I was thinking of reblogging @queen0fm0nsterz ‘s post about this, but I feel like it’d be better if I just make a separate one instead. (Carols you did such a great job as always 🙏🙏 I just wanna add to the conversation lmao)
Anyways, the idea of Femininity and Masculinity being tackled in the Little Nightmares franchise makes my brain tingle, but definitely not something I was initially aware of until it was brought up; especially in the way it subverts expectations– while at the same time, tackling the very toxic stereotypes that our society has come to place upon every individual.
With The Lady and The Thin Man being the strongest contenders of this example, to the point that even their names contains feminine and masculine terms.
On a misogynistic point of view, when you think of a lady, you think of someone soft. Vulnerable, caring, weak, approachable. But The Lady appears to be anything but those terms. She subverts the expectations of what is established to be a woman, a geisha, by being cold, sharp and unforgiving. Anything alive that dares stumble upon her quarters are to be punished. A strong independent business mogul of a booming empire in the sea, her faceless appearance capable of being worshipped as a Goddess by those who idolize her.
Yet behind closed doors, when she takes off the mask… we see a glimpse of The Lady’s fears, of the very weakness she so desperately hides; a crack in her carefully crafted and vain facade. Her own self. Her buried and lost identity. And it’s even more prominent when Six finally enters the scene; she is literally forced to weaken herself. To give the little girl in the yellow raincoat a fighting chance, because of the ritualistic passing of the torch to the next successor.
To be killed and consumed in the hands of a starving, filthy little child.
All in all; it’s an ultimate “fuck you” to The Lady, who’s spent her whole life climbing to the top, making herself the apex predator, only to be forced to lower herself to such weakness at the very end of her life because of forces beyond her own control, like how women in real life are expected to submit.
Then, when you think of a man, you think strong. Muscular, fierce, broad, confident, immovable.
The Thin Man also appears to be anything but those things. He is scrawny and lanky, his frowning face hidden behind the shadows of his hat, his bad posture looks as if he is curling in on himself or falling apart; he is so overly emotional that even his surroundings are affected by it.
He subverts the expectation by being a recluse, frail and flexible; but also needing companionship so badly that he KIDNAPS A RANDOM CHILD WHO JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE WEARING HIS FRIEND’S RAINCOAT, yet also stereotypes himself into being selfish, stubborn, intimidating, and all-powerful man who never changes his ways despite being constantly proven wrong.
His stubborn mindset comes at par when he is facing down with his younger self; Mono. When Mono makes a rescue attempt, he is IMMEDIATELY GOING AFTER HIM. Stopping at NOTHING, even when met with countless obstacles that would’ve already deterred an ordinary monster. It even comes to the point where they come to a standoff on the streets in front of the Signal Tower, which proves to be his ultimate demise. Because he has the constant need to keep going after Mono, to crush his younger self for daring to try and stand against him, he ultimately fails because Mono is stronger, younger and has raw, uncapped power compared to his weakening state. Even when he is about to fade away from existence he STILL wants to crush Mono, until he physically collapses in on himself.
Men are expected to be idols, “Alpha male” role models if they’re a successful individual, but The Thin Man is incredibly obscure. You don’t even get to see him in the beginning of LN2, during Mono’s nightmare sequence. In fact, I doubt his viewers even know of him, they just know his broadcasts. He’s regarded to be the boogeyman of LN. He even submits to what he assumes his "friend" wants; giving her TONS of dolls, toys and even a new pair of shoes just so she'd stay. Whether or not he was the one to give her the music box is still debatable.
He’s a no one, a nobody. Just a battery to an eldritch being.
If you think it stops there, oh no. We’re not done.
- The Hunter; we see his taxidemized family– Resident Evil VII reference aside– posed to be having a lovely family dinner. We don’t even know if it’s his actual family, or it’s just some random unfortunate souls who happen to have found themselves in the clutches of The Hunter. It’s even to the point that The Hunter HIMSELF is taxidermized– bits of cotton sticking on his shoulder and waist, possibly so he could feel like he’s a part of the “family”.
The way he subverts the trope of a Huntsman being a recluse, lone wolf, yet at the same time stereotyping himself to be one, and being a whole lot more trigger happy than your local redneck? Horrifyingly well executed. He built himself a community and even changed himself to conform into it, but his stubbornness caused his end.
- The Teacher, who surrounds herself with fake ceramic children– as empty, and shallow as their thinking, to teach useless lessons that no one in the class can even comprehend. As far as we know, she’s the only adult in the School, and yes, I’m not counting the Principal because he’s only shown in the concept art.
Imagine. One teacher. Hundreds of students. Despite the presence of countless little shits, she’s STILL alone and isolated trying to be independent, because these aren’t even REAL CHILDREN that she’s teaching for. She isn’t given the chance to die like the other male antagonists of LN2, she just continues on like nothing because death would be an easy out.
- The Doctor, who crawls on the ceiling because he’s a doctor; a higher being who would rather not walk on the same floor as his patients. Yet still caters to their wants of body modifications, because without his patients, what use would there be of a Doctor in the first place.
Whenever his work is disrupted in the slightest, he goes on a raging rampage; flipping shelves and stacks of beds, attempting to crush the little vermins who ruined his craft to the point of chasing them inside of a cremation furnace, again– stubbornness causes his downfall.
- The Janitor, stuck in the bowels of The Maw to do every job, even taking care care and watching the captive children in The Prison.
He holds a lot of objects with sentimental values, even carved a wooden statue of a Nome that the Runaway Kid can throw in the flames of the Maw’s engine. When he captures a protagonist, he’s very gentle, only really snapping his neck and limbs to stretch and adjust his posture. In the end, he is forced to wrap up the very same children he takes care of, to be sent to the kitchen for the feast. His arms are taken from him, and he bleeds to death all alone because he was too insistent when he could’ve just left a cornered Six alone.
- The Twin Chefs have each other. They’re so in sync, that they’re practically conjoined to the hip, that even promotional material shows them literally being that way.
Despite the mountainous task of cooking for hundreds of Guests, they are able to achieve this because they have each other’s backs. They both survive Six’s clutches despite their stubbornness, yes, but they’re also both stuck in the Kitchen to keep cooking for customers every day, every year, ‘till the rest of their lives.
The way Little Nightmares handles Femininity, and Masculinity is definitely a fascinating subject, and to think that we got this level of detail from Little Nightmares 1 DURING APRIL OF 2017. You know? The time when the world was still on edgy humor, and misogynistic point of views were still widely accepted to be valid, because it could be passed off as dark humor? It's a rather insane amount of detail that makes Little Nightmares this horrifying, and twisted view of our own reality; exaggerated to the utmost degree of course, yet scares us not just because of it's effective monster designs, but also because of how it shows a glimpse of an ugly truth hidden in plain sight in our society.
My head still kinda hurts, and maybe I can word this better if I spend a few days workshopping it (especially since I haven't even included the kids in this post) but this is just some of my current thoughts on the topic.
