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All right, listen up, folks. This is a story about kicking ass.
This is a story about some goddamn justice going on. This is a story about the Man getting what was coming to him and about the little guy winning the day. This is a story about the goddamn underdog, Avengers. You will better listen up.
We will begin by taking a drink. There will only be four of them, so make them count. Then we have some hors d'oeuvres and then we get down to business. This is the business of telling our story.
Coulson, you're the WASPiest man on the planet, you get to represent the Man.
He's actually not, he just plays one on TV.
Okay, fine, Stark? You're the 1%, you get to be the Man.
1%? He'd have to lose most of his net worth to sink that low.
Yeah, fine, whatever, Warren Buffett. Tony Stark is the Man. Jane, you're the nice Jewish doctor, you represent the experience of Jews in America since the war.
And I'm before the war?
You got it, Brooklyn. Natasha, you're the Russian diaspora. You are them trying to kill us and us winning by surviving. No? Okay, you can just bring some extra booze. Banner, you represent the dichotomy between the Jewish wimp and Jewish badass tropes in pop culture. Watch these DVDs and call me in the morning, we can talk about all the problematic bullshit going down there. Good? Awesome. Barton, you're the token Christian. Thor, you're... you're Thor. In your Thorness. Righteous struggle against evil, the whole works.
I don't like tokenism. Can I pretend to be a Maccabee?
Wrong holiday, but sure.
So, listen up. We are going to talk about the triumph over adversity. We are going to talk about the oppressed kicking the oppressor's asses. We are going to talk about avenging some motherfucking wrongs.
Stark, you're the Man, and all of us, we're in a fight against the Man. And it always looks like it's doomed, because that's how epic struggles always look. We're the little people. We don't have much, we just have ourselves and our faith. And most of the time, that doesn't give us jack shit. But then we work together and then we can overcome. We can kick the Man's ass and win the day.
And, sure, the Exodus? They had a god on their side. And you just don't get that in the real world. Present company excepted, of course. No offense, Thor, but you're not exactly going around fighting on behalf of the oppressed people of the world. You've an Avenger. But tell that to everyone dying because the Man is denying them health care.
Stark Industries has a
Let's not get bogged down in details right now, okay? We're all archetypes here. We're representing everything greater than ourselves. This is a story. That's the point. Stories exist to remind ourselves that heroism is possible and that good can triumph over evil. It doesn't always and it's not assured. But if we work together, if we believe that there is something greater than each of us individually, if we believe in the 'we', if we believe in the power of people working together, we can win. We can beat Pharaoh's ass and we can win the day.
Amen, Ms. Lewis.
Thanks, Coulson.
So we're going to talk about triumph and hard work and beating the odds. And then we're going to eat! And we're going to keep talking. We're going to share our stories about how we have triumphed. We are going to talk about our own Egypts and our own exoduses. We're going to talk about the back breaking work and suffering and we're going to talk about us. About us, how we got here, and where we're going. Because you don't just get out of Egypt once. No, you do it, and then you do it again and again until the unthinkable becomes the normal and you help everyone else out of their own Egypts. Because this is about redemption. People tried to kill us. We beat them. That's worth celebrating. That's what this is all about. It's a celebration of survival.
And we're going to eat matza, because I can make you do that, and because we should. This is our bread of affliction. It tastes like crap. That's the point. The matza is all the shit we don't want to do. The matza is everything that sticks in our throats and in our stomachs. It's the Man shoving his fist into our gullets and telling us to smile for the cameras. The matza is what we eat when we're in Egypt, because we're oppressed, and we eat it when we leave, too, because you don't get over the massive psychological horror of Egypt in a quick commercial break. You keep chewing on it and it gets stuck in your teeth and when it's finally gone, you know it. And you know what you had to do, what pain you had to suffer, to get through it.
It's us. It's four cups of wine, some matza, and a nice dinner. And we're going to sit around and talk about it. Because this is our Exodus. Because this is our triumph. Because this is our story and it tells us what we can do.