SEPARATION ANXIETIES - Lsu - Louisiana State University

patriarchy and capitalism, as well as examinations of the possible consequences of such
resistance.
In chapter two, I examine works focusing on representations of religious separatism. The
characters and philosophies in these texts are subtler, more insular, and less violent than those
studied in chapter one. These new iterations of separatists and separatism thereby expand
traditional definitions of the terms; though these characters choose to separate themselves from
mainstream America, they reject violence. Their isolation is an important focus for examining
issues of domination and oppression, of belonging, and of American myths. In one text that I
study in this chapter, Peter Weir’s film Witness, a young Amish boy is the only eyewitness to a
murder; the policeman who wishes to protect the boy must enter the Amish community and
pretend to be one of them. The resulting clash of cultures and ideologies is a major issue in the
film and illustrates how differences between dominant and separatist communities can negatively
affect individual members of both, in terms of their interpersonal relationships and how they
function in their respective societies. Yet Weir explores these issues through the lens of the main
“English” character, an outsider who has more in common with the film’s audience than with the
Amish characters that he encounters.
Witness’s separatist community is based on a very specific, real-life group; on the other
hand, in her novel The Rapture of Canaan Sheri Reynolds constructs a fictional separatist
community that is an offshoot of modern-day mainstream Protestantism. 11 The Fire and
Brimstone community is a mixture of Baptist somberness, Pentecostal eagerness, and Puritan
simplicity and severity. This community’s hybridization of other groups’ dogmas ensures that
the Fire and Brimstone characters are as different as possible—in terms of physical appearance,
thought, and belief—from those characters who represent the mainstream community. These
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