My Predictions for the New Little House Prairie Series

A few days ago, I heard that Netflix is planning to “reimagine” the Little House on the Prairie series. Based on their long track record of delivering, shall we say, less-than-stellar content, I decided to make some predictions based upon the Netflix track record.

First of all, Ma will be black. She will also be completely smart and capable of doing everything without any character flaws. She'll be better at the "manly" jobs around the farm than Pa, who'll do his fair share of cooking and cleaning (albeit poorly). There will be at least one physical altercation with a man twice her size (who will also bear a striking resemblance to Donald Trump) where she will easily defeat him. Pa will be a likeable doofus, whose ignorance is often on display as the female characters around him put him in his place. He will, however (unlike Michael Landon), have a nice millennial beard.

The Ingalls girls will all be strong, capable, and enlightened. Laura will also be quite snarky, and able to easily do things better than any of the adult male characters. There will be at least one gay character. There will be a female character who looks and dresses like a guy. The townspeople will be made up of a broad range of races and genders. They’ll live in peace and harmony, except for the cis white guys, who always cause trouble. 

Native Americans will play a central role in the series and will be referred to as either “indigenous peoples” or “first nation peoples” by the characters themselves (except for the white guys, who’ll call them “Indians”). These indigenous people will be uniformly strong, noble, and environmentally friendly. They will probably talk to animals. They will have no flaws. They will, however, be attacked and harassed by evil white men, most of whom seem to have a bit of an orange tint to their skin.

Now that I’ve tortured you with my lame attempts at humor, I do have to say that I've noticed that some fans of the original TV series are afraid that this new show will be terrible considering the reputation Netflix has earned. However, it's not like the original Little House  series was exactly historically accurate. You had a bunch of beautiful people with perfect ‘70s hair (oh, those feathered hairdos) and Michael Landon’s curly locks and bare chested studliness, not to mention the ridiculous storylines that threw away 90% of the source material after the first season.

So, it would be really refreshing to see something that's actually somewhat historically accurate. The fact is, white settlers and Native Americans eyed each other with suspicion and fear. I have a friend whose husband is Native, and even he is disgusted by Hollywood portrayals of them as enlightened saints living in harmony with each other. They were indeed quite savage at times–just like the white guys who hunted them down. My own great grandpa had to hide in a swamp with his mom and siblings when Native Americans ventured onto their farm. The Indians (yes, that's what they called them) would come and just take whatever they wanted. Nobody dared mess with them. That's how it actually was. 

I really hope the new series does the books justice and avoids the messaging that has plagued Hollywood in recent years. How about just showing history as it was, not as you think it should’ve been?