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"Devil's Playground" is a unique window into a world not many of us have ever seen: the world of the Amish youth.
Directed by Lucy Walker, it explores and exposes the experiences of several Amish youths who decide whether to remain in, or leave, their community and faith during the Amish rite-of-passage known as rumspringa ("running around" in Pennsylvania Dutch). If they decide to be baptized in the community, but then later leave, they risk being shunned by the whole community, family and friends alike.
Young adulthood is a delicate time in everybody's life, whether or not you are Amish. It is a time when we make many decisions that will impact the rest of our life before really understanding the full scope of what it is we are deciding!
For the Amish, in particular, the decision comes down to "us or them": the angelic Amish world, or the devilish Cheshire grin of the modern world at large.
I share this documentary since it is so far outside most of our ordinary worldviews that it offers a wonderful starting point from which to glimpse the craziness that is today's modern world.
Enjoy!
Directed by: Lucy Walker
Produced by: Steven Cantor
Starring: Velda Bontrager, Joann Hochstetler, Emma Miller, Faron Yoder, Gerald Yutzy
Production company: Stick Figure Productions
Distributed by: Cinemax
Release date: January 11, 2002 (Sundance Film Festival)
Running time: 77 minutes
Language: English
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If you like the Amish
Check out “Sins of the Amish”
Wow, these Amish teens really
Wow, these Amish teens really love their cigarettes! lol
This is very interesting, I wonder what it's like for the Amish in 2022 (20 years after this documentary was made).
TheCorsair00 wrote:
Me, too! I will check out Omicron's recommendation since it is a 2022 production. Will share here if any good
cheerio
www
They did have little cell phones back in 2002, but not the internet and smart phones like they do now, which I imagine would wreak holy havoc on the Amish way of life!
euxalot wrote:
You can skip the 2022 series...it is typical Hollywood fluff: choose one villainous fault and then color the entire subculture on that basis. I am quite certain that there are decent Amish men among the abusive ones! If the goal is to bring to light heinous behavior, then the title would not be so click-baitable. It is typical sensationalism with little actual depth or substance, in my view.
By contrast, I still standby this 2002 documentary...it explores something at the boundary of society and on the fringe of most people's awareness....it may seem like they are just smoking or doing drugs and drinking, but the interviews demonstrate that they are wrestling with deep and fundament questions about their identity at a tender age. The doc is much less sensational than 2022.
And more importantly, it casts the "larger world" into a negative light...much less than it casts the Amish one negatively (as does 2022 docuseries)
Faron Yoder
Thanks for pointing that out about the 2022 docuseries. I really liked the 2002 one for the reasons you mentioned, as well as the soundtrack (it features a lot of early Aphex Twin ambient recordings).
I decided to look up one of the "main characters" in the documentary, Faron Yoder, to see where he is now. It appears as though he has a Facebook, but unfortunately it looks like he had some minor recent problems with the law: https://www.wane.com/news/crime/report-man-found-in-trunk-drunk-with-met...
The "devil's playground" proves to be very alluring and addictive for some to stay away from, despite their good intentions and religious views in the long run. He's just one example, I bet many young Amish go back to church after their party years....
TheCorsair00 wrote:
wow! thanks for sharing that...it is good to have the continuity on this particular arc...
did you ever watch those Up series of docs? (filmed at age 7, then later years over 56 years...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)
{for some reason that link won't include the brackets...wonder why wikipedia put brackets in the stupid URL!}
I like those ones, too :)
Up
I am sure Faron has done a lot of different things in his life. I think he would be in his late 30s now. He probably works, makes money, does all of that. But the article did mention meth, and that was a problem he had in his youth as well.
Yeah, the Wikipedia link for Up has lots of different items relating to the word, and different shows called that. I think I ran into the bracket link problem here before. I have not heard of the documentary series, but I would like it, it's an interesting premise. How people turn out over the years, I wouldn't necessarily like to be the subject of such a film, but generally I would like to see it for many types of people!
TheCorsair00 wrote:
Shared here:
https://concen.org/node/43512
I know it is a LOT of films...but it is interesting to watch the first one and then even just one of the later ones (I just discovered there was another one in 2019, but I haven't added that to my collection yet)