AN AMERICAN FAMILY
THE STORY OF THE LOUDS

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AN AMERICAN FAMILY was television's first reality show,
shot documentary style in 1971 and first aired in the United States
 on PBS in 1973.  The show was twelve episodes long, edited down
 from about 300 hours of footage, and chronicled the experience
 of a nuclear family, the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California,
 during a period of time when parents Bill and Pat Loud separated
(in a infamous and powerful on-camera sequence) and Pat filed for divorce.

The parents had five children.  One of them, Lance Loud, was a gay 20-year-old
 man who occasionally wore lipstick and women's clothes and took his mother
 to a drag show in the second episode of the series.   He lived in the Chelsea Hotel
during its Warholesque heydey and this is captured in the second episode
(Holly Woodlawn was his neighbor and appears in several scenes, along with
 Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and other famous drag queens of the time).

Scholars sometimes mention that Lance came out of the closet on TV, but this
is technically incorrect — he was simply gay without announcement or drama;
his family says that they had known for quite a while.   As such, Lance was the
 first openly gay character on television and has become something of a gay icon.

On airing, the show drew over 10 million viewers — phenomenal viewership
 for PBS in 1973 (or even presently) — and drew considerable controversy.
 The series was widely discussed in the media in 1973, and the Loud family
 appeared on the cover of the March 12, 1973 issue of Newsweek magazine.

In 1983, PBS broadcast AMERICAN FAMILY REVISITED, and in 2003
 PBS broadcast A DEATH IN AN AMERICAN FAMILY, shot in 2001,
visiting Lance and his family again at Lance's request.  Lance
 was 50 years old, had gone through 20 years of addiction to
 crystal meth, and was HIV positive and dying of hepatitis C.
In the winter of 2001, a few months after 9/11, Lance Loud was gone.

Far from a conventional "happy ending", watching the entire arc
of this brilliant masterpiece from start to finish is unforgettable:
  Lance's downfall from a young, vibrant and magnetically alive
 kid in 1973, to a man reaching middle age in 1983 (with shorter hair
 but still cheerful) to the incredibly painful final images of him in 2001
 (at the age of 50), walking with a cane, losing teeth, looking like a non-
survivor of a concentration camp ... it is a truly shattering experience.

But the entire series as a whole is a very life (and family) affirming tale,
and it includes alot of vintage 70s music, often played over a car radio while
 someone is driving a car (The Who, John Lennon, Rod Stewart, Elton John, etc).
Its possible that the cost of re-acquiring these music rights for a re-release
is the prohibitive factor in PBS not releasing the series in a factory boxed set.
Unfortunately, this is all too often the reason than cinematic masterpieces
rot in studio vaults, and apparently the Louds are destined for that same fate.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW IS COURTESY OF:
JANUARY MAGAZINE

BANG THE DRUM LOUDLY

Reviewed by
RICHARD KLIN
 _______________________________________

From May to December 1971, the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California --
 parents Bill and Pat, sons Lance, Kevin and Grant, daughters Delilah and Michelle --
 were filmed going about their daily lives for an eye-opening, unrelenting total
 of 300 hours.  Under the aegis of producer Craig Gilbert, the finished product,
 AN AMERICAN FAMILY, was shown in 12 episodes to a transfixed viewing public.
   Broadcast in 1973, the groundbreaking PBS chronicle engendered an
 absolutely enormous amount of attention, notoriety and commentary.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY, such fodder for dissection at the time, has essentially passed
 from media memory.   This year -- the 30th anniversary of the show's original airing --
 PBS has promised to rebroadcast an episode.   Airings of the show are few and
 far between.   As of this writing, the series is oddly unavailable on video.   If AN
 AMERICAN FAMILY is at all recalled today, it is essentially as a curio.   Basically
 two incidents are considered seminal: the real-life, on-air dissolution of Bill
 and Pat's marriage, and the celebrated "coming out" of eldest son Lance.
Nowadays, when the show is discussed -- if at all -- the nature of the
series is dumbed-down; it is now the supposed forerunner of "reality
 television."   The implication is that there is a strong causal connection
 between the Louds'  complicated family saga and today's exhibitionist,
 omnivorous media:  MTV's REAL WORLD or SURVIVOR or BLIND DATE.

Media scholar Jeffrey Ruoff's book, AN AMERICAN FAMILY: A TELEVISED LIFE,
 stands as an insightful, long-overdue undertaking and a sterling
 look at the seminal, though oft-overlooked, series.

It cannot be a coincidence that AN AMERICAN FAMILY, such an important event
 in the annals of television history, has fallen into relative obscurity, just as its
 decade, the 1970s, has itself been relegated by a revisionist slant that has cast
 the entire era as one of mindless, coke-fueled hedonism, ubiquitous kitsch,
 disco, funny hair and Charlie's Angels.   On some level, of course, it's not
 entirely unfair.   The 1970s has a huge legacy of silliness and there's nothing
wrong -- in fact, quite the opposite -- in dissecting THE BRADY BUNCH.   But
 there's now such a thorough, pervasive recasting that is not just a distortion,
 but a reactionary distortion as well.   It completely elides what was
 in reality a gritty, expansive -- and from today's sad vantage point --
 an era of astonishing progress.   It is no accident that AN
AMERICAN FAMILY has been cut from the sanitized 70s canon. 

  The present-day, lightweight view of the 1970s leaves no room for George
 McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, or Earth Day, Kent State, Ramparts
 magazine -- all products of the 1970s, not the 1960s.   There is no room for a look
 at the rise of new political forces that transpired during that time: feminism,
 gay rights, ecology, or that one could look at a magazine such as Rolling Stone and
 see politics and issues discussed in its pages.  Or that rock milestones associated
with the 60s actually took place later -- such as the death of Jim Morrison, in 1971.
   It was Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency --
 not because he cared at all about the planet, of course -- but such were
 the prevailing political currents to a degree simply unimaginable today.

It was precisely against these backdrops in which AN AMERICAN FAMILY was conceived
 and launched: this "exceptional program," Ruoff writes, "that broke the rules of
 television production."    The era had also spawned a brief, very important interregnum
 when corporate underwriting was far less a factor in non-commercial television.
NATIONAL EDUCATION TELEVISION (NET) -- the forerunner to PBS -- and PBS
 itself were far less beholden to their corporate masters.   Innovative,
expansive programming was a concrete, attainable goal.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY was, as Ruoff details, tremendously innovative.   Making full use of a
 spate of technical innovations -- "lightweight portable cameras and wireless  microphones" --
and almost entirely dispensing with traditional narration, AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 occupies such a unique perch that the term documentary is, in a sense, inadequate.  Gone
 was the traditional anchorperson, gone were the ubiquitous voice-overs and standard
 interviews.   The amount of film, the time frame that was covered and the sheer scope
 of the project all served to set it apart.   According to Jeffrey Ruoff, "...the recording
 of spontaneous action without scripts, the telling of a nonfiction narrative in episodic,
 serial form -- were later absorbed into commercial television in modified forms."

Ruoff's use of the term "nonfiction narrative" is not unintentional.  An enormous
 amount of inspiration for the show's conception was a direct response to the
 ongoing political and social ferment, influences that transcended the usual
 criteria for works on television: the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement
 and emerging countercultures that spawned a new journalism as well as the detective
 fiction of Ross Macdonald, with its southern California setting.   It was, as Ruoff
delineates, a culturally polyglot confluence that spawned AN AMERICAN FAMILY.

Not just a simple family profile, the show's touchstones were also
 to be an examination of the "surface/depth contrast" inherent
 in the abundant good life of (supposedly) carefree Santa Barbara.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY's charged 12 episodes kicked off a spate of intensive,
 in-depth dissection, played out in the mass media, prestigious publications
 and with the input of intellectuals, critics and a memorable Doonesbury strip.

Ruoff's book is a perceptive, detailed work of media scholarship and as such
 fills its mandate quite effectively. But the show also serves as an enormous,
 almost unprecedented emotional touchstone. AN AMERICAN FAMILY
has oscillated from either its current place of semi-obscurity to period-
piece freak show.  The emotional wallop has rarely, if ever, been explored.

I am roughly the same age -- albeit slightly younger -- as the Loud children.
Presumably none of the contemporaneous commentary vis-a-vis AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 was generated by teenagers.  To those of us of a certain age, the Loud family -- the kids --
 are shockingly recognizable.   Delilah is eerily familiar; her brothers too.

