new ones are substituted. We are robbed of the opportunity to complete a conventional train of thought and are presented with a more imaginative one in its place. The substitution is amusing, but its ramifications are more than amusing, for they turn us on to the possibility of unique, unstereotyped thinking on a wider scale. Whatever the specific topics of our laughter, in the mere fact of reacting through humor, we achieve a moment of nascence, of renewal, of creativity. The process sheds light on the levitating influence of wit and comedy in general. (Mindess, 1971, pp. 152-153)

The liberatory and enlightening nature of humor are highlighted in Mary Poppins, where there is actual levitation, caused appropriately by levity. Zen koans, as just noted, are tools for enlightenment precisely because they work like jokes, and interrupt the normal patterns of the ego. Speaking of interrupting, let us look at how this relates to the trickster.

Mindess (1971) says that “The comic spirit is an embodiment of the spirit of disruption. It breaks us free from the ruts of our minds, inviting us to enjoy the exhilaration of escape" (p. 22). Trickster tales are entertaining, they make people laugh, but beyond that teach people how to behave, and they are used in healing rituals. Trickster tales also “help us become conscious of aspects of life and culture that might otherwise be neglected. By becoming aware of them, we can rearrange them or see why it is best to leave them the way they are,” (Hansen, 2001, p. 59) and Hansen also notes that Babcock says that creative thought is “double-minded” as opposed to routine thought (p. 60). Laughter, too, allows us to see things that might otherwise be neglected. Like the Trickster, laughter deterritorializes the ego, and allows us to get unstuck, to free ourselves from habit, routine, and one-sidedness. Later, one of the jokes that Michael learned at Uncle Albert’s will prove very enlightening indeed.

Jane and Michael think that they will have to stay up on the ceiling forever, but they learn that there is a way to come down. You can literally "come down," by thinking of something sad, by becoming emotionally down, which Uncle Albert is reluctant to do. When Mary says that they must go, it is sad, and as a result, they all end up back on the ground. Bert stays with Uncle Albert after Mary and the children leave, unsuccessfully attempting to cheer Uncle Albert up again, but his jokes fall flat and Uncle Albert just weeps.

Sowing the Seeds of Chaos

A Few Words with Mary Poppins—"A British Bank" . . . [The Life I Lead tune]

George Banks is still cross and angry when he returns home that evening, ignoring Admiral Boom, George is a man on a mission. The children are waiting for him at the door, and try to tell him about their day and the joke about the wooden leg, which he does not get: “We don’t know anyone named Smith,” he says, because he is so distracted that he either did not hear that it was a joke, or he did not care to play along. George dismisses the children who are rambling on about the day, while Mary is coming down the stairs. George tells Mary he wants to speak with her. Everyone in the household knows what is coming, they have seen it before. Winifred is on her way out to a rally, but George insists that she stay and begins the discussion by saying that he is partially to blame for letting the children spend time on “worthless frivolities” and that “it is high time they learn the seriousness of life.”

Mary has been honoring the imagination. Through her tricky ways, with her games and outings, she has helped the children learn new things through these playful and play-filled experiences. George does not see any value in this. He does not allow any irrationality into his life. He holds fast to his persona, his social mask, and is very threatened by the changes he sees going on all around him, although they are positively affecting the rest of the household:

Flights of the imagination may threaten deeply rooted attitudes or moods. Such attitudes are comfortable, and they impart a sense of familiarity to everyday living. We feel their rightness, and so we may find it disquieting to open ourselves wholeheartedly to the irrational play of the imagination. (Combs & Holland, 2001, p. 136)

Because of George’s rigid one-sidedness, he does not play, as Winifred so astutely mentioned earlier in the day, in the discussion about the piano. Nor does George play at anything else, it seems. George is possessed by his social self-image, a British banker, serious to the utmost. In order to play, to let our imaginations run free, we need to

lighten up from time to time . . . . To do this we must relax rigid attitudes or moods, even perhaps our concepts of morality…. Putting aside your culturally created and therefore limited conception of reality, including the reality of your own self. The trickster can then reveal aspects of ourselves that are hidden from our scrutiny . . . but if we allow the trickster to be our guide and follow his play consciously, we are given the very real possibility of expanding our lens of who and what we are. Allowing true freedom to the imagination requires that we take the courage to bare ourselves to an insecurity that comes with giving oneself over to the irrational. (Combs & Holland, 2001, p. 136)

