READY OR NOT (2019) | Why We Protect the Systems That Hurt Us

Ryan Does: Okay, everyone, ready to jump into our conversation about Ready or Not, the hide and seek horror movie that I just didn't see coming. And for this conversation, I invited my friend Rebecca to give her expertise, ⁓ her knowledge, her experience on this topic, and ⁓ how ready or not connected with her. But Rebecca, I want to know a little bit about you, share with listeners what work you're involved with, what you find yourself doing, and ⁓ The first time you were introduced to the movie Ready or Not. So my name is Rebecca Lynn. I'm on Instagram as Rebecca Lynn Writes. Currently, I am on the board of the New Evangelicals. If people are familiar with that nonprofit, we're a digital first nonprofit working ⁓ at the intersections of faith and justice and finding a better path forward in love. So I do a lot of work with the new evangelicals right now. I also am going to school to get my doctorate in social transformation. But most excitingly, recently I was officially ordained with the Curian Network as an ordained minister. So now I go by Reverend Rebecca Lynn. I go Yeah, that's been really, really fun. So I would consider myself, you know, I I want to be a public theologian. That's kind of my goal. So that's what I'm doing. The role or the the the movie Ready or Not, my you know, I think I saw it when it first released on Netflix, whenever that would have been. ⁓ Because I remember watching it in my living room for the first time a couple of years ago and I remember loving it then and I'm so glad that I got to watch it again because this is what happens to me. I watch a movie and I think it's really good and then I forget about it entirely and then I can watch it again like I've never seen it before. So I got to watch it again. That happens to me too. And it was ⁓ similar like with these more like modern movies, I find that I I didn't like le I don't I don't have a big build up. These movies. It's like I see it and I'm like, it's an interesting concept. I want to know more about that concept. And I remember seeing the trailer for this when it came out multiple years ago and thinking, if hide and seek involved satanic rituals, like what is this? And I remember getting ready for a series of these conversations and wanting to do one about how do we fight class inequality and what you know the Difference between wealthy and poor people and ready or not kept coming up. And I saw Samara Weaving, awesome, Adam Brody, I love Adam Brody, and Andy McDowell. I know. The cast is fantastic. And sitting down to watch this for the first time, it was a different kind of horror movie because it was ⁓ very, very timely. Rebecca, I think that's fair to say. It's timely, even though it came out multiple years ago. And there is a sequel coming out very soon that will continue the story. But before we jump into our discussion, which ⁓ we have a fantastic discussion ready for you, listener, talking about how we fight systems, mainly patriarchal systems, and how the the messiness of it kind of tends to eat up people who are viewed as lesser. So we have a great conversation ready for you, but I want to share. A few details with you before we jump into our conversation with Rebecca about Ready or Not. This movie came out August 1st of 2019 to the US wider audience. It was directed by Matt Bedinelli Open and Tyler Gillett. It stars Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Andy McDowell, and a few others. Those were the three names that jumped out to me most significantly from other things that they've done. And the story goes like this. On her wedding night, a young bride named Grace is thrilled to join the eccentric and immensely wealthy Les Damas family at their secluded estate. To be officially initiated, she must participate in a mandatory tradition where she draws a card to play a game. Unknowingly, she selects the rare and lethal hide and seek card. She soon discovers that the ritual is a literal hunt where her in-laws must sacrifice her before dawn to uphold a centuries old satanic pact that preserves their fortune, just like like any wedding that happens. Yeah, I thought that was normal. What follows is a brutal struggle for survival as Grace transforms from terrified victim into a defiant warrior, dismantling the family's elite pretenses, one blood soaked encounter at a time. So Blood soaked, very important here. This is a gore fest of a movie. And it serves as this kind of like bloodbath parable about extreme wealth inequality that is very obvious from the beginning of the film, where the haves literally hunt the have-nots to maintain the status that they have. The Damas family views their extreme wealth as a gift that they have to protect at any cost. So, Rebecca, how does the story expose? The way elite patriarchal systems, in your opinion, use tradition to justify sacrifice and sacrificing people who they see as lesser. I know there's a lot in that, but we might as well start with the big idea. