The King And I - Edgar_liao_review

NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL

The King and I By Edgar Liao Bolun

The reign of King Mongkut has always been ‘an usually attractive subject to study’, because it has always been regarded as ‘a pivotal one in Thai history’. 1 Interestingly, it is through the King and I that most in the Western world became acquainted with this Thai historical figure, consequently making significant impact on Western perceptions of Thailand and its monarchy.2 This first section discusses the film’s representation of Thai history, concluding that its narrative tend towards unreliable distortions of historical reality, thus limiting its value as a historical source. The film, based on Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam, an integration of Anna Leonowens’ two accounts of her tenure as a schoolteacher in Mongkut’s court, remains useful as a Western-authored text that unveils the Europeans’ perceptions of the Thai..3 Certainly, the highly-entertaining film achieves its stated objectives but due to dramatic considerations, a lack of genuine knowledge and Eurocentrism, the result is a distorted representation incommensurate with historical realities.4

1

Constance M. Wilson. “Towards a Bibliography of the Life and Times of Mongkut, King of Thailand, 1851-1868”. In Southeast Asian History and Historiography: Essays Presented to D.G.E. Hall. Edited by C.D. Cowan & O.W. Wolters; with a Foreword by John M. Echols (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 1976), p. 164 2 Patrick Jory, “The King and US: Representations of monarchy in Thailand and the case of Anna and the King” in International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 4(2) 2001, p. 203 3 Ibid., p. 202. The two semi-autobiographical accounts of Anna Leonowens are The English Governess at the Siamese Court, published 1870, and The Romance of the Harem, published 1873. To avoid otherwise inevitable confusion, this paper shall refer to the actual Anna Leonowens and King Mongkut as ‘Leonowens’ and ‘Mongkut’, and their namesakes in the film, ‘Anna’ and (Yul) ‘Brynner’s Mongkut’ respectively, where applicable. 4 The film sought to bring the audience ‘on an exotic journey, weaving a tapestry of emotions from forbidden love to a potentate’s poignant struggle to adapt himself to a changing world, to a woman’s indignance turning to eventual admiration for a man with different values than her own’. Excerpted from album back cover: Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I [videorecording: Special wide screen edition] / 20th Century Fox ; directed by Walter Lang. Beverly Hills, California : FoxVideo, Inc. 1991.

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL Centered on a romanticized relationship between Mongkut and Leonowens, the film provides a few insights into Thai history, largely misrepresented. Ostensibly, its biggest fault remains Mongkut’s characterization in the film, which Wilson accuses as having ‘no basis whatever in reality’.5 In totality, Brynner’s Mongkut is ‘a capricious, sometimes cruel and often foolish tyrant’, his naiveté accentuated by his impossible whim of sending male elephants to reproduce in America, belying the real Mongkut’s intelligence. 6 While Mongkut had been paternalistic with regards to some customs, Brynner’s characterization does injustice to the ‘small, slight, and saintly king’ who would have shunned lines like ‘a woman is designed for pleasing man, a man is made to be pleased by many woman’. 7 There is little sense of Mongkut’s Buddhist nature, manifested only during the scenes where he prays for providence and guidance, contrary to the disposition of the monarch who had been ‘deeply concerned with the reform of Thai Buddhism’. 8

Additionally, the representation of Buddhism is problematic,

especially when Brynner’s Mongkut prays to his ‘Lord in Heaven Buddha’ akin to a divinity from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Furthermore, the Siamese monarchial system is unqualifiedly rendered in a negative light - the king as parochial slavery-practicing despot. There is no explication of the complexities of the Siamese court structure, or the nature of Siamese hierarchical relations that tend towards servitude than slavery. Additionally, the film is a ‘generally inaccurate and often disparaging depiction of the Thai society and culture of the time’, epitomized by the Leonowens’ consternation with the Siamese’s half-nakedness and

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Wilson, “Towards a Bibliography of the Life and Times of Mongkut, King of Thailand, 1851-1868”, p. 183 Jory, “The King and US: Representations of monarchy in Thailand and the case of Anna and the King”, p. 203 7 Wilson, “Towards a Bibliography of the Life and Times of Mongkut, King of Thailand, 1851-1868”, p. 183 8 Ibid., p. 167 6

