How to teach an 'uppity' woman writer a lesson

Sorry but this film isn't about PL Travers personal adult life. It's about Disney trying to get the rights to make Mary Poppins.

Spot on, scootergirl. 

Travers was demanding about her creation, yes? Travers was an intellectual, yes? Travers had little tolerance for the frivolous, yes? Women can be just as demanding, intellectual and intolerant as any man and if that makes someone want to "punch her in the mouth" that's their problem because they can't recognize that women are just as complex as men and that we too don't fit into a mold.

Absolutely true. The form in which she was mischaracterised and had her character assassinated may have reflected how they saw her as a woman, but the problem was not her gender: it was actually that the Disney team just expected her to fall in line and fall in love with all their suggestions and intentions. They weren't used to anyone saying no to them, possibly (to be fair) didn't actually know how to deal with it, but they didn't actually try to -- they'd brought an intellectual, strongly-individualistic author into the mix and didn't find a way to work with her constructively. And she became incensed that it became very clear Disney had no intention of keeping any of the promises he'd made to her in trying to get her to sign over the film rights; I think it was completely understandable that she dug her heels in, but the Disney way of dealing with it was to assassinate her character and paint her as one of the Big Bad Wolves of Disney corporate history.

They promised her that the film would be authentic to her books, and (something that was massively important to her) authentic to the England she knew; but what they meant all along was that it would be authentic to the Disney version of "English", which Travers found revoltingly low-brow and cornball. Disney knew his market, but he didn't find a way (and didn't bother to try) to engage Travers in the same vision.

I despair at people on these threads buying into and even exaggerating the Disney version of the story, without ever realising it's almost entirely fictional, from the whole story of her father to her brittle, everbody-hates-her personality. But then, I've read threads here on IMDb where people claimed stories like Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio were Disney originals, and got vicious in their attacks of anyone who tried to point them to the truth, so clearly facts have little to do with opinions on the Internet. Sigh.

As for her seeming oblivious, I didn't get that impression at all. Her taking with her to LA a statue of the Buddha shows that she was probably more aware of the big world then anyone she would be doing business with in that city.

A lot of people don't realise Travers was an intellectual, and an acknowledged scholar in the field of mythopoeics and Jungian archetypes. She had quite a few academic papers published in recognised journals. I assumed the glimpse of the Buddha was a small nod to that side of her.



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

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