Produced for PBS by Craig Gilbert in 1973, An American Family was a broadcasting experiment that has since become one of the most critically-analysed television series. Unlike latter-day “reality TV” shows, the participants, the Southern California Loud family, were filmed in their own environment, living their own “real” lives; its current counterparts transplant real people either into completely unreal situations (Survivor, Temptation Island, etc.) or into bizarre simulated contrivances of “real life” (MTV’s The Real World, Big Brother.)
Filming took place over the course of seven months, mostly in the Loud family home in Santa Barbara, California. A total of 300 hours were filmed, which was then edited down to 12 one-hour “episodes” for broadcast.
The experiment could be considered either a success or a failure. It was surely a success as entertainment. Few other experiences compare to watching the Louds drink and dysfunction (after the show aired they complained that the editing misrepresented them). I found watching them fascinating mainly because they seemed to be people whose lives had very little content. They seem to have trouble communicating for the simple reason that there is nothing to communicate.
As a social experiment, it was a failure. In the course of filming, the family members’ relationships with one another clearly showed more and more strain, and they even seemed to grow more and more listless and bored. There is some debate about how much of a role the constant presence of cameras in their lives had in the breakup of William and Pat Loud’s marriage, or for that matter, in their son Lance’s coming out of the closet. It’s my sense that the family was a shambles to begin with, though being under scrutiny may have hastened its collapse.
Lance Loud was perhaps the most interesting member of the family. He has the distinction of being the first openly gay “character” on TV. In the late 1970s he went on to form punk band The Mumps. He died of complications resulting from hepatitis C Dec. 22, 2001.