Amish Get Dose of Reality
Posted by anastasia on 07-30-2004
When I lived in New York City, my ex-boyfriend and I decided to get out of town for the weekend and go somewhere completely anti-urban so we decided to drive to Amish country in Pennsylvania. We rode in a buggy, visited a working Amish farm and watched a video about this really interesting subculture. I learned you can't just become Amish — it's a bloodline thing — and that very few people decide not to remain Amish. When Amish kids reach the age of 18 they're given a period of time called Rumspringa to experience the non-Amish modern world and partake in all of the vices it has to offer. When the period is over, they decide whether or not to remain Amish. Almost all of them do (don't have the stat but it's really high). I wonder if part of it is that if they leave the fold, they are basically cut off from their families and the Amish world they grew up in.
All of that as an intro to the latest reality TV phenomenon called "Amish in the City," which airs on the UPN Network. It premiered this week (with very high ratings) and is reairing tonight. The idea is that a group of Amish in their Rumspringa period get to live in the Hollywood Hills with non-Amish city dwellers in their lates teens and twenties. Like when Julie (The Morman) was on the Real World except there are more Julies and they are Amish. Reality Blurred has a good round up of coverage. NPR also has a pretty hard-hitting interview with executive producer Daniel Laikind, who also worked on a documentary about Rumspringa called "Devil's Playground." She challenges him the idea of showing Rumspringa in an artificial reality TV context.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:26 am
I didnt get to watch Amish in the City but I know one of the Amish's that plays in it. Mose Gingerich-he is somewhat my neighbor. My family is really good friends with his brothers. And I also heard many things about his late wonderful father.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
thanks for the story. An interesting one.