Posted on 10/08/2006 12:35:00 PM PDT by Hetty_Fauxvert
TORONTO -- After facing a barrage of insults, death threats and all kinds of broken records in the face of an offhand remark about the U.S. president, The Dixie Chicks are no longer chicks.
“It turned us into women,” says Natalie Maines, speaking about the past three years in near media exile, facing one of the largest pop culture controversies in recent history.
On the eve of the war in Iraq in 2003, Maines made an offhand comment about being against violence, and being embarrassed that the U.S. president, George W. Bush was from Texas, her home state.
Despite being the best-selling female act of all time, big fans turned into rabid haters. Record sales plummeted. Country radio excluded them from their playlists. People said their career at the top of country was over.
The conflict was so rich in scope and meaning, it attracted the attention of two-time Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple and her colleague (Gregory’s daughter), Cecilia Peck. The result is Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing! — one of the hottest documentary titles of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Beginning the voyage with the actual comment recorded in a London amphitheatre, Kopple and Peck take a full immersion tour through the post-Bush-slag landscape, and follow the Chicks — Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison — as they attempt to understand what happened, and how to move forward without their sturdy net of a solid fan base.
“In watching this movie, it felt like I was watching myself mature,” says Maines.
Robison echoes the sentiment. “I think for the most part, when your career is going great, you don’t really have the opportunity to soul search but we did. And we do think it happened for a reason.”
Looking fantastically glam as they address the media at a Shut Up and Sing! news conference, the Chicks say they have absolutely no regrets about speaking their mind. If anything, the experience made them realize just how vulnerable to censorship we are in the world of consolidated media ownership and nationally uniform radio playlists.
“Consolidation means one guy at the top decides everything and I don’t think the media has been successful in pointing out why it’s so dangerous,” Robison says.
“People don’t understand why this is so important,” Maines says. “But if you live in Lubbock, Texas, where I’m from — you just have one paper and one radio station and unless you’re savvy on the internet, that’s it for you. If Bush said get a gun and kill an Arab, they would do that.”
Maguire says if it had been just one — or even several — DJs who felt it was just too much of a hassle to spin Dixie Chicks singles, they would have been fine with the boycott. The problem was how the whole anti-Chicks campaign was orchestrated by a select few through a right-wing Internet site called the Free Republic.
“This wasn’t about us being women as much as it was about country music,” says Maines. “In our industry, they always blow off the liberal, Hollywood, pot-smoking celebrity For the (people who read the Free Republic), we were their wet dream.”
According to the research done by Kopple and the Chicks themselves, the Free Republic sent out form letters to their 30,000-thick subscription list with market-specific information, saying if the station did not stop playing their music, they would cease listening to the station.
The campaign worked, and the Chicks’ current tour for their new album is being booked at venues half the size of their previous tour.
“What was wrong was that (the decision to not play Dixie Chicks records) was coming from the top and that (DJs) were not allowed to play the records, even if they wanted to. I think that kind of censorship is dangerous,” says Maguire.
For a society that prides itself in the notion of free speech and the red, white and blue, the Dixie Chicks’ descent into the land of crispy Salem witches seemed like a betrayal of crucial American truths — which is something Kopple has been chronicling ever since she started creating documentaries with Harlan County, U.S.A, a disturbing look at a miner’s strike in Kentucky.
Kopple says what happened to the Dixie Chicks really struck a chord because it spoke to the changing times.
“In the '60s, there was a sense of a cultural movement that happened, and you really felt a sense of belonging to a community. They (Dixie Chicks) were on their own, and our hope is that people who see this film will become part of their community so the Chicks no longer have to stand alone,” Kopple says. Maines, who says she always felt the support of her bandmates and family, says she’s still a little surprised by the whole journey. Though she’s learned to really think hard about what she says to the press these days, she says she may well have said the very same thing — even with a little reflection. “Even if I had thought about what I wanted to say, I don’t think I ever could have imagined what happened. What I said was just so lame.”
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing! Is slated for a fall /winter theatrical release.
>in the face of an offhand remark
It was no big deal. /s
That's funny. I don't remember getting any letter.
"According to the research done by Kopple and the Chicks themselves, the Free Republic sent out form letters to their 30,000-thick subscription list with market-specific information, saying if the station did not stop playing their music, they would cease listening to the station."
Well, I'm upset. I didn't get my letter. What am I, chopped liver?
Oh, that's right. I hadn't subscribed at that point. I was just a lurker.
We don't need no stinking letters!
No....foie grais. [Ha-Ha, just kidding]
WHAT??? When did this happen?
Better to be mis-portrayed as a gorilla than a mouse.
We should feel flattered
Does NOT pass the smell test.
Rock and Roll PING! email Weegee to get on/off this list (or grab it yourself to PING the rest)
“It turned us into women,” says Natalie Maines,...
***
That's good. Before you looked like a man. *Snort*
This article is absolutely hilarious.
So little ol Freerepublic slayed the Dixie Chicks despite the endless adulatory free press by their left wing media cheerleaders? Give me a break.
I didn't get one, either.
Jim, don't you love us?
Hey. Why am I not on the list? Why didn't I get this letter too?
What letter?
Well, among other things, it fails to address a simple fact - live audiences do not turn up for their shows in numbers approaching previous participation - and this is not a choice of a DJ but the personal choice of those buying tickets. DC have had to cancel shows, and reduce the hall size of those bookings they do keep.
A second point not addressed - the media is very much of an anti-Bush slant, and yet with the - well, I won't use hype - say, the friendly treatment from the media, they still have lost a chunk of audience and income.
And they are still pushing the meme "It's their fault, not mine!" Doesn't sound too mature to me.
Libel against FR?
According to the research done by Kopple and the Chicks themselves, the Free Republic sent out form letters to their 30,000-thick subscription list with market-specific information, saying if the station did not stop playing their music, they would cease listening to the station
Me, either.
Must...not...comment....
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