An American Family
An American Family was a reality show in the United States . The television series was recorded in 1971 and was first broadcast on the PBS television network in 1973 .
The series had twelve episodes and is considered the first reality show in the United States.
Content of the series
The series broadcast the everyday life of a nuclear family , the Loud family of seven from Santa Barbara , California . During the documentary, the parents Bill (1921-2018) and Patricia ("Pat") Loud (* 1926) separated, whereupon Pat applied for a divorce. Bill and Pat had five children. One of her children, 20-year-old Lance Loud , was gay. Lance Loud wore lipstick and women's clothes on occasion, and took his mother to a drag show on episode two . Viewers on the series believed that Lance was coming out on TV. However, the Loud family knew about Lance's homosexuality even before the series was produced. Lance was the first openly gay television character in the United States and became an icon of the US lesbian and gay movement .
The television series reached over 10 million viewers - a phenomenal audience for 1973 - and caused social controversy in the United States in those years. The 1973 television series received heated media coverage and the Loud family featured on the cover of an issue of Newsweek magazine on March 12, 1973 .
In 1979 the television series was parodied in the film Real Life . PBS re-filmed the Loud family in 1983 under the title American Family Revisited and also in 2001 under the title Lance Loud, A Death in An American Family . This show was broadcast on PBS in 2003. All family members except Lance's brother Grant participated in this program. Lance was 50 years old in this documentary and was HIV positive. He died of hepatitis C that same year.
In 2002, the television series An American Family was voted one of the top 50 television shows ever produced in the United States by TV Guide .
Family members of the television series
- William C. (Bill) Loud (born 1921)
- Patricia (Pat) Loud (born 1926)
- Lance Loud (1951-2001)
- Kevin Loud (born 1953)
- Grant Loud (born 1954)
- Delilah Loud (born 1955)
- Michele Loud (born 1957)
literature
- An American Family: A Televised Life , Jeffrey Ruoff, University of Minnesota Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8166-3561-7
- Pat Loud: A Woman's Story , Pat Loud and Nora Johnson, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1974, ISBN 0-698-10578-8
Web links
- PBS: Lance Loud!
- January magazine article about the series and its historical context
- An American Family: The Story of the Louds
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.facebook.com/matt.schudel : Bill Loud, patriarch of 'An American Family,' TV's first reality show, dies at 97. Retrieved on August 2, 2018 (English).