Grace, Wealth and Tradition: Ready or Not and the 21st Century US
I’m going to do something stupid. I’m going to tell you that perfect movies exist. This is stupid for a number of reasons.
The first is that common wisdom says there is no such thing as a perfect movies. Clearly, I disagree. There are many different perfect movies, because there are so many different kinds of movies. I don’t just mean genres either. Within genres, there are all kinds of different intents. To my way of seeing it, a perfect movie is one that executes all of the technical aspects of filmmaking, along with the performances, so they coalesce to meet and exceed the intent of the story and in the experience of the film, while telling a story that elicits an emotional response from the viewers/audience. When telling a story, intent runs throughout it. There’s tone, there’s the emotional and psychological reality, there’s the way the characters are created, shaped, what we’re told about them and what we’re not, the way a scene is executed to maximize it within the story itself. In film, that shapes everything from set design to costume design to cinematography, blocking, staging, music and editing. It pulls together all of the different arts that go into making a film, and provides an experience to the viewer that is in line with the intent of the story and the filmmakers.
The second reason this is a stupid thing to do is that to state anything as emphatically and in such a declarative a manner through a digital distribution medium, is asking for trouble. The context and conditions of my existence require I publish on the internet, and if I have any interest in anyone reading what I’ve written, I have to post and publicize it on social media. Somehow, the advent of social media has revealed the rather shocking number of people are willing to engage in things like insults and threats over things like film and music. Now, I am male, and white, so that’s a bit less of a concern, but I can say, the worst of my social media experiences have been death threats from neo-Nazis at number one, and the second was a variety of pile on that lasted a number of days, that had to do with storytelling and genre. No doubt, death threats are more disturbing. I will say, the neo-Nazis were at least direct, and clear about what exactly the motivation for their vitriol was. I’m not a woman or a person of color, otherwise, doing something so dastardly as stating something I feel passionately about would have a much higher likelihood of being sent rape threats or people saying I should kill myself.
The third reason is the most important though. It’s this third reason that made me want to write this when the idea came to mind to include this film, in this series about films speaking to our particular moment in the twenty-first century.
The primary allure of this film is that it’s fun. It’s really fucking fun, and it’s engaging in that variety of fun, while dealing with a slew of different things that have meaning. It’s not dour. It’s not a downer. It’s not wallowing in misery. The last film I wrote about for this series Compliance, isn’t wallowing in misery, but it is a very difficult film. One of the things that makes 2019’s Ready or Not a perfect film is the boldfaced absurdity with which it approaches its subject matter. It treats all of its subjects, save one, as the absurdities they are and that their real life counterparts have been all too willing to reveal themselves to be, but we don’t leave the experience trying to contend with Killer Clowns In The Executive Branch. If I were a rights holder for Killer Clowns From Outer Space, I’d be trying to get that sequel made the second I had a serviceable script, because… well, look around.
There’s a strong thread in our culture, especially among the storytelling arts, that only certain varieties of comedy can be important. They usually have a sad edge or are what we now call cringe comedy. The idea that a film that has no intent to be anything but fun, might still have some very relevant things to say isn’t necessarily looked down upon, but it’s a thing much more rarely explored or considered, which by nature and effect, suggests it’s not something worth giving time to. Clearly, I disagree.
Traditionally, horror comedy is a hard sell. There are many in existence. They are an entire sub genre of horror. Historically, they’re a gamble at the box office. Occasionally, one hits something in the zeitgeist or word of mouth is strong enough they do well. American Werewolf in London is one of the few examples of box office success for a horror comedy. The other undeniable example is Scream. The success of Scream and its subsequent influence can’t be calculated or understood without the degree of humor it has, and how fun the film is as a whole, brought from the meta aspect and the playful nature of the script and performances. For all it’s fun and games, Scream is pretty clearly making a statement about the degree to which society both shames and feels entitled to women as sexual beings and their sexual desires. Wes Craven, having been subject to criticism about horror’s treatment of female characters, was initially hesitant to take on another horror film, but accepted Scream, because it was making that larger point, and presented its female characters as having a wide range of humanity.
