Amish in popular culture

The Amish have been portrayed in many areas of popular culture.

Film

Topical

Peter Weir's 1985 drama Witness is set and filmed in the Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Harvest of Fire is a 1996 Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-TV movie AbOUT an FBI agent's investigation of cases of suspected arson in an Amish farming community. The 2002 documentary Devil's Playground follows a group of Amish teenagers during rumspringa, and it portrays their personal dilemma with both the "English" world and the decision on whether or not to be baptized as adult members of the church.

In Kingpin, a former bowling champion coaches a young Amish man in winning a bowling tournament to win enough money to save his family's farm.

Michael Landon, Jr.'s 2007 film Saving Sarah Cain, based on the novel The Redemption of Sarah Cain by Beverly Lewis, shows the removal of young Amish children to the big city and realizing the life they can have with both the Amish and English world. Producer Larry Thompson's 2010 Lifetime Original Movie.

The Heritage of Lancaster County, another series by Beverly Lewis, is the inspiration for a trio of movies on the Hallmark Channel beginning with The Shunning. It follows Katie Lapp, a young Amish woman with ties to the English world and her struggle to find where she belongs.

Amish Grace portrayed the events surrounding an Amish school shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.

Episodical

In the comedy [...] Drive, the three main characters hitchhike with an Amish man, played by Seth Green, who takes them to his home. There they find a party during rumspringa, where the character Lance meets his future love interest in the film. In the George Romero film Diary of the Dead, a deaf Amish man appears and helps the main survivors before [...] himself after being infected.

For Richer or Poorer is a 1997 comedy film starring Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley, who find themselves hiding in a small Amish community in Pennsylvania.

Literature

Modern novels

• Cramer, Dale W., won a Christy Award for Levi's Will, a novel based on his father's life after leaving the Amish as a teenager. He wrote a series, The Daughters of Caleb Bender, based once again on the history of his family, this time with his great-grandfather. It follows a small group of Amish fleeing persecution in America in the 1920s and settling in Mexico.
• Cushman, Kathryn, Almost Amish is a novel by about two modern families trying to live Amish for a reality TV show.
• Gaus, Paul's Ohio Amish Mystery series, set among the Amish community in Holmes County, Ohio.
• Levinson, Paul's 1999 Locus Award–winning novel The Silk Code portrays Amish farmers involved in a science-fiction mystery about biotechnology and mysterious deaths
• Lewis, Beverly, the "Queen of Amish Fiction", has an extensive series of Amish romantic fiction.
• Leslie Gould is writing a series of books based on William Shakespeare's plays set in the Amish world. The first book, Courting Cate, is based on The Taming of the Shrew.
• Richard Montanari's Philadelphia crime series features a [...] detective named Joshua Bontrager who grew up Amish.
• Jodi Picoult {2000} Plain Truth dealt with a crime concerning the death of a newborn infant on an Amish farm.

Older novels

Helen Reimensnyder Martin's 1905 novel Sabina, a Story of the Amish, similar to her 1904 novel Tillie, a Mennonite Maid, so harshly depicted its subjects as to provoke cries of misrepresentation. Anna Balmer Myers' 1920 novel Patchwork: a Story of "the Plain People", like her 1921 novel Amanda: A Daughter of the Mennonites, are generally regarded as gentle correctives to the work of Martin. Ruth Lininger Dobson's 1937 novel Straw in the Wind, written while a student at the University of Michigan and receiving the school's Hopwood Award, so negatively depicted the Amish of Indiana that Joseph Yoder was motivated to correct the severe stereotypes with a more accurate book about the Amish way of life. In 1940, he wrote the gentler Rosanna of the Amish, a story of his mother's life (and his own). He later wrote a sequel, Rosanna's Boys (1948), as well as other books presenting and recording what he regarded as a truer picture of Amish culture.

Children's literature

• Marguerite de Angeli's 1936 children's story Henner's Lydia portrays a tender Amish family. The author sketched many of the illustrations at the site of the Little Red Schoolhouse still standing at the intersection of Pennsylvania Route 23 and Red Schoolhouse Road, just west of Morgantown, Pennsylvania. Today the building is the Amish Mennonite Information Center. The Lancaster County landscape, portrayed in the end papers of the book, can be recognized throughout the area. De Angeli's illustrations of a nearby bank barn were sketched just hours before the barn was destroyed by fire. She incorporated the incident in her 1944 Caldecott Honor book Yonie Wondernose, a story about a curious Amish boy, younger brother to the Lydia of Henner's Lydia.
• Another popular children's book, Plain Girl by Virginia Sorensen, was published in 1956, and is still in print.
• Beverly Lewis, known for her numerous award-winning Amish novels, has also written several picture books and chapter books for children.

Theatre

• The 1955 Broadway musical show, Plain and Fancy, is an early stage-play portrayal of the Amish people. Set in Lancaster County, it tells of a couple from New York who encounter the quaint Amish lifestyle when they arrive to sell off some property. This show depicted "shunning" and "barn raising" to the American audience for the first time.
• Quiet in the Land, a Canadian play concerning Amish struggles during World War I (1917–18).
• The Confession is a musical based on Beverly Lewis's best-selling The Heritage of Lancaster County series.

Television

In 1988 NBC aired a family drama, Aaron's Way, about an Amish family who moved to California and had to adjust to a non-Amish lifestyle.  Numerous other TV shows have presented episodes with Amish characters or storylines, including Family Guy, The Simpsons, Dexter's Laboratory, "Cold Case" and Grey's Anatomy. In the summer of 2004, a controversial reality-television program called Amish in the City aired on UPN. Amish teenagers were exposed to non-Amish culture by living together with "English" teens and, at the time of the show, had yet to decide if they wanted to be baptized into the Amish church.

In 2009, BBC2 in the UK aired Trouble in Amish Paradise, a one-hour documentary about Ephraim and Amanda Stoltzfus and their desire to adhere to Evangelical Christianity whilst remaining Amish in culture. This was followed by a second programme, Leaving Amish Paradise, in 2011, documenting the transition of the couple and two of their friends to non Amish society after their excommunication from the Amish church. In 2010, the UK's Channel 4 aired a series of documentaries entitled Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers where a group of Amish teenagers were taken to the UK in a cultural exchange to live with British teenagers during rumspringa. A follow-up series, Living with the Amish, aired in 2012, where British teenagers were taken to live for a few weeks in various Amish communities.

In 2012, the National Geographic Channel debuted the documentary reality series Amish: Out of Order, about the lives of former Amish who have left the community.

In September 2012, TLC began airing the reality television series, Breaking Amish which follows a group of Amish and Mennonite youths as they leave their communities to experience the outside world in New York City. Not long after the show began airing, controversy arose concerning evidence that appears to indicate the cast members had actually been living outside the Amish community for some time, leaving the viewers to believe that much of the show is staged or scripted.

PBS had broadcast a documentary about the Amish in February 2012.

Discovery Networks in December 2012 began broadcasting a show, "Amish Mafia". While portrayed as a reality show, the show's official website states that some scenes are "re-enacted", although such re-enacted scenes are not identified as such in the show. This has lead reviewers to question the veracity of the show. Persons who work closely with the Amish community have stated that they have never heard of such a "mafia" organization.

The 2013 Cinemax original TV series Banshee is set in a fictional small town in Amish Country, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and features Amish people.

Music

"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1996 parody "Amish Paradise" and the accompanying music video were an affectionate send-up of Coolio's earlier rap song "Gangsta's Paradise", with Yankovic and former The Brady Bunch actress Florence Henderson in Amish garb, and lyrics reflecting Amish themes.

See also

• Beverly Lewis