Man, so, apparently Mary Poppins has been totally racist for the last 60 years and nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever even noticed it.
And, no, I'm not referring to chimney soot being "black face."
The beloved and timeless Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke classic has "discriminatory language," so in the UK that means they're having to change the movie from U-rated (essentially a G rating) to PG.
So why is Mary Poppins now racist?
In it, a derogatory term originally used by white Europeans about nomadic peoples in southern Africa is used to refer to soot-faced chimney-sweeps.
That now 'exceeds our guidelines f'or U films, the BBFC said ...
In the film, Admiral Boom, a neighbour and Naval veteran who thinks he is still in charge of a ship, uses the word twice.
Um ... okay?
What word is that, you ask? What word from a 1960s movie that's set in 1910 London could lead to a change so many decades later?
'Most recently, the film was resubmitted to us in February 2024 for another theatrical re-release, and we reclassified it PG for discriminatory language,' a spokesperson said.
'Mary Poppins (1964) includes two uses of the discriminatory term "hottentots."'
Oh no! The dreaded H word!
Admiral Boom, a mentally unsound naval veteran, uses the word "Hottentot" twice. And because the film doesn't condemn the use of the word, in the Year of Our Lord 2024 they've decided the film should be given an additional warning.
While Mary Poppins has a historical context, the use of discriminatory language is not condemned, and ultimately exceeds our guidelines for acceptable language at U. We therefore classified the film PG for discriminatory language.
Hottentot was apparently a Dutch (and then English) term from South Africa that referred to the natives. I had to read about it on Wikipedia because if the BBC hadn't told me it was a racial term I would have assumed it was just a made-up word in a kids' movie.
(But we have to be hyper-racially aware and not let kids live in blissful ignorance. Because wokeness demands.)
The Oxford English Dictionary says the term, which referred to the Khoikhoi and San people, is "generally considered both archaic and offensive".
The BBFC said its research about racism and discrimination showed that a key concern for people, particularly parents, was 'the potential to expose children to discriminatory language or behaviour which they may find distressing or repeat without realising the potential offence.'
Literally no one has repeated this word from the film in the last 60 years because kids don't like emulating salty old British sailors, but I guess we have to put bubble wrap on everything to protect the youth from archaic language from the 19th and early 20th century.
Wokeness has to ruin everything, even an innocent kids' film that is 👇
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