It’s much more common for horror comedies to find an audience to be discovered after their theatrical runs. Often, this is due to limited theatrical runs or not being given theater distribution at all, because they are so risky at the box office. It’s yet another instance of a vicious cycle in the film industry. Once the belief takes hold that a particular kind of movie doesn’t do well at the box office, films in its genre or that are similar aren’t given the opportunity to find an audience in theaters. See both the beliefs that films by Black filmmakers about Black life and film by women about their experiences as women as further examples, even as there are numerous examples to the contrary. Interestingly, Get Out is arguably the most successful and influential horror film since Scream, and its a horror comedy wrapped up with the sociopolitical. The degree to which it is fun is central to its success as well. Though not a horror comedy, is a different variety of hybridization of horror and other genres, the success of Sinners has caused a number of rounds of the perennial “Is it really a horror movie?” question that is inevitably brought up when a horror film reaches the level of success and acclaim it has, and because it too is unafraid to center its sociopolitical ideas.
The Blackening is a recent example of a horror comedy that found its audience after its theatrical run, and again, is very directly concerned with the sociopolitical. Not surprisingly, even as it is funny, entertaining and met with good critical reception, because it is completely disinterested in how white people might feel about its subject, “Is there are right way to be Black?” in the eyes of Black Americans, its theater run wasn’t financially successful. The comedy is derived from its expert satire of both racial stereotypes and horror tropes, mingled heavily throughout, and using those in its examination of that question.
Despite the clear (and recent) history of horror and horror comedies being excellent vehicles for sociopolitical ideas, there’s still some sense that if a film is “fun,” but isn’t overt satire, it can’t be taken seriously in the sense of being worth the kind of critical consideration of what ideas it might contain. It seems only the variety of success that makes a film a monolith, and a cultural event unto itself, can force a horror comedy to be taken seriously. In 2022, The Menu earned a respectable $80 million at the box office, making it a financial success, because of the popularity of films like Ready or Not, and I suspect because it was also a horror comedy, it was written off as “another eat the rich movie.”
Maybe, at this point, audiences and critics are more familiar with commentaries on race and gender, and are therefore less likely or willing to consider commentaries on class. Either way, the combination of Ready or Not finding a sizable and vocal following in the years since its release, the nature of the class commentary it puts at its forefront, and the quality of its filmmaking, make it worth asking whether it’s speaking to audiences in ways beyond just being “fun,” and acknowledging there can be things implicit in a film we perceive that way, which do fit the standard of what is often considered more “substantial.”
In summary, Ready or Not is about a young woman, Grace, who on the day she’s wed her fiancé, one of the heirs to a fortune built on different varieties of games, discovers everyone who marries into the family must choose a card from a box. The card will tell her what game she will have to play in order to be considered “one of us,” an initiation of sorts. Unfortunately for her, she learns one card is different than the others, hide and seek. From there, the film proceeds to become a mixture of Clue and The Most Dangerous Game, because this outrageously wealthy family of absurd idiots believe they must kill her before sunrise, otherwise the devil will collect on the deal he made with one of their forefathers. They’ve become fabulously wealthy, and if they want to keep that wealth and not die, Grace must be sacrificed by dawn.
Grace is played by Samara Weaving. She’d starred in a relatively well received Netflix film, The Babysitter, and had a small role in a few episodes of the Evil Dead spin off Ash vs. The Evil Dead prior to Ready or Not. It was the role of Grace that cemented her as a favorite among horror fans, and as an emerging “Scream Queen.” She’s been building a respectable resumé since, including a few other horror or horror adjacent comedies. This weekend, Ready or Not 2 is releasing in theaters. Later this month, she’s starring opposite Jason Segel, in the midst of his run on the very popular Apple TV+ series, Shrinking. In April she’s back in theaters in another horror adjacent comedy, Over Your Dead Body. Later this year, she’s also going to be starring opposite another horror crowd favorite, Kyle Galner, in Carolina, Caroline which is apparently a Bonnie and Clyde-esque story of romance and crime.
