At the beginning of the annual congressional shootout over funding for public broadcasting,
inevitably launches a barrage of press releases about its storied
cultural and intellectual contributions to U.S. culture. One
achievement that never gets mentioned: the invention of reality
television. Long before Jon and Kate or the “Real Housewives,”
The Louds, who lived in an upscale
camera crew to follow them constantly for seven months in 1971 and
1972. When the results aired the next year in the 12-hour series “An
American Family,” the country was transfixed.
What began as a sunny idyll of backyard barbecues
and teenage puppy loves plummeted into a living hell of domestic
dysfunction that pitted children against parents and spouses against
one another. At a time when homosexuality mostly lurked in the deepest
part of the American closet, viewers were shocked by the flamboyantly
gay lifestyle of teenage son Lance (and, unfortunately, had difficulty
separating his empty-headed narcissism from his sexual identity). And
they were stunned when wife Patricia, without warning, dumped her
husband Bill right there on camera, kicking him out of the house and
flouncing off to a divorce lawyer.
The results were great for
drew an average audience of 10 million viewers for each episode of “An
American Family,” quadruple that of the stuffy British costume dramas
that until then had been the network’s most popular shows. The outcome
for the Louds was less rosy — the family was not only shattered but
also publicly vilified.
“We’ve lost dignity, and we’ve been humiliated as a result of it,” a broken Patricia said. “Our honor is at question.”
The biggest loser of all was television. “An
American Family” had created a new genre, and it turned out to be a
short step from the Louds to “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance” and “
Almost four decades later, television is finally
confronting its history. HBO’s drama “Cinema Verite” is a searing and
irresistible look at the making of “An American Family” and an incisive
dissection of the mendacity of what we so absurdly call reality TV. It
is a study in manipulation and betrayal, exogenous and self-inflicted.
And it is a mirror for television audiences to stare into while asking,
why do we watch this stuff?
Villains of varying degrees abound in “Cinema Verite.” But the most sinister is
He wanted to do a television version of Mead’s famous studies of Samoan
families but direct it at the deconstruction of the sitcom version of
American life.
The Louds, blinded by vanity (“We’re like the West
Coast Kennedys,” brags Bill), proved perfect foils. They were
Christmas-card perfect on the outside: a bluffly cheerful husband with
a successful business career, an elegant
wife with a touch of middle-aged sultriness and kids busily riding
horses, forming garage bands and engaging in various wholesome pursuits.
But, like any family (and perhaps more than some),
the Louds had their domestic fault lines. The marriage still hadn’t
totally recovered from Bill’s adulterous escapade of several years
earlier. The homosexuality of a child was still largely unmapped
territory for parents. And the same economic tensions that wracked many
middle-class homes of the era, between parents who grew up during the
Depression and children who thought money grew on trees, were present
in the Loud household.
“Cinema
shows Gilbert ruthlessly aggravating and exploiting every chink in the
Louds’ domestic armor to create drama for his show, encouraging Lance
to preen outrageously for the camera and playing on Pat’s fears about
her husband’s fidelity. She could be a feminist icon, he argues — “a
vision of a modern liberated woman. … Women all across America are
going to look to you for a road map of how to be and who to be. You are
in a position to show women whose strength is eroding how to take back
their lives.” Gandolfini’s performance as the hippishly oily Gilbert is
matched by
More subtle than Gilbert’s manipulations, but equally devastating, are those of the medium itself.
The Louds quickly learn to play to the camera, and
every petty spat goes nuclear, each one-up retort accompanied by a
sidelong glace into the lens. Even a mildly grumpy exchange about the
children’s spending goes toxic within seconds, with Pat demanding “How
about raising people that have a shot at being happy?” and Bill
snapping, “How about having parents make certain their kids know the
difference between right and wrong?”
Later, after Pat finishes a scorching speech about
why she wants a divorce, she proudly boasts off camera: “I think it was
my best scene.”
Sadly, so does an entire generation of reality TV
stars who’ve eagerly followed her in a quest for their 15 minutes of
fame. Some of them should ask Pat about the 16th minute.
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CINEMA
HBO
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(c) 2011, The Miami Herald.
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