A Disappointed Traveler

 I saw the ugly side of the American traveler yesterday in Rome. A man, with wife and child in tow (literally, they were several steps behind him), loudly made fun of the names on the backs of soccer jerseys on display at a typical tourist knick-knack store. "What the hell is a Vini, Jr.?" he proclaimed, laughing. His son, innocent and credulous and not yet aware of or acculturated to his father's jingoistic chauvinism, told him Vini, Jr. was a famous soccer player. The display embarrassed me, challenging my belief that Americans abroad do not need to wholly abandon their Americanness to be gracious guests.

Despite the challenge of this singular and proud Know Nothing display, I still believe Americans can find a proper balance between being themselves and respecting local norms when they travel abroad. Smiling a bit too much signifies Americanness will, in most contexts, signify Americanness in a culturally inoffensive manner ( and the truth is most Americans will be noticeably American even if they are trying hard to blend in). Loudly making fun of your host country's most popular sport is simply offensive and causes one to wonder why such a person would travel outside of the U.S. in the first place. For most people, one reason to travel is to experience the differences between places firsthand. Foreign countries are not immersive zoos whose inhabitants are on display for the traveler's amusement and should never be treated as such. 

Perhaps this is what people in other countries find so annoying about the "American" traveler - this sense of gazing at a place and its people as if the viewer, the American, is looking at a display and hasn't really left America at all. Such travelers, to paraphrase Neil Finn, take America with them wherever they go. And this is offensive because it treats the subjects of the gaze as objects of amusement rather than as fully forme persons with moral and cultural agency. Thus, the middle-aged man can proclaim, without embarrassment, "What the hell is a Vini, Jr.?" on a crowded Roman street in August, 2024. I cannot stop being an American (nor do I want to), but I do prefer to leave America when I physically leave America.