One of the unfortunate realities of the way the film industry, critical community and the press around films works being unwilling to consider certain kinds of films and stories for the quality of their work, is that the people working in them are often left without the recognition they deserve. Weaving is phenomenal as Grace. She is the heart and the anchor to the entire film. She is the audience proxy, as well as the heroine, and part of the reason the film’s comedy works as well as it does, is that she is able to move through various tones and convey an impressive range of emotions in a way that is vulnerable and authentic. If Weaving can’t anchor the story and tone, creating a sense of reality to what we’re seeing on screen, nothing else in the film works. It’s premise falls apart, the comedy being played off the absurdity of the other characters, and especially the ending, never works as well unless Grace feels authentic and real at every moment. It’s an excellent cast full of actors doing excellent work, and much of it would have been wasted or far less effective within the film as a whole, without Weaving carrying the film. If this had been a film ending with Weaving walking into the sunset with the love of her life, it would have been her Pretty Woman moment or her Risky Business moment, and she would have been a Movie Star for the foreseeable future. She evinces that combination of talent and on screen presence/charisma that used to make people the kind of Movie Stars who shape the industry for a generation.
The script gives her all of that room, and is subtle about her characterization, which is important because of how broad the rest of the characters and the comedy are. For all the sweetness, humor, silliness we see from Grace in her first few scenes, she’s also candid in a way that belies intelligence, self assurance and strength. She could easily be read as a young woman who falls into the “cool girlfriend” stereotype, but we also come other understand the wedding itself is happening because she was standing on what she needed. She wanted marriage and family, having been a foster child, and despite having met a man she seems to genuinely loves, she would have walked away if it wasn’t the future he wanted. Grace is not just going along, as the “cool girlfriend” does in that stereotype. She has her sense of who she is and what she wants. It could also be easy to suggest Grace does this because her fiancé, Alex (played by Mark O’Brien), comes from this incredibly wealthy family, but a woman who was interested in the the family fortune would know far more about the family business by the wedding day than Grace does. All of this is conveyed in a few scenes, in minimal dialog, with Weaving being pitch perfect in the combination of anxiety of meeting this extremely rich clan, and the excitement of achieving a dream she’s had all of her life. The chemistry between Weaving and O’Brien is great in these opening scenes. It sets the stage for what transpires, particularly a dynamic and sense of revelation as the film progresses, as opposed to being the rote exercise in waiting for characters to get knocked off.
It’s driven home in the actual wedding sequence, where we get the first inclination of how good the editing in the film is. As we’re seeing the standard procedure of wedding photos being taken, we’re cutting back and forth to different conversations among the family members, and between Grace and Alex’s mother, Becky (played by Andi McDowell). Most of them feature Daniel (Adam Brody), Alex’s brother, who very clearly thinks more highly of Grace than he does his own family, and the tone of the film starts to become clear in the sardonic nature of the conversations among the Le Domas clan.
One of the strengths of Ready or Not is something that is sometimes cited as a failure of other films. A number of the characters in it feel like they are in different films. Samara Weaving and her performance as Grace is grounded, and feels realistic in everything. If the premise and what she’s confronted with weren’t so extreme and outlandish, her performance would fit in a dramedy. Melanie Scrofano (Emilie), Christian Bruun (Fitch, Emilie’s husband) and Henry Czerny (Tony, the father) feel as if they’re plucked from a broad comedy. Mark O’Brien, Adam Brody, Elyse Levesque (playing Charity, Daniel’s wife), and Andi McDowell feel as if they’ve come from a family drama. Nicky Guadagni plays Aunt Helene as if she’s stepped directly off the set of a Hammer Horror film from the seventies. Helene is a zealot whose cult is falling apart due to its adherents questioning their beliefs, and being rich dolts.
Part of what makes Ready or Not a perfect film is understanding the tension between those tones is what the film needed, and central to what makes it successful. With Weaving as the anchor and the audience proxy, the rest of the cast is free to reach for the absurdity, so when the moments of family drama come into play, it’s still anchored enough to not feel out of place. The absurdity of the comedic moments, as well as the horrific moments, doesn’t feel like they are “too much” because of the way those dynamics are played throughout, and the level of reality Weaving tethers us to, and what that dynamic conveys and reveals. Family dynamics, and especially unhealthy or toxic family dynamics, can be a mixture of absurdity and danger to everyone within or around them. They don’t necessarily come with the variety of physical danger the Le Domas are putting Grace in, but they are at the least, emotionally and psychologically dangerous. As absurd as all of this is, as heightened as all of this is, it feels like a dynamic one might recognize if they’ve encountered the underlying truth of this holds. The major difference between the film and what most of the audience may have experienced, is the Le Domas are insanely rich, with a level of privilege most of us can’t imagine and/or haven’t encountered. What that does to their family dynamic, as well as their attitude toward Grace, is where things get most interesting, and is the reason the film can be so broad in its comedy and its horror.
