Movies and TV Shape Perceptions of the Amish

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For many people, everything they know about the Amish was taken from the 1985 Harrison Ford movie “Witness.” Outside perceptions of the circumstances surrounding Monday’s shootings at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa., seem steeped in the mythology formed from the few representations of the Amish on television […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For many people, everything they know about the Amish was taken from the 1985 Harrison Ford movie “Witness.”

Outside perceptions of the circumstances surrounding Monday’s shootings at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa., seem steeped in the mythology formed from the few representations of the Amish on television and in the movies, experts said.


While “Witness” was a serious film and a worldwide hit, minor silly comedies such as 1996’s “Kingpin,” with Woody Harrelson (in which the Amish grandmother has a beard), and 1997’s “For Richer or Poorer,” with Tim Allen, also impacted perceptions of the Amish.

“The problem with how people see the Amish is very similar to how people see the clergy,” said Eric Michael Mazur, associate religion professor at Bucknell University. “People assume that because they are pious, they’re not human. We tend to make them exotic and commercialize them.”

In Lewisburg, where Bucknell is located, Mazur said he often sees Amish-labeled products sold, including Amish salsa. He is most troubled by the Amish dolls.

“What if on the same shelf there was little Charlie Catholic, Jeremy the Jew and Larry the Lutheran?” asked Mazur, who added that there is a perception that traditionalists such as the Amish, Orthodox Jews or Christian fundamentalists are deviants. “Many people don’t understand that the Amish are not ignorant of the world around them, they have made very specific choices about the world around them.”

The Rev. Richard A. Blake, co-director of film studies at Boston College, said: “I’m sure that this story gets extra notoriety because of the clothes the Amish wear and their language patterns are different. This sort of foreignness gets people more interested in the story.”

That foreignness has made the Amish a device in television shows based on a fish-out-of-water scenario.

The UPN Network’s 2004 reality show “Amish in the City” had five Amish youths living with six non-Amish people. NBC’s 1988 series “Aaron’s Way” showed Amish people being afraid of modern appliances.


In the 1993 Warner Bros. TV show “Lois & Clark: The Adventures of Superman,” villain Lex Luthor discovers that the Amish are the only ones who can’t be mind-controlled because they don’t use modern technology.

While the conflict with modernity is often employed for lightly comedic purposes, the same dynamic can distract from the essence of Monday’s tragic reality.

CNN’s coverage included an expert on the Amish, which probably doesn’t shed more light on why the murders and suicide occurred, observed Clay Calvert, associate professor of communications and law at Penn State University.

“The real world comes crashing into an isolated community is how it’s being framed. But really, it’s just another human tragedy,” Calvert said. “The fact that it happened at an Amish school allows bigger play for the story. It’s like if there was a story on the Midwest, they’ll always play up the fact the corn is 8 feet high.”

The perceived isolation of the Amish is often far from the truth, said David L. Weaver-Zucher, professor of religious studies at Messiah College.

“For many of the Amish in Lancaster County,” he said, “there would be a good bit of contact with English people,” as non-Amish are known.


“English people who would live next door to Amish farm neighbors would be friends with these people,” Weaver-Zucher said. “It’s not an utterly isolated community.”

Nor are relations tension-free. There are those in the Lancaster community who have issues with the Amish for business reasons, or because the Amish are exempt from some government policies.

“And there are others who find it highly disturbing that the Amish are so highly esteemed by outsiders,” Weaver-Zucher said.

KRE/PH END CARROLL/WANG

(Pat Carroll and Li Wang are staff writers for the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa.) Editors: To obtain a file photo from `Amish in the City,’ go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by “RNS AMISH TV.”

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