Reality show mocks Amish culture

A new reality series is in the works from UPN, and it sets the bar at a new low.

Tentatively… A new reality series is in the works from UPN, and it sets the bar at a new low.

Tentatively titled “Amish in the City,” the show’s gimmick places Amish teen-agers in an urban setting and follows them around through their culture shock.

Representatives for Amish groups are up in arms, as well they should be.

This show represents exploitation and discrimination. It wants to hold up a people who are different from those who’ll be consuming the show for ridicule. The hook of the show is seeing people in a fish-out-of-water situation, which can be funny, but not when it is done in a spirit of mockery.

The Amish choose to live the way they do because, to them, it is right and proper that they do so. They aren’t unsophisticated hayseeds for the rest of society to laugh at. Their way of life has served them for centuries.

They are motivated by their particular interpretation of the Bible, so this show amounts to laughing at those who have chosen a different religion. Would a show that followed observant Jews around at a pork barbecue make it to television?

The Amish have isolated themselves from the rest of society – they call non-Amish people “English” – to keep free of what they see as English impiety, and as a result, they don’t face a lot of the same problems. This show wants to take people out of their sacred enclave and throw them to the wolves for cheap laughs at their expense.

The teens who participate in the show will surely face family and community repercussions. The Old Order Amish avoid being photographed as an interpretation of the Biblical proscription against making graven images. Surely these teens being videotaped and exhibited for the enjoyment of the English will draw the ire of some of their older peers.

Of course, the participants in the show had to have agreed to do it, but how could they know what they were in for? The Amish don’t use electricity and so probably haven’t caught the last season of “The Simple Life” and “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” They probably don’t realize what a vapid and demeaning genre reality television is.

It will be nothing short of miraculous if this show indeed depicts the Amish with the “utmost respect and decency,” as a release from UPN claimed – let alone if the show is even remotely good.