Like Compliance, there is a wide deep thematic vein in Ready or Not speaking to the way the environment we spend our lives in shapes what we understand to be normal, how that shapes who we are, and how it shapes our morality, including in this case, the way privilege insulates us from recognizing other human beings as having worth equal to our own. The difference between privileges and rights, is that power can grant or revoke access to privileges, at will. By nature of being power, it can change or break any perceived deal or arrangement about those privileges, whenever it wants. Mr. Le Bail (the devil), has made a deal with one of the Le Domas ancestors, and throughout Ready or Not, one can’t help but question whether he’s been orchestrating the end they come to. There’s an argument to be made that the reason Grace is given the hide and seek card, is that Le Bail knows that of the people who’ve married into this family, she’s the one most likely to survive until dawn, meaning he gets to collect on his deal.
Helene says at one point that Alex is the only one to have seen Mr. Le Bail, and to her way of understanding, this is why Alex is supposed to be the next one to lead the family. Her understanding is that the reason Grace is given the hide and seek card, is to prepare Alex for that.
The combination of the theme of games, with the story of the great grandfather’s encounter and subsequent deal with Mr. Le Bail though, falls in closer to a long line of stories about the devil, the games he plays, and his penchant for taking advantage of his prey’s failure or inability to consider all of the possible options for how the devil may influence the outcome. As a figure of mythology, the devil will keep his word, but he doesn’t exactly play fair, in the common understanding of fairness. If there are agreed upon rules, he won’t break them, but when it fits him to stick to the word of a deal, and violate it in spirit, he will. The devil is also eternal, and an expert observer of human behavior, the two traits which add up to his adeptness at corrupting human beings. To have existed as long as he has, is to witness almost every variation of any scenario, learn what influences the likelihood of any outcomes, to learn what strings to pull to corrupt a human being, and to learn to identify which human beings have the collection of traits necessary for any task, including finding exactly the right person who could cause the humans whose souls he aims to collect to be unable to fulfill their end of the deal.
Does Mr. Le Bail appear to Grace at the end of the film because she’s played the game well, and he respects it or is his nod to her that whether or not she knew it, she played the part he expected/hoped she would?
Le Bail, as the devil so often is, is just a metaphor for the ability of wealth and power to corrupt. The Le Domas make the mistake of believing they are the power, that they are entitled to this authority. It’s why they’re all so completely inept, and why Stevens, the butler, is the one that’s the genuine threat to Grace. Maybe he’s just a sociopath who enjoys being part of cruelty. Maybe he’s as loyal to the Le Domas because he has been in such close proximity to this privilege, for so long, it feels like his own too. Maybe he believes serving the family, in this particular way, in their hour of need, will give him access to further privilege. Stevens isn’t “one of us” though. He wasn’t born into that privilege, and his proximity to it has always been in service to it. People like Stevens have been cleaning up after the wealthy and privileged, literally and figuratively, as long as wealth and privilege have existed. He’s no different than a public relations firm that specializes in crisis management for the wealthy and powerful.
The only other people who present any genuine threat to Grace, because they haven’t spent the entirety of their lives being so privileged as to be useless, are Charity (Daniel’s wife) and Becky (Alex’s mother). Both of them have married into the family. Neither of them come from this kind of background, as we’re told at the beginning of the film. It’s a fitting irony that Charity is the one who kills Daniel, because she has come into this agreement, this family, with eyes wide open. We get this information in the course of the film, that Daniel told her about the ritual of the game on wedding nights, and she didn’t think twice about going through with it. She says, “You know where I came from, and I’ll never go back to that.” To her mind Daniel is betraying her, just as much as he’s betraying the rest of the family. She is “one of us,” through and through, and was before the nuptials were exchanged. She was “one of us,” the second she agreed it was worth it to play the game.
