Anna and the King of Siam
Leonowens' account, Margaret Landon's book, and movie adaptations
One of the most controversial books on eastern culture by western writers is Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon.
The book was published in 1943 to reconcile the two original written accounts by Anna Leonowens, who worked in Siam (now Thailand) as the English teacher of the royal children from 1862 to 1867. Anna and the King of Siam is a popular and constant source of western curiosity, media adaptations, and consequently of Thai distaste. Up until now, Thailand always discredits any true-to-life claim of Leonowens' accounts, and bans all related movies, plays and print materials in the country, including Landon's book.
The book is a chronological story of Leonowens' life in Siam as provided by the out-of-print accounts. It contains Leonowens' valuable descriptions, particularly her personal understanding of Siamese slavery, which spurs continual adaptation.
The first play, and movie was directed John Cromwell in 1946. The most recent movie is Anna and the King, shown in December 1999, starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yung Fat. Earlier in March of the same year, the animated musical cartoon, The King and I was released. Movies are created under the premise of artistic license, and may contain historical inaccuracies.
Among the inaccuracies and deliberate insults perceived by Thais is the insinuation of romantic attachment between King Mongkut and Anna in all of the seven adaptations, and the deliberate influence of Anna in Prince Chulangkorn's education and belief system. Even Landon's book suggests that Anna's repugnance against slavery had the influenced the Prince, who later as a King terminated Siam slavery in 1905. This has the same resonance of the western idea of the "white man's burden".
The media products produced in relation to Anna Leonowen's stay in Siam seem to have the idea of European ascendancy, known as "cultural imperialism". A similar example is the poem "The White Man's Burden" by an English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands. (Philippines was once occupied by Spain, Japan, US.)The term "the white man's burden" is considered by many as a racist remark for non-Western national culture and economic traditions.
Margaret Landon studied the accounts of Anna Leonowens, The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870), and the Romance of the Harem (1872) for four years before the release of her own book. On the last page of Anna and the King of Siam she gives her own analysis of Anna's fabric content, "I would say that it is seventy-five percent fact, and twenty-five percent based on fact."