My own upbringing was far less opulent than the well-heeled Louds, but their house,
 their world and their entire terrain are very, very evocative.   Watching the show
 is the closest thing that exists to actually wandering back into one's own past.
AN AMERICAN FAMILY includes the most vivid portraiture of the quotidian rites
and rituals of 70s teendom.   The viewer is included in Delilah's oddly melancholy
dance recital, in the brothers' garage band belting out "Summertime Blues."   There
is a welcome warm-and-fuzzy tone to today's parenting, but in AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 Bill and Pat represent a foreign, incomprehensible and sometimes threatening
outer world that often looms all too large.   Adulthood then had its own awful,
repugnant music, its out-of-touch mores, ridiculous slang and a vulgar
 day-to-day of cocktail parties, fancy cars, general intolerance and weird hair.

A look at the original criticisms of the show are fascinating.   Many of the charges
 leveled were stunningly misguided.   According to Jeffrey Ruoff, the Louds were
branded by many as "smug."   It is an astonishingly inaccurate assumption.
The aura of sadness, not smugness, is palpable.   It permeates the lives of the five
 children.   The look on Delilah's face after an especially troubling phone conversation
 with father Bill is moving and gripping, as are Lance's often oddball attempts to
 somehow connect with his family.   The Louds are victims of one of the
cruelest American postwar innovations:  the nuclear family.  In one of the
 show's few voice-overs, Bill reads a woefully inadequate letter of advice to Lance,
 peppered with almost touchingly inappropriate maxims.   Bill, the inadequate
 paterfamilias -- and in many ways the most unsympathetic of the family --
 is ultimately a father unable to fathom the terra incognita that are his children.

There was additional criticism, Ruoff's book relates, directed at the family
 for a supposed "lack of historical consciousness and connections to wider society..."
 In a ludicrous broadside, writer Anne Roiphe took 15-year-old Delilah to task for
her supposed disregard of "the migrant workers, the lettuce pickers, the war dead."
 Jeffrey Ruoff himself, a perceptive and sympathetic chronicler, decries a
"historical context... completely missing from the... shows."

But the Louds are completely of their time, place and historical context.
 It is all part-and-parcel of the general restructuring that casts the 1960s as
 a time of total commitment and the 1970s as a time of sloth and self-indulgence.
 But the political pulse of the 1970s is less distinct and sadly easier to overlook, a pulse
 distinctive and yet maddeningly elusive, a counterculture everywhere and nowhere.

No era deserves uncritical homage.   A simple paean to the 1970s would be grossly
 inaccurate. There was, of course, a good amount of darkness during that time.
 If one looks for kitsch and spectacle, it can be found.   But there was much more
 not to laugh at, not to disregard.   And it is inaccurate and tiresome to brand
 the Louds and their era as simple exercises in ego or frivolity.   Television and
media today overflow with Brady Bunch references, homages to AMERICAN
 BANDSTAND, K.C. and the Sunshine Band;  fun, irony-laden trivia.
The story of the Louds is almost nowhere to be found.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY is moving, disturbing, funny and very, very real.
 It is television's finest moment.

FEBRUARY 2003

 ___________________________________________________________

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW IS COURTESY OF:
JEFFREY RUOFF

CAN A DOCUMENTARY
BE MADE OF REAL LIFE?

THE RECEPTION OF
"AN AMERICAN FAMILY"

from The Construction of the Viewer:
Media Ethnography and the Anthropology of Audiences.
Eds. Peter Ian Crawford and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson.
Denmark: Intervention Press in association with the
Nordic Anthropological Film Association, 1996, 270-296.

 AN AMERICAN FAMILY captivated the imagination of the American
 viewing public for several months in 1973, generating considerable controversy.
 The 12-week observational documentary series, broadcast on public television,
 chronicled seven months in the lives of the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California,
 including the divorce proceedings of the parents.  Producer Craig Gilbert's use of
dramatic story-telling techniques in a non-fictional account of family life blurred
conventions of different media forms. Like most serial television, AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 emphasized character over plot, concentrating on the different personalities of the
 family members, especially Pat Loud and her oldest son Lance. Unlike the documentaries
 of Frederick Wiseman, which block identification with individual characters,
AN AMERICAN FAMILY encouraged this focus, catapulting the Louds to media stardom.
 'Eventually', one critic admitted, 'we began to root for our favorite Loud'
 (Rosenblatt, 1974).  No less an authority than anthropologist Margaret Mead,
 a friend of Gilbert, claimed that the series 'may be as important for our time
 as were the invention of drama and the novel for earlier generations:
 a new way to help people understand themselves' (WNET, 1973b).

The documentary received widespread attention in the national press
 for three consecutive months. People talked about the series endlessly;
 critics panned and applauded it. The subjects, the Loud family, entered the
 discussion vigorously, along with the producers, making AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 the most hotly debated documentary ever broadcast on American television.
 The Louds gave interviews, wrote articles, and appeared on talk shows
 such as The Mike Douglas Show and Phil Donahue. The reception of AN
 AMERICAN FAMILY eventually took on a life of its own, little concerned
with the original 12 hours of images and sounds; the series itself was
 left behind (Staiger, 1992, p. 46).  As reflected in reviews, the documentary
became swamped in controversies concerning the American family and sexuality,
the state of the nation, the role of television, and the representation of reality.

Gilbert wanted to make a series about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances;
 he ended up making celebrities of the Louds. Mrs. Loud wrote and published her
 autobiography, Pat Loud: A Woman's Story.  Mr. Loud, for his part, was solicited to
 host a television game show (Chicago Tribune, 1973b).  The five children performed
 as a rock band on The Dick Cavett Show, Delilah appeared as a guest contestant
 on The Dating Game, Lance posed in the nude for Screw magazine,
 and Mr. Loud modeled in his bathrobe in Esquire.

The 12 March 1973 cover of Newsweek featured the Louds for a series of articles on
 the American family. In the 1970s, the family became the central arena for debates
 about the state of American culture, epitomized in works like Theodore Roszak's  The
 Making of a Counterculture (1969) and Charles Reich's The Greening of America (1970).
 Social theorists started to think of the family as 'an intimate battleground' (Melville, 1977,
 p. 240).   Arguments about the decline and renewal of American society pivoted around
 particular visions of family life, fueled by anxiety over the divorce rate, the women's
 movement, new sexual mores, gay liberation, and the generation gap  (Berger, 1983,
 p. 16-17; Skolnick, 1991, p. 2-6).  Reich's critique of mainstream American culture
 included the role of the media, 'Many attitudes, points of view, and pictures of
 reality cannot get shown on television; this includes not only political ideas, but
also the strictly non-political, such as a real view of middle-class life in place of
the cheerful comedies one usually sees' (Reich, 1970, p. 79). Craig Gilbert was not
the only producer who tried, in the 1970s, to redefine the image of the American
 family inherited from old television shows (Newcomb, 1983, p. 5; Taylor, 1989, p. 2).
 Like many social critics of the time, Gilbert believed that the American
family was disappearing, becoming 'obsolete' (Loud, 1974, p. 80).

The first episode of AN AMERICAN FAMILY was broadcast on Thursday, 11 January 1973,
 at 9:00 p.m., eastern standard time, the same evening as the family drama The Waltons.
 PBS broadcast the next 11 episodes each following Thursday at the same time,
encouraging ongoing viewer involvement with the characters. As the production secretary,
 Alice Carey, noted, 'Viewers built their weeks around AN AMERICAN FAMILY, because it
 was like watching live soap opera' (Ruoff, 1989).  Viewing patterns, coupled with attitudes
 about television in American life, played a crucial role in the way the documentary was
watched, interpreted, and criticized. In the early 1970s, television did not have a reputation
 as a serious art form, as movies did, in American culture (Ruoff, 1991, pp. 6-7).
Recently, scholars have recognized the importance of television in the dissemination
of documentary film, without fully considering the historical specificity of television
 audiences (Hockings, 1988; Crawford, 1992, 1992a; Loizos, 1993; Colleyn, 1992).
AN AMERICAN FAMILY reached an unusually broad audience for a documentary,
 especially a series broadcast by PBS.  Reviewers estimated an average audience of ten
million for each episode (Newsweek, 1973c), relatively small for commercial networks,
 but undoubtedly the high point for American public television. In the mid-1970s,
audience ratings for popular programmes on PBS, such as Masterpiece Theater,
 were only 2.5 million households (Morrisett, 1976, p. 168).

While many reviewers saw the series as the high point of film and television realism,
 others compared it to fictional forms. Large segments of the audience contested
the impression of reality that the series offered. On the one hand were critics who
 believed AN AMERICAN FAMILY was 'more candid than Allen Funt's wildest dreams'
(Rock, 1973) and that 'never was there greater realism on television except in the
murders of Oswald and Robert Kennedy' (Rosenblatt, 1974). On the other hand,
some reviewers claimed that it was 'a most artificial situation' (Hayakawa, 1973),
 'a bastard union of several forms', and that 'the mirror is false' (The Nation, 1973).

