Sydney Svoboda

Professor Getachew

Reflection #7

April 2, 15

“An Idiot Tourist”

            I found this documentary very interesting and funny. The tourist is very incompetent about other cultures and different countries, as he has not traveled much before this trip. While he is faced with the challenges from his day-to-day travel experiences it shows how people can form stereotypes or certain ideas in their head about countries without truly experiencing culture first. For example, as he walked around China he wasn’t expecting it to be the way he was viewing it, but rather said, “I thought this was where they made the IPod?” I think sometimes we forget that one culture doesn’t define a certain country. There are thousands of different cultures in China that vary from the one he is experiencing, and often times we try to generalize a country as a whole rather than the communities it makes up.

            This documentary was very eye opening in both an inspiring and educational way.  Inspiring because it motivates me to travel and limit stereotypes of different countries in my head, that I have compiled over the years whether it be from TV, movies, the Internet, or the News. It was also very educational in the sense that it shows how incompetent some may be of other countries due to not traveling. It also showed me a culture of China that was very different and something that I have never seen before.