​​NEW YORK—Standing before a crowd of millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers, members of Generation Z announced at a press conference Wednesday that actress Julie Andrews was problematic, but they refused to explain why. “You know what she did—you just don’t want to admit it,” said Gen Z spokesperson Taylor Collaco,…
  • rwhitisissle@lemy.lolEnglish
    01·
    8 months ago

    Julie Andrews did black face in Mary Poppins. That’s the only thing I can think of.

    • pimento64@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      31·
      8 months ago

      Is the chimney sweep routine really blackface, or is it just classist humor at the expense of impoverished white people who had the shittiest job outside of coal mining?

      • rwhitisissle@lemy.lolEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        The original novel had a racist element to the chimney sweeps. The film departs from that, but its source material is about as racist for what you would expect of a novel from that time period. There was some minor controversy where some English professor accused the film of racism: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mary-poppins-racist/

        That said, I refuse to ever say anything that might be construed as defending racism in any form, and suggesting that a work of art exists as a cultural artifact of often contested ideological beliefs of the time and place it was created, possessing creative merits independent of its source material or even particular one-off attributes that may have aged poorly when viewed in the light of contemporary discourse, comes dangerously close to outright apologia in the eyes of your more insufferable pearl clutchers on the internet.

        So, yeah, Mary Poppins is definitely racist. Why? Well, it’s not my job to educate you, that’s why.