SOURCES

Reviews, editorials, and interviews appeared in a wide variety of mass circulation
 magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
 Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Variety, Vogue, Time, Ms., Harper's,
 The Atlantic, Village Voice, Ladies Home Journal, The Nation, New Republic,
Society, Esquire, Commentary, America, Newsweek, Commonweal, and many others.
 A three-page article by Margaret Mead in the 6 January issue of TV Guide introduced
 the series as a novel experiment in television (Mead, 1973). The WNET advertising
campaign, together with reviews that appeared before the first episode was broadcast,
 set the agenda for responses to the series. Reception studies of film and
 television, therefore, should not be conceived in isolation of the publicity
campaigns that accompany those media (Bennett, 1987, p. 249).

This chapter examines the responses of professional television and cultural
critics, of varying degrees of competence and specialization, who wrote newspaper
 and magazine articles in the 1970s. The absence of critical standards for documentaries,
 and the innovative style of AN AMERICAN FAMILY, made for a tremendous variety of
 responses to the series; generic constraints were not fully operative (Feuer, 1987, p. 118).
 Reviewers compared the series to the real world, home movies, television commercials,
talk shows, variety shows, situation comedies, soap operas, novels, plays, sociological
studies, and documentaries.  While historical reception studies suffer from the
 absence of ethnographic data about ordinary viewers, ample evidence exists of the
 unusual resonance AN AMERICAN FAMILY had with the American public.
 A reviewer from Esquire contended, 'I doubt if in the history of the tube
 there has been so much talk about anything' (Miller, 1973). In the words of the
 Chicago Tribune, the series 'made the trials of the Louds a shade better known
 than those of Job. Everybody wrote about them and dissected them' (Sharbutt, 1973).
According to Newsweek, AN AMERICAN FAMILY 'made household words out of
 Bill and Pat and Lance and Kevin and Grant and Delilah and Michele Loud' (1973b).

WNET'S PRESS RELEASE

WNET's press release for AN AMERICAN FAMILY attempted to channel audience
 expectations of this landmark series.  Many of the early reviews amount to
 little more than publicity, confirming the cinematographer's comment that
'Most television critics just take a press release and run with it' (Ruoff, 1993).
 The press release contrasted the series with the depiction of families on
situation comedies and soap operas, thus supplying intertextual references
for reviewers (WNET, 1973b). In addition, it promised a national character
study in the guise of a portrait of one upper middle-class family, 'The series aim
in focusing on one specific family was to illuminate and reflect facets of behavior,
 feelings, and attitudes common, in varying degrees, to all American families'
(WNET, 1973a).  The idea that the series investigated the American dream
appeared first in the WNET portfolio, 'The members of the Loud family have
 been shaped by the national myths and promises, the American dream and
 experiences that affect all of us, whether we be rich or poor, black or white,
young or old' (WNET, 1973a).  The press release argued for a commonsense
notion of shared American identity that was, at the time, very much under
 attack from revisionist critics and social activists (Wilkinson, 1988, p. 30).

The press packet established that the family was materialistic and rich,
 linked, not by bonds of love, but by modern communications systems.
 The 'Profile of the William C. Loud Family' accentuated
 the wealth of the family to the point of caricature.

The use of the words "headquarters" encouraged reviewers to see a modern
 corporation or military outpost, rather than a family. The 'Profile' suggested
that the house was a soulless corporation rather than a home, while the
emphasis on travel hinted at a highly mobile, rootless, nuclear family,
unattached to other social institutions. The sheer number of cars underlined
 the family's affluence, as did the notices about the pool and the horse.
 The press portfolio linked the American dream, through the medium of the
Loud family, to the pursuit of wealth and the consumption of material goods.

The WNET press packet included a portrait of the Louds, with all the family
members dressed up for the occasion, together with two of their dogs, smiling
 directly at the camera.  The Louds made this family photograph for their 1972
Christmas card and, as such, it represented the antithesis of observational cinema,
 a style that attempted to record spontaneous behavior without acknowledging
the presence of the camera.  The photograph offered a view of happy middle-class
 family life that AN AMERICAN FAMILY deliberately challenged; its circulation in the
 press packet presented an ironic juxtaposition of competing views of the Louds.
 The family portrait was widely reprinted in the publicity campaign for the series -- it
appeared with the advertisements in the New York Times -- and was eventually featured
 on the cover of Newsweek for an article devoted to divorce and the American family.

Although producer Gilbert wanted viewers to watch the series without the
benefit of an on-camera host and the voice-over commentary that accompanied
 most documentaries, the press release provided an explanatory framework for AN
AMERICAN FAMILY.  The press materials, in fact, contained a more explicit statement
 of purpose than the series itself and, in this way, contradicted the producers' desire
 to show family life without telling viewers what to think, to present what the
 associate producer Susan Lester called 'the discomfort of the real' (Ruoff, 1989).
Although the press release established a horizon of expectations, one of the
 novelties of the series for a mass television audience was, unquestionably, the
 absence of a surrogate authority figure who explained the events, a commonplace
of television documentaries (Silverstone, 1985, p. 170).  The observational
 style of the film suggested that viewers could decide for themselves about the
 Louds; the press packet, however, made clear that the family was in trouble.

THE WNET ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

The advertising campaign that ran in the New York Times and in
newspapers across the country served a similar function as the press
packet.  (The publicity department at WNET developed the ad campaign in
consultation with an independent firm run by Lawrence Grossman.) The first
 ad appeared in the 11 January edition of the New York Times for that evening's
 broadcast of episode one. Bold capitol letters asked, 'ARE YOU READY FOR
 AN AMERICAN FAMILY?', underneath the family photograph, suggesting
 that something outrageous and bizarre was coming on PBS. The ad quoted
Margaret Mead's claim about the novelty of the series.  By this time, the Louds'
 divorce was no longer a secret.  The 6 January issue of TV Guide simply noted,
 'By way of introduction, the series opens with scenes from the last day's filming --
at a New Year's Eve party in the Louds' California home.  It is an affair mainly
 for the children--the Louds have separated.  (Eight months after the filming was
 completed, the marriage had ended in divorce.)' (TV Guide, 1973a).  Of course,
 the press portfolio provided this information, 'During the filming of AN
 AMERICAN FAMILY, the Louds' 20-year marriage collapsed, ending in a
separation' (WNET, 1973b).  Viewers, then, were liable to know the general
outline of the series before ever tuning in to the broadcast.  The publicity
 materials served to limit the polysemic quality of the 12-hour
observational documentary (Bennett, 1987, p. 247).

The advertisement in the New York Times for the 2nd episode on 18 January
 was considerably more inflammatory. Bold capitol letters proclaimed,
 'HE DYED HIS HAIR SILVER', for the episode that focused on Lance Loud.
 Lance's face appeared torn out of the family photograph and the ad called
 attention to his difference from the rest of the family, 'He lives in the
 Chelsea Hotel on Manhattan's lower West Side. And lives a lifestyle that
 might shock a lot of people back home in California'. The advertisement
exploited Lance's sexuality, noting that he dyed his clothes purple  'As a
personal expression of. . . something. . . something he wasn't fully aware of
at the time'. (The wording of the ad may explain why most critics claimed,
erroneously, that Lance came out of the closet during the making of the series.)
The advertising campaign gave clues as to the events to come, enticing audiences
to stay with the programme. The New York Times ad teased on 15 February,
 'Next week problems between the couple begin to reveal themselves, and
their son Grant has a car accident. The following week Pat decides to file for
 divorce. Follow the drama of TV's first real family'.  Clearly, the serialized
broadcast schedule helped build audience loyalty, keeping AN AMERICAN
 FAMILY in public view. In fairness to WNET, later advertisements were
less sensational, conceivably even in response to criticisms of earlier ads.
However, the first ads were more important than the subsequent ones in
 establishing a horizon of expectations. By 8 February 1973, the advertising
campaign included quotes from reviews from the New York Times,
Saturday Review of the Arts, Harper's Bazaar Magazine, TV Guide, Cue,
and Vogue. The 8 February ad stated, "Newsweek described this series as 'a
starkly intimate portrait of one family struggling to survive a private civil
 war.'  See for yourself." (New York Times, 1973).  By this time, however, the
 advertising campaign was becoming less significant in comparison with
 reviews that appeared in newspapers and magazines.  Articles in the
national press continued to set the agenda for critical responses in the months
that followed, often being quoted in other reviews as well as in advertisements.

