To Tell A Non-Englishman At A Glance

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On the Slacktivist blog, Kit Whitfield did a beautiful and fascinating deconstruction of why Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins was completely not English but American, and it wasn't just his accent.

I have never yet seen Mary Poppins, but I found that very interesting to read, so I am saving it for easy finding.

He's just all-American in every line and gesture. If you bit him, he'd taste of sweet pickles and mayo rather than fish n chips.

It's his open-mouthed smile, his white white teeth, the texture of his skin, his ability to look squeaky-clean while covered in soot, the way he keeps looking around fluidly instead of keeping his head poised, the way he looks loose-limbed and tight-knit at the same time, the way his elbows cock slightly outward when he walks (that's an aggressive gesture in England), the way his pose and body have an air of roundness without fatness (you'd expect there to be something angular in an Englishman of that build) ... all sorts of stuff.

Even his dancing is just not the way you'd expect an Englishman to dance. Englishmen don't bounce like that; a fit Englishman would dip his shoulders from side to side as he walked rather than skipping on his heels, and that knees-up stride of his (http://youtube.com/watch?v=te_Nv3lMUnA&feature=related) - well, the only Englishman I can think of who's ever done something similar is John Cleese doing his famous silly walk (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w), and you can see the difference. There's a tension in Cleese's legs and spine where van Dyke is loose and springy; Cleese holds his head steady and forward, like he was balancing something on it, where van Dyke keeps turning and tossing his; Cleese stands with his legs straight when he's at rest where van Dyke bends his knees... you get the idea. Van Dyke is too rubbery to be English. We don't move like that; we hinge rather than bend, especially the men.

He's touchy-feely, too: English people keep out of each others' body-space - it's a crowded country, and not squashing is a token of respect - but van Dyke keeps getting right up to people, all patty and cuddly like a puppy. You rattle English people if you do that. We're too packed together as it is, and it's a gesture of consideration of you keep a comfortable distance.

There's also his air of benevolent instruction, which has a particularly American tang. You might expect an English adult to be benignly instructive to children, but there'd be a sense of an age gap and authority, as with Julie Andrews, unless they were encouraging mischief, in which case they'd have a conspiratorial air that van Dyke lacks.

Similarly, he's completely displaced in terms of class, which makes him look entirely foreign, especially in a story where a big part of the plot involves two middle-class children whose genteel governess takes them on a tour of various social states lower down the ladder than their own. Mary Poppins is an employee who maintains her standing with a properly ladylike air, combined with a schoolmarm crispness. Bert the sweep is supposed to be a cheeky chappie, but van Dyke can't do cheek: to get it right, you have to be aware that somebody outranks you and enjoy the game of playing on the dignified restrictions their social status imposes, teasing them yet never quite stepping over the line - a delicate business that's quite beyond van Dyke. He acts as if he's unaware of class distinctions rather than having fun playing with them, and that's totally wrong.

To have a character in Edwardian England who doesn't notice class at all, he'd have to be in the tradition of great English eccentrics, and van Dyke is too relentlessly normal for that. There's something confidently mainstream about him, but by the standards of his setting, he's alien to the point of oddness. My boyfriend's childhood theory was that Mary Poppins was a friendly angel and Bert the sweep an affable devil, who are better friends than theology would have you suppose; considering van Dyke's performance, it's actually a good working theory, because he definitely ain't from around 'ere.