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, it at one point the the dad, like they're sitting down, right, to play the game, and it's before she even draws the card that has hide or seek on it. And the the father, the patriarch, the head of the family is telling this lore. It's family lore. It's where, you know, they've they're in this hidden room that you can't even enter until you are like married in. Right. ⁓ they're sitting around the table a variety of characters, which ⁓ hopefully we get into like the sister and Fitch and some of these. Absolutely. But I he's telling the story and it goes all the way back. I think it's his grandfather or great grandfather, but how he was on a ship or something and you know met this guy and got this box and made this agreement. So we find already this agreement. There's a there's a covenant, so to speak, that's happening. And so in order to maintain that, there needs to be this tradition. And so you hear like all of these other married in people have gone through this tradition. One of them got old made and the other one got checkers or something. You know, so you think this is just kind of silly. Yeah. but But you can feel the like you know that there's a possibility of something really, really bad. Because we also see at the very beginning of the movie the playing out of the one other time in this family that this has happened where someone drew this card. And so everyone knows that this could happen. ⁓ but I think that's that's such a good overview of the patriarchal nature because it's always been through the head of the household, it's been family tradition, they all gather around. Even the one who just got married, that son, he went away and left his family and came back because this tradition is so strong and because he knows what will happen if he doesn't participate. It's an incredibly loaded exposition at the beginning of the movie to kind of set us into this weird tradition where this family is mega powerful. And the the hunting context is shown in the in the game room as well, because it's called the game room and then there's this Aesthetic double meaning choice that the movie makes, ⁓ and the the set and the the the directors make this choice of when they walk into this game room, not only are there like old Parker Brothers, like style games like shoots and ladders and checkers and chess, there are big taxidermied animal heads all around the room as well. So they're very, very much like setting in this: like, you're your hunt, you are being hunted, and are. The hunters. Samara Weaving has no clue. She is a she's kind of a clueless victim for the first few scenes of the movie, but then she realizes, ⁓ this system is being held up somehow. So I I guess just quick follow up, Rebecca. You work a lot with new evangelicals, which for people who aren't familiar, ⁓ is this space where a lot of people who have deconstructed it or are unpacked. Let's say they've left a more traditional church. World, they're unpacking the system that they're from. Is there a little bit of like expedited process in Samara Weaving's deconstructing the things she thinks she's joining? And then she's like, ⁓ my gosh, this is something entirely different. Do you guys often see something akin to that happening with your work you're doing? yeah, and I would say just to point out, and I forgot to say this earlier, she at one point identifies herself as an orphan. Like she grew up in Foster, so she didn't ever have a family. So she's looking for a family, and she just can't believe that she has found this family of all families are very wealthy. Too good be true. Too good to be true. And wouldn't I mean I would categorize the church as having been that way for me. Like looking back, right, in the moment I didn't really consider it as presenting itself that way, but I would see that parallel here. This is too good to be true. This is a family. It looks Perfect. They have everything that you could ever want. They have this amazing home. They have this legacy that's gone on for generations. ⁓ she's never really had a mother. I mean, she has this really sweet talk with her new mother-in-law about how she's wanted this family. And so when I when she realizes she just she thinks this is all funny still, right? Even after they start the game, she doesn't understand that they are actually literally hunting her to kill her. She gets shot at, and then she's like, ⁓ my goodness. And I would say, like, yeah, ⁓ many of us in this work we do, we have that that inciting incident where it's like we've kind of see this is a little bit weird, but we'll just kind of play along and kind of see how it goes. Maybe I can stick around for a while. I'll I'll just go with the flow. And then that thing happens. And I think that's how I would parallel that moment. She gets shot at and realizes, ⁓ my God, this is actually serious. And I think that's the moment that we are meeting people in and then walking them beyond that and hopefully to other resources. I would say we're really like an off-ramp from the evangelical space so that people can go to other places where they need to go. But