I saw Fabio yesterday, but only in profile

Every Tuesday I tutor a Chinese girl named Jojo. She has a show on the Chinese language channel and was semi-famous in China. Here's her website. I admit I am a somewhat sloppy tutor, which I make up for with my incredible intelligence. I'll tell you how. I can count on Jojo to provide material to keep us busy for at least half of the hour-long lesson. Last week we went over her resume. This week, we sat down and the first thing she said was:
"Have you ever seen a movie called Good Luck Good Night? I don't understand it."
"Good Night and Good Luck? Which parts don't you understand?"
"All of them."
So we watched the first half hour together, with closed captioning on. The problem with closed captioning is that it's not the same as English subtitles. When we see English subtitles of a foreign movie, they are not usually literal. For example: He has a beef with us. It means nothing in the literal sense. How would you say the same in a Chinese phrase? Maybe: His puppies are out of control.
So the first thing I did was try to explain the McCarthy Era to her. "So, there was the Cold War, right? Which I think was with the Soviet Union. And then everyone started to think that everyone else was a communist. And there was this Senator McCarthy. He was from Wisconsin. You couldn't win he accused you, and you couldn't question his methods, or that made you a commie. It was a witch hunt."
"Witch Hunt?"
And on and on. My biggest problem was that I don't understand history very well myself. I never learned it in high school. Every year, we would begin at the beginning of that grade's history book. It usually started with Columbus, and we would work our way through history from there. But we never got to the Twentieth Century. I kid you not. I think once, when I was a sophomore, we made it to World War I by May, but that's it. So where did I learn the meager facts above? Film school. Hollywood is still angry about that blacklist, so every generation must learn and remember.
After the movie, we read outloud a bit, I corrected her grammar, and I went home, twenty dollars happier. Not a bad gig.