Critics relied heavily upon the press portfolio for rhetorical strategies to describe
AN AMERICAN FAMILY. The roll-call of material wealth, lifted verbatim from
 the press release, cropped up in many reviews. The New York Times noted that
 '[the Louds found in Santa Barbara] their approximation of the American Dream --
 an eight-room ranch house, a horse, three dogs, a pool, a Jaguar, a Volvo, a Toyota,
 and a Datsun pickup' (Harrington, 1973). The reviewer synthesized the idea of
 the American dream as a series of material goods. The press packet simplified
 the reviewing process; critics would have had difficulty piecing together this
 string of possessions just by watching the twelve episodes. Indeed, the absence of
 this kind of detail was one of the principal weaknesses of the observational style.

The press release helped establish the Louds as wealthy but discontented Californians,
 the inverse of the poor but virtuous Waltons of Virginia. John J. O'Connor described
the family in the New York Times, 'Besides five children, they have three dogs, a horse,
 two cats and a bowl of goldfish. Their house is equipped with a pool, a small recording
studio and four cars, all foreign makes. The overall image is of toothpaste-bright affluence,
 California-style' (1973b).  This symbiotic relationship between the reviews and the
press portfolio suggests that early articles were little more than an extension of WNET's
 publicity campaign. This dependence may plague reception studies that rely on
 newspaper and magazine reviews, such as Janet Staiger's Interpreting Films:
Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (Staiger, 1992). This essay
has been haunted by the prospect that it should be properly called 'newspaper studies'.
 Reviewers of AN AMERICAN FAMILY, if not viewers, were constrained not only by the
 original episodes but especially by the written press materials that accompanied them.

At the time the first reviews appeared, episodes 9, 10, 11, and 12 were still in the editing
 stage. Many early reviews were written on the basis of the press portfolio, a screening of
 several episodes, particularly episode one, and, in some cases, conversations with the
 production team. The emphasis on the first episode was significant because it was
 the most didactic, and least representative, of all the shows, making use of a flashback
 structure, parallel editing, on-camera narration, and a 'day in the life' approach
 rather than the basic chronology of the rest of the series (Ruoff, 1992, pp. 230-1).
 In particular, the first show primed viewers toread all the subsequent episodes
 for signs of the imminent decline of Pat and Bill Loud's marriage.

Following the work of Liebes and Katz in The Export of Meaning: Cross
Cultural Readings of Dallas, this essay divides the responses of reviewers
into categories of referential and critical readings (Liebes, 1990, p. 100).
All documentaries invite referential readings and they were by far the
most common responses to the series.  Most reviewers speculated at length
about the actual Loud family, lending credibility to Jay Ruby's thesis that
viewers of documentaries misread the representation for reality itself
(Ruby, 1977), though referential readings were also predominant in the
 reception of Dallas (Liebes, 1990, p. 111).  A comment on AN AMERICAN
 FAMILY in Newsweek was typical,  'At school, at home, at work and at
play, these nice-looking people act like affluent zombies. The shopping
 carts overflow, but their minds are empty' (Alexander, 1973).
For Shana Alexander, the documentary provided not only
 a window into the Louds' ranch house, but also a view
into their innermost thoughts, or lack thereof.

REFERENTIAL READINGS

Anne Roiphe's nine-page article in the New York Times Magazine
provided the most sustained referential reading of AN AMERICAN FAMILY;
her review was actually about the Louds, hardly about the series at all.
 Of Mr. Loud's extramarital affairs,  Roiphe speculated, 'Why the
infidelities? The camera doesn't tell us, but we can guess' (Roiphe, 1973a).
 Referential readers, regardless of whether they believed the family
was representative or not, attacked the Louds for all kinds of personal
shortcomings. In some instances, criticisms of the family members reached
absurd proportions, as in Roiphe's characterization of the 15-year-old
 daughter, 'Delilah, like the rest of the Louds, never grieved for the migrant
workers, the lettuce pickers, the war dead; never thought of philosophy or
poetry, was not obsessed by adolescent idealism, did not seem undone by
 dark moods in which she pondered the meaning of life and death' (Roiphe,
1973a). Although semiologist Sol Worth pointed out that 'pictures can't say
ain't' (Worth, 1981, p. 173), Roiphe based her conjectures about Delilah
entirely on the absence of certainscenes in AN AMERICAN FAMILY.  Roiphe
 was most critical of Lance, whom she referred to as an 'evil flower',
 an 'electric eel', and a 'Goyaesque emotional dwarf' (Roiphe, 1973a).

Roiphe's denunciations did not go unanswered; a letter to the New York
Times Magazine from the president of the Gay Activists Alliance supported
Lance and his family (Voeller, 1973).  As O'Connor recently noted, Roiphe's
 article survives primarily as an example of homophobia (O'Connor, 1988).
 Roiphe's criticisms of the family members epitomized the responses of
many reviewers who found the Louds' lifestyle objectionable.  Roiphe's
remarkable essay ended with the nostalgic wish that the country could
 'return to an earlier America when society surrounded its members with a
tight sense of belonging' (Roiphe, 1973a), a feeling which Roiphe found,
ironically, in the family drama The Waltons, which she reviewed
 nine months later in the same magazine (Roiphe, 1973b).

The significance of the real was paramount, even for critics who compared
the series to fictional works. The production secretary underlined this
dimension of the reception, 'I think when one watched AN AMERICAN FAMILY
one knew that somewhere in Santa Barbara they were watching the same thing'
 (Ruoff, 1989). The notion of liveness, an important dimension of television viewing,
cropped up in many of the reviews. These reviewers failed to acknowledge any
 distinctions between representation and reality. An article in Newsweek,
 'The Divorce of the Year', announced, 'This week, in the presence of 10 million
Americans, Pat Loud will tell her husband of twenty years to move out
of their house in Santa Barbara, Calif.' (Newsweek, 1973c).  By the time
 episode 9 was aired, in which this scene occurred, Pat and Bill Loud
 had already been divorced for six months. The review, like many others,
collapsed the difference between story time and broadcast time,
implying that viewers saw the events not as they happened, but as they
 were happening. Similarly, a reviewer in Commonweal asked, 'What is it like
 to live on television?' (Murray, 1973), while the New York Times entitled
 its first review, 'An American Family Lives Its Life on TV' (Harrington,
 1973).   Clearly, by 1973, reviewers associated television not only with the
 real world but especially with the simultaneity of the live broadcast.
 A further indication of the role of television in the reception concerned
 the relationship between entertainment, reality, and broadcasting.
Some critics saw the Louds' willingness to share their private lives
in a television series as an indication of a therapeutic society that
thrived on the 'compulsion to confess' (Time, 1973b), an indication
of the weakening of America's moral fiber. (Years later, writing in the
New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann counted this compulsion as the main
sociological insight of the series (Kauffmann, 1979).) With this in mind,
reviewers attacked the Louds for simply taking part in the documentary
 (The Nation, 1973). The accusation of exhibitionism, on the part of the
 Louds, and invasion of privacy, on the part of the producers, led to a denun-
ciation of television in American life. Critics saw the celebrity of the Louds,
 famous for having their lives televised, as a sign of a society increasingly
based on spectacle (Woods, 1973). Indeed, some reviewers saw the Louds
as a family created by the media. Sara Sanborn contended in Commentary,
 'Lance seems to have been literally brought to life by television; it is
hard to believe that he exists when no one is watching' (Sanborn, 1973a).

Critical misgivings about, and hostility towards, television led some
 reviewers to speculate about the medium swallowing the real, anticipating
post-modernist theories, 'A delightful only-in-America scenario presents itself:
will the Louds eventually appear on TV to promote the book they'll write about
 having been on TV?' (Woods, 1973). Critics envisioned various paranoid
scenarios about the encroachment of television in everyday life, 'TV critics will
 become involved in broadcast debates with the Louds and will thus themselves
 become participants in the drama. Margaret Mead herself may be sucked in,
explaining her anthropological interpretations to Pat and Bill on TV and then,
 as they react to her theories, becoming inexorably a part of what she is analyzing'
 (Murray, 1973). To other reviewers, the only possible response was parody.
 In the Chicago Tribune, Jay Sharbutt described a new series about the
 Scrimshaw family of Florida, 'We'll start filming the family just as
 soon as Everett Jr. gives my documentary crew its camera back and
 apologizes for throttling the producer' (1973). These referential readings
saw television as a debased and dangerous substitute for the real world.