Daniel is the only one of the Le Domas clan who’s been raised in this, and can see himself and his family for what they are, because of his experience with the game as a child. He was the one responsible for Helene’s husband being caught and sacrificed, as a child, before a lifetime of indoctrination and acculturation could set it in, and as we’re told, he’s spent most of his life protecting Alex, putting Alex before himself. None of the other members of the family, with the possible exception of Becky, their mother, have done that, at all. He understands he is “one of us” though, because as he says, if he were a better brother, he would have stopped Alex from marrying Grace. He would have protected both Alex and Grace, but he didn’t. He was confronted with the consequences, before the indoctrination and acculturation had been decades in shaping him. He makes a choice to stop being one of them, and it’s Charity who kills him, because he’s betraying her. He brought her into the family, and therefore, under the conditions of the deal with Mr. Le Bail.
Both Daniel and Becky have to die, in part because they are “one of us,” and because their deaths leave Alex with no one but Grace, and at the moment he realizes there is no way she’s going to be with him even if she survives the night, he makes his decision. That choice reveals the degree to which he never stopped being “one of us.” Grace is a possession. She’s not a person whose autonomy he respects. Knowing what he does about his family, he could have either told her about the requirements of marrying into his family, given her the choice Charity was given or he could have chosen not to tell her and in not being able to marry her, let her go. Instead, he takes the chance that she might draw the card, without telling her the truth beforehand. His choice when he realizes Grace is going to leave him amounts to, “If I can’t have you, no one will.” It is, in many ways, the ultimate form of entitlement, believing you are due or owed the loyalty, love and life of another person, and to decide they’re not going to live if they won’t give it to you. As fun, silly and absurd as Ready or Not is, the statistics about the violence men commit against women are clear about this. A woman is never in more danger from another human being than when she’s trying to leave a man who believes he’s entitled to possessing her, and all that this means.
The Le Domas have been rendered incapable of preserving what they have, as a result of what they have has made them into. The way they’re portrayed, is to follow a sense how family dynamics work that is so traditional as to be stereotypical. All of this, is about wealth, tradition, and ritual, and every bit of that is given more weight by the many decisions in both production design, and costuming. All of the set design is meant to convey the Le Domas wealth, all of their privilege, are tied and worshipful of tradition. Ritual, by nature, is the worship of tradition, and it’s the ritual that is meant to kill Grace.
Emilie is clearly a “Daddy’s girl,” and in this, she’s absurd and inept, just like her father. There’s something deeply sad about this character. Melanie Scrofano seizes every opportunity to make the most of the comedic potential in her character and lines. It’s a hilarious performance, because she commits to the degree Emilie is emotionally and mentally stunted. She’s a child. Her family’s privilege, and the clearly patriarchal nature and structure of the family, have never asked her to be more. They’ve never even suggested to her she could be more, until this night, and when she’s failing, there’s no sense of surprise, but there is a sense of condemnation. This is what they’ve taught and expected her to be, and the entitlement comes through in the fact that they’ve prepared none of their children, or themselves, for what they understand is a very real possibility. It’s not unusual for stereotypes to have some kernel of truth to them, and the truth to the stereotype of the Daddy’s Girl in these patriarchal traditions, is that it’s infantilizing.
There’s another bit of subtlety in the script when it comes to the children and their marriages, in this way too. Emilie is emotionally and mentally stunted by her family, and the man she ends up marrying is no less so. Fitch has the intellectual and emotional capacity of a teenage boy. He’s never progressed beyond it. It’s part of why he is “one of us.” The cost of the wealth he’s married into doesn’t matter to him. It’s material comfort. It’s a never ending party. He’s not even sure he believes any of the story about Mr. Le Bail, yet he’s willing to go along with trying to kill a woman who is simultaneously a stranger, and his new sister in law, in order to keep hold of what both allows and requires him not progressing emotionally or mentally. The fact that they’re both essentially children, emotionally and psychologically, is why Emilie and Fitch are together.
Charity, Daniel and Alex all see the Le Domas for what they are. Charity and Daniel see themselves accurately within this. Alex, does not. He has been lying to himself about who he is, and maybe to some degree, there would have been a chance for him to become someone else, if he had been able to let go of the entitlement that is the need to possess Grace. This combination of accurate self appraisal and the family produces the bone deep cynicism masquerading as practicality that ties Charity and Daniel together.
