These revolutionary times or movements are the liminal times between two different structural periods. The 1960s was such a revolutionary time. As mentioned above, these times can be dangerous, and they are especially troubling to those such as George Banks in Mary Poppins or the establishment in the 1960s, who value order. ∆RC[mp9]

V. Turner (1982b) notes that since liminality is an ambiguous state, it “may be for many the acme of insecurity, the breakthrough of chaos into cosmos of disorder into order, [rather] than the milieu of creative interhuman or transhuman satisfactions and achievements.” Although the structures of society inhibit us in certain ways, they also provide security," while “liminality may be the scene of disease, despair, death, suicide, the breakdown without compensatory replacement of the normative, well-defined social ties and bonds.” In tribal societies domestic witchcraft, hostile dead and vengeful spirits were denizens of liminality, and “in leisure genres of complex societies [the dark side of liminality] may show up as extreme situations of existentialist writers: torture, murder, war, the verge of suicide, hospital tragedies.” The bottom line, as V. Turner states is that “liminality is both more creative and more destructive than the structural norm” (pp. 46-47).

This was evident in the 1960s. The stable structure of life in the 1950s provided a respite from the atomic anxieties after World War II, but it was also stifling to many, and the structure of society itself was flawed in many ways. The different revolutionary movements in the 1960s sought to shake loose this structure, and to fashion it anew. In Mary Poppins, George’s overly orderly life is stifling to his family. His wife and children in their own ways are rebelling against it, and the children’s latest rebellion led to the hiring of Mary.

Writing in the 1960s, V, Turner expanded van Gennep’s notion of liminality, and distinguished different groups that remained liminal at all times, including, shamans, court jesters, dharma bums, and hippies. Bert is an example of an ever-liminal person. We will explore Bert's liminality during the scene-by-scene-play when we examine "Chim Chim Cher-ee."

People in liminal positions often defy classification, like the Trickster and play itself, being liminal similarly eludes categorization; this is due to their antistructural nature. Discussing the function of societal structure, Hansen (2001) notes its more Saturnian side: “roles give definition and continuity to a person’s life… by its nature, structure produces social distance and inequality…. some alienation results from all structure” (p. 54). During liminality, antistructure, a breaking down of structure occurs, which is Plutonic in nature. During rites of passage, this breaking down of structure occurs within the group of initiands, whose condition V. Turner (1982) describes:

Initiands are often considered to be dark, invisible, like the sun or moon in eclipse, or the moon between phases, at the “dark of the moon”; they are stripped of names and clothing, smeared with the common earth rendered indistinguishable from animals. They are associated with such general oppositions as life and death, male and female, food and excrement, simultaneously, since they are at once dying from or dead to their former status and life, and being born and growing into new ones . . . . Thus the ritual subjects in these rites undergo a “leveling” process, in which signs of their preliminal status are destroyed and signs of their liminal non-status applied. (p. 26)

It is worth mentioning that I was born at the dark of the moon and the moon in my chart is also conjunct with Pluto. This may explain my continuing fascination and affinity with liminality.

Liminality Plays Throughout in Mary Poppins

In Mary Poppins, we see this leveling process alluded to in the chimney sweep scene when all are covered in soot. When George is dressed-down at the bank, it represents a dying to his old way of being, the destruction of his previous structure, which is akin to decrownings at Saturnalias. Along with this in-between status, and somewhat related to the notion of communitas, was a "special kind of freedom,” which V. Turner (1982) refers to as:

the “sacred power” of the meek, weak, and humble, as they are outside of society, and are free from societal obligation, and as they are temporarily undefined, they are also without rights over others. At such times, they are frequently compared with “on the one hand ghosts, gods, or ancestors, and on the other hand with animals or birds.” (p. 27)

“Feed the Birds,” alludes to this in-betweenness: there are birds, both real and animate, which are sometimes ghostly and ephemeral looking; the song also speaks of ancestors in the form of “the saints and apostles.”

As previously mentioned, Mary Poppins is a liminal mandala, and the entire movie can be seen as a rite of passage, with George as the primary initiate, although the entire household and community also participate to a degree. Mary in her mysterious, magical, indirect way appropriately picks different liminal practices as enumerated by V. Turner (1982):

Some of the practices that occur during these times are instruction in a secret language, various non-verbal symbolic genres such as dancing, painting… with symbolic patterns and structures which amount to teaching about the structure of the cosmos and their culture as a part and product of it . . . liminality may involve a complex sequence of episodes in sacred space-time, and it may also include subversive and ludic (or playful) events. [emphasis added] (p. 27)

In Mary Poppins, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" can be seen as the “secret language,” and there is much dancing and singing. Mary teaches through a series of outings and games, what could be more ludic than that? Mary is subversive as well, because she indirectly influences George as much as the children with her ludic lessons. By introducing the Birdwoman and “Feed the Birds” into their consciousness, Mary is symbolically teaching about the marginalized but nonetheless important aspects of the cosmos.

