The Fable Of The Dickhead Western Traveller: Should We Care About People Acting Stupid Overseas?

Just in case you thought the infamous “Budgie Nine” episode was a one-off, the Department of Foreign Affairs has today released data showing a record number of Australians are getting into trouble overseas. More than 1,500 Australians were arrested in 2015; it’s a 23 percent increase on the year before.

One Of Christopher Pyne’s Advisers Was Arrested In Malaysia After Formula One Stripping Incident

The media loves stories about Australians doing stupid things overseas and many outlets even became somewhat infatuated with the Budgie Nine. Despite their slightly-offensive-yet-laughable moniker, it’s hard to go past the story of a bunch of young men, some with parliamentary connections, deciding that it was cool to start stripping in Malaysia, while drinking booze out of shoes and wearing budgie smugglers emblazoned with the local flag.

But why are the public and the media captivated by stories of people acting like jerks overseas? And are there any wider ramifications for their behaviour?

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From Ryan Lochte To The Budgie Nine

Although their actions may seem trivial, the Budgie Nine help form part of an ongoing view that western travellers think they’re entitled to do what they want around the world. The unfortunate proof comes from the variety of headlines over the past 12 months of people being dickheads in foreign countries.

We’ve had Australians kicked out of temples in Bangalore for their tattoos, three men stuck on the top of Uluru, and a French hitchhiker “going berserk” in rural New Zealand despite being within walking distance of a larger town.

These Dickheads Getting Stuck On Uluru Might Be The Most Satisfying Story Of Our Time

However, prior to the Budgie Nine’s arrival, the award for Worst Western Dickhead was reserved for swimming gold-medallist and self-proclaimed bad boy Ryan Lochte. The Olympian famously said he was “robbed at gunpoint” by thieves posing as police, only to later be caught out having trashed a local service station, including breaking a bathroom door and peeing on the wall.

I recently spoke to my mum — a traditional Brazilian Catholic — about the Ryan Lochte saga. She tells me that the whole thing was orchestrated to “demean the Brazilian character”. There’s a part of me that agrees with her: Lochte took advantage of preconceived stereotypes of Brazilian crime and corruption to get out of an embarrassing situation. And when caught, many bent over backwards to forgive him, including the Rio organising committee themselves. Meanwhile, Brazil is left with the bill for an Olympics many deemed superfluous, with another dent in its cultural identity.

National identity, as well as the legacy of colonialism, plays both into why these stories are frequent in occurrence, as well as why they continue to be featured by our media. Many reports use the story of these humble travellers, exploring a suspicious, foreign land to illustrate the divide between foreign cultures and good old Australia. At least one reporter even blamed the Budgie Nine’s arrest on Malaysia’s Muslim population. Sometimes our own government becomes the target, for not doing enough for travellers, despite the Australian government’s official position on all foreign crimes being a simple offer of consular support.

However, another part of why these stories have so much media value is that they reflect a common experience among travellers: bearing witness to the ‘carefree traveller’ who ignores all social and cultural mores to have a ‘good time’. A request for examples from my Facebook friend circle drew numerous stories of travellers engaging in sexual misconduct, stalking, petty theft, improper use of fireworks, dares to “get arrested in every Greek island”, and in one stunning example, a group of American frat boys openly celebrating their “victory” at the Hiroshima Peace Park.

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What’s The Harm In This?

But it’s not always the act itself that generates outrage and controversy. It’s the broader cultural context. While it’s physically the same act, smashing a chair at a Barcelona pub or Camp Nou doesn’t carry the same level of disrespect as breaking a pew at the Sagrada Familia.

Soon-Tzu Speechley, a Malaysian historian and writer working in Singapore, tells me that while the Budgie Nine’s actions were lewd, they paled in comparison to that which has come before. “I think it was quite different with the tourists who stripped at the summit of Mount Kinabalu [in the East Malaysian state of Sabah]. That’s a site with deep spiritual significance for indigenous people there,” he said. “People making a fool of themselves at the [Malaysian Grand Prix] seems a lot less serious to me.”

Speaking of Ryan Lochte, Emerson Damasceno, a journalist from Fortaleza, Brazil, notes that it was less his lewd behaviour as it was his deceitful nature that angered most Brazilians. “Despite myself not taking it too seriously, I understand,” he said. “If they told the truth — we were drunks, broke some stuff in a gas station and so some security guys punted their guns to us — they would never have gotten into this.”

Asked if Ryan Lochte drew the local media away from more pressing issues, including the ongoing impeachment of President Dilma Roussef, Damasceno notes that Brazilian mainstream media was already untrustworthy before it began. “During all the impeachment process the best coverage came from outside. Our media would show us anything but the coup.”

The reality, however, is that no matter how egregious the acts of tourists, it often pales in comparison to the real discrepancies and differences that years of institutionalised colonialism and prejudice can create between nations. In fact, by focussing on the cringeworthy antics of a select few idiots, we regularly ignore the real issues faced by the countries who graciously open their arms to us. It would be nice to have similar attention paid when Australians aren’t causing strife.

It’s in the intersection between the Western Dickhead and the socio-political issues of the nations they visit where a major problem lies. When it comes to the Budgie Nine, there’s a decent chance that these men could very well end up making decisions that affect the countries they acted like jerks in. When looking at their faces, I am reminded of a review of Chris Lilley’s Ja’mie: Private School Girl. Girls like Ja’mie, reviewer Byron Bache said, grow up to be women like Janet Albrechtsen. Guys like the Budgie Nine could possibly grow up to still wear budgie smugglers, just somewhere more important.

People or Budgies, Tony Abbott really should steer clear of smugglers.

— Adam Hills (@adamhillscomedy) June 15, 2015

The same can be said of many of the other men and women who act like hoons overseas. Ryan Lochte is now featured on the latest season of Dancing with The Stars; his recent controversy is now a footnote in his infamous personal profile, as he continues to be a role model for young children in the US.

They might act like dickheads now, but the real damage is yet to come.

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Albert Santos is a Sydney writer. You can find them on Twitter here.

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Feature image via Nik Asyraaf/Twitter