Anna and the King, is a romantic love story between the English teacher ‘’Anna’’ and the king

of Siam
‘’Mongkut’’. This movie easily shows how we can have a culture shock when visiting another
country, it shows the distinct differences between two kinds of cultures, the western and the
eastern cultures.

As what I have notices, Siam is high in power distance and appreciate the authority, it is also high in
group collectivism, and mostly it is a masculine country, yet I will only focus on the most dimension
that was seen and obvious for me through the whole movie, which is ‘’Uncertainty Avoidance’’.

The culture in Siam is without any doubt high in uncertainty avoidance, and this was seen by the
amount of rejection Anna was getting from the people or the king whenever she suggested
something new to do. They can’t accept change, because it would even lead them to death, rather
they stick what is known and what is followed since ever, because this dimension comes originally
from beliefs, values, norms and all of them will lead the people to a certain social practice.

Yet there comes Anna, from England, and shows us the communication between two cultures, and
how they affect each other, and how it is possible to change the aspects of a culture after a period of
time.

Firstly, in Siam, the king is treated like god and everyone has to kneel down in front of him and it’s
not accepted to look at him in the eyes, But in Anna’s culture, showing respect is done by making a
bow and looking straight forward to that person, because lack of eye-contact means disrespecting
the other person, everyone was shocked that Anna wasn’t kneeling down, and even that everyone
was seeing her standing up in front of him yet they couldn’t do it because they would be punished,
and it’s not something they would easily change, because it is a big risk for them that might cost
their lives. But the king was forced to respect her culture, because she is also his guest. In Jordan we
do appreciate the uncertainty avoidance idea, but we don’t kneel down to someone except our God,
and for showing respect for someone we might only bow to that person. And this shows the
similarity with Anna’s culture, and the difference with the Siamese culture.

We can also see the change when the King gifted the guests at the special night that gathered the
Siamese and the British people on one table, a European dance, it is called the ‘’waltz dance’’, and
he even danced with Anna afterwards, the thing that astonished every person that night, because
the king usually doesn’t appreciate women and he is supposedly stands by himself, as he is
described as God, and no one should touch him or dance with him, but he changed because of Anna,
which shows how when values of two cultures mix, they will affect each other no matter what.

Here in Jordan, we can see clearly that other cultures affected us, and the first thing that pops to my
mind is the attire and dress. Look how different it is when comparing the dress in the 50s or 90s and
now, back then we were sticking more to what is known and only from our creation, but now, most
of our dresses and clothes come from other cultures, e.g., from Turkey, USA, Bangladesh, etc…
which clarifies that a culture’s dimension might change overtime, but it takes years if not decades to
see the change.
Even though the culture in Siam was likely going through transforms and changes, still there was one
thing that Anna couldn’t convince the Kind nor affect the public opinion so that it would prevent it.
In Siam, if the wife of the King cheats or is caught doing an inappropriate act, she should be killed as
that is a major disrespect to the King, while Anna on the other hand, believes that Tuptim should be
free in choosing her lover, and at least she shouldn’t be tortured even if she was caught with her
boyfriend. Here we’re seeing the high in uncertainty avoidance at its peak, because whatever Anna
tried, and even if the King prayed and asked his God ‘’Buddha’’ to make him choose the right choice,
he kept on choosing to kill her.

Comparing it to Jordan, we as Jordanians, are not that different, yet we’re not the same, because we
can see that if a girl is seen with a guy out of marriage, she might get killed as what we call ‘’Honor
killing’’ , we can see that some people are still valuing this disgusting act, and the majority is
demanding justice and calling to execute every person who kills or even hits a female just because
she was seen with a guy or even if she had a relationship with him, since we can solve it by logic and
not by killing a soul.

Marriage is also a sign of high uncertainty avoidance, and it’s seen when the King of Siam had many
wives and almost 58 children, because he believes that the heritage would stay on the same family
track because of this. Anna tried to convince him that a person should only have one partner that
they appreciate, and spend all of their life with, appreciating him-her and trying to give his-her love
to only, yet the king got married to Tuptim, which was already in love with another guy, and this
indicates that the King saw that marrying only one wife, is a risk to Siam and its future, because he
doesn’t want anyone except his children to rule Siam.

In Jordan, even though according to our religious values and beliefs which allow the man to get
married with 4 women at the most, we only see the appreciation of just marrying one person,
because to us, it is about heart and feelings more than it is about heritage and history of the family.
The Jordanian royal family is also seen like this, and we won´t see too many princes and princesses in
the near future of Jordan.

Conclusion
Anna and the King demonstrates that beliefs, values, norms and social practices can be
changed over time, and how some dimensions of a certain culture can affect them and even
affect other dimensions, as we saw greatly ‘’Power distance’’ affecting other cultural
dimensions, it has a great impact and it even might speed up the process of changing and
replacing some values and beliefs, just like what we saw with the King of Siam and how his
power affected the population there. Also we should mention the role of teachers on
cultures and how greatly they can improve and change the ideas and notions that some
people have, even in high in uncertainty cultures, we might see the change because of
them, and this change is mostly going to be positive and useful. To sum up everything,
people change , so do the cultures, it is just about who changes them and how and when,
but thinking they still the same forever is completely wrong, and the difference between
cultures should be a source of power, not a reason to fight or argue with each other.
‘’ Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity
brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity’’
Robert Alan