Stereotypes In 'Little House On The Prairie'

Hollywood has created many ideas on life during Manifest Destiny, many of which are based on mainly modern stereotypes and very few accurate facts. In the video clip from “Little House on the Prairie”, many stereotypes are clear. This video is an advertisement for the television show, now on DVD, and is obviously supposed to make you want to buy the DVD version. The clothing the characters wear is a major example of this. Styles such as bonnets, aprons, cowboy hats, and suspenders were all in the video. Society seems to have painted this picture that, no matter the exact time period, females in history always wore bonnets and aprons. This is interesting, because while mainly true, this is also a major stereotype that people seem to imagine.

Combined with suspenders, which are part of the stereotypical miner’s outfit, this definitely is a hodgepodge of stereotypes put on the male characters of “Little House on the Prairie” to fit today’s expectations. Another example of stereotypes seen in this video is how the setting is consistently wide open spaces filled with tall grass, and a log cabin which conveniently have a large attic for the children to sleep in. The open fields of grassland is the typical idea of a prairie to a person, which is a given considering the title of the show is “Little House on the Prairie”. The log cabin is what society would often picture a family living in during Manifest Destiny, when in reality people typically lived in houses made of buffalo chips (buffalo dung that has been burnt and dried). The large attic is also strange, considering the size of the house, but that will be later expanded on. The next stereotype is sort of miscellaneous, however equally important. The main characters seem to have a mild obsession with the idea of “home”, which eventually will cause some people to

At the beginning of the list would be the casting choices, particularly Johnny Depp, a white American male, playing a Native American, despite him having no Native heritage himself. This is something that has been questioned regularly by people watching the movie, and it honestly boils down to that racism still exists today, and the whitewashing of films, while less frequent, still happens. Native Americans were slaughtered in Manifest Destiny in cases like the Trail of Tears, with a myriad of other tragedies enforced by the United States Government. Having a white person playing a Native American can help reinforce the stereotypes, mainly because the actor will be less aware of the unintentional harm that they are inflicting. “The Lone Ranger” also has the issue of guns randomly being shot off in the middle of a town, not dissimilar to “Wild Wild West”. As previously stated, it isn’t likely that a successful society was started by people who don’t even understand gravity. The typical tools were used, such as handguns with rotating bullets for accuracy. While the randomly shooting guns are probably supposed to give an exciting and uncontrollable edge to the movie, it really is just stereotypical and expected at a certain point. The older looking town, salons, environment, and setting in general were also very similar to “Wild Wild West”.