The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

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Although it could hardly be said to exist at that time, ‘Reality TV became a talking-point and cause for concern in 1974, following the broadcast of An American Family, a fly-on-the-wall documentary series which aimed to capture the truth of real people’s lives and relationships by focusing on the Loud family of California. It was just one series, but it seemed a portent of the future, when there would be cameras everywhere turning ordinary people into celebrities and serving up their problems, conflicts and emotions as entertainment for the masses.

I was a television critic as well as a science fiction writer in the 1970s, and remember that even though An American Family had few imitators (in Britain there was The Family a year later) -partly because it was a slow, expensive, labour-intensive way of making programmes with the technology of the day — the series had a powerful effect on the popular imagination. It led to arguments and discussions about the influence of the camera — and implied audience — as catalyst rather than a passive recorder; as something that created the very drama it was meant to be observing, by inspiring people to perform. If they weren’t being watched, would Pat have demanded a divorce from her husband of twenty-plus years? Would their son Lance have come out in public as gay? Critics and commentators wondered about the alienating effect of lives played out on screens, about exploitation, about the truth of this so-called ‘reality’. Privacy and relationships were being destroyed and the pain of real people turned into popular entertainment — to sell more products (in fact, An American Family aired on PBS, a non-commercial network. But we thought we could see the way the wind was blowing).

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