Love seeing a deep dive on this. I've always thought this concept was a little dubious - it seemed too predictable, cartoonish, judgmental. But I wrote off my doubts as a side-effect of my own American ignorance of the cultural superiority of the rest of the world. Today the image of the boorish American compared to his sophisticated (especially European) non-US counterparts is surely nothing more than pre-Woke nonsense, what they used to call "liberal elitism", and yeah, I ain't havin it.
As you say, "speaking the language" was always the centerpiece of the "shitty American tourist" complaint, and for my money that complaint is immediately torn down by the swaths of Asian immigrants (largely Vietnamese and Chinese) living in my city who never learn more than a word or two of English, and muddle their way through the world demanding locals struggle to understand those one or two words combined with some poor pantomime, or demand to have a translator provided for them. And I'm not talking about tourists - these people live here.
I think the core issue here is: responsibility to create the world one inhabits. When we go to a restaurant, a hotel, a theme park... we're paying for someone else to create the "world". Disneyland is what it is because someone else is making it that way - you simply pay your fee and enjoy it. But when we visit a city, any public place, really, and particularly when we go to live in a place - it is we who collectively make that place what it is. Our presence, our interaction, our behavior, is a crucial part of the experience of being there. We *are* the "there", in many ways. This "ugly American" is the person who doesn't know that, who thinks that anywhere they go outside of the home is Disneyland - created and maintained by someone else for their personal enjoyment.
This is what killed my city, and probably other cities that gain some cultural popularity. People hear about it and read about, then come to live so they can experience what they read about. But what they read about was created and maintained by the residents, not simply attended and enjoyed - ten or twenty thousand people move in to simply enjoy that world, well now you've got a whole bunch of people living there who aren't creating it anymore, and it's gone. It's a city inhabited by its own tourists, waiting to be provided for.
Really enjoyed this! I think you hit on why it stick as a reputation - that sometimes, inadvertantly, the Americans are those that you hear! I'm a Brit and we're absolutely terrible travellers by reputation, stag do's, binge drinkers, the lot. But those of us that aren't those aren't as noticeable. But I completely agree that I think there's just a composite ugly traveller - and they can be very much any nationality.
Love seeing a deep dive on this. I've always thought this concept was a little dubious - it seemed too predictable, cartoonish, judgmental. But I wrote off my doubts as a side-effect of my own American ignorance of the cultural superiority of the rest of the world. Today the image of the boorish American compared to his sophisticated (especially European) non-US counterparts is surely nothing more than pre-Woke nonsense, what they used to call "liberal elitism", and yeah, I ain't havin it.
As you say, "speaking the language" was always the centerpiece of the "shitty American tourist" complaint, and for my money that complaint is immediately torn down by the swaths of Asian immigrants (largely Vietnamese and Chinese) living in my city who never learn more than a word or two of English, and muddle their way through the world demanding locals struggle to understand those one or two words combined with some poor pantomime, or demand to have a translator provided for them. And I'm not talking about tourists - these people live here.
I think the core issue here is: responsibility to create the world one inhabits. When we go to a restaurant, a hotel, a theme park... we're paying for someone else to create the "world". Disneyland is what it is because someone else is making it that way - you simply pay your fee and enjoy it. But when we visit a city, any public place, really, and particularly when we go to live in a place - it is we who collectively make that place what it is. Our presence, our interaction, our behavior, is a crucial part of the experience of being there. We *are* the "there", in many ways. This "ugly American" is the person who doesn't know that, who thinks that anywhere they go outside of the home is Disneyland - created and maintained by someone else for their personal enjoyment.
This is what killed my city, and probably other cities that gain some cultural popularity. People hear about it and read about, then come to live so they can experience what they read about. But what they read about was created and maintained by the residents, not simply attended and enjoyed - ten or twenty thousand people move in to simply enjoy that world, well now you've got a whole bunch of people living there who aren't creating it anymore, and it's gone. It's a city inhabited by its own tourists, waiting to be provided for.
Really enjoyed this! I think you hit on why it stick as a reputation - that sometimes, inadvertantly, the Americans are those that you hear! I'm a Brit and we're absolutely terrible travellers by reputation, stag do's, binge drinkers, the lot. But those of us that aren't those aren't as noticeable. But I completely agree that I think there's just a composite ugly traveller - and they can be very much any nationality.
“She’s got legs just how I like ‘em. Feet on one and a pussy on the other!”
This man’s a legend.