yeah, I would say we I've seen that so many times. It's that that recognition that this really is too good to be true. In fact, it's really harmful. And I might die here. So I I mean, wow. That didn't mean like a ton of bricks. Because they I think there is that. That there is a lot of that when you think you've found a place like Grace does in the movie. You feel like you found a place to call home, somewhere to belong, someplace that on the surface, you don't want to really question it because your life has kind of been full of all these moments of it's too good to be true. Like this is happening for me. This is awesome. And it takes her literally being the target. Of a family's obsession to keep their own legacy intact, to jostle her loose from this illusion. And I I like to I don't often reference my own experience here, but this I feel like is key. Sometimes when you're in a system, you cannot see the veil over your eyes. But when the veil is lifted, to use the wedding bride imagery, when the veil is lifted, you can't not see it. It becomes harder to not see it than it would be to go back and get comfortable with the illusion again. Throughout the lead up to the real terror hitting Grace, she follows along with these polite systems. Like you mentioned, she's like, ⁓ this is a weird family game night. It's like we all have weird family traditions. We all have odd things that our family does. That if an outsider came in, they'd be like, What in the world are you weirdos doing? But she goes along with this polite. system. And it just makes me think that sometimes our language of values and heritage tend to mask a a a core thing in a system that ends up being predatory. And how specifically does this predatory system inflict itself on women? Because we're talking in the patriarchal context, this is predatory in her direct in her direct ⁓ in her direction, I'll put it that way. Yeah. I think there's a couple pieces to that. I will really want to talk about the aunt, right? She's nuts. Yes. But ⁓ she is upholding this system partly because it took so much from her. Like she is the one person whose spouse, brand new spouse, ever pulled that card before. And she lost that. And in the midst of that. became this hardened person who then like she came to understand the importance of this, right? So now her entire life goal, as far as we see, seems to really center around upholding this system. So what I think for me that that translates to is the women who do the part of upholding the systems because that is a significant piece that we are dealing with now in our current system. I mean, if we look at the last election, white evangelical women voted against their own best interests in a significant proportion. Women are at they are they are upholding the system, even if they might say, I don't agree with, you know, I don't agree with the Save Act. Let's just talk about that for a second. I don't agree with that, but I can't not vote to support the Republican Party. So there are these like lines that we negotiate with ourselves and women especially, because we depend especially in a patriarchal system and the way things are created, we depend on the men. And so we have to keep ourselves safe, which means that we have to make these negotiations and agree to some things that are like, I don't really agree with that, but what else will I do if I don't? And the other side of that is really scary if it is unknown. Right. Once you make that decision, you realize like, ⁓ this is actually really I'm so glad I did this because I didn't betray myself. But I think these systems ask women to betray themselves a lot. And we see that in this movie. Especially with the aunt, but also with the mother. She, I think, was very similar to Grace from the conversations we hear them having. They were very much alike. And she even says at one point, I thought you were going to be the next me. So she sees Grace as a potential like heiress to this whole thing. The aunt says that this son of both sons is gonna be the leader of the family, right? He is the next patriarch. So we see this manipulation by these two women, the older women in this. patriarchal system trying to manipulate things so that the system continues. Would the men do that? I don't know. And that's my question in the patriarchy is like, would men continue this if the women weren't there propping it up? That's a question I'm very curious about. I would actually love to hear what a lot of people have to say about that. Because I think that the women participate, they have to. If they didn't, I think it would fall down. Yeah, there's this ⁓ well I mean to to not to jump completely to the end of the film, Samara Weaving's character acts acts differently than the mindset you're describing from the older of the the matriarch of the family and then ⁓ the patriarch's sister, she burns it all down. And there is a a a phrase that I've heard more recently that if you can get someone convinced to go against their best interest to If you can get them to support something that does not benefit them, that