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“Big Sissy”: The Queer Construction of Lance Loud
Rick Moody
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.08.006
Utah Valley University, Orem, Utah, USA
The continued popularity of reality television, and the release of the recent HBO film Cinema Verite—about the production of the first “reality show,” An American Family (1973) —has resulted in renewed interest in the series and tangentially its other distinction—its portrayal of the first openly gay character on prime time television. Lance, the oldest of the Loud family children, is on film both flamboyant and effusive, but at the same time—through judicious editing—an asexual creature with no romantic or sexual relationships. This paper considers Lance in the context of Gay representation in media of the 1970s, and then explores the struggle of the filmmakers—and the Loud family themselves—to control and contain the public perception of Lance. The often vague and allusive comments by Lance’s parents and even Lance himself suggest a character that is at once charming, witty, and vibrantly alive, yet also pretentious and deceitful. The final argument is that these complicit efforts to avoid controversy actually engender it, turning Lance Loud into a figure of mystery and conjecture … and the undisputed star of the series.
Cinema Verite, An American Family, Lance Loud, Gay
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