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Reality TV and the Next Assault on Rural People:
Ad campaign targets
Amish in the City
The Center for Rural Strategies launched a newspaper advertising campaign to stop UPN television from producing a reality program called “Amish in the City.” The first ad in the campaign appeared on the op/ed page of the Wednesday, May 19, 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer.
We’re launching the campaign because UPN has refused to kill the proposed reality show. Instead it has clung to tired excuses that the program will portray Amish young people in a positive light. All the while UPN executives such as Leslie Moonves, also president of CBS, have gleefully touted possible episodes in which the youth will be “freaked out” with their encounter with mainstream culture.
It’s hard to see how that’s going to be positive for anyone, least of all Amish or the rural Americans in general who will be smeared with the stereotypes and indignities this show would present. Whereas Moonves’ last foray into rural reality TV dealt with the cultural stereotypes implicit in the proposed “Real Beverly Hillbillies,” this current slap makes sport with the religious faith of teen-agers.
UPN announces plans for new reality show - January 2004
Viacom and Leslie Moonves are at it again. The same giant corporation and the same executive who came up with the idea of “The Real Beverly Hillbillies” have developed a new swipe at rural America. This time it is called “The Amish in America,” a reality show for UPN, a network owned by Viacom and programmed by CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves.
On this show the network will set up five Amish young people in a big city apartment with cameras and crews watching to see which of the youth fall from grace. And like in the plan for “The Real Beverly Hillbillies,” television viewers will be invited to laugh when the Amish appear out of step with modern culture.
The custom in the Amish faith is for youth to spend time away from their families when they become 16. This ritual, called Rumspringa, allows Amish youth to experience life outside their home community and then decide for themselves whether to return home and be baptized into the Amish Church.
For the reality show, UPN will place a progression of temptations in front of the young people and televise their struggles in holding on to their faith. In the Washington Post, writer Lisa de Moraes reports about Les Moonves’ promotion of the series on the recent Los Angeles television critics press tour: “Asked by one stunned critic why on earth they would allow television producers to manipulate and massage a ceremony that will literally alter the course of these kids' lives, Moonves, who also oversees the CBS network, joked, "Well, we couldn't do 'The Beverly Hillbillies.'”
Chris Gay in the Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on the proposed Amish in America series. She quotes Mark Andrejevic, author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. "Reality TV seems to be fashioning itself into an Animal Planet for humans," said Andrejevic, an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa. "It's like a laboratory experiment: Take people who wouldn't otherwise spend time together, put them in jar, and see what happens.”
What we are seeing one more time from Viacom is the use of “reality TV” as a way to exploit rural people for profits and ratings. This time the executives are not just making fun of rural people for being poor; they are placing the religious faith and values of rural people in a fish bowl for comic effect. And if Viacom, the billion dollar corporation, succeeds in leading a few young people into temptation and away from home and faith, well I guess that’s just show business.
On Face the Nation CBS newsman Bob Schieffer recently referred to the phenomenon as “the unreality and vulgarity of reality television.” He is one Viacom employee that gets it right. Now if he could only get his bosses to listen.
Learn more about Amish belief, heritage, and lifestyle:
Here are links to web sites that have realible information about the Amish.
National Committee For Amish Religious Freedom
Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau, Lancaster County, PA
The People's Place, Intercourse, PA, an Amish museum
Amish Country News, a magazine
ChristianityToday.com
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