An American Family made ordinary people fleetingly famous just for being themselves
Evidence
“This series,” Lance Loud later said, “was the fulfillment of the middle-class dream that you can become famous for being just who you are.” It wasn’t Gilbert’s intent, but the unexpected effect was to make the Louds famous for a brief time. Pat Loud would publish her autobiography, and the five children would perform as a rock band on The Dick Cavett Show, à la the Partridge Family. Bill Loud would pose in his bathrobe for Esquire, and Lance in his birthday suit for Screw magazine. And yet by the 1980s, the Louds’ name would scarcely ring a bell; the exception was Lance, who would achieve immortality as a gay icon. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 842
Categorization
- SHARE: Lance Loud’s trajectory—brief celebrity, then gay-icon immortality—is a delightfully specific detail for someone following TV history.
- XREF: connects to: An American Family ignited a national debate about whether filming changed the family — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 826; The Kardashians broke reality fame’s ephemerality by rotating family members as engines of attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 850; Real people sometimes adopt fictional symbols inspired by themselves. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 346 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- The Kardashians broke reality fame’s ephemerality by rotating family members as engines of attention
#contradicts(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 850 - Facebook cultivated the self-as-brand among ordinary individuals
#qualifies(0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1004 - Real people sometimes adopt fictional symbols inspired by themselves.
#qualifies(0.70) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 346