Divided into two parts ("Rituals," "Elsewhere"), this is a film about American culture at the moment when Ronald Reagan became President in 1981. Featuring conversations with Jane Fonda, Francis Ford Coppola, fashion designer Betsey Johnson, NBC’s head of programming, and various figures from the counterculture, American Mythologies is a meditation based on an assemblage of images produced for mass consumption. Gitai has mused that "on the surface, when you look at the U.S., there seems to be no structure. But there is a very clear structure of control. To some extent that is what we tried to show."