Liminality In The Devil's Playground

After watching the film, The Devil’s Playground, it was clear that Turner’s ideas of liminality, communitas, and rituals of status elevation related to the film in various ways. Liminality is the transitional period when individuals began to not support something or lack social status during the rite of passage. Communitas refers to a group of people who shares a common belief or interest, sense of unity, and can also be working towards the same goal. Rituals of status elevation define as ‘life-crisis rituals’ as it raises the individual's position within social structures. The film made clear connections and gives decent examples of Turner’s ideas, with that said the film also helped make the ideas clearer. Liminality plays a huge role in the film discussed above as the main characters in the film all deals with being liminal. During the ages of 16-21 individuals from families who identifies as Amish would be considered as adults. Being an adult would give individuals the opportunity to decide if they would like to continue their family’s traditions and become Amish as …show more content…
Faron was one of the main characters in the film. He was shown as a guy who made poor choices, whether it was drinking, abusing drugs or disobeying his parents. Faron was at the age where he had to make the choice of whether he would be become a member of their Amish church or to live freely of his life. The process, he took in finding who he wants to define Faron as a liminal individual. It shows that he was clearly not a member of the church and he had not done anything successful in his life yet far. During this liminality phase, Faron began to lose his connection to his family because he stated that he would become Amish one day but just not yet. It was the process of him making a permanent transition as he remained