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Laura Newell: Poppins slur storm overblown

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Laura NewellThe West Australian
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Cor blimey guv’nor, Mary Poppins is no longer suitable for all!
Camera IconCor blimey guv’nor, Mary Poppins is no longer suitable for all! Credit: ArtTower/Pixabay

Cor blimey guv’nor, Mary Poppins is no longer suitable for all!

Yep, that Disney family favourite is no longer so much a spoonful of unobjectionable sugar as a bit of a colonial disaster, according to UK film censors.

Thanks to the indefatigable mutterings of Admiral Boom — the Banks family’s nautical neighbour with an obsession over timeliness that would impress even my father-in-law — the British Board of Film Classification has upped its rating of the 1960s-made movie from “Universal” to “Parental Guidance”.

The board’s definition of a “PG” film is that some scenes could upset “younger, or more sensitive, children”.

And the offending element that’s led to this change? Use of the word “hottentot” without an accompanying condemnation of the racist term’s use. The board say they fear children may also repeat the word and add insult to ... well, serious insult.

Now, my daughter has a good vocabulary for a six-year-old. She’s the product of not one but two journalists and has been carefully telling us she wanted to be a zoological veterinarian (notice, no shortenings here) since she was three. But I can tell you, she has no gods-earthly idea what “hottentot” might mean.

Nor would she — or indeed almost anyone — know similarly bygone-era terms such as “fopdoodle”, “smellfungus”, “zounderkite” or even my personal favourite old-fashioned swear word, “bescumber”.

And before anyone comes at me, no, I’m fully cognisant that doesn’t make the term — particularly when used as it is in the otherwise practically perfect Mary Poppins — any less racist. And let’s not beat around the bush here, and it is racist in a bad way.

But forgive me if I feel like it does mean that it’s unlikely to upset a child — particularly a young child. It’s a patent over-reaction. And that’s my tuppence.

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