American Dreams: Lost and Found James Benning, 1984

American Dreams is chock full of concrete, discrete elements that comprise an American iconography of the past three decades. The film encourages a kind of perverse nostalgia for the good old days: Nixons you dont have Nixon to kick around any more; Elvis response to questions about his gyrating style and the rumour that once he shot his mother; Patty Hearsts Tania statement; Senator Ribicoffs reference to Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago. All of which is punctuated by the music of the period and set against a composite image of Hank Aaron memorabilia (arranged chronologically, 195476, the span of the champion homerun hitters major league career), and the sordid diary jottings of the wouldbe assassin, Arthur Bremer.