it takes a lot to dislodge that mindset. And eventually, Samara Weaving ends up having to burn the entire thing down. To get rid of the mindset, to get rid of the system, she has to burn it down. And I know that you know there can be takeaways from that that are ⁓ almost anarchistic. And maybe that works for some people. But Samara Weaving's character I find so fascinating because she identifies The illusion is the illusion. She's able to break through it. And instead of letting the system hurt her more and to let it become complicit in that system, and we'll talk about complicity in the system because there's plenty of characters to draw that from. Instead of that, she acts in her own best interest, but does not put herself in alignment with the system, if that makes sense. Yeah. I actually said to my husband while we were watching it, because he watched it with me, the fact that she grew up in foster homes and actually would be considered like more of a marginalized person in this story. I mean, yeah, she's the have not in the story. She is set up for survival. Like she understands already that the systems at work are not always above board. She already knows that. And so I think that that sets her up to survive this, which is why some of the other characters like Fitch and like ⁓ Daniel's wife, they just want to be rich, right? And they maybe came from more like the maybe upper middle class. So they were already like participating in the system. She came from nothing. And she already had to survive in these situations, moving from home to home and all of those things. She learned how to be self-protective in ways that these other characters never would have had to. And so I think that she is different. She already was different. And that is what sets her up to be successful, quote unquote successful by the end of this movie. Right. She She is willing to play the game to a point. And then she's like, You're gonna win or I'm gonna win. And I've decided that I'm gonna win. Cause cherity, Daniel's wife and bitch, their whole mindset is like, how do I c I'll do anything to climb the ladder? Yeah. And Grace's mindset is, why is there an F and ladder? Exactly. Exactly. Have you stopped to wonder why are we playing these games? Like it's like I'm gonna get, I'm gonna I'm gonna become the best at the game that I possibly can be. And Grace is over in the corner, be like, Why are we playing games? Right. I think Fitch and Charity are such interesting characters too. Like Charity's all in the whole time because she just wants to be rich. She just wants to survive this. She like Daniel tells her before they even got married, this is what could happen. And she's all in, right? Fitch is like, I'll go with the flow for a while. And that he's like, Constantly, you see him constantly making those negoti having those negotiations with himself. Can I accept this? It's worse now. Can I accept this new requirement that they have of me? I mean, to the very end, right? He is always like, I don't know about this. You can just tell there is this thing inside of him, but he always decides to go along with. Yeah. Even though he has that struggle. So he was actually probably my favorite. I mean, outside of ⁓ Grace, the main character, he was probably my favorite character to just like watch the dynamics of like how he interacted in these situations. Cause he even at the beginning of the hunt, he's like, Really? Right? Like this is when we this is when we bail, right? He says to Charity. And she just looks at him like, No, I'm in. Like I'm doing this thing. And he's like, ⁓ shit, I guess we're doing this. And then he continues to participate. So I really enjoyed his character quite a lot, actually. Well and and he has extra stake in it because he's married into this family and now has children in this family. Exactly. ⁓ my gosh, and those children. That's a whole nother thing. Yeah, that's it every single member of this family has their own way that they are interacting with it. And even the kids take on it is like, I did good, mom, didn't I? I did good. And it's like ⁓ my gosh, that's I'm so proud of you. It was like One member of the family we've mentioned, but haven't dug too deep in is ⁓ Adam Brody's character, Daniel. And he is at times the most relatable, empathetic character, but he is also the most vocally complicit. Like he is dragging his heels, but eventually he's going to do the thing that requires us to we the opening scene is him protecting Alex from seeing their potent like almost uncle. Like being sacrificed in the first hide and seek game. Daniel keeps that complicity up until the end. And then he makes his kind of 180 turn where he he even he poisons everybody as they're about to do the satanic ritual to Grace. Again, if you haven't seen the movie, it is bonkers. ⁓ And as they're running out of the room where Grace was about to be sacrificed to Satan, she says, what? What was that about? Like, I didn't I didn't think you would turn on your family. He's like, I didn't either. So they run out and he ends up dying, but still being