![]() ![]() Woman at War veers off into another plotline, because after all a woman is at the center, and, conventionally, women who do anything impersonal must be conflicted. George who slew our dirtbag dragon was a way of writing off our own obligation and capacity. In the wake of Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report, a lot of people reminded us that counting on Mueller to be the St. “Unhappy the land that needs heroes” is a line of Bertold 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. 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. Among the virtues that matter are those traditionally considered feminine rather than masculine, more nerd than jock: listening, respect, patience, negotiation, strategic planning, storytelling. Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action. The movie-which keeps lingering without irony on pictures in her Reykjavik flat of negotiations-and-meetings endurance champions Gandhi and Mandela-doesn’t seem to know it, but it also doesn’t seem to care about how you do this thing that saves rivers or islands or the earth. Halla, the middle-aged protagonist of Woman at War is also a choir director, and being good at getting a group to sing in harmony has more to do with how most environmental battles are actually won than her solo exertions. ![]() Back in 1970, the farmers did produce a nice explosion, and movies love explosions almost as much as car chases, but it came at the end of what must have been a lot of meetings, and movies hate meetings. We are not very good at telling stories about a hundred people doing things or considering that the qualities that matter in saving a valley or changing the world are mostly not physical courage and violent clashes but the ability to coordinate and inspire and connect with lots of other people and create stories about what could be and how we get there. It’s almost the only story I know of environmental sabotage having a significant impact, and it may be because it expressed the will of the many, not the few. There were no arrests, and there was no dam, and there were some very positive consequences, including protection of the immediate region and new Icelandic environmental regulations and awareness. After the dam was dynamited, more than a hundred farmers claimed credit (or responsibility). In a farming valley on the Laxa River in northern Iceland in August 25, 1970, community members blew up a dam to protect farmland from being flooded. But the most famous and effective eco-sabotage in the island’s history was not singlehanded. ![]() It’s about an Icelandic eco-saboteur who blows up rural power lines and hides in scenic spots from helicopters hunting her and is pretty good with a bow and arrow. For an embodiment of the word singlehanded you might turn to the heroine of the recent movie Woman at War. ![]()
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