Beloved ‘Little House on the Prairie’ faces wagonload of ‘woke’ allegations over Netflix reboot
Netflix’s newly released "Little House on the Prairie" reboot is facing claims it has turned the beloved story into a politically correct overhaul, with the show’s creator addressing "woke" concerns.
The eight-episode season premiered on Thursday to generally favorable reviews, sitting at a 75% critic score but a less enthusiastic 58% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, accusations of the show being "woke" flew before it even aired, and now the creator and showrunner of the reboot, Rebecca Sonnenshine, is pushing back, saying people are "worried for no reason."
"I’m not even sure what ‘woke’ means to people anymore, to be honest," Sonnenshine told Variety. "I know what I think it means, which is the definition of it being aware and alert to social injustice and prejudice, in particular racial prejudice. So, when people say, ‘I hope it’s not woke,’ I think, ‘Really? Oh, that’s interesting.’ But I don’t think people are using it in that manner."
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"I think it’s just become a catch-all word for things that I don’t quite understand. If I had to sum it up, what people are afraid of is that something from their childhood will be portrayed in a way that scares them," she added.
The show is based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s "Little House" books and follows the legacy of the original TV series, which ran in the 1970s and lasted for nearly a decade. It centers around the Ingalls family as they leave Wisconsin to create a new homestead near Independence, Kansas, on the 1800s frontier.
Some television critics have accused the show of sanitizing the premise and presenting a less-rugged view of the time period. A television critic at Slate noted that Netflix "did indeed woke-ify" the show, writing that the family’s new close friends are "an Osage couple, a Black doctor and Black storekeeper, and a French Canadian woman who wears trousers and practices free love."
But Sonnenshine insists the show is intent on "exploring some interesting issues," and told Variety, "I think conservative people are really interested in Native American stories, honestly. When people watch the show, it’s like, ‘We want to know more about the [mixed-race Osage family] Mitchells,’ and that’s kind of across the board."
"I think that they’ll really like it. I think people just are afraid of whatever they’re afraid of, and that’s OK. But I honestly think that there’s nothing to be afraid of, and it’s a story that will really resonate with everybody," she added.
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When the reboot was announced, some conservative commentators were concerned about the show’s reimagining of the beloved storyline. This prompted Melissa Gilbert, who starred in the show for nine seasons, to respond on Threads that the original was also "woke."
"Ummm…watch the original again. TV doesn’t get too much more ‘woke’ than we did. We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse and every other ‘woke’ topic you can think of. Thank you very much," Gilbert wrote.
Fox News Digital reached out to Netflix for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