largely complicit in the system. So he makes a good choice, but he's also made several choices leading up to this. So there are so many parallels we can drive, you know, whether that is in the economy, whether that is in politics, whether that is in religious spaces, but the complicity of someone who is. What we probably generally simply call good, being complicit in a bad system. How do we navigate that very, very awkward, messy middle ground? You know, I think that's where like the rubber meets the road, right? Like we so I say that I have these values, that I value honesty, I value integrity, I value these things. If I see, if I'm in a system and I start to see those things. It is that moment when we decide I am going to go along with this or I'm going to be the one to say something, knowing that when we say something, it could end up it I mean, for me, I ended up fired from my job. Literally got fired from my job for saying the things people didn't want to hear. He died. Yeah. And in some of these things, it is like I believe that in my situation, for example, I planted enough seeds that eventually the thing will fall apart. Assuming other people will, you know, do the what tend to those seats. So I was willing to sacrifice that so that the whole thing could get better. Because at the end of the day, I wasn't there for me. I was there for I mean, even when I took that job, it was about the people. It was always about the people for me. And in this thing, I think he knew he ran the risk. I mean, of course, if this was real, he was gonna die anyway. Right. So he knew he knew the risk he was running. I'm probably gonna die. So why not? Even if my family kills me, like I'm gonna be the one to plant this seed that right, there's that saying planting seeds of trees you may never sit under. There have to be people that are willing to do that within the system. Otherwise, I just don't see a way for the systems to truly come apart. There have to be what people that are willing to see the social good, the common good of all, and are willing to put themselves on the line for that to change. And I think we're seeing that. Like right now, we're seeing that in Minnesota. Yeah. I mean, honestly, the in a in a previous episode we ⁓ we referred to power being something that we as humans are constantly navigating the relationship with and how we use power, how we use power with others. I think the counter narrative to that is human history has also shown that when when enough people have a crisis of conscience. That's how systems slowly start to break and erode. And you're right, whether it is systemic, really honestly, the because I'm such a h history nerd and I'm hopelessly, you know, just listening to stuff all the time, I think of like slave trade, how enough crisis of conscience happened and still happen that that system is broken down and we get to a not a Perfect place, but a more improved place. How systems that hurt people, when enough people see how hurt others are at the hands of that system, the wheels start to move. Like you said, the seeds start to get planted. That is, that I believe is the character Daniel is in this. He is every one of us that's been a part of a job, an organization, a church, any kind of any kind of system, and seeing the cracks in it, and you're like, Hmm, something about that does not sit well with my soul. And I have to do something or I have to remain completely complicit in it. Right. It's And the odds are when we choose to say something, we don't survive that. And it is an it's an incredibly difficult place to put others in and to put ourselves in, but it's a necessary place. ⁓ a lot of times I I'm reminded of the line. Well, I know, I'll I'll get rid of that part. It's not a very good line. So I want to go back to Grace, though. Rebecca, her wedding dress tells an entire story in this. And first of all, it's a gorgeous dress. It's like so gorgeous. Samara Weaving is stunning regardless. Yes. But that wedding dress, I was like, she may be The perfect bride on her wedding day. ⁓ but her dress is beautiful and throughout the movie we see the wear and tear of this experience on her and it gets dirty. I mean, eventually the wedding dress is red at the end. You wouldn't even know it was a wedding dress ever. But ⁓ how does the the messiness of her dress give a mirroring of the the shedding of the expectation that she's the journey of expectations that she was supposed to play this role in the system? But she ends playing an entirely different role in the system. How does how does the dress kind of, I don't know, mirror w the journey she goes on and the relationship to the system that had wanted her to be one part, but she ends up being another part? So this is such a good question. And my husband and I had this conversation actually when we watched the movie because we saw the way that this dress in itself was like a character on its own, right? It's like providing a lot of context. Or meaning. We can use it for meaning making, of course, like we are. I think at the beginning, you know, and I know this