Related articles and links |  1 of 3

When television network UPN announcedAmish in the City, their latest attempt to capitalize on the popularity of reality TV shows, many journalists questioned how it was different from a similar show that never got off the ground. CBS, whose parent company owns UPN, last year cancelled plans to air The Real Beverly Hillbillies, in which poor Appalachian families would be paid to live in a Beverly Hills mansion. Interest groups and legislators said the show would be insensitive to Appalachian culture and communities.

This year, it's Amish in the City, which will place five Amish teens during rumspringa—an Amish tradition allowing teens 16 and older more freedom from community rules before choosing whether or not to join the church—alongside five "mainstream" teens. The point, execs say, is to see what happens to Amish kids "who will walk down Rodeo Drive and be freaked out by what they see." It's not intended to be insulting, the network says. Still, after one CBS executive admits that the series was planned in part "because CBS couldn't do 'The Real Beverly Hillbillies.'" The Amish, he said, "don't have as good a lobbying group" as rural Appalachians do.

That is about all that Donald B. Kraybill and UPN can agree on. Kraybill, author of The Amish: Why They Enchant Us and many other books on the Amish and Mennonites, believes it would be impossible for the show to accurately depict the Amish community, and that any effort would be by nature insensitive to Amish prohibitions on graven images. Yesterday, CT talked with Kraybill, who is Senior Fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.

Do you think Hollywood has more of an interest in the Amish than the rest of the country does?

I think there is a TV and Hollywood interest in them because they are unique and different. They've had the courage to buck many of the strong currents of technological change and modern values. They're interesting for Hollywood simply because they stand apart so far outside of the mainstream of American life.

But I also think they're easy prey because they don't fit the standard taboo list of religion and race that Hollywood may not be able to talk about with other groups. And, by nature of their passive nature and religious commitment to peace and non-resistance, they're not going to file suits or engage in aggressive lobby efforts like some other religious or ethnic groups might do.

So they're really vulnerable in a sense to the powerful forces of Hollywood.

Could you explain rumspringa?

Technically, rumspringa translates to running around, which simply means that they begin going out with their friends. They may begin dating. Others are out with their friends. They'll be sledding, they may be ice-skating, they may be playing volleyball. They're going to youth group singings. It's a time when they are less under the supervision of the parents, and they are still not baptized in the church, so they are betwixt and between the supervision of their parents and the authority of the church. They are not required technically to abide by the regulations of the church until they are formally baptized.

For the bulk of them it would be four to five years when they continue living at home. The one news release I saw implied that all young Amish people leave their home communities and live out in the larger society. That's simply not true. The typical practice for over 90 percent of them would be that they would continue living at home, continuing working at home, or in an uncle's shop, or an aunt's quilting store.

next page... |  1 of 3

January (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48