V. Turner quotes Brian Sutton Smith, one of the foremost commentators on play, who, using Turner’s notion of antistructure notes: “the ‘antistructure’ represents the latent system of potential alternatives from which novelty will arise when contingencies in the normative system require it . . . . It is the precursor of innovative normative forms. It is the source of new culture [pp. 18-19]" (V. Turner, 1982, p. 28). V. Turner then quotes Sutton Smith’s discussion of games in terms of antistructure and he parenthetically comments on them:

“We may be disorderly in games [and I would add, in the liminality of rituals, as well as in such “liminoid” phenomena as charivaris, fiestas, Halloween masking, and mumming, etc.] either because we have an overdose of order, and want to let off steam [this might be called the “conservative view” of ritual disorder, such as ritual reversals, Saturnalia, and the like], or because we have something to learn from being disorderly.” (p. 17). What interests me most about Sutton Smith’s formulations is that he sees liminal and liminoid situations as the settings in which new models, symbols, paradigms, etc., arise—as the seedbeds of cultural creativity in fact. These new symbols and constructions then feed back into the central economic and politico-legal domains and arenas, supplying them with goals, aspirations, incentives, structural models and raisons d’etre. [emphasis added] (V. Turner, 1982, p. 28)

The Creative Power of Chaotic Times

While some may see liminality in terms of chaos, others see the creative potential of this chaos. This brings to mind the Trickster, who in creating disruption and order, is also a culture bringer and creator. In the next excursion we will discuss the trickster at length, because Mary Poppins is tricky indeed, as we will see in the following trickster tour. On the way there, we will take a look at the liminal nature of leisure and its association with the Trickster, which V. Turner (1982b) explicates. Leisure comes from the Old French leisir, which comes

from the Latin licere, “to be permitted” and which, interestingly enough comes from the Indo-European base *leik—“to offer for sale, bargain,” referring to the liminal sphere of the market, with its implications of choice, variation, contract—a sphere that has connections, in archaic and tribal religions, with Trickster deities such as Eshu-Elegba, and Hermes. Exchange is more “liminal” than production. (p. 40)

V. Turner (1982b) draws a parallel between liminal rites of tribal people and our modern forms of leisure: “Just as when tribesmen make masks . . . invert or parody profane reality in myths and folktales,” so do the various forms of modern popular culture, “sometimes assembling them in random, grotesque, improbable, surprising, shocking and usually experimental combinations. But they do this in a much more complicated way than in the liminality of tribal initiations.” Popular culture has produced a dizzying array of the different genres to choose from, “as against the relatively limited symbolic genres of ‘tribal’ society” (p. 40).

V. Turner (1982b) notes that liminal phases of tribal society only invert the established order, like a mirror they invert the object and reflect it, but he argues that art and literature often break things down or apart and remold them, and sometimes even destroy them—if only in the imagination. The entertainment genres of industrial societies, V. Turner explains, “are often subversive satirizing, lampooning, burlesquing, or subtly putting down the central values of the basic, work-sphere society, or at least selected sectors of that society” (p. 41).

With liminality and the Trickster can bricolage be far behind? Bricolage, too, is a product of liminality. During periods of liminality, the factors of culture are combined and recombined in various ways because they are done so using fantasized versus experienced combinations, and in this way they are often grotesque. “In other words, in liminality people 'play' with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them. Novelty emerges from unprecedented combinations of familiar elements.” (V. Turner, 1982, p. 27). This is a major function of the eternal return and is a way in which cultures renew themselves.

Hansen (2001) notes that

this recombination of elements is a quality also found in altered (i.e. destructured) states of consciousness. Odd assortments of items appear in dreams and in the productions of visionary artists. This is perhaps the essence of creativity—producing new patterns, new ways of seeing the world.” (p. 56) ∆RC[mp10]

V. Turner explicitly relates bricolage and liminality (1988) especially as it relates to play. Turner sees the analysis of culture, such as that done by the Structuralists in France, like Levi-Strauss, as the essence of liminality: “it is the analysis of culture into factors and their free or “ludic” recombination in any and every possible pattern, however weird, that is the essence of liminality, liminality par excellence (p. 28). So, according to Turner, this dissertation would be liminal in this way, too. Now that we have the lay of the liminal landscape of Mary Poppins, and its transformative possibilities, let us look a little closer at the Trickster.

A Trickster Tour

As Jane and Michael Banks watch Mary Poppins arrive, floating down with her umbrella on the East wind, Michael wonders: "Maybe she’s a witch," Jane answers, "Witches have brooms." However Michael is onto something, because Mary Poppins is indeed magical. Shortly thereafter, the children meet Mary on the second floor, between the main floor and the third floor nursery. Mary has slid up the banister and Michael is in a state of shock. While unpacking her things in the nursery a few minutes later, Mary pulls a hat rack, a mirror, a tiffany floor lamp, and a potted plant out of an apparently empty carpetbag. Michael exclaims, “We’ll have to look out for this one, she’s tricky.” And indeed Mary Poppins is tricky. George Banks will later accuse Mary of tricking him too: “Its that Poppins woman, she tricked me.” So, let us look at Mary’s character in this light. First we will explore the notion of tricksters: their qualities, characteristics, and spheres of influence, and then we will consider a special brand of female trickster, the "trickstar" (Jurich, 1998), because classic tricksters are almost always male. After that we will look at Mary’s friend Bert from this perspective, and then, in the following excursion, we will explore just how Mary and Bert accomplish some of their best tricks.

Tricksters in a Nutshell

First of all, as tricksters are ultimately indefinable, they evade description. Don’t take my word for it, Hynes (1993) quoting Pelton agrees:

The trickster is indefinable. In fact to define (de-finis) is to draw borders around phenomena, and tricksters seem amazingly resistant to such capture: they are notorious border breakers” (p. 33). Robert Pelton has observed that the trickster “pulverizes the univocal and symbolizes the multivalence of life. (Pelton 1980: 224). Embodying this multivocality, the trickster himself eludes univocality by escaping from any restrictive definition: the trickster is always more than can be glimpsed at any one place or in any one embodiment… the trickster disorders and disassembles. (p. 35)

However, that being said, attempting the impossible, here is a brief sketch or broad overview of the trickster in 175 words or less: (Actually it is 183, but in typical trickster fashion, to know a boundary is to break it, since tricksters are far too wide-ranging to be confined to a nutshell). After that, we will get "A Bit of Background" on the trickser. Later, during the scene-by-scene-play, different trickster characteristics will be highlighted as they apply to Mary Poppins.

Continued on page 4