Referential readings were the most prevalent responses to AN AMERICAN FAMILY.
They were, of course, counseled by the press release and the advertisements
that insisted that the series was 'actually lived by the Loud family of California'
(New York Times, 18 January 1973), allowing Americans to see their lives reflected
in 'the mirrors provided by these real people' (New York Times, 11 January 1973).
Referential readers took the series as real, using it to talk about the Louds.
(Others used it to talk about television engulfing reality.) Still today, during
lectures about the series, someone always asks about what happened to Pat, Bill,
 Lance, Kevin, Grant, Delilah, and Michele. In 1988, at a Museum of  Broadcasting
 symposium devoted to the documentary, Grant Loud tried to stem the
tide of curiosity about the family -- and to counsel a critical reading
-- shouting, 'AN AMERICAN FAMILY is not about us; it's about you.
I don't want to tell you about what we're doing in our lives today'.

CRITICAL READINGS

Reviews frequently combined referential and critical frames.  Critical
 readings paid particular attention to the conventions of television,
 the message of the programme, and the making of the series (Liebes,
1990, p. 115). Looking for generic comparisons, reviewers cast about
 for categories to describe adequately the twelve-part series. Occasional
 reviewers referred to AN AMERICAN FAMILY, as a 'home movie' (Sharbutt,
 1973; Newsweek, 1973c), usually as a way of discrediting the documentary.
 Several critics commented that the Louds seemed to step right out of the
 idealized world of the television commercial (Alexander, 1973;  Sanborn,
1973a; O'Connor, 1973c). Similarly, Erica Brown noted in Vogue that
 'The manufacturer of Barbie dolls could not have typecast a family
 better' (Brown, 1973).  For these critics, the Louds possessed the surface
 characteristics of commercial, fabricated, representations of American life.

Few reviewers compared the series to sociological studies of the family, although
 the press release quoted Margaret Mead and referred to the work of Oscar Lewis
 (WNET, 1973b). Reviewers did use the series as a springboard to discuss the
 family in general (Newsweek, 1973b). Time magazine solicited comments about
AN AMERICAN FAMILY from a psychotherapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist,
 and two sociologists (1973b). A roundtable discussion broadcast by WNET on 5 April,
 in the same weekly time slot as the series, aired the opinions of Margaret Mead and a
 panel of academic experts of literature, drama, history, psychiatry, and anthropology.

Virtually the only tradition the series was not compared to was, finally, documentary.
 The press release referred to the series as a documentary, but failed to provide other
 examples of the form, other than noting that AN AMERICAN FAMILY was not a
 'survey type of documentary' (WNET, 1973b). Taking their cues from the press packet,
 most of the reviewers did not mention other documentaries. Almost none cited the
history of observational cinema; this was the first time the style had reached a mass
 audience.  Writers who looked for non-fictional comparisons mentioned such works as
 The Selling of the Pentagon (O'Connor, 1973c), Sixty Minutes (Miller, 1973), But What
If the Dream Comes True (Blake, 1973), and Titicut Follies (Menaker, 1973).  A reviewer
 in the Chicago Tribune suggested that the series was 'a sort of non-fiction novel' (1973a).

Not surprisingly, reviewers in film magazines mentioned documentary precedents with
 greater frequency. Writing in Media and Methods, Robert Geller cited the work of Wiseman,
 Arthur Barron, Allan King, and the Maysles brothers (Geller, 1973). The narrative basis of
the series, combined with a lack of familiarity with observational cinema, led most critics
 to other forms. Stephanie Harrington commented in the New York Times that, 'Unlike most
documentaries, AN AMERICAN FAMILY does not proceed from a premise and then marshall
 the evidence to dramatize that premise' (Harrington, 1973). For many critics, then, the series
 was not a documentary, but rather a non-fiction soap opera or a non-fiction situation comedy.

Incipient critical readings believed that the series had as much in common with
fictional forms as with the documentary tradition. For many reviewers, the interest
 of AN AMERICAN FAMILY came from the novelty of portraying the intimate life of an
 actual family in serial form, 'You find yourself sticking with the Louds with the
same compulsion that draws you back day after day to your favorite soap opera.
 The tension is heightened by the realization that you are identifying, not with a
fictitious character, but a flesh and blood person who is responding to personal problems
 of the kind you yourself might face' (Harrington, 1973). Harrington evoked referential
 and critical frames, even suggesting that the particular attraction of the series lay in the
 combination of these readings. Many reviewers likened the series to soap opera, on the
 basis of the form, serial narrative, and of the content, intimate personal relationships.
 As Robert Allen pointed out in Speaking of Soap Operas, many critics considered
 soap opera a low form of melodramatic entertainment, targeted primarily at a female
 audience (Allen, 1985).  Like soap operas, AN AMERICAN FAMILY left room for active
 involvement of spectators through multiple stories drawn out through multiple
 episodes. In between episodes, viewers had time to speculate with friends
 about the character developments to come.   The serial form, coupled with the
 actuality material, fostered an unusually intense relationship between viewers
 and characters. The Louds received substantial amounts of mail from fans,
like the fictional characters on daytime serials (Intintoli, 1984).

Throughout their articles, critics compared the series to a variety of mostly fictional
television shows, movies, novels, and plays, including The Waltons, The Forsyte Saga,
 Secret Storm, Father Knows Best, The Partridge Family, My Three Sons, The Brady
 Bunch, Ozzie and Harriet, Marty, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Godfather,
Scenes From a Marriage, A Doll's House, and Death of A Salesman.   Often critics
 invoked these fictional intertexts, especially the situation comedies, for contrast, i.e.,
 'no Ozzie and Harriet confection' (Time, 1973b), 'a lot more fun than Peyton Place'
 (Rock, 1973), 'scarcely the Forsyte Saga it is billed to be' (Alexander, 1973),
and 'Maybe it's better to be a Corleone than a Loud' (Roiphe, 1973a).

For many reviewers, AN AMERICAN FAMILY offered a corrective to
idealized representations of family life on television, 'the reality of the Louds
has no connection with the fantasy of The Brady Bunch' (O'Connor, 1973c).  These
critical readings frequently equated documentary with truth and fiction with falsehood.

Although reviewers focused obsessively on the personalities of the family members,
some intuited that the Louds stood for more than themselves, as in Alexander's comment
that the series was a 'genuine American tragedy' (Alexander, 1973).   Critical readings
 recognized that the series had a message and a point of view beyond simply showing family life.
For example, short plot summaries in TV Guide attributed authorship to the producer
 rather than to reality, 'Producer Craig Gilbert shows the communications gap between
 [Pat and Lance] by focusing on their uneasy small talk, telling glances and painful silences'
 (1973b) and 'Producer Craig Gilbert hints how the family's summer separation
may have deeper roots' (1973c). Critical readers took AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 as a statement about contemporary society, supporting Bill Nichols' claim
that documentaries are films that make arguments (Nichols, 1991). 

In thematic terms, reviewers asserted the series was 'a scathing commentary on the
 American domestic dream' (Newsweek, 1973a), 'a statement about the values of
marriage and family' (Rock, 1973), and 'the American Dream turned nightmare'
(America, 1973).  (Clearly, reviewers did not see the divorce as a positive step
towards ending an unhappy marriage, nor as a message, for example, of liberation.)
The series documented 'the erosion of traditional values' (O'Connor, 1973b), 'the
 generation gap' (Woods, 1973), the inability 'to communicate' (Alexander, 1973),
spiritual emptiness (Donohue, 1973), 'conspicuous consumption' (Menaker, 1973),
the disappearance, according to anthropologist Gloria Levitas, of 'a central core of
 belief' (Roiphe, 1973a), while the Loud family was 'a symbol of disintegration and
 purposelessness in American life' (McCarthy, 1973).  A viewer who wrote to the
editor of the New York Times Magazine quoted Thomas Jefferson to buttress her
interpretation of the series, 'Material abundance without character is the surest
way to destruction' (Aruffo, 1973).  The dominant interpretation of the series
 was that it chronicled the breakdown of American culture; the centre, Robert
Geller noted, quoting Didion quoting Yeats, will not 'hold' (Geller, 1973).

There were critics who agreed that AN AMERICAN FAMILY made an argument about
the demise of Western civilization, but who questioned the evidence the series
provided to support this contention. Sociologists were quick to note that the
 Louds constituted a 'Sample of One', as an article in Time asserted (1973b).
 Reviewers argued that the Louds were not statistically representative nor could
 any one family adequately portray the diversity of American family life (The Nation,
 1973). Gilbert had tried to circumvent this line of criticism by noting in the press
 release that the Louds were 'neither typical nor average' (WNET, 1973b).   In an
 intriguing twist, critics argued that participating in the series somehow placed the
 Louds outside the mainstream of American life.   Sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz
 claimed that 'The very act of being filmed for public television makes the Louds untypical'
 (Time, 1973b). Newsweek paraphrased Horowitz' reasoning for the conclusion to its cover
story on the documentary, 'The minute Craig Gilbert's cameras began to roll in May 1971,
 the Loud family became anything but typical' (1973c). Horowitz' contention was tautological:
 any family that appeared in the series would automatically have been excluded from the
sample of representative families, by dint of having participated in the documentary.

