It’s easy to romanticize or fetishize the Amish. They’re either an ethereal, spiritual cult, or a goose-stepping oppressive society—or even just a convenient foil for our own dilemmas about American modernity. Ergo our reality-TV infatuation with rumspringa and those who break with the Amish community. (See TLC’s “Breaking Amish,” or The Discovery Channel’s “Amish Mafia.”)
But how are we supposed to get to know them if most observant Amish don’t allow themselves to be filmed or photographed? I assumed the latest American Experience documentary, provocatively titled The Amish: Shunned, would fall into the same trap.
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