Ugly American

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For other uses of the term, see Ugly American (disambiguation).

Ugly American is an epithet used to refer to perceptions of arrogant, demeaning, unthoughtful behaviors of Americans abroad. The term originated as the title of a 1958 book by authors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, reprinted in 1999, The Ugly American. The film adaptation of the novel came out in 1963, directed by George Englund and starring Marlon Brando. Englund was nominated for a Golden Globe award as director of the film.

In the context of this novel, the title alludes to both positive and negative attributes of its characters. The authors state that one of the "good" characters is "ugly" looking to create a contrast with the "bad" characters who were "handsome" . In the book, the authors' "good" characters used their skills and resources to make a positive change in the lives of villagers in Southeast Asia and the "bad" characters used their skills and resources for other purposes. For example there is an "ugly" engineer who helps villagers with an irrigation system, and a "handsome" Ambassador who does not care about what happens to the people on the village level. The novel weaves many separate stories with these kinds of counterpoints of an "ugly American".^{[citation needed]}

The best-selling, loosely fictional account included descriptions of blundering, corrupt, and incompetent behaviors of Americans in Southeast Asia that were involved with American foreign aid. The book led to a move by President Dwight Eisenhower to study and reform American aid programs in the region.

In the book, a fictional Burmese journalist wrote, "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious. Perhaps they're frightened and defensive, or maybe they're not properly trained and make mistakes out of ignorance."

Over the years, the book has had less influence on American literature than it has had on perceptions of American culture. More often, stories of the "ugly American" abound largely out of tourists who make little to no effort to understand the nations they are visiting, or even the idea that the world revolves around the United States. Said examples can include an American woman in Paris yelling at a department store clerk for refusing to accept American money and the "ridiculous idea" that the clerk will only accept French francs as payment.

Americans have not been the only group to be classified as ignorant when traveling. "Brits abroad" is a similar term used to describe residents of the United Kingdom who display similar combinations of arrogance and ignorance.

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