Amish Mafia: When Reality TV Finally Jumped the Shark
Move over Honey Boo Boo. Now somebody calling himself Lebanon Levi, a kind of Amish Tony Soprano, has arrived for his 15 minutes of fame. From the show’s official description:
Untrusting of outside law enforcement, some Amish in Lancaster County, PA have for many years regularly turned to a small organized group of men for protection and justice. A sneak peek of Discovery’s new series Amish Mafia, which provides a first-ever look at the men who protect and maintain peace and order within the Amish community in Lancaster, will air Tuesday, December 11 at 10:30 PM ET/PT. The series will premiere Wednesday, December 12 at 9:00PM ET/PT.
The 2006 School shootings in Lancaster County during which five young Amish girls were killed and five more seriously injured by a non-Amish milk truck driver brought to the nation’s attention the vulnerabilities of the Amish community, and their need for continued protection.
When you think of the Amish, buggies, bonnets, peace and simplicity come to mind. In the historic Amish settlement of Lancaster, protection and “peace” can come at a price.
Lebanon Levi is the Amish insider who holds the power and serves as protector of the community for a price. He exists above the law and occupies the role of police, judge and jury. Levi’s team engages in a life outside of Amish and non-Amish community codes as he quietly exerts his influence and control. Levi’s brand of order is precise as he seeks to keep outside forces from infiltrating the Amish community, while keeping the principles and morality within the community in check.
Levi’s team is lean and fearless. Alvin is Levi’s right hand man and nobody gets to Levi without going through Alvin first. A lifelong friend, Alvin is at first glance an average passive Amish community member. However, he has a dark side, a past, and most importantly, Levi’s complete trust. Alvin will protect Levi at any cost.
At the beginning of every episode of Amish Mafia the producers admit that they utilize “select reenactments” in order to protect the innocent Amish. One need not watch much of the show to realize that everything is a reenactment and the documentary approach is just an aesthetic style. (Otherwise everyone involved in the show would be in jail as accessories to crimes. Stores depicted as “under Lebanon Levi’s protection” on the show make a big joke of it in real life.)
When “Reality TV” first began to rise in popularity more than a decade ago shows offered the thrill of supposedly “real people” overcoming real challenges out in the real world — not predictable, fictional characters in familiar scenarios with laugh tracks. But Amish Mafia amounts to little more than a sitcom shot in documentary style.
The show’s success speaks to culturally secular America’s continued need to wallow in criminality, the fantasy of vigilante justice, and the subversive thrill of blurring the sacred and the profane. If even a pious people like the Amish can’t get by without a corrupt thug-in-chief like Lebanon Levi to dispense his own brand of “justice,” then what hope is there for the rest of us?
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More on reality TV at PJ Lifestyle:
You couldn’t tell from the effing commercials that it was scripted?!
It’s pretty obvious. Even the show that preceded it on Discovery, “Moonshiners” is obviously scripted. No way would a film crew avoid legal troubles by filming people distilling without a permit. Just like no real “Moonshiner” would willingly be filmed breaking the law. It would be the same as filming a bank robber in the act of robbing a bank.
Although Sister Wives also has this issue.
The cable people are smarter than given credit for. They understand very well, how to capitalize financially, on the majority of todays society who live in the worlds of delusion and fantasy. If you’re reading this, you won’t have to make many clicks of your mouse to witness this reality.
Infidel! Next you will utter falsehoods against Wresteling!!! This shall not stand!
“Wrestling” is crap. Now, rasslin’, on the other hand…
Watched the first episode, it was so obviously “reenactments” of stories that may or may not have any factual basis. Haven’t watched it since. Reminds me of that horrible Chasing Mummies show, and I hope this lasts just as long.
From Mythbusters to Amish Mafia? Even the allegedly “educational” channels have gone downhill.
Exactly…what precisely does “Honey BooBoo” have to do with either learning or educational/informative programming? Other than how not to parent your kids, that is…
It’s no longer calling itself The Learning Channel. The new name is simply TLC. Basically, they’ve thrown in the towel.
T = totally
L = laughable
C = crap
The Lean Channel…….. sizzurp…..XD………..
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lean
Look at how low reality TV was fallen.
I recall when you had class acts like Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone’s vault.
“I recall when you had class acts like Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone’s vault.”
Now that here is funnay!
Moral of that story is: Sometimes, the fallin keep crawlin
Can’t imagine why anybody would give GR any attention but then everybodys has a right to if he’s the kind of idol they seek.
Geeze…. gotta’ wipe down my monitor… it doesn’t like coffee. That was a good one…….