is true for me growing up in the evangelical church, thinking about like my role as a woman, as a, you know, young woman in the church is to get married and have babies. That's what I was told. Family values and all that stuff. So there's this idea of like this perfection, right? The expectations are it's gonna be So this whole thing's gonna be so great. Look, they had this wedding, it was a beautiful wedding, her dress is beautiful. Her husband, I mean, they obviously love each other as you know, we're starting out in this story. Even when she picks the card, he's trying to save her. Like, it's just perfect. And then actually the scene that really stood out to me is when she's in the dumb waiter and she's like, ⁓ forget this. And she gets out and her dress gets caught. She just like I I was like, no one would do that. She just like pulls on it. She doesn't like carefully and meticulously pull it off like you would, like I would do if I was, you know, had this gorgeous dress. So it's the first time we see her have damage to this dress, and she just pulls it. And I'm like, yep, that's what happens. There's one small thing. And we just like, okay, we get through that. We we do what we have to do and we move on. And then there's the next thing and the next thing. And like, you know, she's caught. Where is she? They're like by the kitchen or something, or in the back, the back little maze back. hallway, whatever that is. Secret passage. It's like a secret passageway. Yeah. And he's like, her husband is there telling her, You need to run, you need to go, go down here. And she realizes like she's tripping over her dress. Almost like this idea of perfection is like getting in the way. And so she rips that dress, the bottom of it off the you know, the top tool piece and then the underneath piece and makes it shorter. And she has these converse tennis shoes on. She is ready to go. He's ready to go. She's also still kind of Freaking out, right? Like you see her have a full moment of just like she doesn't go anywhere and she just sort of stands there and she lets herself be scared and be ⁓ you know, fearful of these people and be like in that total what the hell is happening right now moment. She allows that. And then you see her just like bolster herself up, like, all right, let's go. And she she starts to play the game. And I think that's when we see her start to really play the game. And I love that transformation of the dress because what was she gonna do in that long, beautiful, perfect dress? Nothing but now she can fight. And and and like you said, it's it's the dress is almost a character in and of itself. And she is we see just a cool transformation when she realizes that she can't just be a passive recipient of the system anymore. She can't just allow herself to be hunted because now she knows she's in the crosshairs. She knows That her complicity in the system is helping prop up the thing. And that the dress is just such a cool character. ⁓ but by by the end, she's covered in literally the blood of her in-law and ⁓ she tells Alex, I want a divorce. Such a badass, like action hero 80s movie line. Why is it so vital, though, in this film and in life to see a woman rejecting a harmful system? Instead of trying to just outlast it. I think there's so much power in making a choice for myself. No that I have certainly tried to rely on the villainization of someone else, or even be able to say, look at how bad they are. Of course I needed to do this. And then now I'm a victim. But if I make the choice and I say, I'm looking around me and I see how bad this is, peace, I'm out. Like I have chosen that. Now I'm empowered. Now I can go and build life. And I'm not just at the whim of circumstances. And I think very often, especially women throughout, you know, history because of the patriarchy, because of these, it's especially before women could have credit cards and bank accounts and own property and all of that, there was such a reliance on survival. Patriarchy requires that in order to continue. And so if women can go and make their own life, they can make their own choices, that really can undo the system. That's scary for people that want to hold it up. But there is so much power in saying out loud the choice that we want. And it is scary when we don't know how to do it because we weren't taught how. I wasn't taught how to do that. The agency that I have now as a forty-five year old woman, I have worked really hard to get. So I resonate. I mean, that that movie, it's what is it? It's like a hundred a hundred it's not even two hours. It's an hour and thirty six minutes or something. Yeah, it's like an hour and a half long or something like that. Yeah. So you see her go through the struggle for what, forty minutes or something? And I'm like, damn, my struggle was like twenty-five years. ⁓ so it is a hard fought battle. And I think that's kind of the point there. She had a hard fought battle. How many times she almost actually died? Right. And even when Daniel poisoned them, like she if he had not done that, she would have died. And