When Amish Kids Go Crazy: A Review of The Devil's Playground

It was a typical college party: beer pong, shiver-inducing games of Never Have I Ever, and mono-infected kisses. There I was, discussing the ins and outs of partying with a girl who drank when someone said "Never have I ever had anal sex". I argued that Rice athletes don't party as hard as they say they do. She countered with an irrelevant but interesting claim: "Wanna know who parties the hardest? The Amish. Friend told me about this documentary. Devils, Devil's, I don't, Devil's something. Anyway, these kids go fucking crazy." I was intrigued. I had always thought of the Amish as a rather chaste and demure group, full of women whose hymens are tougher than my bag gloves and men who flog themselves for eating wine cake. And yet here was the Anal Queen suggesting that I might be wrong. I had to order it.

The Devil's Playground, directed by Lucy Walker, follows several Amish youths as they embark on Rumspringa, a period during which Amish adolescents experience the outside world (i.e. "the devil's playground") for the first time. After completing Rumspringa, which can last for several years, the Amish adolescent is able to make an informed decision about whether to remain Amish or join the damned. The documentary does a good job of showing the dilemma that they face: comfort, familiarity, and security on the one hand, opportunity, fun, and novelty on the other.

And they do indeed have fun. Unfortunately, they do not party any harder than the average frat boy. For a viewer like myself who anticipated gang bangs and intravenous drug use, there was a sharp sense of disappointment. Just binge drinking in pastures, some grab-ass. Only one guy ventures into hard drugs (he becomes a crystal meth user and dealer). The most interesting thing about the film is that they do all this while wearing traditional Amish attire. It is a most incongruous picture, seeing a bonnet-wearing lass drinking a 40.

Overall, the film is decent. For the most part, the Amish interviewees are well-spoken, offering a well-rounded picture of the Amish lifestyle, and even though they don't party like Snoop or the Anal Queen, they party hard enough to justify watching it.