Film “Anna and the King”: A Reflection on West and East Cultural Misunderstandings

Abstract

The aims of this study were to know about the aspects of sociocultural of the West and East cultures and to describe the misunderstanding of West and East cultures in the 19th century, as seen in the film entitled ‘Anna and The King’ by Andy Tenant based on a sociocultural approach. This was descriptive qualitative research. It used two data sources namely primary and secondary data. The primary data was the film itself while secondary data were books, internet sources, articles in scientific journals, and other data that had a relation with the research. Six techniques of collecting data were utilized, such as intensive watching the film for several times, identifying the film by reading the film script, determining the characters that would be analyzed, taking notes of the important parts both in primary and secondary data, classifying and determining the relevant data, and giving the verification of the data by referring to the sources. The technique of data analysis was interactive data analysis by Miles and Huberman. The data were analyzed using the sociocultural approach, which was proposed by Christopher Bates Dobb. Based on the research results, there were three kinds of sociocultural aspects which were discussed, such as beliefs, norms, and values. On beliefs, there were religion, marriage, and education. On norms, there were customs, morality, punishment, and values. The aspects of sociocultural between West and East culture in the 19th century have made misunderstandings caused by the different mindset, view, and culture. Keywords: sociocultural approach, sociocultural aspect, Anna and the King. https://doi.org/10.55463/issn.1674-2974.50.3.20