After reading “The Tongan Tradition of Going to The Movies,” and “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day,” about Papua New Guinean audiences, I began wondering what these people learn about American society from our movies. I assume that Papua New Guineans have other sources of education about America but if we look just at movies, especially blockbusters that would be internationally distributed, a very inaccurate picture of our society emerges. However, many things can be learned by watching the movies of another society as long as you understand the context. For example you can learn what entertains people if you view a movie as entertainment and not a reflection of society. Even documentaries, which are often advertised as being a reflection of a society (or part of society), have to be taken in context. If someone’s only knowledge of America came from Hollywood movies they’d probably think that we are a super-violent, funny and quick-witted people, which is not very accurate. What the above-mentioned articles show is that there is also a lot to be learned by how societies put foreign movies into their own context. I love the description in “The Tongan Tradition of Going To the Movies,” of the interpreter getting booed for directly translating a movie without adding any of his own flair. Tongans put movies into their own context by comparing characters to people they know and elaborating to the plot in order to add relevance to Tongans. As I thought about this I began to realize that my own knowledge of places that I haven’t experienced directly comes, mostly, from movies. While I’d like to say that my knowledge of someplace like Africa comes from some kind of respectable sources, in reality my understanding comes from “Blood Diamond”, “The Last King of Scotland” and “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. None of which were made by Africans and all of which have their own biases.