THE AMISH AND THE ARTS

The Amish don't benefit from literature and film in the way the rest of society does because their issues are not examined. Example..... Witness was about the problems of a big city cop. The Amish were just props. Sure, the Amish were portrayed well, but what if Peter Maas' only tried to portray NYC well when he wrote Serpico. I'm not suggesting that there is corruption among the Amish in need of an expo'se. But that there's a lack of awareness about the consequences of making the choices that the Amish have made. But, you say, there's a lot of good scholars doing great work on the Amish.

AN EXERPT FROM AN EARLIER POST


Donald Kraybill, a prominent scholar of the Amish is widely accepted and respected as the preeminent authority on Amish life, but I couldn't fully address my concerns without questioning the impact of his work on the community he studies and the perception it fosters in his readers.Kraybill showcases the communal values of the Amish and juxtaposes them with western cultures individualism, which is a worthy effort for a social scientist, but he fails to ask whether there is a cost to conforming to those values. Since the Amish are a closed authoritarian society, there is a poverty around self-reflective activities that normally enable societies to work through social issues and moral dilemmas. Kraybill is an outside agent that could at a minimum create language for the issues that need to be wrestled with.Labeling a problem is the first step towards determining a response. Kraybill's consistent rose colored view of Amish life colludes with the Amish leaders efforts to portray, any acknowledgment of problems within the church, as heresy. This squelches dissent or identification of problems and consequently any solutions. Because of this collusion Kraybill's legacy in the end, may be one of having harmed the community he studied.Kraybill's contribution to how the rest of the world sees the Amish is also problematic. There is a real danger if the general public's perception of the Amish is too simple or rose colored. Our relationship with the Amish is going to demand practical real life solutions. Romanticism will hinder that effort. One of the problems affecting Kraybills work is a lack of aggressive peer review. Because the Amish are a closed society it is hard for anyone else to obtain information so they can test or refute Kraybills conclusions. After the shooting at the Amish school in Nickel Mines Kraybill was reported to have given over one hundred interviews. It doesn't matter how accurate he is on ninety percent of his work, with that kind of coverage if ten percent of his work is flawed, with no other works to serve as an emollient for his errors, the damage can be enormous.