As someone from the general area, it’s complete BS.
It’s like someone saw the stories from years back about a couple of Amish drug dealers (those actually do exist), and decided they could somehow extrapolate that out into some ridiculous Witness-meets-The-Sopranos BS.
You know, I’m beginning to the the Wild, Wild West wasn’t neither wild, wild or even just wild.
What relation does this have to the topic at hand? Probably nothing, but “Amish Mafia” is an oxymoron.
I live in an are with a large Amish population. The one’s in my area are very traditional, not like some of the fake Amish in the Lancaster, PA area who dress up like the Amish to make money off of the tourist industry there (but even the fake one’s usually have beards). I am sure some people decide to leave the amish culture and get swept up in criminal behavior (as anyone from any culture could) but at that point I think they would be shunned. On one hand you have intolerant urbanites criticizing the Amish for the practice of shunning, then you have them making up bullshit about Amish mafias. Perhaps there is good reason for shunning. Their culture would rapidly disintegrate without it. They allow them to come back with open arms and forgiveness when they are willing to follow the rules of the culture, so what is the problem?
I agree with you; it’s similar to the Jewish process of cherem (so-called excommunication). Without this, how could we get a recalitrant spouse to give his wife a religious divorce when she is entitled to one? (And vice-versa, by the way.) It’s freedom of speech and association, and the rest of the world can mind its own business. The Amish are not a tourist attraction and should be left alone.
Strange referring to Lancaster (often pronounced LAHN-cis-tir) as an “AMish settlement. It’s a small city in PA, which has the distinction of having been the capital of the US for one day. (Also has one of the few Orthodox synagogues in central PA.) Are there two Lancasters, or do they mean “near Lancaster”?
One question. When we lived in Harrisburg (next county over, as you know), we visited an “Amish farm” which gave an Amish family (non-oldest-son) a place to farm and work in return for letting tourists see the place. The tourist guide was a lady who seemed to know Amish personally, and gave – well, to me, as a religious Jew – reasonable explanations for the customs. I found it fascinating, although I suspect she found some of my questions (do they touch when dancing? Do they hitch the horse and cow together?) strange.
Do you think this was authenitic? It seemed to be.
P.S. How do you tell an Amish man from a Chasid? The Amish shave the moustache.
(There are of course various degrees of Amish (“black bumper” to “car”, I believe) and many other groups of “plain people” in the area.)
Sad to see my sanctuary from BSTV is filling up with this kind of made up crap. Deadly Catch has been my favorite for some time – can’t fake that! Gold Rush is pretty interesting but I wonder how much of the tension between the crew is manufactured. Shark Week – can’t fake the footage – sometimes the same scenes are shown on different shows with the narrative changed.
Haven’t watched Amish Mafia – I damned near shot my coffee out through my nose when I saw the first commercial for it. I thought “yeah – right!”. I suspect if you messed with the Amish much you’d end up as pig shit. Vanished without a trace. Lets hope manufactured shows like this end up with the same fate.
Reality TV has not ‘jumped the shark’. It has plenty more shark where that came from.
These reality shows – all of them – are about as real as a soap opera. Sorry Paleo-Conservative, but I include Deadly Catch in that category as well. Don’t think those scenes can be faked? Watch the film “The Perfect Storm.” All those scenes of the Andrea Gail getting tossed about in the ocean, and eventually capsizing, were done on a sound stage or on a computer. Looks very real, but it is still fake nonetheless.
Perhaps I am not the best person to be commenting on this, as I have become very cynical about virtually everything on TV, especially these idiotic reality shows. I still ask myself a simple question about these shows – would the characters on these programs act this way if they didn’t have camera crews following them around 24/7? And I keep coming back to the same response – no, they wouldn’t. That being the case, they are all fake.
I suppose by your estimation we never sat foot on the moon either. Just because something CAN be faked doesn’t mean it is. At any rate a nephew of mine was an Alaskan fisherman for 15 years – according to him that ‘show’ depicts perfectly how it is during crab season. He watches it and ‘knows’ its real.
It would be cheaper to put film crews onboard a real crab boat than to fake everything in a studio and computer animation – which by the way is discernible from real scenes in case you didn’t know. Computer animation isn’t that good – yet.
And my nephew knew a couple of those guys personally. For what its worth…
Reality TV is low-cost TV. No way are the producers of those shows going to be paying for special effects like those in movies such as _The Perfect Storm_. Not to say that they are otherwise realistic. They aren’t.
I’ve channel-surfed by _Amish Mafia_ and watched it for a few minutes. I see it as a way someone has come up with to demean and diminish the Amish.
