Not How It Seems: ‘The King and I’ (1956)
Rod
gers and Hammerstein wrote the musical South Pacific in the 1940s after their successful collaboration on Oklahoma! and Carousel. As their work continued down the road of “girl enters the strange world of a man in a power position,” the very same road that led them to The Sound of Music would lead them to The King and I.
Taking place in the 1860s, The King and I is the tale of Anna Leonowens, who moves to Siam (Thailand) to become a tutor for the royal family. Anna is apprehensive of the move, but she has been promised a house near the palace.
The King immediately shows himself to be an angry and domineering man, but a man who is willing to learn. He ignores Anna’s request for her house but Anna agrees to stay and teach anyway, living in the palace. The King has many wives, including a woman from Burma named Tuptim. Tuptim is unhappy in the palace because she is in love with another man, Lun Tha, who brought her to the palace. She asks Anna for a book to read to take her mind off of it and is given Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Anna continues teaching, but doesn’t stop trying to get the house she was promised. She takes pride in getting to know her pupils.
The children become rambunctious after Anna describes snow and they refuse to believe her. The King enters and quiets the children down. He sees Tuptim’s copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and argues about slavery with Anna. Anna is a supporter of President Lincoln, but the King is supportive of slavery since his country still utilizes slaves.
In the middle of the night, the King summons Anna and asks her to take down a letter to President Lincoln. He is offering to send him elephants to help the war effort. The King soon begins to berate Anna for not following their custom that no one’s head should ever be higher than the King’s. She eventually promises that she will follow it from now on.
Anna and the King have a disagreement in which he claims she is his servant, and she threatens to leave. The head wife explains to her that he is upset that the British think he is a barbaric leader and are soon sending an envoy to Siam. She tells Anna that for all his faults, the King is a good man.
Anna helps convince him to host a banquet for them in European style. The banquet is surprisingly successful, and after dinner, they present a ballet version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that Tuptim has written.
It becomes obvious throughout the play why Tuptim felt such a connection to the story. Although she isn’t technically a slave, she’s being held away from her lover against her will, much like Eliza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The King also doesn’t miss the metaphor and begins to get uncomfortable. When Eliza is reunited with her lover in the play, and the wicked king (the slave owner) dies, Tuptim begins to speak out against the King, but is silenced by him. They complete the play, and when the ambassadors call to meet the author, Tuptim has disappeared.
Tuptim has run away with Lun Tha. Still, the King counts the banquet a success, and gives Anna a ring to show his appreciation. He also agrees to begin building her house. Anna is appreciative, but explains why Tuptim was upset, and asserts that the King just views her as another woman among his many wives anyway. The King says that men are like bees, going to each blossom, but that blossoms mustn’t travel from bee to bee.
Anna explains the European conception of single-partner romance to him and explains how nice it feels to her. She then teaches him to dance.
Tuptim is found and the King prepares to punish her by whipping her as is the custom, but after Anna tells him she thinks he’s better than that, he finds he cannot. He rushes out of the room, and Anna decides that she will leave Siam.
On the day her ship will leave, the head wife comes to see Anna and explains that the King is dying. He has essentially been wasting away since the night of the banquet. Anna goes to him and sees the direction his son is prepared to take the country in. She is pleased by how opinion has changed in the country, but saddened by the King’s state. Anna makes plans to stay in the country and the King passes away.
The King and I covers a number of hot-button issues in a very simple story. Much like South Pacific, it’s obvious that Rodgers and Hammerstein had some points to make. First though, it must be noted that “Siam” has never been the name of Thailand to its natives. “Siam” is the name that mildly racist people of other countries gave it. The name translates to mean “brown people” or “brown race.” “Siamese” people have always referred to the country as “Mueang Thai.” Of course, culturally, Westerners may not have known this up until more recently, but all the references to the country in the film are historically inaccurate (as is Yul Brynner, a Russian, playing the King, but that’s another story).
As race goes, there isn’t very much reference to it, honestly. Anna treats the King as she sees fit based on his actions, not on his skin, and doesn’t look down on any of the royal family for their cultural differences. The audience is expected to sympathize with Anna, and she is very fair about her treatment of people. Now there is a slight issue with the way banquet was held in a European style, as though the ambassadors wouldn’t accept the country as civilized unless the people of the country acted the way the Europeans did. But, Anna recognized that these people would not understand the ways of the King the way she did, and wanting him to make the impression he desired, she assisted him in doing so. Seeing as the musical was set 100 years in the past, there’s nothing to lead us to believe society was past the point of judging other cultures.
The King is presented as a strong-willed man, but always willing to learn. Anna regards him as a child, and in some ways that is rude, but we realize that the path his son is taking at the end of the film, becoming king at such a young age, may have been the fate of the titular King. He may have started his reign early, and who teaches a king anything? It seems that Anna has been the only one, possibly ever, who has been brave enough to wound his ego by questioning his ideals and teaching him new things. And to the point of Anna, she enjoys learning about other cultures (“Getting to Know You”).
Slavery obviously touches on the issue of race, although it’s more about power for the King and race only in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Anna is pro-equality, which may be part of her issues with the King’s inclination to command. Not only is she a European woman who both has and recommends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to people, but she is on the side of Lincoln in ending slavery in the US.
But the film is stronger in its treatment of feminism. Anna is a powerful character, and she proves that you can wear a skirt and still want equal rights for women. Heck, you can wear a huge skirt that makes natives of the country wonder if your body is also shaped that way. And I mean, this was the 1860s, but Anna never seems to stop and think that she should be acting lesser because of her gender. The only thing that makes her start lowering her head to the King is the fact that she respects their culture.
The King has many wives, but Anna respects them all as women and as people. She does her best to convince the King that women aren’t simply objects, particularly in the scene prior to “Shall We Dance.” The King treats women (and people in general) the way he does because of cultural standards. But even the King is swayed by Anna’s rationalizations about things, including the fact that a woman shouldn’t be punished for loving someone else. The whipping scene serves as an inadvertent reference to women being stoned for being unfaithful, something common in biblical times, but also something that is still a concern for women in some countries. We are really shown the contrast in the treatment of genders when the King has dozens of wives, yet one wife is being punished for having another lover. Without making the culture look lesser, we are still able to raise our eyebrows about the way women are viewed.
Anna’s curiosity paired with her level-headedness make for a very progressive viewpoint that the audience is expected to relate to and hopefully take on.
“Not How It Seems” takes a look at the underlying messages in classic movie musicals.
