I think that we’ve all been in one of those situations where we have used a negative word or phrase to describe our mum, dad, best friend, or dog, but then if an outsider makes the same observation about the same person we have, we would be mortally offended. That’s pretty much how it felt living in Malta last week after Gladiator II director Sir Ridley Scott took a swipe at the island.

Speaking to director Christopher Nolan at a promotional Q&A, Scott said that our little island was “a treasure trove of architecture” but that he “wouldn’t advise going there on holiday”. He repeated the latter sentiment a few seconds later by saying: “I would not go back there on holiday.” Given our delicate sensibilities regarding any form of criticism, these statements have inevitably sparked a lot of anger, which has not died down despite Scott claiming he was joking just a few days later.

Now, I’m not going to go into the merits of whether or not Scott should have said what he said to begin with. Politeness and social norms do, of course, dictate that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you or the country that has happily accepted you into its arms time and time again. However, what I don’t understand is why so many have chosen to focus their ire on him rather than perhaps question why comments like these would have been passed, to begin with.

As painful as it seems to be for many of our citizens to swallow, the truth is that the country is a far cry from the unspoilt paradise it was a few decades ago, and we can’t keep expecting people not to bring it up out of good manners.

It usually takes an outsider to call out all the awful things that your mind has come to accept and normalise- Anna Marie Galea

We are a country with next to no natural resources. We literally have nothing else to offer outsiders except our looks. We used to be cheap, but we’re barely affordable to those born here anymore. Yes, we have our rich history, but who wants to be stuck in traffic for hours to get to Ħaġar Qim? For months, if not years, the area around our airport was a literal building site that my visiting foreign friends would look at with wide eyes and gaped mouths. When we would go around the islands, they were often too courteous to say anything openly offensive, but as I would encounter road closure after road closure with them inevitably asking me questions about our infrastructure, and I kept seeing them try to angle their cameras not to get families of cranes in their holiday snaps, it became glaringly obvious that they wouldn’t be coming back in a hurry.

One of them even asked me if we had any building regulations after seeing a particularly ugly block of flats dwarfing a gorgeous townhouse. He wasn’t trying to be impolite; he just isn’t as blind as the vast majority of us seem to be.

As sad as it sounds, it usually takes an outsider to call out all the awful things that your mind has come to accept and normalise. Growth can only come when you can look at your shortcomings without bias, accept them, and ask yourself what you can do to change them.

We can bury our heads in the sand all we want, but we can’t expect others to follow suit.