Chick Flick Road Kill: A Behind the Scenes Odyssey into Movie-Made America

by Alicia Rebensdorf

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 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 myth—one that's far more exciting when freed from the mystique and power of pop culture's romanticism.

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2007

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 1 out of 5]

Chick Flick Road Kill is not a good book, and that's too bad, because it means a half-decent premise has been wasted on a writer who is simply not up to the task she sets herself. As an aimless twenty-something, Rebensdorf decided to embark on a cross-country road trip, visiting various locations romanticized by movies and television: the Northwest filming location of Stand By Me, the Boston of Cheers, field of dreams in Iowa. She'll compare Fargo with Fargo. She has a hazy notion that seeing the real locations will burst the manufactured bubble (although she never establishes herself as particularly ensnared by these false images, never articulates clearly why this quest is significant).

Rebensdorf is not, as she might wish, a distaff Chuck Klosterman, however. She falls short as an observer, as a writer (my editing fingers twitched, yearning for a blue pen), and as an amateur psychologist. She frets from start to finish, wondering what she's aiming for and disappointed that she's not finding it. I don't fault her for her confusion, but I do fault whoever deemed it worthy of publication. Slap more than 280 pages between two covers and I expect a little more insight, a little more perception.

Also, the title is awful. It's nicely percussive, but what does it mean? There's a chick in the book, sure, but no chick flicks, and no roadkill (one word, dammit!).

[Hunter Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not the target demographic (the publisher is a publisher of books "By Women. For Women.", I enjoyed the read. I had a tough time getting into it (and it languished with a bookmark for months at a time), but either the prose improved or I started seeing more of the poetry in the prose as I went. Hits on movie reality vs. assumed reality, 9/11, stereotypes, politics, and sometimes some film trivia as well. The author is liberal and urban; there's no proselytizing for those points of view, but the assumptions are there.