 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 : Nixon s  you don t 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 Hearst s  Tania  statement; Senator Ribicoff s 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, 1954-76, the span of the champion home-run hitter s major league career), and the sordid diary jottings of the would-be assassin, Arthur Bremer.