Over at LitHub, Rebecca Solnit has a lovely piece on how the model of the individual hero has failed us. This hero concept is where we get the “good guy with a gun” theory of gun violence prevention. Got a problem with guns? The answer is one more guy with a gun!
“Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action. Among the virtues that matter are those traditionally considered feminine rather than masculine, more nerd than jock: listening, respect, patience, negotiation, strategic planning, storytelling. But we like our lone and exceptional heroes, and the drama of violence and virtue of muscle, or at least that’s what we get, over and over, and in the course of getting them we don’t get much of a picture of how change happens and what our role in it might be, or how ordinary people matter. “Unhappy the land that needs heroes” is a line of Bertolt Brecht’s I’ve gone to dozens of times, but now I’m more inclined to think, “Pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn’t know it has lots and what they look like.”
I am not a fan of comic book superheroes, which means there’s rarely anything for me at the movie theatres in the summer. My most recent plays involve women working together to overcome difficulties. America’s romanticization of the rugged individualist who solves things single-handedly will lead to our destruction.