Monday, November 21, 2011
Mary Poppins is very unrealistic...
Besides the never-ending bag aspect, and floating around with an umbrella, Mary Poppins has other fantastic qualities. For example, chimney sweeping seems a lot more harmless from Disney's point of view. Basically, paupers sign off their children (some as young as four) to chimney sweeping apprenticeships. It's low paying, dirty work. And very fatal. Supposedly, they wore top-hats and tails because they got most of their clothes as cast-offs from funeral directors. Also, it gave an air of distinction to the demeaning work they performed. The scariest/saddest thing about it to me, it how these little children could die from either inhaling too many poisonous substances, or getting stuck like in this picture (the one on the right).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I did a little research and I found out that the children who did this work could be as young as 3 years old! I also found that a lot of the chimney sweeps would get cancer which isnt surprising. This was the first industrial related kind of cancer reported.
It's funny how pop culture can distort People's perceptions of certain historical facts. After I watched Mary poppins as a kid, I would have never even suspected that the chimney sweepIng children endured so much tOrture.
It's true that a lot of movies are based off of really sad, bad things. For example, I'm sure many of you all know that Alice in Wonderland is somewhat based of of spiraling into a drug addiction. Also, if you listen to the lyrics in Aladin, they're really gruesome!
I agree that a lot of movies distort certain things such as chimney sweepers. They make it seem so fun with their singing and like it is enjoyable when in reality many children die from working in the chimneys. Parents just ship their unwanted children off to do these horrible tasks.
I don't these people where just sending their children off to do this for no reason. I'm sure many knew the risk, but someone had to do it. And if you had a lot of kids and you couldn't really provide for one, you might have to subject him to that kind of work.
Post a Comment