King Mongkut: Man, Myth, and Misrepresentation

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

6 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

04/24/2007

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

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Summary :

The real King Mongkut
Anna claim to having been born in Carnarvon
The portrayal of King Mongkut in The King and I
The king: Not the only character to receive ill treatment at the hands of the script writers
The general untruths found in the story
The elaborate 'Small House of Uncle Thomas'
The King and I: Banned in Thailand
Anna and the King
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

Fewer stories of a Western encounter with the "Other" have been more popular than that of the English governess Anna Leonowens and king mongkut (Rama IV) of Siam, now Thailand. The fascination began with the two books written by Anna herself, The English Governess at the Siamese Court and The Romance of the Harem, published in 1870 and 1873, respectively. Her story did not become famous, however, until Margaret Landon condensed the two books into the best-selling Anna and the king of Siam in 1944 (Kim 2). Two years later, the book was made into a movie starring Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison then a Broadway production as a musical play by Rodgers and Hammerstein with Gertrude Lawrence as Anna and Yul Brynner as the king. The most famous adaptation of the story was the 1956 Hollywood film entitled The king and I, with Deborah Kerr as the English school teacher opposite Brynner. It raised a scandal in Thailand for its ridiculous representation of king mongkut, one of Thailand's national heroes, and was consequently banned there. Nearly a half-century later in 1999, Twentieth Century Fox decided to revive Anna Leonowens' story once again, supposedly determined this time, however, to give an accurate portrayal of Siam and its monarch. Although Anna and the king corrects many of the earlier faults of The king and I and even adds outright jibes at imperialism and the attitudes of British colonizers, it is still infused with the idea of the romanticized encounter with the exotic "Other" and displays evidence of newer, more insidious forms of colonialism that continue to pervade Western-dominated institutions like the media.