ARTS & CULTURE
The American Disgrace:
S
o where are you from? the taxi driver asked me, speaking in rapid Portuguese. “Why don’t you guess?” I replied, proud to have caught his question. “You are Brazilian, from Rio.” “No, I am not, I only just learned Portuguese.” “French! No, German!” “No.” “Are you from the UK?” “No, I’m American.” “Really? Wow, I would have never guessed. You don’t act like an American.” ——————— The American stereotype abroad has been captured from many different angles, and immortalized in various forms of entertainment. The images that particularly come to mind is of tourists in khaki shorts who roll up their Hawaiian shirts to expose beige travel-safe fanny packs, and pull out large bills as they buy cheap souvenirs—ignorant meatheads who cannot use a phrasebook or eat anything other than McDonalds, and people who come back and tell their neighbors that the French are mean to anyone who doesn’t speak French, the Brits cannot cook, and all there is to Mexico is Cabo and Cancun. My mother constantly reminds me that I have the best passport. America is an uncontested superpower, giving me the privilege to travel safely around the world, but when I see it hanging in clear plastic around tourists’ necks I shrug away in embarrassment. I am by no means an exceptional American, but wherever I go abroad, I am frequently told that I am not like “other” Americans. When I was younger, I travpage 30
counterpoint / april 2016
eled with my parents to Austria to attend the 250th Mozart festival. When we arrived at the opera, our friends introduced us to the Bürgermeister (mayor). He was a large man, sporting a white tuxedo with a maroon cummerbund. He was cold and rude to me, probably dismayed by the presence of an American child (who might squirm, whisper, and eat Cheetos loudly throughout the performance) at such a prestigious event. After I sat patiently through the show and then the lengthy dinner (into the earlier hours of the morning), he confessed to my mother that I was the best-behaved American child he had ever met. Congratulations! My parents were so proud that their daughter did absolutely nothing and was awarded the immense honor of being an above-average American. An award-winning performance of a kid sitting quietly and not intruding on the adults and their fun. Bravo. I often question why the Bürgermeister and others have labeled me in this way. Perhaps a bit of US history holds some of the answers. Abbé Raynal explained in 1770 that we were a cultureless group, “America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science.” After the United States gained independence from England in 1776, Americans found their new nationality greeted with hostility. Our former motherland spread rumors about our apparent greed and inferiority to Europe. However this generic disgust for the self-important American began, in my own experience I have found that American behavior abroad may actually deserve some contempt. Because the
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BY RACHEL THOMMEN