American Experience: The Amish: Shunned DVD

If you want to see what a superior production - on any topic, in any genre - looks like, watch this show. You will learn more about the Amish than you ever thought you knew, but you will also learn about quiet courage, and quiet intolerance. You will learn more about unnecessary loss and pain, about what we humans can do to each other - even the ones we most love - when we begin to think there is only way to righteousness, and love, and truth. But you will also see how well a story can be told when the creator of it gets out of the way, and lets the characters involved speak through their own words, and quiet day to day actions. There is grace throughout this production, the grace you see when you look quietly and closely and with deep respect at all the parties and places involved. The camera views are like a gift to us - it turns the ordinary into moments of extraordinary beauty, simplicity, meaning and preciousness. It is remarkable. Truly, through this camera we see the beauty and preciousness of things that a quicker, louder, more documentary or dramatic show would not be able to. I love PBS. I have seen many productions of so many kinds, on so many topics. this one was unique, and has enriched me in ways I never expected. Sometimes I put it on late at night and just watch again, the individual people struggling with the harsh reality of intolerance, of being cast aside because they saw a different way to the same good place. Each is a GOOD person, but each is cast aside completely and permanently for not following the one path. I watch it because of the simple views it gives us of ordinary people in ordinary lives, and the way in which the camera makes each thing beautiful. Almost like seeing the unique moments of life through the eyes of someone dying, through the eyes of someone who can see the beauty in every single ordinary things. Truly, if you are writing an essay, painting a picture, writing a story, making a film, watch this and learn just how much can be done when the writer/painter/director steps back and just focuses a careful, caring lens on the ordinary all around us. Remarkably beautiful, deeply caring and so fundamentally respectful. I doubled my PBS donation after seeing this one show.

I grew up as a Jehovahs Witness, left the faith, and have been shunned three times. This account, though through the Amish, is a very accurate telling of the impact on shunning on all sides ... with special emphasis on the people that leave. There is not one stroke of bitterness throughout, which I think is important. Rather, it exposes the harsh reality, brokenness, and needless tragic end that many families suffer because of this practice. This would be an important film both in terms of understanding the affects of shunning, and also to help those that have been shunned to recover from their loss.

Ultra Strict Father Morality.Rewards and Punishments. Tough Love. Proven by cognitive science to be very harmful to a childs emotional development.

Ultra Strict Father Morality.Rewards and Punishments. Tough Love. Proven by cognitive science to be very harmful to a childs emotional development.