THE MAKING OF THE SERIES

Many reviews discussed the making of the series: the duration of the shoot, the
 number of hours recorded, the rapport with the family, the motivations of the
 producers and the Louds, and the influence of the camera. Some were devoted
 entirely to providing the backstage details of the production, such as 'Looking
Thru the Lens at One Man's Family' (Kramer, 1973a). In  'Finding and Filming
an American Family' in the Los Angeles Times, Gilbert admitted that Ross
MacDonald's detective novel, The Underground Man, described ''with absolute
accuracy the kind of family [he] was looking for'' (Smith, 1973), a detail not
provided in the press packet. An entire episode of The Dick Cavett Show explored
the making of the documentary.  As a result, O'Connor complained in the New
York Times that 'The content of AN AMERICAN FAMILY slowly began sinking into
 a mindless ooze about the making of AN AMERICAN FAMILY' (O'Connor, 1973c).
At first, Gilbert maintained that the series had no point of view, stating in
the press release, 'I didn't set out to prove anything' (WNET, 1973b).
 Only during the ensuing controversy did Gilbert make more explicit claims,
 'We were using the film to say something about this country and what it
means to be a man and a woman. The divorce was simply used as a dramatic
 device' (Newsweek, 1973c).  About the Louds, Gilbert noted, 'They communicate.
 But they don't communicate about the bad stuff. That's the way we are as a
 country, and that's what the series is about. We can't ever admit that we have made
 a mistake' (Time, 1973b).  Critical readers seemed disappointed to discover that
 producer Gilbert had a point of view (Sanborn, 1973a; McCarthy, 1973; Murray, 1973).

Reviews accentuated the backstage details that the series itself kept in the shadows.
Melinda Ward wrote in Film Comment, 'The audience knows, especially after all the
 publicity, how long the crew was there, how many hours were shot, etc.' (Ward, 1973b).
Commentary noted, 'As all the world must know by now, a production crew from WNET
 in New York spent two years and over $1,000,000, plus a prodigious amount of talent and
 energy pursuing the William C. Loud family through better and worse' (Sanborn, 1973a).
 Many believed that the production of the series held clues as to its legitimacy as a represen-
tation (Staiger, 1992, p. 8). The emphasis reviewers placed on the making of the series
 derived from referential expectations but ultimately led to critical frameworks.
Recognizing that the documentary was produced represented the beginning of a critical
 reading (Liebes, 1990, p. 115).   AN AMERICAN FAMILY may best be remembered as the
 non-fiction series haunted by the presence of the camera, an unwittingly reflexive
 work, even though Gilbert wanted to make 'a series of films about the Louds and not
 about how the Louds interrelated with a film crew from NET' (Gilbert, 1982, p. 34).

Rare is the review that did not speculate about the influence of the camera on the family,
exemplified by a comment from America, 'As this journal of deterioration unfolds,
one must ask continually: 'Might it have been otherwise if there were no camera and no
microphone?'' (1973). Cultural critics like Benjamin DeMott pointed out that the series
offered only 'the truth of how people behave in front of a camera' (Donohue, 1973).
One review of AN AMERICAN FAMILY pointedly asked 'Can a Documentary Be Made
of Real Life?' (Hayakawa, 1973). The reviewer's response to his own question was 'no',
putting him in the company of Brian Winston and other critics of the 'documentary
 illusion' (Winston, forthcoming).  Reviewers had a hard time believing that
family members could learn to act naturally under these artificial circumstances.
In anticipation of this issue, the press portfolio addressed this vexing problem,

The press release raised this issue to dismiss it, a tactic that clearly backfired.
 Indeed, the emphasis on the making of the series in reviews was another reflection
 of the centrality of the press portfolio in the reception of AN AMERICAN FAMILY.

Reviewers who called attention to the presence of the camera usually dismissed
 the idea of observational cinema, rather than discussing specific examples from
 the series. To buttress their arguments, critics, writing for such publications
as Harper's, The Nation, and New Republic, paraphrased Werner Heisenberg's
Principle of Indeterminacy to challenge the notion of simple observation--'the
process of conducting certain kinds of experiments alters the very properties
under investigation' (Menaker, 1973), 'intervention in the life of a social microcosm
significantly changes the phenomena under observation' (The Nation, 1973), 'the
 observer is never wholly independent of the observed' (Woods, 1973)--claiming
that 'the medium has created the phenomenon it now purports to study' (Sanborn,
 1973a). Others, such as Dick Cavett and S. I. Hayakawa, cited their own experiences
 being filmed as proof of the intrusiveness of the camera (Hayakawa, 1973).

These reviewers, by and large, ignored comments from the Louds that contradicted
 their arguments. Furthermore, few critics looked at the series itself to find evidence
 to support their claims, although there were many ways of inferring the presence
of the crew.   In episode 10, after an argument with Pat, Grant turned to the camera
 for support; 'Nothing like a sympathetic mother!', he remarked with a grin. Every
 episode contained dozens of asides to the camera, subdued references to the
 presence of an internal audience, self-conscious demonstrations to the crew,
 and other unintentionally reflexive gestures. (In any case, the influence
of the camera on the family was minuscule compared to the influence of
the broadcast of AN AMERICAN FAMILY and the celebrity it brought them.)

Gilbert believed the cameras would inhibit the Louds' actions for a limited time
 until the family grew accustomed to the presence of the crew.  This was the
 rationale for the extremely long shooting period. Comments from the family
 and crew confirmed this intuition, as when Mrs. Loud noted that she gradually
 accepted the camera's presence, ''After some months the crew was like family',
 explains Pat. 'I acted as if they were part of us. I just forgot about the camera''
 (Time, 1973b). Lance recalled the same process, 'It wasn't like letting a camera
 person and sound person in to film us; it's just that Susan and Alan were in the room'
 (Ruoff, 1990). The Raymonds developed filming techniques to minimize their impact
 on the family (Raymond, 1973, 1973a). Mr. Loud recalled the most controversial scene
 in which his wife asked him to move out of the house, ''When Patty told me about the
divorce, I could have said, 'Get this camera crew out of here.' But we had gotten
 used to them'' (Newsweek, 1973c). Gilbert asked the Louds to behave 'as if'
 the camera were not there, an arrangement with which they, according to their
 personalities and the situation, complied (Loud, 1974, p. 119-120). Gilbert
asked the audience to watch the series 'as if' the camera were not there;
large segments of the viewing public refused this gambit.

In their discussions of the making of the series, most critics focused on the
 production stage rather than on post-production, under-emphasizing the
 function and importance of editing. Editing came under scrutiny primarily
because this was the stage of the production that the Louds believed manipulated
the story of the family. For some critics, the simple fact that the series was edited
 implied manipulation. They considered editing not as a process of making meaning but
 rather as means of possible distortion and falsification (Woods, 1973; Donohue, 1973;
Hayakawa, 1973; Sanborn, 1973a). In this sense, reviewers faulted the documentary for
 literally failing to reproduce reality, a referential standard borrowed for a critical reading.

More thoughtful reviewers, those who had more time and more space to develop
their ideas, called attention to the principles of selection of AN AMERICAN FAMILY.
An ability to recognize the series as a construction often engendered nagging
doubts about its status as non-fiction. Some reviewers had difficulty reconciling
 the strong narrative emphasis of the actuality material, as if documentary were,
 by definition, a non-narrative form. The Saturday Review of the Arts critic noted
 that the 'most striking narrative moments seem to conspire against seeing the film
 as true-to-life', a comment that suggested tightly organized story structures must be
 fictional (Gaines, 1973). Clearly, the narrative drive of the series grated against the
 realism of the handheld camera and direct sound. A reviewer in Newsweek speculated
 that 'their impromptu remarks seem improbably articulate, as though they had been
 scripted ahead of time' (1973c). Use of continuity techniques, suspense, and fore-
shadowing implied a fictional basis to the series. One reviewer found it implausible
 that a tarot-card reader in episode two accurately hinted at Pat's coming separation
 from Bill, neglecting to mention that the series was edited with the divorce in mind
(Gaines, 1973). The editor, looking over seven months of footage, had the
 power the tarot-card reader lacked, to accurately predict the future.

