I've been chomping at the bit for several years to see this, and it's thankfully been made available - albeit in a severely truncated form.
"An American Family" was a 1971 experiment in cinéma vérité that placed a camera crew in an upper-middle class Santa Barbara household - The Louds - for a period of six months. The resulting footage was edited into a 12-hour miniseries that aired on PBS in '73. That miniseries would become part of the national conversation (for months) and make television history.
And I use cinéma vérité because that's exactly what this is: cameras observing the interactions and behavior of a particular subject matter. There's no commentary, no plotted narrative to abide and no comic music strategically used to let us know when we're supposed to laugh. So to compare it to the current crop of "reality-based" TV is both unfair and disingenuous.
Within the 2-hour pared-down material, we meet the Loud family (parents Bill and Pat, kids Grant, Kevin, Lance, Delilah and Michele) during a half-year that sees foundational shifts in the family. Lance, having recently come out to his family has moved to New York City, while Bill and Pat, in a gradually deteriorating relationship, file for divorce. Son Grant gets some screen time and attention as the apathetic teenager who squares off with his self-made man father over what he'll do with his life. The other siblings go largely ignored, leaving me to wonder what material of theirs was left on the cutting room floor.
And that's really my only beef with this disc. The compression into 120 minutes leaves no breathing room, and the other members of the family get backseat treatment. Aside from that, the image and sound quality are pretty rough, but this is a 40 year-old TV series that was shot on 16mm. No complaints.
I'm also curious as to how this family was chosen, and why the producers didn't go with a less well-off household. The house at 35 Woodale Lane is no shoebox, and Patricia's close friend even tells her "You don't even know what it is to be unlucky". Bill is constantly on his kids to be enterprising and work hard for a living; Pat and the kids, on the other hand, definitely come off as those who have never known hard times. Producer Craig Gilbert, in his introduction, says, "The Louds are neither average nor typical. No family is. They are not THE American family. They are simply AN American family". The choice of such a nicely-appointed household, makes me wonder if they make better lab rats for us to peak in on. Or maybe just see how other richer people have it in life.
The bottom line is this: this is an utterly fascinating experiment. It requires you to remember that this was filmed in a time and place where Reality TV didn't rule the airwaves. Manufactured drama wasn't everywhere you looked. So to see this family go through such shifts made for a TV show that was truly ahead of its time. I'm genuinely thankful to have what's so far been released (the full affair is tied up in music licensing hell). I see "An American Family" as a footnote in television (hell, even American) history, so I'll see it any way I can get it.
Watching this is like watching Albert Brooks' "Real Life" or "Network"; both posit such an outrageous situation that it's all the more hilarious (or disturbing, depending on your point of view) when TV networks adopt that absurdity for cheap junk food TV. This is nothing like Reality TV. This is history; bold, unique, and absolutely mesmerizing.
7/10
"An American Family" was a 1971 experiment in cinéma vérité that placed a camera crew in an upper-middle class Santa Barbara household - The Louds - for a period of six months. The resulting footage was edited into a 12-hour miniseries that aired on PBS in '73. That miniseries would become part of the national conversation (for months) and make television history.
And I use cinéma vérité because that's exactly what this is: cameras observing the interactions and behavior of a particular subject matter. There's no commentary, no plotted narrative to abide and no comic music strategically used to let us know when we're supposed to laugh. So to compare it to the current crop of "reality-based" TV is both unfair and disingenuous.
Within the 2-hour pared-down material, we meet the Loud family (parents Bill and Pat, kids Grant, Kevin, Lance, Delilah and Michele) during a half-year that sees foundational shifts in the family. Lance, having recently come out to his family has moved to New York City, while Bill and Pat, in a gradually deteriorating relationship, file for divorce. Son Grant gets some screen time and attention as the apathetic teenager who squares off with his self-made man father over what he'll do with his life. The other siblings go largely ignored, leaving me to wonder what material of theirs was left on the cutting room floor.
And that's really my only beef with this disc. The compression into 120 minutes leaves no breathing room, and the other members of the family get backseat treatment. Aside from that, the image and sound quality are pretty rough, but this is a 40 year-old TV series that was shot on 16mm. No complaints.
I'm also curious as to how this family was chosen, and why the producers didn't go with a less well-off household. The house at 35 Woodale Lane is no shoebox, and Patricia's close friend even tells her "You don't even know what it is to be unlucky". Bill is constantly on his kids to be enterprising and work hard for a living; Pat and the kids, on the other hand, definitely come off as those who have never known hard times. Producer Craig Gilbert, in his introduction, says, "The Louds are neither average nor typical. No family is. They are not THE American family. They are simply AN American family". The choice of such a nicely-appointed household, makes me wonder if they make better lab rats for us to peak in on. Or maybe just see how other richer people have it in life.
The bottom line is this: this is an utterly fascinating experiment. It requires you to remember that this was filmed in a time and place where Reality TV didn't rule the airwaves. Manufactured drama wasn't everywhere you looked. So to see this family go through such shifts made for a TV show that was truly ahead of its time. I'm genuinely thankful to have what's so far been released (the full affair is tied up in music licensing hell). I see "An American Family" as a footnote in television (hell, even American) history, so I'll see it any way I can get it.
Watching this is like watching Albert Brooks' "Real Life" or "Network"; both posit such an outrageous situation that it's all the more hilarious (or disturbing, depending on your point of view) when TV networks adopt that absurdity for cheap junk food TV. This is nothing like Reality TV. This is history; bold, unique, and absolutely mesmerizing.
7/10