Now let us get a bit more “gamey” and bring in some more “properties” from the Cosmic Game. If you have been with us on the whole journey, you may remember that in my game, Monomythopoly—Eternal Return edition ™, I gave examples of other people’s languaging of this same archetypal model. [link to Monomythopoly page] So now we will take a another quick look at how the movie plays out looking at it from the eyes of Helen Shulman Lorenz, (aka Helene Shulman, aka Helene Lorenz) and her rupture-nepantla-restoration model. If we put H, Lorenz's terminology alongside our cosmic archetypal model, using the planetary archetypes as a shorthand, we can see the movie from her view, too. Just to make things more interesting, and to see the struggle more easily, we can add the notions of gerontomorphy and pedomorphy, into the mix. We will discuss these terms shortly, in the ongoing themes excursions, but for now, think of gerontomorphy as being similar in quality to the planetary archetype of Saturn—with the focus on structure, rigidity, and boundaries, and pedomorphy as reflecting more Plutonic liminal and chaotic elements, mixed in with Neptunian amorphousness and boundary blurring. Here are H. Lorenz’s terms, as playfully described as Monomythopoly properties with their planetary archetypal associations included.
Rupture Road [SATURN]
Break out of old habits, identities—death—movement to antistructure, out of old environment, flying apart, disintegration—interrupts normal passage.
Avenida Nepantla [PLUTO]
Pulls towards unconscious and confrontation with the shadow, boundaries break down, in-between, defamiliarization, reconfiguring identity.
Restoration Blvd [URANUS]
Reintegration of missing pieces (creative) or sewing pieces back together (normative), new structures possible through dialog—new containers.
Viewing the movie in this light we see, that at the beginning, the children (and household) are in chaos and they return home with a broken kite to an unconscious family whose gerontomorphic nanny has just quit. The children are caught between two opposite Banks—their “Red Queen” [chaotic] suffragette mother, Winifred is pedomorphic and revolutionary, while their banker father, George, is frozen, gerontomorphic, rigid, and orderly. The wind changes direction. A new nanny, Mary Poppins, is hired. She is an outsider, and Trickster. Nepantla reigns, ruptures of all kinds abound. The movie moves in two directions at once—Mary gives the children more structure and life lessons about seeing things differently; with George, Mary provides what appears to him as more chaos, and destabilizes his life. George’s name is Banks, he works at a bank, and is over-identified with it.
Crises occur within George, his family, and the bank itself. George is in a constant state of nepantla. Adventures and outings of many kinds take place—both inner and outer. Mary and Bert provide mentorship and reframing. The children go through a creative restoration. Their father attempts a normative restoration (i.e., trying to put things back the way they were before), but ends up in deconstructive and ultimately creative restoration. George individuates after a bank run leads to his being fired, his old world deconstructed by chaos. The women of the house undergo spontaneous restorations. In the end, the wind changes, the kite is mended, sacrifices take place: the job, the cause, the beloved nanny and for Mary, she sacrifices her position and the children—and asuwada occurs. The Banks family is integrated; George is rehired with a promotion. The community (bank) has changed, having undergone its own restoration, and in communitas, as the movie ends, they are joyously flying kites with increased consciousness in the park as Mary Poppins leaves, alone. Along the way we will see some of this play out, and the unfamiliar above-mentioned concepts will become clearer as we explore the scene-by-scene-play. Other Cosmic Game properties may be interjected along the way, and for convenience they are found summarized in the Game Table, [link ]. Before our tour through the scene-by-scene-play, we can take a few excursions into the ongoing themes of Mary Poppins.