What ? ?
Soap Opera TV is NOT real ?
Who’d a thought !
I, too am very skeptical about these shows, however, I think one has to be a very hearty soul to be on a crab ship in the cold Bering Sea in 30 degree temps with waves crashing on you. I wouldn’t last an hour with those conditions. Most other shows are bogus and I will know in 5 minutes if I want to view them. I have a feeling I would turn off Amish Mafia in 5 minutes because I want to view the Amish as one of the remaining cultures that has a good standard of morality in this country.
mzk,
You are confusing Amish and Mennonite. My hometown area has lots of the latter, and I’ve dealt with quite a few Amish in shops and markets. I really hate this tendency to treat them like freaks. They are preserving a rural lifestyle that is far more authentic than the back to nature greenies. Why would anyone hitch a cow and horse together? Maybe you should visit some more farms to understand more about rural life.
@ 11. vb
The reference is biblical — Deuteronomy 22:10 :
“Do not hitch an ox and a donkey together for plowing.”
I’ve long since stopped watching They History Channel, Discovery and the Learning Channel as they’ve stopped actually showing anything worth watching. I loved them in the beginning as they had some great programing. But since they’ve switched to bad “entertainment” they’re just not worth it anymore.
I’ve totally given up on The Learning Channel. I still watch Pawn Stars and American Restoration, but that’s about it and even those shows are getting so scripted it’s painful to watch.
I might give History’s new The Bible series a watch and pray they don’t sneak some alien astronaut in there.
The show is a reflection of what we have become … ugly.
Speak for your self!! WE!, have NOT become ugly!! A certain segment of our society is what they have always been. If you identify with them you have a right, but leave me and mine out!
Reality TV is the final choking breath of a dying culture. It gurgles with relativism, narcissism, infantilism and spits out decadence and putrid superficiality. R.I.P. America
By the way, did anyone else notice that the MSM in their litany of every school shooting in responding to Sandy Hook failed to mention the Amish school shooting? Could it be because the families of the children chose to forgive the shooter, a simple act of faith and love with which the MSM is unfamiliar? Or is it because the purity of the act terrifies them?
I actually stopped watching television and yanked my cable. Why are conservati es paying money to support trash that treat you like trash? Boycott Hollywood where it matters to them; in the wallet.
I agree 100%.
But why the 30+ conservative / libertarian governors and controlled legislatures don’t force the cable companies to provide ‘a la carte’ service, i’ll never understand (maybe they enjoy the cable monopoly’s donations too much…). But a la carte service would do more to discipline the far left media companies than anything else – we’d win the culture war, because the leftist organs we’re forced to purchase to acquire the 1 out of 30 decent cable channels these days would die or reform quickly, to serve the American audience. As it is, centrist and right / individualist leaning Americans, the vast majority, are forced to purchase packages that includes MSNBC, Current TV, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and all the other crap-tastic leftist organs, in effect subsidizing those hippy-dippy dopes that have so degraded America…
enough already – call you State representatives and demand action….
Fight the cable monopoly and the rent seeking leftist channels we’re forced to subsidize through the cable companies!
I unhooked my cable over two years ago. Between streaming netflix, hulu and amazon prime I can see just about everything I want for less than 1/4 of what I was paying for cable.
I just find Hollywierd’s conceptions of “reality” to be amazing.
Oh, and “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” are REAL??? “Reality TV” has been awful for a long time, the amazing thing is that it keeps finding new depths to plumb!
America has long suffered a hostile takeover of progressive liberalism and socialist communism. Once the liberals got a claw-hold, they opened the flood gates, granting access to every vile, putrid, bloodthirsty, america hating, criminal element known to man. The saddest part is that we let it happen.
I just saw on the news that Al-Jazeera TV just bought out Current TV and intends on becoming Al-Jazeera America, -Al Jazeera buys Al Gore’s Current TV – CNN.com
“By acquiring Current TV, Al Jazeera will significantly expand our existing distribution footprint in the U.S., as well as increase our newsgathering and reporting efforts in America,” Al Jazeera Director General Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani said in a news release. “We look forward to working together with our new cable and satellite partners to serve our new audiences across the U.S.”
When groups who support terrorists and promote our destruction, buy out our television channels, it is well past time for revolution.
We just continue to assimilate.
Make that “Al Gore-zeera?”
They canceled “Dirty Jobs” for this crap?
I’ll start watching “Survivor” when loosing contestants are carried off in body bags. Until then, the show is obviously faked.
I watched the first couple of episodes of Amish Mafia. I got a good laugh when I saw the “enforcer” go to the home of a guy that supposedly hit a neighborhood buggy.