Daniel and Emilie, have ended up with partners who share one of the defining traits of who they are, because there has been no question about being “one of us.” Alex is also a tragic character in a way. In his inability to be honest with himself, he’s married someone who is not “one of us,” and it is the end of the family. As he says to his mother, “… I realized you’ll do pretty much anything, if your family says it’s okay, then I met Grace. She’s the opposite of all of you. She’s good. She made me feel like I could be good too, so if comes down to you or her, I choose her.”
Becky replies, “I don’t believe you. And I don’t think that you believe that a girl that you’ve known for a year and a half knows you better than I do.” In the end, she’s right. She does know Alex better than Grace does, and he turns on Grace, choosing what’s left of his family, when he realizes he can’t possess her, that whether he likes it or not, and no matter how much he’s going to inherit, she is an autonomous human being, with her own mind, her own ability to make choices.
There is something tragic in the members of the Le Domas clan who’ve been born into this. There was never a choice for them. This was a birthright. Their families chose for them, by choosing to have them in the first place. These are the traditions, the rituals and the legacy they are given, the condition they’re born into. The only choices for them are to continue these or die. It’s a choice which works directly against the human instinct for survival, and that as human beings we rarely recognize as much of a choice at all, for good reason. It’s why we recognize and reify people as heroes when they make a choice which puts their own lives and well being in danger in service of others.
Recently, Lio Cundiff, a man who happens to also be transgender, and apparently doesn’t know how to swim, jumped into the icy waters of a freezing lake to save a baby when its stroller rolled into the lake. There are a number of news articles in multiple outlets declaring the heroism Lio displayed, but they also demonstrated something as coded into the human animal as the drive to survive, the drive to help each other when we see the need. Cundiff’s reaction in being hailed a hero, more or less amounted to, “I wasn’t going to let that baby drown. The idea that anyone would is crazy.” Across different interviews, Cundiff has responded saying more or less that the idea anyone who witnessed a stroller rolling into a lake, would save the baby. There’s a lot made of how deeply coded into the human animal the drive for survival is, but Cundiff isn’t wrong either. How many people would actually stand around and watch a stroller sink into a lake, even if the temperature were low enough to be dangerous? It’s not naive, Pollyanna-ish or optimistic to say very few would just stand there and watch. I’ll remind you here, the most famous example that gave lie to the idea people will not help a stranger perceived to be in danger, was based on misreporting and the opportunism of grifters, in the form of tabloid newsmen and politicians. The popularized version of the story of Kitty Genovese was full of mistruths, which were just further exaggerated by the equivalent of the telephone game in its retelling.
On first glance, there's nothing tragic about the members of the Le Domas family who chose this, in full understanding of the choice they were making, unless we consider what it means within the broader scope. The wealth, with the comfort and ease it affords, was enough. That it was going to, at some point, require being a murderer or at least an accessory to murder once in a while wasn’t a consideration. That it would require not even attempting to prevent murder wasn’t enough to render it a choice out of consideration. If a few people have to die so they can live with the privilege of the Le Domas family’s wealth, they’re willing to go along, and really in Charity’s case, zealously take up the cause. Again, in reality, we see people make decisions like these often. The proximity to wealth and power is enough. The history of the United States is shot through with things like cover ups of pollution and product faults that costs lives, just to keep the profits rolling in, and they often have layers of people participating in them. The premise presents the reality in a stark black and white, stripped of the kinds of excuses and justifications that decades and generations of indoctrination and acculturation make available. We know those justifications and those excuses, because we are so steeped in them. That is tragic.
Ready or Not is very much about class, as the most surface criticisms have acknowledged, but it’s about more than that too. It is about tradition, the rituals that support it and pass it on, and how they shape us, whether we like it or not. It’s also about the gravity wealth creates, no matter what its traditions and rituals require. It’s about what a tradition and legacy of wealth do to us and the culture we’re all raised in.
Alex tells Grace early in the film that the Le Domas like the enterprise of their wealth, privilege and influence to be called a “dominion,” when she initially refers to it as a dynasty or empire. It tells us two things. First, that Grace isn’t marrying Alex for the money. Someone who was, would know this before the wedding day. It’s something she would have found out much earlier in the eighteen months they’ve been together, their “bone-a-thon” as she calls it. It’s the kind of detail a person interested in his wealth would have gone out of their way to learn.