I think that just that highlights the importance of doing the thing, of standing up and saying something. Getting in the way of it, even if it means you don't survive that system, that's okay. Because the system itself is harming so many people. They allude to in the movie also that there are other families like them, right? They're like, you don't even want to know what happened to so and so's family. And they're like, You don't you only know what the media told you. But it's alluding to the fact that there's all this stuff, like rich people can do whatever they want, and we will never know about it because they're protected. And even what's the guy's name, the the butler guy. you know, I I I I'm blanking on his name right now, but he he works very hard at keeping their system propped up and he doesn't even benefit from it. Like he g he's employed by it, but he's not like they're not like you'll become just like us. He's working for them. He's such a pick me. He is such a pick me through the whole movie. And I was just like, He's that guy that thinks at some point he's gonna sit around with them telling stories with the family. No, he's not. No. They will as soon as he's a liability, he's gone. Right? And I think that's the thing that people are confused by. Like, yeah, you're you're a you're chosen for the moment. Yeah. You are a disposable part of this system, but we've we we treat you like you're this super special, you know, you're you're almost family. Like you're like family. It's like I would really heavily Emphasize the like part, not the family part. Like I've I've watched enough Rebecca, I've watched enough Regency dramas to know the housekeeper is never family. They're never. They're always help. It's like but I love how like shows try to like they try to set up a villain and how they can misuse somebody that either is trying to impress them or they're just trying to manipulate as saying, like, no, no, no, you're like family. We would never I would never turn my back on you. I'm loyal to you. Systems systems require people to buy lies, even if they're not great lies. How many times has this butler seen them play these games? I mean he knows exactly. He's like coming in saying, Okay, it's it's eleven fifty-five and he puts the record on like he is setting the stage. Who knows? And and I I just I feel terrible for the maids because they're the ones that work in the system but are clueless. Because they're kept out of this and they become the first victims of it because they're not even given the opportunity to see that the system is about to take them out. Yeah. That like so many parallels to if you watch Ready or Not, you will see a character that you either resonate with, empathize with, or you will see yourself as a character in this. But Rebecca, is there anything else about Ready or Not and how we can in our own way Fight fight systems or or maybe just maybe just not be so complicit in systems. Is there any final thought you have on this before we calm the the conversation down? You know, I think there's a lot about we talked a lot about patriarchy and you know, patriarchy and and capitalism go hand in hand, right? And capitalism is really dependent on this idea of like individual individualist kind of this family. They hold themselves up by the bootstraps. Kinda sorta, but did they? Cause they had this agreement with the devil himself. But really, like this, this is about this one group and the good of that group. And when we move into thinking about the good, the common good, what is good for the 99%, then we can start making different choices. Right. And I think that's kind of the train that that's the journey that Daniel was on. That's the journey that Grace took throughout this whole thing. It's like the common good is not that this family survives. The common good is that we actually burn this to the ground. And I'm not suggesting we need to burn everything to the ground, but I think we do need to have some controlled burns here and there because which means, you know, you gotta have the people that are like there to set the boundaries and make sure that it doesn't like completely destroy everything. But I think there is a place for that. And I think the common good should be the goal. And if we are not so focused on the individuals, then we will start to become a people that are willing to plant those seeds. Like we talked about with Daniel. And you know, we're in that place right now. A lot of people are making that transition from the individual, like this doesn't really affect me to the common good. It doesn't affect me, but it affects all of us. And so I have to be involved. ⁓ and I think that's what we see in this movie. It's it's an incredibly thought provoking film. And maybe you've seen it and you're like, I didn't get any of that. And it's like, I would encourage you to re engage with it then. Yeah. but it was a fantastic conversation, Rebecca. Thank you so much ⁓ for lending your voice and your experience to Ready or Not. ⁓ it's always a pleasure, friend. ⁓ my gosh, so much fun. Thank you.