As a child of the 1980s, Alicia Rebensdorf was raised by TV and movies. But when she, like so many of her generation, found herself a bored twentysomething, waitressing and wondering why life wasn’t as she imagined it would be, she devised a plan: She’d visit the locations of the shows and movies she grew up with and try to come to terms with her nostalgia for places and scenes that purported a real America.

Chick Flick Road Kill explores Rebensdorf’s relationship to popular culture and media mythology. From the streets of Fargo, North Dakota, to the bleachers of the still-intact field from The Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, Rebensdorf learns that her generation’s sense of America is, indeed, as flat as its two-dimensional TV screens. What’s more, she discovers the America behind the Hollywood mythone that’s far more exciting when freed from the mystique and power of pop culture’s romanticism.