An American Family
| An American Family | |
|---|---|
The Loud Family (Back, from left: Kevin, Grant, Delilah and Lance. Front, from left: Michele, Pat and Bill)
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| Genre | Documentary/Reality |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 12 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Craig Gilbert |
| Editor(s) | Pat Cook Eleanor Hamerow David Hanser Ken Werner |
| Production company(s) | WNET New York |
| Release | |
| Original network | PBS |
| Picture format | 16mm film |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | January 11 – March 29, 1973 |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by |
An American Family Revisited: The Louds 10 Years Later Lance Loud!: A Death in an American Family |
An American Family is an American television documentary filmed from May 30 through December 31, 1971 and first aired in the United States on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) from January 11, 1973 to March 29, 1973. After being edited down from about 300 hours of raw footage, the series ran one season of 12 episodes on Thursday nights at 9:00 p.m.
The groundbreaking documentary is considered the first "reality" series on American television. It was originally intended as a chronicle of the daily life of the Louds, an upper middle class family in Santa Barbara, California but ended up documenting the break-up of the family via the separation and subsequent divorce of parents Bill and Pat Loud.
A year after this program was broadcast, the BBC in 1974 filmed its own similar 12-episode program, called The Family, focusing on the working-class Wilkins family, of Reading, Berkshire, England.
In 2011, The New York Times reflected on some of the controversy the series engendered:
For the viewing public, the controversy surrounding An American Family doubled as a crash course in media literacy. The Louds, in claiming that the material had been edited to emphasize the negative, called attention to how nonfiction narratives are fashioned. Some critics argued that the camera’s presence encouraged the subjects to perform. Some even said it invalidated the project. That line of reasoning, as Mr. Gilbert has pointed out, would invalidate all documentaries. It also discounts the role of performance in everyday life, and the potential function of the camera as a catalyst, not simply an observer. The show included footage, including of intimate family interactions, including an on-camera separation demand from wife Pat to her husband, and the coming-out of one of the children who was gay.
In 2002, An American Family was listed at #32 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time list. It is the earliest example of the reality television genre.
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