The narrative thrust of AN AMERICAN FAMILY influenced its reception in other ways.
Stories require change from one state of affairs to another. The parents' separation
provided the momentum necessary for narrative development; some critics
attributed this change to the presence of the camera. Pat, for her part, maintained
 that she and Bill stayed together longer than they otherwise would have because
of the filming (Loud, 1974, p. 115). For similar reasons, reviewers typically stated
 that Lance 'came out' during the filming, attributing Lance's sexuality to narrative
 progression and, again, the influence of the camera. Lance, however, made clear in
 statements to the press that he was gay before, during, and after AN AMERICAN
 FAMILY.   He mentioned on WLS-TV's Kennedy and Co., 'The sexual preference
 has always been there. When I went thru puberty, I wanted to have sex with
boys' (Petersen, 1973b).   Lance didn't come out on American television;
 American television came out of the closet through AN AMERICAN FAMILY.

THE LOUDS STRIKE BACK

The Louds themselves eventually became reviewers and critics of the series,
influencing its reception, an uncommon occurrence for a documentary and
 a seeming impossibility for a fictional work. During the editing, the Louds
viewed and gave their approval, both tacitly and explicitly, of the twelve
episodes (Loud, 1974, p. 124). Before the broadcast, their responses to
were positive. Pat Loud told Vogue that ''Divorce happens to so many
people that I really don't mind having it televised'' (Brown, 1973).
 Bill Loud mentioned to a journalist from Newsweek that 'he thought
 the series would make them look like the 'West Coast Kennedys'' (1973a).
Shocked by the hostility of so many of the reviews, the Louds entered the
 debate shortly after the broadcast of the first episodes. They took exception
 to the advertising campaign for the series, arguing that it sensationalized
 their lives for entertainment purposes. When Pat Loud complained to
 Craig Gilbert about the publicity for AN AMERICAN FAMILY, he remarked
that these aspects of promotion were out of his control and not normally
 the responsibility of a producer at WNET (Loud, 1974, p. 142). The family
 members felt antagonized by the publicity for the series and were
scandalized by the critical reception of the documentary.

Throughout the controversy, the Louds tried to direct attention towards the
 point of view of the series, especially the editing. They never denied having said
and done the things that appear in AN AMERICAN FAMILY, as occurred, for example,
 with some of the people who appeared in Hearts and Minds (Davis, 1973).
 Although they claimed that the series misrepresented their lives, they never
implied that events were staged or that they were encouraged to do certain actions
 by the producers, accusations that were leveled against Jeff Kreines and Joel
 DeMott, the makers of Seventeen (Hoover, 1992, p. 111).  Nor did the Louds
maintain that they were performing in a spurious manner or that the camera
 radically transformed their behavior. They simply asserted that the editors had
 a cynical view of humanity. Responding to critics who harped on the family's
 inability to communicate, Pat Loud accused Gilbert and the editors of having
''left out all the joyous, happy hours of communication and fun'' (Time, 1973a).
 Bill Loud accused the editors of being New York radicals opposed to the traditional
 family and added, on The Dick Cavett Show, that if the Louds had been able to edit the
 series they ''would have done more of a Laugh-In type of thing''.  (Mr. Loud evidently
 saw greater possibilities for humor and comedy in the footage than the producers did.)

Although the Louds were referential readers of AN AMERICAN FAMILY, they
 disagreed with reviewers about the sources of bias. They tried to put out improved
 referential images of the family. The premise of their appearance on the 20
 February 1973 episode of The Dick Cavett Show was to give viewers a chance to
 meet the real Louds, not mediated by the series, as if the setting of the television
 talk show were more believable than the scenes in AN AMERICAN FAMILY. During
 the talk show, the Louds had the opportunity to state their position that they had
'lost their dignity' as a result of actions taken by WNET, the station's publicity
agents, Gilbert, and the editors of the series.  Similarly, the Chicago Tribune
 published interviews with the family members in an article entitled,
'Real-life Louds recall their days as TV's Louds', implying that television,
unlike newspapers and magazines, packages reality (1973c).  Subsequent
representations of the family in the media promised glimpses of the Louds
 themselves, ironically standing the rhetorical claim of the observational
style on its head. As Jeanne Hall has shown, the early observational films
of Drew Associates promised greater access to the real and questioned the
 verisimilitude of 'more traditional forms of documentary' (Hall, 1990, p. 21).

Eventually, the members of the Loud family swallowed the critics' appraisals
of the series, just as the reviewers followed the lead of the press releases.  In the
 Chicago Tribune, Bill Loud parroted the terms offered up by a reviewer to
 characterize his family, ''We had a great family, really great people, a lot of
 ambitious people, and the children looked like affluent zombies looking into a pit''
 (Petersen, 1973a). They accepted the designation of the genre of soap opera, as
Mr. Loud's comments testified: ''We let Gilbert and his crew into our house to
 do a documentary, and they produced a second-rate soap opera'' (Time, 1973b).
Since critics viewed soap opera as a low form of entertainment, broadcast by an
 already discredited medium, Mr. Loud condemned AN AMERICAN FAMILY by association.

CELEBRITY

The celebrity of the Louds continued well beyond the second broadcast
 in the summer of 1973.  Pat Loud: A Woman's Story appeared in March
 1974, one year after the broadcast of the series and, again, in paperback
several months later.  The marketing of the autobiography capitalized
 on issues related to single motherhood, divorce, sexual liberation, and
 the women's movement. Sales figures for the book industry are notoriously
 hard to obtain, but Alan Raymond has estimated that over a hundred
 thousand copies of the book were sold (Ruoff, 1993).   AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 vaulted Pat Loud to the status of every woman, whose tale spoke to just
 about everyone, as the book jacket proclaimed, 'Whether you're single, married
or divorced -- Pat Loud's story will touch your life'.  During the promotion of
her book, she claimed to speak for the anonymous American wife and mother,
 'Every housewife I know has a story they are dying to tell but never do'
 (Kilday, 1974). Fulfilling Crawford Woods' prediction, Pat Loud did appear
 on television to promote the book she wrote about appearing on television.

The chapters that detailed the Louds' participation in AN AMERICAN FAMILY
offered the most remarkable testimony by the subject of a documentary in
the history of the medium (Loud, 1974, pp. 79-163). Pat dedicated most of
her book to answering the critics, especially the perpetual question of why
 the family agreed to take part in such an unusual experiment in non-fiction
television. Most viewers, seeing only the result of that pact on their home screens,
 could not imagine the small steps that led to it. The Louds' biggest fault, to many
 reviewers, was simply the foolishness of participating in the project (The Nation,
 1973; Time, 1973b).  Presumably, any normal American family would have
sent Gilbert packing.  'Why We Did It' explained for the inquiring minds
 who wanted to know, 'There seem to be three groups of people -- the ones
 like Craig, and Abigail McCarthy in The Atlantic Monthly, and I think me,
 who think anybody would have done it--the ones who think Californians
 would do it because they're exhibitionists and Easterners wouldn't because
 they're paranoid--and the ones who think anybody who would do it
has got to be nuts, like Organized Psychiatry' (Loud, 1974, p. 83-4).

Certain details in the autobiography suggested ways in which Mrs. Loud
came to view her life according to the commentary the series generated.
 For example, the story of the family's arrival in Santa Barbara is entitled
'The American Dream' (Loud, 1974, pp. 60-79). The first chapter, 'Aftershock --
Summer of '73', opened with comments that picked up where the series ended,
 'I still live in the house, but the pool is empty now', an off-the-cuff reference
to Roiphe's designation of the Louds' swimming pool as a 'fetid swamp'
(Roiphe, 1973a). This conspiracy of familiarity with the reader continued
 with the disclosure of intimate details of their ongoing lives.  The book relied
 entirely on the notoriety of the television series, and Pat Loud's subsequent
 celebrity, as its raison d'être, assuming familiarity with 'TV's first real family'.

Celebrity was not the inevitable result of being the subject of AN AMERICAN FAMILY.
 To my knowledge, no one has ever gone on to become a celebrity from appearing
in a film by Wiseman, although he has made over twenty-five feature length
 documentaries. Although his films have been seen widely and often have
engendered bitter controversy -- especially Titicut Follies, High School,
and Primate -- they portrayed individuals in their social roles, not
 as personalities. Wiseman was explicit about his intent, 'I think
 the star of each film is the institution' (Mamber, 1974, p. 240-1).

AN AMERICAN FAMILY was based largely on the different personalities of
the family members and their daily activities, and the serial structure
 encouraged viewer identification with the Louds over a span of several months.
 The WNET press packet facilitated this identification with individual
 characters through capsule biographies, 'Fashionably dressed and casual in
 appearance, Pat Loud is an attractive brunette who looks younger than her
45 years' (WNET, 1973d).  AN AMERICAN FAMILY offered character-centered
 narrative drama to an audience well acquainted with the form (Bordwell,
 1985, p. 13) A comment from The Atlantic best expressed this audience response,
'Their impact as individuals is what lingers in the viewer's memory' (McCarthy,
 1973). In her autobiography, Pat Loud mentioned 'boxes and boxes of letters' sent by
 viewers to the family (Loud, 1974, p. 8). Letter writers were referential readers, too.

