16 replies to this topic

[Darrel Manson]

Let's use religion to give us a way to laugh at people.

QUOTE

UPN Making Reality Show About Amish Jan 18, 2:20 PM (ET) By DAVID BAUDER LOS ANGELES (AP) - The UPN television network is preparing a reality series that follows Amish teenagers having their first experiences with modern conveniences and outside society, part of a religious rite of passage that tests their faith. Network executives are informally calling it \"Amish in the City,\" although they said Sunday the title will likely change. \"To have people who don't have television walk down Rodeo Drive and be freaked out by what they see, I think will be interesting television,\" said CBS chairman Leslie Moonves, who also oversees UPN. \"It will not be denigrating to the Amish.\" Members of the Amish religious sect dress simply and shun most technology. Rural Pennsylvania and Ohio are home to large Amish communities, where their horse-drawn black buggies appear on country roads. At age 16, Amish youngsters are allowed to break free of the religion's strict code of conduct to decide whether they want to be baptized as adults. During the period of \"rumspringa,\" a Pennsylvania Dutch term that means \"running around,\" they often date, drink, drive cars and move away from their homes. The majority return to the faith. For UPN, the series is vaguely reminiscent of corporate cousin CBS' ill-fated attempt to make a real-life version of \"The Beverly Hillbillies.\" Both networks are owned by Viacom. CBS hunted for an Appalachian family that it would pay $500,000 to live a year in a Hollywood mansion. However, many politicians and others in the mountain region and the South attacked the idea as a mockery of rural Americans, and the project likely will never be made. Moonves acknowledged that he thought of that debacle before giving the green light to the Amish series. The show will be about culture shock, not religion, and he said it would be like a reverse version of Fox's \"The Simple Life,\" where socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie lived for a time on an Arkansas farm. \"Where were all the people writing about 'The Simple Life'?\" Moonves said. \"Did it make fun of the family they were living with? Did it make fun of the two girls? It was fun.\" The Amish series is tentatively scheduled for this summer.

Of course it could be an interesting commentary of materialism in our culture. Yeah, I'm sure the producers will take that route.

[mrmando]

From Sojourners:

[mrmando]

And now the word is that the show's back on.

[Joel]

anybody seen the devil's playground?

Edited by joel, 16 July 2004 - 06:03 PM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

joel wrote:
: anybody seen the devil's playground?

Yes, the thread on that film even links back to this one.

[Darrel Manson]

[Mark]

Early word from the Christian Science Monitor is that the show might not be so bad ....

http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content...12s01-altv.html

[BethR]

Four of the participants--two Amish, two "city" kids--plus the producer, were interviewed this morning on Good Morning America. They wouldn't reveal specifically the outcome or final decisions of the experience/show, but the Amish young persons insisted they felt it had been worthwhile & was not exploitative; the young woman reiterated that she felt sure her parents were actually proud of her, although they would never, ever tell her so. Hm.

Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they? And where were the other three, one might ask?

Edited by BethR, 28 July 2004 - 12:00 PM.

[Thom]

There was an interesting article in the Sunday (7/25/04) edition Chicago Tribune written by one who identifies himself with Conservative Friends.

What I found especially interesting is in bold

`Amish' TV show may deliver reality of Christian bias

By Scott Savage
Published July 25, 2004

My wife and I are Conservative Friends, choosing a long-standing tradition within Christianity that values a "plain and simple" life. Our family manages to exist without a media diet of television or radio; we light our quiet evenings with oil lamps and do our nearby traveling by horse power.

An outsider might lump us together with our Amish neighbors, but unlike the Amish, we stayed in school beyond the 8th grade and have college degrees. Along with farming, I do some teaching and writing, spending plenty of time in two very different worlds: the small, protected world of horse-and-buggy "plain" people and the big, worldly world of American society.

It is no surprise then, that I would know about the new UPN "reality" television series, "Amish in the City," coming to a little screen near you beginning Wednesday. What might be unexpected, however, is that quite a few Amish people also are aware of the series, although they won't be tuning it in.

To update those who have missed the hype: According to UPN, the series puts "five Amish young adults" into an extended sleepover in a Hollywood mansion with "a handsome swim teacher, a fashion-forward party girl, a colorful club promoter, a busboy/musician, an inner-city student and a strict vegan." The purpose being to peep at religiously raised children sampling the "delights and challenges of modern metropolitan life."

In other words, the joke is to get these innocents to sin (pardon my pre-postmodern language) on camera. Each episode will follow the young people as they are tempted to behave in ways that erase their purity, leading up to the finale, where they will "decide whether or not they want to join the Amish church ... or stay in the outside world."

The Budget, one of two newspapers published specifically for the Amish, has closely covered "Amish in the City" developments as they have unfolded, noting for instance when "scouts" for the series fanned out to Amish communities in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. In our area of Ohio, camera crews traveled the back roads, and some Amish families are reported to have allowed filming of their daily life without being fully apprised of the program's intentions.

Since the Amish believe Christians should not resist "evildoers" (that outdated language, again!), they haven't sued UPN's parent network, CBS, or petitioned advertisers to pull out of the series. UPN said back in February that while similar television programs using other social minorities might spark an uproar, "the Amish don't have as good a lobbying group." That's certainly true, but it would be wrong to assume they also don't have objections.

Last week I spoke with a close friend who is a member of an Amish community where the series' production company did some heavy recruiting. Word on "the Amish Street" (or buggy path, I guess) is that one troubled teenager of Amish parentage was offered $20,000 to take part. "She's still off in California somewhere," he said softly and sadly. This young person was described as being thoroughly untypical.

