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Popular Culture Review
European, non-white people who would have been perceived during the 19lh
century as exotic. Today, this definition expands to include any ethnic group that
is considered to be different. Moreover, the photograph and postcard further
objectify “Others” by presenting them “as static objects, rather than active
subjects who possess the same desires and needs as the viewer.”37
The Amish become the modem day “Other” since their lifestyle is
categorized as different, primitive, and therefore, exotic. The most frequent
Amish postcard themes—farming with mules, riding in buggies, building bams,
or shopping for produce—appear to be authentic images of everyday life, not
exotic events. These apparent uncomplicated aspects of the Amish lifestyle,
however, are truly romanticized by tourists. The postcard photos reinforce this
romanticism. It is the element of “authenticity” that makes the seemingly
quotidian image into something exotic. In “Postcards—Greetings From Another
World,” Elizabeth Edwards explains this complex notion: “Postcards of the
everyday suggest a level of intimacy of experience which appeals directly to the
tourist’s desire for the authentic.”3®Tourists believe that they are experiencing
something historical in a modem world—a quaint lifestyle—making the Amish
“actors” into a kind of agrarian diorama.
The photograph and constructed reality
Postcards are constructed visions that fulfill the fantasies of consumers and
tourists. Historically, the postcard has appealed to popular taste by perpetuating
and reinforcing the previously established aesthetic standards. In short, Amish
postcards are carefully crafted to project a traditional (and predictable) Amish
“image.” In Amish picture postcards, the sky is always blue, the grass is always
green, and the people are always hardworking and happy. These highly idealized
images allow the viewer to replace the Amish individual with a fictional
character. The postcard transforms the Amish into the stereotypical
“Pennsylvania Dutch Amish” or the “Lancaster County Amish” that tourists
have come to expect.
The countryside around Lancaster is a tourist destination well
recognized in promoting the state. Near the population centers
of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and even New York, the Dutch
Country is an easy drive. Modern-day visitors are enthralled
by the covered bridges, horse-drawn buggies, and prosperous
farms operated by the “plain people” without benefit of
gasoline, electricity, or other modem conveniences.39
This benign description from Tom Range’s postcard history on the Amish
(2002) illustrates how even recent literature on the Amish continues to tout
Lancaster County as a utopia that “enthralls” its visitors. Ever since the 1930s
and ’40s, such romantic writing about the region has changed very little from the
earlier National Geographic descriptions of the county when it was called “a
garden spot of America” and the “Land of Milk and Honey.”40