Cinema diplomacy failing?

With the movies at the local theatre only $1 on weeknights it has quickly turned into a fun, budget friendly, language/culture lesson for me.  The theatre actually frequently has American movies passing through- always at least a year after they came out in the US- and after seeing a couple I think I have figured out why the American stereotype here is so extremely Hollywood-centered.  In a city that gets very few, if any, tourists each year and is obviously outside of the US Embassy’s Public Diplomacy reaches, these cheap movies that make it to the theatre in Sumatra are really one of very few representations of American culture and people.

The last film I saw called Redline came out, unnoticed by me, in the US in 2007 and is basically an even trashier version of Too Fast Too Furious (I didn’t think that was even possible).  But to give you an idea, the IMDB summary says: “A gorgeous young automobile fanatic--and front to the hottest unsigned band on the West coast--finds herself caught up in illegal drag-racing competitions organized by exotic car fanatics.”  The gratuitous overload of skimpy clothes and cheesy lines is really just a cheap rendition of someone’s shallow fantasy.  This can be harmless, but the significance here is that it is probably being shared with millions of foreigners and some of those will never experience the opportunity to have those images challenged.  So it develops into a permanent stereotype and in this conservative Muslim culture I live in, it helps foster an environment where I am always aware of how my behavior and clothing can be interpreted.