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL Louis’s fearful remark that “they look so cruel”.9 Immediately, the Siamese are derogated before they could be understood. The film is thus useful for understanding how the Siamese were viewed by the Europeans. Like the post-colonial paradigm of Orientalism suggests, the Siamese are reduced to being the inferior ‘Other’. The Siamese are consistently presented as the exotic through the oriental-esque sets and music and importantly, through caricature where the Siamese make un-naturalistic movements. Its impact as a dramatic device is achieved at the expense of a genuine depiction of the Siamese. The dichotomization of the West and the Siamese is ostensible in the characterization of the Western characters knowledgeable, refined, magnanimous and rational, vis-à-vis the Siamese - naïve, uninformed, whimsical barefoot barbarians. Accordingly, the film ironically documents the West’s demeaning conceptualization of the Thai, contributing to our understanding of how the West viewed the peoples they encountered in Southeast Asia, subsequently enabling us to comprehend how the foreigners position themselves in relation to their colonies, and discern the implications of such disparaging depictions being presented to and internalized by foreigners unacquainted with the genuine picture. However, to qualify, some Western critics did criticize Leonowens’s account and attempt to rectify the distorted image of Siamese society.10 Transcending the distortions, the film offers some revelations about the nature of colonialism. We see a far-seeing Southeast Asian monarch eager to modernize Siam, concerned that his country would be swallowed by the colonialists, and on this regard, Brynner’s Mongkut comes closest to the real Mongkut – the enthusiasm for bringing in

9

Jory, “The King and US: Representations of monarchy in Thailand and the case of Anna and the King”, p. 203 Ibid., p. 205

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL Western science to advance his country, as well as in engaging in diplomatic relations with the West. Concomitantly, Mongkut’s successes in negotiating the West, by firstly bringing their sciences in, show that the impetus behind colonialism, at that stage, was not the occupation of territory for expansion’s sake, but to facilitate the introduction of Western sciences to serve the Europeans’ varied interests. Additionally, one discerns the Westerners’ view of themselves as modernizers, ‘convinced of their superiority and their greater enlightenment’. 11 Their messianic attitude is exemplified in Anna’s embracing of the Siamese as ‘people who need me, people I can help’. Correspondingly, the Westerners pejoratively equate modernization with Westernization, where successful advancement is assumed to warrant the subordination of allegedly inferior Siamese culture to Western values. These inclinations are commensurate with scholarly acknowledgements that the ‘goals of the foreign community in Thailand were not the understanding of Thai culture … but the spread of Christianity, the introduction of Western customs and economic and political values’.12 Consequently, a deeper reading of the drama reveals the tension caused by the clash of values and civilizations, where attempts to adapt to each other’s culture constantly bring absurd outcomes. Thus, the film highlights the historical difficulty the Westerners and the Southeast Asians had in understanding and accommodating one another. The West’s conceptualization of the Siamese as being willing to accept Western values culminates in the fictitious but climatic denouement of the film – Brynner’s Mongkut

dies

to

Chulalongkorn’s

Westernizing proclamations,

metaphorically

representing the demise of the undesirable traditions and the arrival of a modern state

11 12

Wilson, “Towards a Bibliography of the Life and Times of Mongkut, King of Thailand, 1851-1868”, p. 181 Ibid., p. 181

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL along Western terms. While a Western-oriented audience would applaud this ending, it misrepresents the extent the historical Mongkut and Chulalongkorn were willing to Westernize in order to modernize.

This paper proceeds to assess the benefits and detriments of a history student utilizing The King and I as a historical source, in comparison with Malcolm Smith’s A Physician in the Court of Siam, concluding that although Smith’s account possesses its own flaws, it is of better value as a source. Naturally, their use is not mutually exclusive. Both sources are helpful in conveying the Eurocentric orientation of their authors and the utilization of both presents much value in terms of corroboration and contestation. Smith corroborates the film’s characterization of Mongkut in certain ways, for example, Mongkut’s antagonism towards Christianity and his ‘rigid conservatism as regards certain customs’, and Mongkut’s relationship of ‘great difficulty’ with Leonowens.13 The entertaining film’s greatest asset is its ability to engage, but while it may thus drive the student’s interest, its limitations as a historical source have already been discussed. The film is thus more useful in heightening the student’s awareness of the intricacies of utilizing films as sources, in addition to the ramifications of the abovementioned Western attitudes towards the East. However, its ability to captivate presents the danger of the film’s representation being internalized as historical reality, if the source-user is un-discerning or seeks no further corroboration, especially since the film employs many devices to immerse any audience in its simulacrum of 19th century Siam, for example, the music which helps transport the viewer to the Orient.

