Reply to Little House on the Prairie Reboot!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I HATED the Anne of Green Gables reboot and I'm sure the Little House one will also be an abomination.  My prediction is that Laura will make friends with the Native Americans and the new storyline will involve her fighting social injustice on the prairie.

Yes, the original Pa is a drifter and kind of selfish, and Ma is racist, and Almanzo is also kind of selfish and not a good husband: the real Laura had a sad, hard life.  But I think it is interesting and important to preserve all of those elements, to see the experience of someone from that era and what they believed to show where we started from.  I'm not interested in Woke on the Prairie, which is what this will be, no doubt.[/quote]

I loved the original books.  One of the main reasons was because it was about one real girl and her very strong POV.  She had a lot of adventures and experiences even while admitting her looks and behavior weren't perfect.  Without reference to the show characters (which diverged from the books), it's still clear that Laura felt that Mary was the better-behaved sister.

As an adult, I came to learn that African-American parents didn't approve of the books and I looked up info about the racist elements of the books.  Mainly there's a minstrel show that Pa participates in, the family is afraid of Native Americans, and there are points of conflict about Native American taking stuff from them.  As a kid, I understood the Ingalls' family's fears and I didn't really absorb negative messages about races from this.  After all, white people also steal from each other and have conflicts over land.  I did learn as an adult that Pa was an illegal squatter on treaty territory...and that is less honestly covered in the books.  However, history also teaches that white settlers moved into lands settled by Native Americans and took possession of them.  What's more in focus in the books is just the daily life of a colonist/farming child. They are not supposed to be didactic sociological treatises.

Overall my dominant impression is of a story of one woman's life from toddler age to birth of her own children.  The anecdotes I remember best are about old-fashioned objects and processes.  Like pouring maple syrup on snow to make a taffy.  Or having a doll made out of a corn cob.  And the story of how Almanzo met her and singled her out for courting.  That's the first romantic storyline I ever read.  She plays up his bravery and solicitude at various points.  I don't think she found him selfish.

So...Will I watch this new show?  Probably not.  Because I agree it looks woke.  And Laura's family were not.  I don't like when things are modernized to gloss over original stories or new characters are invented for plot purposes.  These were real people and you can still visit many of their home sites.  Most of the books were historically true (Laura did fictionalize some things...including omitting a baby brother who died).  It seems wrong to make a new show with fake content.  That pretty much is why I didn't like the 1970s show...it had a lot of fake content, episode plots, and characters.  And those were usually the cringiest storylines.[/quote]

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