Movie or TV scenes about Ugly American-style tourists?
August 13, 2023 8:56 AM Subscribe
There's a classic trope where rich tourists meet a foreign culture with smug close-mindedness. They're disgusted by cultural differences and cluelessly assume that different customs exist because the natives are too dumb or primitive to know any better. They patronize and condescend. They loudly explain how their own ways back home are just smarter, more civilized, altogether better. Can anyone suggest funny scenes featuring this behavior?
Tourists don't need to be American, necessarily; I'm looking for sendups of self-satisfied ignorance and parochialism in general.
I've reviewed the Ugly American pages on TvTropes, but a lot of their examples are about tourists being rude, loud or exploitative, whereas I'm looking more for scenes where they're shown as incorrect in their self-serving assumptions about the new culture, and preferably get their comeuppance because of it at some point.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Tourists don't need to be American, necessarily; I'm looking for sendups of self-satisfied ignorance and parochialism in general.
I've reviewed the Ugly American pages on TvTropes, but a lot of their examples are about tourists being rude, loud or exploitative, whereas I'm looking more for scenes where they're shown as incorrect in their self-serving assumptions about the new culture, and preferably get their comeuppance because of it at some point.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Wilde's The Canterville Ghost is pretty much the archetype for this: very English, but very dead, ghost of a knight needs to enlist the help of very loud American visitors renting “his” castle. There are many film and TV versions, and the brashness of the newcomers is a key feature.
Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) is mostly silent, but the gaggle of loud ignorant tourists to the Saint-Nazaire seaside hotel are a constant set up for visual humour. Apparently they're supposed to be from Paris in the original, but the English dub makes them Londoners.
posted by scruss at 1:16 PM on August 13, 2023
Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) is mostly silent, but the gaggle of loud ignorant tourists to the Saint-Nazaire seaside hotel are a constant set up for visual humour. Apparently they're supposed to be from Paris in the original, but the English dub makes them Londoners.
posted by scruss at 1:16 PM on August 13, 2023
Not exactly funny, and not TV, but The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is a damning novel about a family of American Christian missionaries in the Belgian Congo.
There's a lot going on in this novel, but the American father trying to teach his "superior" farming methods to the local people, who (rightly) conclude that he's a dangerous idiot is a memorable event for me.
I consider the whole book a sharp "sendup of self-satisfied ignorance and parochialism".
posted by dkg at 10:53 AM on August 14, 2023
There's a lot going on in this novel, but the American father trying to teach his "superior" farming methods to the local people, who (rightly) conclude that he's a dangerous idiot is a memorable event for me.
I consider the whole book a sharp "sendup of self-satisfied ignorance and parochialism".
posted by dkg at 10:53 AM on August 14, 2023
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posted by Rash at 9:14 AM on August 13, 2023