I assume this was one of their “reenactments” because, for one, the damage of the buggy and car didn’t match up. Also, because the “enforcer” was able to walk to his truck, get a shotgun, shoot the window of the car, and WALK back to his truck.
Most other cases, the “enforcer” would be lucky to still be alive, let alone still walk.
I’ve recently moved into an Amish area in the South. Even though I’m called “English”, they know better than to come to my home like that.
Amish Mafia is an ok drama series. When they started sending “enforcers” to talk to a neighbor to an Amish about how she hangs her “undergarments”, that was a little much.
I tend to believe the majority of people will tell them mind their own damn business. This is MY property and I’ll do as I damn well please.
Be careful out there among those Lancaster Amish…
That sure is a nice butter churn you got there. Be an awful shame if something happened to it.
the Amish mafia doesn’t carry guns, they carry scissors and they will cut your beard off.
“But Amish Mafia amounts to little more than a sitcom shot in documentary style.”
Pretty much one persons opinion!
“…need to wallow in criminality…”
Criminality is pretty much the reality of todays american society across all socioeconomic lines and religions.
I guess I miss one or more points of the topic as presented. Does Levi and his boys and their show, somehow have less freedoms and rights than some others whose genral and broad opinions differ? How is the reality of social and religious decay in America, somehow just a sitcom?
Seems to me that far to many of the “righteous’ folks points fingers at far to many others, rather than at themselves, who are equally flawed, albeit in differing ways.
I live in the Amish area of Lancaster county and find the premise of this show absolutely ridiculous. It can only exist in the mind of the TV addled minds of the American public. The Amish are a peaceful people who live their lives as well as they can according to their religious beliefs. They are not without sin but they certainly make good neighbors. I grew up in Philadelphia and I saw the brutality and violence of the Irish mafia which controls the unions and the democrat party and would much rather have an Amish neighbor than one of these Irish goons living next to me. The fact that the TV industry is controlled by the present regime of the American World State also leads to a suspicion that this is part of the Obama/Biden war on Christians. BTW Joe Biden is a bona fide member of the Irish mafia and brags about it all the time.
I live on the heart of an old order, hard-core, Amish Farming Community. Best neighbors and friends I could ask for. Great sense of humor with a good ribbing for each other constantly. We have laughed together so hard at times I could not catch my breath. Their life style is comfortable and efficient with a good pace for one’s health. We ourselves keep a buggy and driving horse for short distances to travel. Our Percheron teams we drive for ranch chores and do not go broke with the diesel prices. Wait till the dictator-in-chief pulls the plug on the grid to enhance his EO power play. The non-electric Amish will not be hurting like the electricity dependent non Amish (English) community. Our youngest daughter enjoys the kids as they all play outside together games that entertained us as kids without some electronic technology. My friends are not as pious nor judgmental as most of our Southern Baptist neighbors are. The Amish will give you a glass of really good home made wine and pop open a can of beer with you too. No having to take two Amish on a fishing trip to keep one from drinking all the beer as with some other temporite religions.
What a bunch of fiction that show at the expense of the Amish. They have no clue how farbie they look and act. Those characters and the script writers are idiots! No where near accurate or reality. The actors do not even look like Amish!
They can bash the Amish all they want knowing the Amish do not believe in or condone suing anyone. This includes malicious ramming of a buggy transporting women and children by a bully driver operating a motor vehicle. Very tolerant folks they are.
A while back I posted part of an article released professing that “people are less intelligent today than our ancestors” (paraphrased). I would say that at least our main stream media folks that come up with this sort of trash prove the report’s claims. I would include those that watch this sort of tripe in that same group. Get a life people…. read a book, go for a walk, just get the hell away from the “boob tube” (“boob tube” does NOT refer to any part of the female anatomy in this case, just in case anyone that watches these programs) needs clarification). Gotta’ be specific nowadays.
“people are less intelligent today than our ancestors”
Indeed, that is true!
One of the most educated societies of the world today and I call them educated morons. The can’t fix stuff. They can’t build stuff. The can’t modify and improve stuff. Overweight and lazy. Suffer from many addictions and phobia’s.
Live in worlds of delision and fantasy. But hey, they all got a wall full of sheepskins!
Pot calls kettle black.
“…..At the beginning of every episode of Amish Mafia the producers admit that they utilize “select reenactments” in order to protect the innocent Amish. One need not watch much of the show to realize that everything is a reenactment and the documentary approach is just an aesthetic style…….”
Another piece of quality entertainment fro the Discovery Channel. Same modus operandi………
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/moonshiners