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"Ugly American" is a stereotype depicting American citizens as exhibiting loud, arrogant, self-absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior mainly abroad, but also at home. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Although the term is usually associated with or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to U.S. corporate businesses in the international arena. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
The Collins English Dictionary defines an Ugly American as "a stereotypical representation of an American tourist as a brash and insensitive philistine." [13] The Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition is: "an American in a foreign country whose behavior is offensive to the people of that country." [14]
The term made its appearance through the title of the 1958 book, The Ugly American . [13] [14] [15] [16] The book was a thinly fictionalized chronicle of American diplomatic insensitivity, ineptness, and bungling in Southeast Asia. [n. 1] [15] [18] The message of the book was that Americans officials abroad were ignorant of local customs, social norms, and culture, and thereby losing influence to communism in the region, during the period of the Cold War. [15]
The novel spent 76 weeks on the best-seller list (reaching number 6 on the bestseller list in 1959), and sold roughly five million copies; it was serialized by The Saturday Evening Post, one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines at the time. [18] [15] In 1963, the book was made into a film with the same title directed by George Englund and starring Marlon Brando. [19]
Since then, "ugly American" became a term for the stereotype of loud, boorish American behavior abroad. [15] Although the 1958 novel made was about diplomacy and made no reference to American tourists, the alteration of the term’s meaning to refer to ill-mannered Americans took place rapidly. In December 1959, Newsweek referred to "poorly oriented" American study-abroad students in Europe as "the 'ugly' ones," and in June 1960, the mass-circulation Parade magazine ran an article about tourism titled "Don't Be an Ugly American," written by Frances Knight, director of the U.S. Passport Office. [16]
The notion of the ignorant or badly behaving American traveller long predates the naming of the phenomenon. In mid-July 1926, individuals and small groups of Frenchmen in Paris began attacking American tourists in the Left Bank and Montmartre protesting against the American invasion with its loud, arrogant, and ignorant behaviour. In the words of historian Harvey Levenstein: "What would later be called 'the Ugly American' phenomenon had reared its head". [20]
Crowds began to harass and purposely block the passage of "Paris by Night" tours in large charabancs—high open busses seating about thirty people that had popularized tours of Paris "Night Life." On one occasion a policeman was even forced to fire shots in the air when he came to the tourists' aid. As the French franc plummeted in value against the U.S. dollar, some tourists started sticking them on the walls of railway compartments and onto their luggage, as they did with hotel and steamship labels. Some even threw money on the streets and laughed at the French that went after them. The American habit of asking, "How much is that in real money?" was seen as especially offensive. The obeisance to the dollar and going along with outrageous American demands angered much of the French press. [20]
The term has also been widely used in the international sporting arena. [21] [22] The term was invoked after Justin Leonard holed a 45-foot putt on the 17th green at the 33rd Ryder Cup held in September 1999, resulting in extensive and adverse media coverage. [23] [24]
Later, at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the term was widely used after members of the US 4 × 100 relay team pranced around the stadium, flexing their muscles and making poses with the American flag, after winning a gold medal. [25] One foreign journalist called the incident "one of the most cringe-making exhibitions that the Olympics has seen". [26] This event was heavily criticized even by the American press and public. The members of the relay team were contrite and apologized for the incident the same day. Then, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the term was regularly used after the skiing superstar Bode Miller, who bragged about skiing drunk before the Olympics, was adversely compared to the term "Miller time", and went home with no medals. [27] A lesser-known teammate was sent home for fighting in a bar. [28]
In tennis, the term was used in regard to players at the 1987 Davis Cup for unsportsmanlike conduct. [29] John McEnroe was regularly cited in the media as being an "Ugly American" for his on-court tantrums and off-court negative comments about London and Paris. [30] In contrast, Andre Agassi who early in his tennis career was labeled a "potential ugly American", managed to transform himself into a crowd favourite. [31] In women's tennis, Serena Williams's outburst at the 2009 US Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters, and again at the 2018 tournament reiterated the "Ugly American" label. [32]
After the United States women's national soccer team lost to Sweden in the quarterfinals of women's football of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, Hope Solo called the Swedish team cowards unleashing multiple Twitter references associating her with this term. [33] [34] At the same Olympics, Gold medalist Ryan Lochte was named the ugly American by media outlets after falsely reporting a robbery at gunpoint during the tournament. Local police investigation showed that he and fellow swimmers in fact caused damage to a petrol station in Rio and were required to pay for the damage. [35]
In May 2008, the US House sub-committee passed a bill (House Resolution 4080) that would allow more foreign fashion models to work in the United States, and was subsequently dubbed the "ugly American bill". [36] George W. Bush was often referred to as "The Ugly American" in part because of his stance on foreign policies. [37] [38] [39] In 2007, Presidential hopeful John McCain outlined a series of measures to roll back Bush policies and counter the "ugly American" image. [40] Numerous opinion pieces have accused President Donald Trump of behaving in a way that fits the “Ugly American” stereotype, including in The New York Times , [41] The Washington Post , [42] Forbes , [43] The Nation , [44] Financial Times , [45] and The Sydney Morning Herald . [46]
The "ugly American" tourist stereotype has been heavily depicted in films, with characters such as Sheriff J.W. Pepper in The Man with the Golden Gun , [47] the Griswald family in National Lampoon's European Vacation , [48] [49] and Ralph Jones in King Ralph . [50] The 2004 film EuroTrip was originally slated to be named "The Ugly Americans" due to its depiction of stereotypical American tourists in Europe. [51] The producers changed the title shortly before its release. [52] A study carried out in 2002 revealed that Hollywood also contributes to the "Ugly American" image. The study found that the more access other countries had to American programs, the higher their negative attitudes toward Americans tended to be. [53]
The 2008 black comedy film In Bruges has the two protagonists, Irish hitmen hiding out in the Belgian city of Bruges, encounter obese American tourists who fit the "ugly American" stereotype, being crude, ignorant, loud and boorish. [54] The movie Sex and the City 2 has been cited as a typical portrayal of the "ugly American" image, where Samantha makes fun of Middle Eastern culture and women in traditional dress during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. [55]
The Simpsons episode "The Regina Monologues" had the Simpson family getting into all sorts of trouble in England due to their boorish behavior, which results from ignorance of and unconcern for the local culture. [56]
Anti-Americanism is a term that can describe several sentiments and positions including opposition to, fear of, distrust of, prejudice against or hatred toward the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general. Anti-Americanism can be contrasted with pro-Americanism, which refers to support, love, or admiration for the United States.
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Max Boot is a Russian-born naturalized American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for The Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. Since then, he has been the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributor to The Washington Post. He has written for such publications as The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has authored books of military history. In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for biography, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot's "ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party", in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. His biography of Ronald Reagan, Reagan: His Life and Legend, was a New York Times Bestseller and named one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2024, as well as one of the year's best books by The Washington Post and The New Yorker.
The Ugly American is a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer that depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Southeast Asia.
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The Simpsons has a long history of satirizing the British, but "The Regina Monologues" unsurprisingly turns Homer into the ugly American—"We're big-shot tourists from everyone's favorite country, the USA. We saved your ass in Vietnam and shared our prostitutes with Hugh Grant!"—who causes an international incident.
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