American Family Revisited, HBO, throughout August
Television is proof positive of the theorem that the mere act of observing something changes the nature of the thing observed. Just look at the Louds. In 1973, millions of viewers did, as a twelve-part, $1.2 million PBS documentary called An American Family recorded seven months in the life of Mr. and Mrs. William C. Loud and their five shaggy children of the California sun. Significant anthropology or indiscriminate voyeurism, the video vérité documentary transformed the unprepared Louds into instant celebrities, paradoxically enlarging and diminishing them at the same time.
This month HBO...
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