Here in Ecuador it is very easy to buy pirated movies on DVD. There are little stores everywhere selling them for about $1.50 each. They are of varying quality - some are just as good as the originals, others have corrupted soundtracks or other issues. We've even seen a few that were made by someone who actually went to a theater with a camcorder and filmed the movie - those are pretty funny. You never can tell what movies will be available, or what condition they'll be in. And since we're kind of out of touch with the latest releases, we never know what's new or what's been around for a while. So most of the time picking a movie is hit or miss, it might be really good or it might be really bad.
The other day we bought a movie called The Gift, which turned out to be a sappy, predictable tale about a spoiled rich kid who becomes a good person after being forced to work hard, live without any money, help out a friend in need, etc. We were both almost falling asleep when in one of the scenes the young hero is taken by plane to a small village in the rainforest and when he lands a woman greets him saying "Welcome to Ecuador!". "This should be interesting," we thought. As expected, it was typical Hollywood nonsense. The actors were dressed in a hodpodge of styles that could have come from many different areas of Latin America. I had to laugh when I saw a guy dressed in a wool poncho and hat similar to the clothing some native peoples wear in the cold, high altitude Andes mountains, even though the movie was set in the hot, humid tropical forest. Next to him was a scantily-clad woman with feathers in her hair and some kind of strange, geometric design painted on her face. At one point there was some kind of gathering and a guy got up to make a long-winded speech (at least that part was accurate), to honor our good-looking hero, and then they place a ridiculous, feather-filled contraption on his head and made him drink some kind of potion. Later he decided to go on a jaunt in the forest to solve the mystery of his father's death, and ended up getting kidnapped by some drug smugglers who spoke Columbian-accented Spanish. Apparently they were holding him for ransom but they must have been a little unclear on the concept because nobody knew where he was and he languished in captivity until his trusty Ecuadorian sidekick rescued him and they found their way back to the village.
Of course this kind of misrepresentation in movies is not new; it's probably the rule, rather than the exception. But it struck me that there were enough accurate details (such as the scenery, the architecture, even some of the clothes) that someone could visit Ecuador, maybe even live here for a while, and never escape this comical, movie-inspired misperception of the country (or for that matter any country that they might have seen in a movie). I know this is not an extremely new or original observation, but I guess I'm realizing how difficult it is to break through some of these inaccurate stereotypes. Even after living here for an extended period of time, they still crop up in my mind once in a while too.