Podcast The King and I

The podcast explores the musical "The King and I" and its portrayal of Siam, highlighting issues such as yellow-facing and inaccuracies in the depiction of the country. It discusses the musical's themes of knowledge, adaptation, and unity between cultures. The host encourages listeners to watch the musical for its powerful moments and promises to debunk more myths in future episodes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to That's A Rap Podcast. My name is Monique Rodriguez, and for the next 10 minutes, I will be hosting you, and we will be going on an exciting journey through the wonderful country of Cheyenne through the eyes of Broadway. The King and I, a musical composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerson II, tells the story of a Welsh widow, Anna Lenowen, who becomes governess and teacher to more than 60 of the King of Cheyenne's children. When the musical opened on Broadway in 1951, Playbill.com states that it was not received very well by others, as Caucasians had been yellow-facing or posing as an Asian character, and did so up until 2011, when the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, or AAPAC, rose against the industry to cast Asian people for Asian roles, as it should have been this entire time. According to the New York Review, the Thai government also disagreed with the entire story of the King and I, as it did not portray exactly what happened. Now, unfortunately, because Broadway will be Broadway, the images that are placed on real-life people are almost never truly accurate. Such an example that Thailand disagrees with is when the children display what they know, and they wrongfully depict, for one, how big Siam is, and for two, that the earth is flat, rather than being circular and spherical. The hot-tempered King acts like a child, pacing and making grandiose movements that reflect his power, saying, why don't you know this? They did not describe the true King Manga, as he is very modernized and had already dismissed the flat earth theory before the 1860s, so why would his people not know yet? In the 2015 film adaptation of the musical, my personal favorite, starring Kelly O'Hara and Ken Watanbe, the King struggles to help his children understand that metaphors are not what is truth, rather they are a symbol of the truth. Upon hearing that Anand, more than the King, was unheard of, and the children were confused. Now, because the true King Manga was a scholar, geologist, and astrologist, disagreements arise once more among Thailand's authorities, and it is understandable that they will not let that image of their past King, an ignorant, open to learning, but ignorant King, slide. Corrections aside, I think we can all agree that we don't know exactly what we are doing in life. We try to make sense of things, but besides science, we are not sure of what we know is true. In The King and I, this is highlighted by the song, Appuzzlement. The King sings in frustration at whether he should act like he knows everything when he actually doesn't, so that his son can learn to be stoic, because he will be the next King. He sings about when he was a child, and how much easier it was when all the decisions were made for him by his father, who was himself stoic. Now let's take a minute to listen. The King sings in frustration at whether he should act like he knows everything when he actually doesn't, so that his son can learn to be stoic, because he will be the next King. I like that ending. With violins, flutes, trombones, and cymbals, the orchestra supports the melody here. When a single melodic voice is supported by multiple instruments, this is called homophony. In this case, the orchestra helps the singer deliver the melody, which contains a strong message in it. Now, with the et cetera et cetera part, while it's humorous, Anna had described prior to the song what this meant, and the King embraced this term. So to say, Anna has this to say, and et cetera et cetera, means that she has much more to say. He embraced this term, and this can be a symbol of Siam adapting to Western culture. And this is something that the King wanted when he hired Anna to teach his children English. Now, like I mentioned earlier, Broadway will be Broadway. In the musical, there is a romantic attachment between the King of Siam and Anna. However, in the biography Bombay Anna, a book written by Susan Morgan, there was no love interest between the two at all. It was very professional. In the chapter, The Teacher and the King, the love is actually that of shaping a career, according to Anna, and that of shaping a country, for King Mangu. Let's listen to the song, Shall We Dance for a Bit, which is after a ball, which shows that Siam is not barbaric. So the Highlanders dress in Western clothing to show that they can be like the Westerners, that they can adapt to modernization. Now, don't focus on the characters as themselves, rather what they represent. Anna, who is representing modernity and speaking English, and King Mangu as a traditional country of Siam. Here, they will be dancing together, and because the King of Siam does not know what the dance polka is, Anna will show him. Let's listen. You did, you did. It's quite gentle, the polka. It goes one, two, three, and one, two, three, and one, two, three, and three. Shall we dance? One, two, three, and? All the bright and proud of music, shall we join? One, two, three, and? Shall we dance? One, two, three, and? Shall we then say goodnight and leave the ball? One, two, three, and? Oh, the time, when the night leaves us at the dawn. Shall we still be together with our arms around each other? And shall you be my new lover? Alright. Now, trying to depict human characters as, say, a country or as a language, it might be hard, I understand. In the song, we can hear the King Mangu learn how to dance polka, which originated as Bohemian dance music. It has two-four duple meter and is very peppy indeed. The polka represents freedom and is dancing groups representing the togetherness of a community. And this is what I tried to get at, where the community is not just people, rather, it can be a language, it can be a translation, it could be a couple of ideas coming together and being shared amongst others. When the King stated that he and Anna were good friends, it gave me a hopeful feeling when we're in a mindset that we had not too long ago. Knowing that Siam was truly open to learning a new language to be able to navigate the world a little better, I was hopeful that they could learn just a little bit more about what other cultures had and maybe even teach others about their own culture as well, just as Anna did to Siam when she taught them English. Personally, I hold this musical near and dear to my heart as this is one of my mother's favorite musicals. Now, when I first watched it, I was so indulged in the romantic interest and I was so eppity-eppity with the love and I was very attached to it in that way. But researching all these things and learning about the background of all this, it made me realize that it's not just the unity of two people, which it didn't really happen. Rather, it was the unity of two ideas to two different cultures and that was the marriage of the two and I think that's so beautiful. This transformed into a new meaning for me and I'm so happy that I'm sharing a little bit of her with each and every one of you all because, hell, if I know, she might have known this already. Well, that's all the time we have here. I've had an amazing time with you all and I had an even greater time helping you all debunk some myths and maybe you can speculate your own interpretations for the songs that I've introduced to you. I really hope you can save some time to watch the musical as there are so many more powerful, tear-jerking moments and so many impactful people that are in the musical that I just didn't have time to tell you about at the moment. Now, I really wish that I could have more time to you to explain this but let's save that for next week, okay? I have plenty more musicals to tell you about and I have plenty more reasons to debunk all the myths that you might have. I love you. I'll see you in the next one. And that's a wrap!