George is not prepared to do this. He is trying to restore the prior order, which Jung would call "retrogressive restoration of the persona." Instead of going with the changes, George is trying to fire Mary Poppins, who is at the heart of the changes. ∆RC[mp30]

When George says that Jane and Michael need to learn the seriousness of life, Winifred reminds him, “But George, they’re only children,” and yet he continues. Almost as forewarning Winifred asks him, “are you certain you know what you're doing?” George answers that he believes he does and then proceeds to discuss the household in term of the bank. This patter song is to the tune “The Life I Lead” and the hiring of the nanny song, and “tradition disciple and rules” are again spotlighted: “A British bank is run with precision, a British home requires nothing less. Tradition discipline and rules must be the tools, without them, disorder! Chaos! Moral disintegration. In short you have a ghastly mess,” [emphasis added] George patters, reminding us of the supreme importance of Saturnian seriousness.

George explains that the children must learn that “life is a looming battle to be faced and fought” and then he tells Mary Poppins that outings should be “frought with purpose, yes, and practicality,” which in his eyes her outings have not been. When George says that they must learn the honest truth despite their youth . . .” Mary Poppins chimes in, finishing his sentence, “about the life you lead” to the same tune.

Mary is establishing rapport by matching his voice patterns. Then she goes on, seemingly on the same page as George, at least to him, to embrace his view of the world. She gives several examples of things that are important to him in his world that the children ought to learn, thus creating what is called in Ericksonian hypnosis a “yes set.” Mary has entered George’s model of the world and by mentioning these truths as he sees them, she paces him and after building a bridge and keeping in rapport with George, she is able to lead him where she wants him to go. She is interested in what is truly best for the children and the whole family, and on some unconscious level he realizes this, and yet consciously, he is resistant. His conscious mind is the problem and so by agreeing with that part of him, she keeps his conscious mind occupied and onboard so that transformation can occur. Although she is agreeing that these things are important to him, she does not necessarily agree that they are important in themselves.

George agrees with Mary as she continues, after all, what she is saying is true in his eyes. After all of this pacing, which has a slightly different tune, Mary sings the last stanza to his signature Saturnian theme, the same “The Life I Lead” tune as he has been singing, and he continues to agree:

Mary: It's time they learned to walk in your footsteps,

George: My footsteps,

Mary: To tread your straight and narrow path with pride,

George: With pride,

Mary: Tomorrow just as you suggest, pressed and dressed, Jane and Michael will be at your side. [She leads him with the suggestion.]

George: Splendid, you’ve hit the nail on the . . . . At my side, where are we going?

Mary: To the bank of course, exactly as you proposed

George: I proposed?

Mary: Of course.

Before he can reconsider, Mary excuses herself to see that the children “have a proper night’s sleep." George then asks Winfred, “did I say I was going to take the children.” Winifred replies, “It certainly sounded that way.” Then, as before, George goes on to make the idea his own, trying to restore his rigid, in control, order-oriented, persona: “Just the medicine they need for all this slipshod sugary female thinking,” which is a sort of bizarre twist on the spoonful of sugar idea. George proposes cold, hard, bitter reality as medicine, to counteract sweetness in life. “Quite right, good idea, quite right, good idea” he mutters.

Mary returns to the nursery and the children believe she has been fired. She dissuades them of this notion, saying she is “never sacked” but that they need to go to sleep because they are going on an outing with their father in the morning. The children remark that he has never taken them anywhere before, much less on an outing. Then Jane, very perceptively, asks how Mary Poppins managed “to put the idea into his head.” Mary replies, with a tricksterish twinkle in her eye and a fleeting smile on her lips, which subtly acknowledges the astuteness of Jane’s comment: “What an impertinent thing to say, me putting ideas into people’s heads, really!” The children are excited that they will be going to the city, and that their father can point out all the sites to them.

Continued on page 7