Second, dominion, is a specific word with specific connotations. It carries specific religious connotations.
Genesis 1:28 in the King James Bible reads:
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
This passage has particularly expansive implications in US Christianity, and as a result, in the politics of the United States. There is a movement of US Christianity referred to as Dominionism, itself deeply troubling, but it’s also larger than this. As a good example, in political circles where Christianity is a common organizing factor, the assertion that human beings should understand how to live in cooperation or unison with the environment which supports life on the planet (as every other living animal does), is often countered with this passage.
The belief being God has given human beings the earth to do with what we please and/or see fit, and therefore, nothing we might do could effect the environment to create a threat to our continued well being God didn't intend. If say, species go extinct due to our actions, it’s not something to worry about, because God gave us dominion over them to begin with. If our actions wreak havoc on the balance of the ecosystem and the environment in such a way particular people are negatively effected, it’s God punishing those people for… any of the long list of things God apparently sees fit to punish some people for. In a rather large section of American Christianity, one’s actions or character have little or nothing to do with whether God decides to punish them, their “state of grace,” whether they live under the protection and love of God, was preordained before their birth. Some people, are apparently here and alive, just so God can heap punishments on them. Others are preordained as being The Chosen. The best on can do is to follow their understanding of God’s will, so they don’t happen to lose that state of grace, living within the protection of God, being showered in His gifts.
It’s likely the writers didn’t choose “dominion” by coincidence, especially considering the role The Devil plays in the overall story. They probably chose it because they know, on some general level, it has connotations connected to Christianity and religion. Part of its specific religious connotation and a particular set of beliefs falls under the larger umbrella of Christian dominionism, and is what’s referred to as Prosperity Gospel. Joel Osteen is probably it’s most well known evangelist. In short, it’s the belief that God showers wealth, privilege and status on his Chosen. In this way, it’s essentially the belief that if you’re wealthy, and you espouse your belief in this version of God, it’s God’s will for you to be wealthy. This stands in pretty stark contrast to the numerous instances of Jesus decrying wealth and claiming some combination of poverty itself being a holy state or that to live within the mandates of God is to give away all one’s earthly possessions, but contradictions and paradoxes within the Bible are what make it easy to pull just about anything one could want to under the umbrella of Christian belief. It’s one of the reasons Christianity was successful in converting pre-Christian belief systems, and one of the reasons it’s been successful in its evangelism. Somewhere in the Bible, you can find justification for just about anything you might want to believe. The Church, before it’s great schisms, would even create saints in order to be able to encompass polytheistic beliefs.
When you begin to get into the ideas of tradition, legacy and Christianity, you can’t deny or leave out patriarchy, rigid hierarchies, and beliefs about inherent entitlement. The Le Domas family fits these exactly, without overtly advertising it. But because of those traditions, because of that legacy, it’s a structure the average US viewer recognizes, and a majority would even just consider normal. There could be an argument saying that because this is nominally a family of people who worship Satan, they are not Christian, but all of the ways they understand Satan, are in strict keeping with the cultural representations of Satan arising from Christianity. This conception of Satan doesn’t exist without it. Islam has a conception of Satan, but it’s specific, and quite different than the Christian conception. Satanism isn't its own invention. No one worshipped Satan until Christianity went looking for people who did, and created a symbol of opposition to its dominance. It's an invention of Christianity, in need of a corporeal enemy. It's Christianity, looking at the negative that produces the photograph of itself. The two are inextricable. In the Christian mind, Satan is taken as a deity to be worshipped and anthropomorphized into a singular being, instead of say a generalized concept, and presented as a man. It's Christianity looking at the negative that produces a self portrait. It’s still mirroring the male centered worldview of Christianity.
There have been, in modern times, more thoughtful, philosophical approaches that evangelize values, what it perceives as the opposition to the male, heteronormative character of the Christian God, and speaks to that characters preferred values and ethics. Satanism, for the most part, is actually just a creation of the Christian imagination, anxieties about its cultural power, and the fear of reprisal for the misuses and abuses it justifies. When it’s come about in actual organized groups, it has been either a kind of tongue in cheek satirization of Christianity, a kind of performance art or an effort to create a confrontation with the abuses of Christianity allowed through its dominance. Sometimes, it’s just a straight, plain grift manipulating the sense of injustice, victimization and absurdity of Christianity’s cultural domination.
