It’s been over ten years since Michael Moore’s intuitive and influential television program came out. Unfortunately I was only four or five when the show came out making me too young. That’s when I wish I was born sooner to experience
TV Nation, Beatlemania, and the inspirational “Pet Rock”…okay, maybe I wouldn’t want to go
that far back, but I’m sure you get my drift. After hearing all of my elders talking about how ground-breaking, funny, and original TV Nation was, I was a little jealous that I didn’t have the chance to experience it myself.
Well, now the jealousy has ended.
In 1998 Mike Moore and co-writer Kathleen Glynn (who also produced the TV show) simultaneously released some of the episodes on VHS as well as a paper companion to go with it—a book titled
Adventures In A TV Nation. I haven’t watched any of the episodes yet, but I finished the book and loved it. It’s a perfect opportunity for people like me and you to experience this big pop culture extravaganza and instead of the two authors milking the cow, they give some pretty good details on the series and give the readers an in-depth look on what the series managed to do in such a short time. One of the things that I love about this book is Moore and Glynn’s poignant thoughts and situations that they discuss in quirky ways to bring out their points of view.
Adventures In A TV Nation is the E! True Hollywood Story about the early nineties TV show only narrated by the people who created the show. The book is written in third-person so you never know who’s writing whether it be Kathleen or Mikey. Either way the book is extremely well written giving you a non-linear timeline of the events that happened before, during, and after the show. Adventures In A TV Nation is a book that is about a lot of different themes whether it was about the crew’s accomplishments (AKA the mischief that everyone started), but also some interesting chapters of ideas left out of the final line up. Like segments that NBC and Fox censored, but are uncovered here. There’s also some behind-the-scenes information on some of your favorite parts of the show.
TV Nation was a TV show that tested peoples’ reactions to what Moore and the TV crew uncovered or made pranks on. One of the things that TV Nation did was have minorities visit huge Aryan and KKK conventions and sing songs about unity and love. As you might guess, these bigots from Idaho weren’t pleased with TV Nation so if the police weren’t there then major problems could have developed. This is explained in one of the early chapters of the novel. With me people a person who hates racists I was very amused by this chapter. As you might tell, it was a controversial show, but not in a gratuitous kind of way. Another segment discussed in his show that was humorous, but also something that all Americans should know about was the racist part. TV Nation put a rich black man on a corner of New York with a convicted white felon a block away and you could see which person the taxi driver would always pick up. All of these segments were amusing, but also very serious as well. And they’re all explained in the pages of
Adventures In A TV Nation.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past fifteen years, Michael Moore burst on the scene with his eye-opening documentary,
Roger & Me, which was about General Motors virtually screwing the people of Flint, Michigan (Moore’s hometown). After that cult classic became the highest grossing documentary, he grew in popularity as the Robin Hood of the lower class fighting for workers rights and even writing a book about corporate downsizing. He is extremely political talking mostly about America’s state of economy (most of it pre-September 11th). It wasn’t until his 2001 book,
Stupid White Men or his 2003 novel,
Dude, Where’s My Country, or even until his awesome
Fahrenheit 9/11 movie that things really heated up controversially for him. Republicans and democrats alike can agree on one thing: they don’t like Michael Moore or his political agenda or even his thoughts on America’s government. Personally I’m biased when it comes to this because I agree with a lot of what he says.
I’d say that if you’ve seen any of Michael Moore’s documentaries like
Bowling For Columbine or
The Big One and are not restrained with his views then
Adventures In A TV Nation is a definitely for you. But what’s most important is that if you’ve seen the TV show and loved it then this book should be at the top of your want list because it’s just so fantastic. It’s very interesting even if you have or haven’t watched the show. A lot of interesting subjects can be found in the pages of this book. The four appendixes found at the end of the book give you all of the lists of episodes and other specs for hardcore fans to love and the format of the book (complete with a lot of pictures) will surely satisfy you. Overall, this 241 page book is a real page-turned and a perfect companion for people who like what Moore has to say.
© Jason Haskins, 2004
“JiggyJay”
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