In a National Public Radio interview about the series, Amish-watching sociologist Donald Kraybill concurred: "The only Amish young people that I think would be willing to participate are going to be Amish young people who have already dropped out of Amish society or who are planning to leave it."
Alas, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Despite the inherent distortion and exploitation of Amish beliefs, the show must go on, drawing many curious onlookers, some undoubtedly hoping to see Amish boys and girls publicly seduced and debauched and made fools of for the sake of entertainment. On the other hand, UPN's prelaunch patter hints that the show's wayward "Amish youth" do muster some inner strength while facing the camera's grinning mug: "... The Amish kids give their city counterparts insights into their beliefs, values and a lifestyle dedicated to faith, modesty and unadorned means."

Whichever way it ends up playing, "Amish in the City" has already left its mark on the "reality programming" of American culture, at least from the viewpoint of Amish and other plain Christians, who are definitely watching this bigger show. It reinforces our perception that there is an emerging spirit in America of open ridicule and hostility to Christian faith. This is of special concern to the Amish and Mennonite plain folk, whose early history is bound up with the horrible persecution they suffered in Europe before fleeing to freedom in America. They remain perpetually on guard.

What plain people see now is television using Christians for the purpose of amusement. This seems ominous--even the Amish apprehend that in the 21st Century's pop culture milieu, violence often alternates with the laugh track.

The basic laughter-generating premise for "Amish in the City" is false. These people who are supposed to be confounded by indoor plumbing and Victoria's Secret catalogs know much more about your culture than you do about theirs. They've seen the Cosmo covers in the grocery store checkout line, and although you've never read their newspaper, they have at least occasionally read yours. The busloads of tourists in "Amish country" might want to ponder whether the plain people they stare at aren't maybe staring back.

How would the tourists feel if they discovered that plain living is not merely the lifestyle choice of a picturesque community of Rip Van Winkles, but a (gently applied) critique of American culture?

My emancipation from television frees my evenings for reading. Right now I'm deep into "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," at the part where Edward Gibbon describes treatment of Christians by ultra-decadent pagan rulers in the 2nd Century.

Believers back then were regarded as criminals just for being Christians, all the more so because they would not submit to the religious "values" of hedonistic Rome: "It was not so much the past offence, as the actual resistance, which excited the indignation of the magistrate. He was persuaded that he offered them an easy pardon, since, if they consented to cast a few grains of incense upon the [pagan] altar, they were dismissed from the tribunal in safety and with applause. It was esteemed the duty of a humane judge to endeavor to reclaim, rather than to punish, those deluded enthusiasts." Torture and death came later, after the commercial break.

In these times when use of the term "culture war" has begun to alternate with "civil war," the reality is that some of us are wondering how soon the cruel laughter aimed at the devout will turn to cruelty itself, plain and simple.

----------

Scott Savage is the author of "A Plain Life: Walking My Belief."


Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

[BethR]

From the Scott Savage article:

[teresakayep]

[Peter T Chattaway]

teresakayep wrote:
: (But the same could be said of the urban kids--not all vegans whine about
: "chicken embryos" when their friends eat eggs.)

Wow, an actual Conehead. (Wonder what that person's position on abortion is.)

[Christian]

I watched, too, and found the show provocative for most of the first hour. But by the time the second hour rolled to a close, and the show seemed to have devolved into a typical episode of MTV’s The Real World, I looked at my wife and said, “This isn’t exactly ‘appointment viewing.’” We agreed that we’ll watch if we’re not doing anything else, but we won’t go out of our way to tune in.

That one blonde from the city – ughh! Totally obnoxious. The only city kid who seems to have any notion of something bigger than herself is the vegan, Ariel, but she’s busy imposing her extremism on everyone in the house. Still, she seems … I dunno … sensitive, unlike the rest of that crew.

[teresakayep]

[BethR]

Having not much else to do at the moment, we caught Ep. 2 of "Amish..." this week. The city kids revealed some unexpected layers. A little more attention was devoted to spiritual things. Whoever suspected that some of the Amish who agreed to participate in this enterprise were/are already pushing the boundaries of their world seems to be correct, from some comments that were made.




The Amish, plus Vegan Ariel, went to church. We weren't shown much of the service, but it seemed to be a fairly generic protestant church, probably non-denominational, maybe evangelical. There was a prominently displayed projection screen for lyrics, etc., and the sermon seemed to be on "stewardship" or "tithing"--Mose complained about the focus on money. They'd never been to a non-Amish church, but all said they enjoyed it (except for Mose's distaste for the financial focus); some discussed the question of whether any forms of Christianity were valid... Ariel's body-language in the pew suggested that she was uncomfortable.

The gay guy invited the group to join him in his regular service project of leading acting workshops for mentally disabled persons--explained that this volunteer work meant more to him than anything else. Only the busboy was uncomfortable enough to refuse to go; one Amish kid felt uneasy, but went along anyway. The group ended up really reaching out and getting into the spirit of the thing--and Randy, who had been annoying the city kids by being uncommunicative, loosened up quite a bit.

Then the big visit to Vanity Fair--a day at the races. The group are treated (mostly) like rich celebrities, meeting a famous jockey who just happens to ride the winning horse in the next race. They are given tickets to a hip-hop concert (Arrested Development)--none of the Amish have ever been to any kind of pop music concert. They have front row places & meet the band. They are blown away and some talk about how wonderful this kind of life would be.

[BethR]

It's like a drug...

FWIW, what some of the mainstream press is saying. Not that they're paying that much attention:

Alameda Times-Star


Mennonite POV

Everyone should watch the Olympics. Really!

[BethR]

If anyone cares--this week, they're all going to Amish country. Ooh!