One would think that a belief system meant to be a response, a backlash to Christianity, its traditions and legacy, would actually be something more like a meritocracy than a patriarchy, but that’s not what we get in the Le Domas, because this isn’t Satanism as a moral, ethical or theoretical response to Christianity, it's Christianity looking at itself in negative. Ready or Not is relying on the acculturated understanding of Satanism, as a way of lampooning very Christian values and traditions.
Tony Le Domas is the “head of the family.” As we see, he’s basically a child. Henry Czerny has said that in playing him, he took his main inspiration for the character from a note in the script, calling Tony a petulant child. Without Mr. Le Bail stepping in to influence the outcome, he’s inept. Becky, his wife, is the one that is practical and pragmatic. Mr. Le Bail has been so responsible for everything in Tony’s life, he can’t handle even the slightest friction on the path to attempt to achieve his goal. Like his children, he’s been infantilized, but yet, he’s still the head of the family. One would think that instead of Alex being considered the future of the family, Daniels wife, Charity, would even be a better choice. It’s why Emilie is a child, in a grown woman’s body. Instead, like a mirror image of Christian Prosperity Gospel, they’re placing their faith in the idea that Satan, under the guise of Mr. Le Bail, is responsible for their wealth. A different “man in charge,” but still a man. Again, neither of them have been raised in this tradition and legacy, and are both more capable and pragmatic, because of the experiences which lead them to accept the terms of this agreement.
This tradition and legacy based in this Christian worldview, is also part of who Alex is, part of what he’s attempting to hide from himself. That tradition and legacy is one of treating women as objects that can be possessed. It’s this underlying tradition, this legacy, which Alex reverts to in not telling Grace the truth about his family, in not giving her all of the information before she pulls the hide and seek card. Her relationship to him has been bought, by trading on what it is he believes will give him that possession over her, by being a person he isn’t, and in truth, he doesn’t know. This isn’t to say people can’t change. They certainly can, but that change requires one being able to confront even those things in themselves which are most disappointing, the things we create shame from. It’s not a matter of just trading in one set of traits for another, otherwise the tradition and legacy of who we were, the person those made us, reasserts itself under stress and duress, which is what happens to Alex. He wasn’t engaged in the labor of unlearning, becoming anew. He was cosplaying as the person who deserved Grace, not doing the work of becoming the person she’d choose. The conflict is, that person would have told her the truth, and let her make the decision about whether she wanted to leave him or continue to “live in sin” with him, something Alex seems intelligent enough to understand, but chose not to confront.
It’s Grace that undoes the Satan worshipping Le Domas.
Do I believe the writers intended to insert all of this in their choices of calling the Le Domas family enterprise a “dominion,” and giving the lead character the name Grace? I don’t think I do. It’s more likely the understood there were broad connotations between these things. It also doesn’t mean this sense of meaning isn’t there, and if anything, it demonstrates just how saturated our broader culture is in it. It demonstrates how saturated we all are in the acculturation and normalization of the kinds of tradition the Le Domas family are. Grace is the audience proxy for the film, but the Le Domas “family values,” their family structure and dynamics aren’t alien to us either. Grace is the only character in the film who doesn’t worship the tradition of wealth and power. In many different forms of Christianity in the US, worshipping God, or worshipping Satan, amounts to just that.
It’s for all of these reasons, and a few I’ve left out, that I say Ready or Not is a perfect film. It is fun. It is absurd. It’s a great cinematic experience, that can give the audience some laughs, some thrills, introduce them to new talent, made with clear care and high degrees of skill. The fact that it is all of these things, does not mean it’s not also much more than that too. When those of us who look at culture seriously only take into account the culture which takes itself seriously and begs to be taken seriously, we're missing entire sections of what it that speaks to us on other collective levels. I say it's a perfect film, because it's worth all of us reckoning with what it has to say, as so much of it pertains to what we're experiencing and trying to understand, at this moment.