Some commentators saw a split between newspaper and magazine reviewers,
 primarily representative of the East Coast intelligentsia, and ordinary viewers,
 whose responses to the family were not so hostile (Ruoff, 1989). Most, though
 not all, of the mail the Louds received was sympathetic towards their family.
Brief citations of the letters in Pat Loud: A Woman's Story hinted at some
differences between the ways in which ordinary viewers responded to the series
and the reactions of professional critics. Letter writers did not relate AN AMERICAN
 FAMILY to other works of art, such as plays and books, as reviewers often did.
Ordinary viewers tended to compare their own personal experiences to those
of the Louds. Pat summarized the two thousand letters the family received,
'Most of them said, We watched the series, we have a family like yours;
 don't pay any attention to the critics, hang tough' (Loud, 1974, p. 158).

Most viewers wrote to the family after their first appearance on The Dick Cavett
Show.  These letters didn't really represent a reaction to AN AMERICAN FAMILY
 itself so much as to the Louds subsequent appearances in the media.  Some wrote
 to assure Pat of her convictions, 'Please try not to be upset by the obtuseness
 of certain critics & viewers . . . it really angers me that you are being criticized for
 the crimes of your honesty and openness' (Loud, 1974, p. 156).  Many women
 identified strongly with Pat as a mother, 'Your private feelings for Lance are
also nobody's damn business. Forsaking your child because he is not what you
dreamed he would be is unthinkable. Many women admire you enormously on
 this point alone' (Loud, 1974, p. 157). Others wanted to discuss their own problems
and how watching the series illuminated them, 'One of the things women have always
done was deprive themselves all their lives 'for the sake of their family' and to the
 detriment of themselves' (Loud, 1974, p. 156). Unlike the professional critics,
 these writers admitted their own faults, 'I have also gotten drunk and regretted my
words later. I bet 95 percent of the audience has, too' (Loud, 1974, p. 158).   Some
of the writers seemingly fulfilled Gilbert's hope that the series would be watched
 as a tool for self-analysis, 'If I delve emotionally into your life it is more to understand
 myself and those around me than to criticize you' (Loud, 1974, p. 158-9).   Still others
 offered advice, and the benefits of their own experiences,  'Stay and keep the family . . .
 most men will come home and rock after a few flings' (Loud, 1974, p. 157).

A letter to the editor of Commentary referred to AN AMERICAN FAMILY
as 'essentially a woman-oriented series' (Conn, 1973), providing some
explanation for the nature of the letters Pat Loud received, many of which
 expressed solidarity with her as a woman. Apart from the fact that
reviewers noted that Pat was the lead character in the series, that AN
AMERICAN FAMILY was favorably and sympathetically reviewed in Ms.
 and Vogue, and that it was, mostly disparagingly, compared with soap operas,
 there were no other references to the documentary as a woman's picture.
Interestingly, many of the reviewers of the series--including those most
 influential--were writers such as Shana Alexander, Sara Sanborn,
 Abigail McCarthy, Anne Roiphe, and Stephanie Harrington.

Bill Loud, for his part, received a number of marriage proposals in the mail,
 as he mentioned on The Dick Cavett Show, including a letter from a woman
 in Georgia who wrote, ''If she doesn't want you, I do'' (Loud, 1974, p. 155).
Lance, too, received many letters in the mail, 'I got three Bibles from different
 religious factions; of course, they just burst into flames the second I opened the
 pages. And I got a lot of letters from gay guys, gay suburban kids, who thanked
 me for being a voice of outrage in a bland fucking normal middle-class world'
(Ruoff, 1990).  Writing in Esquire magazine in November 1987, Frank Rich singled
 out Lance's television appearance as one of the defining images of a period Rich
 referred to as 'The Gay Decade' (Rich, 1987). Pat was not the only member of the
 family to remain in the limelight after the series had faded from the television
screen.  The Loud children performed several songs on a televised fundraising
event for PBS, which auctioned 'A weekend with the Louds' (Loud, 1974, p. 11).
Meanwhile, Lance formed the Mumps, a punk rock group that played original
music in clubs in New York throughout the 1970s. Rock and Roll
 comme çi, Rock and Roll comme ça was their biggest hit.

INTERTEXTUALITY FOREVER

In 1991, Santa Barbara Magazine featured Pat and Lance Loud
on the cover for an article on AN AMERICAN FAMILY twenty years later.
Forevermore, the Louds would be grist for the entertainment mill.
Stand-up comedian Albert Brooks' Real Life (1979) mercilessly
 caricatured many of the popular conceptions of AN AMERICAN FAMILY,
opening with a crawl that promised to extend original research undertaken
by Margaret Mead in 1973.   A more serious venture, but equally entertaining,
 Susan and Alan Raymond's AN AMERICAN FAMILY REVISITED:  THE LOUDS
 10 YEARS LATER (1983) recounted the story of the documentary, focusing on the
 image of the family as it was packaged, criticized, and manufactured by the media.

On The Dick Cavett Show, Craig Gilbert admitted, against his own inclinations,
that a producer cannot control the reception of his work.  AN AMERICAN FAMILY amply
 illustrates this point. The novel aspects of the series provoked a wide variety of
responses. Margaret Mead anticipated this generic confusion in her article in
 TV Guide, 'I do not think AN AMERICAN FAMILY should be called a documentary. 
I think we need a new name for it, a name that would contrast it not only with
fiction, but with what we have been exposed to up until now on TV' (Mead, 1973).

Through the publicity campaign, WNET set the agenda for responses to the program.
Reviewers mostly read the series referentially, criticizing the Loud family.  As Grant
 pointed out, "Any jerk with a pencil or a typewriter, who had the audacity to write
 about us, sat in judgment of these people that he had never met" (Raymond, 1983).
 If this reception study provides a definition of documentary, it may be films when
they are read referentially (Staiger, 1992, p. 96). Referential readers framed the
 series as if it were real while critical readers framed the series as if it were fiction.
 Mixing standards as the series mixed forms, critics compared AN AMERICAN FAMILY
primarily to fictional models of drama.  Interpretive readers took the series
 as a moral tale about the decline of American culture. Others argued that intimate
 family life couldn't (and shouldn't) be recorded on film, preferring the trusted
conventions of television talk shows and investigative reports. A vocal minority
 focused on the idea of the series; troubled by the premise of an observational
 cinema, many concluded that a documentary could not, in fact, be made of real life.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

LOUDS LOCATED!
AN AMERICAN FAMILY
"THE UNDERGROUND EDITION"
A SEVEN DISC DVD BOXED SET

A "black market" DVD set that I recently acquired contains all 12 episodes,
plus the very entertaining 1983 10th anniversary retrospective,
plus the horrific 2001 "finale" about the death of Lance Loud.
I watched it thru in the course of one weekend, and it has
 many scenes and images that I still cant get out of my mind.

The original source for this recording of the series was apparently a set of VHS
recordings created from a 1990 one time encore showing of the entire series on PBS.
Other than that, with the exception of a repeat of a single Lance-related episode in
 2003 (as a double feature with the tragic final episode showing Lance's sad death),
this series has been more or less "lost" to the public eye for three decades!
Considering the many educational uses for this epic film, that is unforgivable.
It should be openly available for every American family to view.

The picture quality of this set is solid, with a few minor
glitches here and there from the VHS recordings, but over all,
this is a very good, steady transfer of the entire series + extras,
and its one of the greatest documentaries of all time, TV or cinema.
It stands up against the best of Frederick Wiseman's documentaries,
and in fact, its non narrative style is extremely similar to Wiseman.
At least Wiseman offers his films out to educational institutions
(albeit at ridiculously huge "rental" prices that are also unforgivable).

Some people loved them, some people hated them, but the
LOUDS truly were a quinessential American family, and their
 saga was one of the most fascinating to come out of the 70s decade.
No wonder so many people still have a fond rememberance of
watching this series even if they havent seen it for many, many years.
It sticks with you long after the last frame has finished.
________________________________________________________

IT IS TIME FOR PBS
TO RE-BROADCAST
THE COMPLETE SERIES

IT IS TIME FOR THE PRODUCERS
 TO GET IT RELEASED TO A LEGITIMATE
 DVD SET

IT IS TIME FOR THE WORLD TO REDISCOVER
AN AMERICAN FAMILY

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" Subterranean Cinema ...
It sounds so sexy and daring,
but I'm not sure what it means. "
GRANT LOUD
(via email)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

SUBTERRANEAN CINEMA
subcin@aol.com
subcin.com
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

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