13

Malcolm Smith, A Physician at the Court of Siam (London: Country Life Ltd. 1946), pp. 24, 33 & 42

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL Smith criticizes Leonowens for being ‘gifted with a vivid imagination which at times took charge of her pen’; the history student is thus exposed to a perspective which contests the film’s representation where pertinent. 14 Nevertheless, both sources share one salient element - by painting the primitive picture of Siamese society, one could retrospectively realize the great impact of modernization on Siam.15 Inevitably, Smith’s account share some historiographical problems accused of the King and I. Firstly, because few Westerners bothered to learn the Thai language and culture, they were unable to ‘understand the basic ways in which the Thai social and political system operated’.16 This problem, obvious in the film, Smith is guilty of when he terms the Kalahom the Prime Minister although ‘there was no such formal position in the Thai state’.17 Smith shares the Eurocentrism replete in the film, writing pejoratively ‘how western civilization had advanced while the East had stood still’ and describing the Second King as holding ‘even more advanced views’ than Mongkut simply because the former ‘was in full favour of full democracy’.18 However, Smith’s account is more measured and balanced than the film’s narrative. Although it agrees with the film on several aspects of Mongkut’s personality, it presents to the student other facets of Mongkut’s character undeveloped in the film – his assiduousness, frugality and ‘his tolerance of the criticism of others’. 19 Furthermore, Mongkut’s letter to Harry Ord, included in Smith’s chapter, shows that, although Mongkut writes in English following a similar register to Brynner’s Mongkut, Mongkut

14 15

Ibid., p. 42 Ibid., p. 16. For instance, Smith’s vocation as a physician prompted his comments on the unsatisfactory

health conditions, which permits a basis for comparison to assess the impact of Western medicine. 16

Wilson, “Towards a Bibliography of the Life and Times of Mongkut, King of Thailand, 1851-1868”, p. 182 Ibid., p. 182 18 Smith, A Physician at the Court of Siam, p. 31 19 Ibid. p. 40 17

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL had a more intelligent vocabulary, better syntax and resisted self-exhortations. 20 Additionally, Smith offers much more information about relationships, customs, social conditions and the complexities of the Siamese society. For example, he reports the rapid growth of the city as well as the presence of other communities and the roles they played. 21 Secondly, while the film covers only the span of Mongkut’s life from Leonowens’ arrival to his fictitious death, Smith’s coverage span Mongkut’s entire reign, from his enthronement to his death caused by malaria. In terms of reliability, Smith’s account holds the advantage in being a primary source, where as a court physician, he had access to the inner palace and the lower levels of Siamese society, thus allowing him to present rich descriptions of going-ons. While the King and I is also based on the account of a Westerner in Siam with similar privileges, the account had inevitably encountered embellishments or diminutions in its adaptation from Leonowens’s accounts into the screenplay. Smith also cites his sources for pieces of information extensively, providing for greater corroboration, and bibliographical directions for the student to probe deeper. Essentially, both sources possess their strengths and flaws as historical texts. For the purposes of historical inquiry, Smith’s account is preferable, whereas The King and I offers superficial, if not erroneous, glimpses into Thai history, but nonetheless, constituting a valuable document in the study of Western discourses towards Thailand. It is fitting to conclude by commenting on the common ground where the two texts meet – King Mongkut’s fervour for modernization to avoid colonial yoke. The irony is that, since the motivation for the Europeans’ colonization was to enforce modernization to

20 21

Ibid., pp. 47-48 Ibid., p. 14

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL serve their interests, Siam was never required to become a colony, because the Siamese monarchy was doing it for them.

(1740 words)

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NUS HISTORY SOCIETY E-JOURNAL References Jory, Patrick. “The King and US: Representations of monarchy in Thailand and the case of Anna and the King”. In International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 4(2) 2001, pp. 201-218 Smith, Malcolm. A Physician at the Court of Siam. London: Country Life Ltd. 1946 Wilson, Constance M. “Towards a Bibliography of the Life and Times of Mongkut, King of Thailand, 1851-1868”. In Southeast Asian History and Historiography: Essays Presented to D.G.E. Hall, pp. 164-189. Edited by C.D. Cowan & O.W. Wolters; with a Foreword by John M. Echols. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 1976

Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I [videorecording: Special wide screen edition] / 20th Century Fox; screenplay by Ernest Lehman; book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; produced by Charles Brackett; directed by Walter Lang. Beverly Hills, California: Fox Video, Inc. 1991.

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