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.
I must have missed the part where Jim asked for my mailing address when I signed up.
You think *you’re* upset? We mods didn’t get one either!
"Fantastically glam"??? Maines is a pig. And how can they rip off Laura Ingram's book title?
FOTFLOL
George Strait had a coke problem??? Source please.
Reply to post #62
Is that Natalies raghead husband in the photo? Ahmad Mohammed Isslime or some thing like that.
It's only "censorship" when a government does it - when the invisible hand of the market tells companies their product is offensive - it's capitalism.
Sometimes that "hand" is word of mouth like FreeRepublic, sometimes it's a lack of sales, and sometimes it's people not showing up for concerts. People find ways of saying "no" to products they don't want. And "yes" to others. It's also called "freedom".
The chicks aren't the only ones to suffer - the same thing happened to McDonalds years back - they put out a terrible sandwich call the McLean - made out of seaweed or something and no one wanted it. And they weren't the only ones -- Coke put out "new coke" when the old one was great. And the new one failed.
The chicks put out the new version of themselves - "the hip - liberal, anti-country fans" version of themselves. And no one liked it. Coke figured out their mistake and old coke came back - McDonald's dropped the McLean, and the chicks -- well the chicks don't "get it". They want to blame their fans. And it that they're wrong. It won't work.
People don't want the chicks. They not the same. They're worse. Insulting. Awful like new coke.
Here's the bottom line - they have the right to say whatever they want - it's called free speech. And we have the same right. It's again, called free speech. We don't have to buy their records, we don't have to listen to stations that play their records, they don't have to post at FreeRepublic and they don't have to donate money to FreeRepublic. We're both free. They're free - we're free. It's a two way street.
The chicks think freedom's a one way street - only for the rich and powerful - people like them. They are wrong. Citizens also have the right to speak up about what they like and don't like -- the powerless have freedom, the rich have freedom. They need to understand that...A simple truth, but one makes all of us Americans.
Reply to post #87
New name? How about "Euro Sluts"!!!
An OFFHAND remark? What lies! They are certainly doing their best to smear us and rehabilitate the anti American chicks aren't they?
These women should realize that they are just entertainers, not politicians.
You look more like SPAM to me.
Here tis
I dont give a damn about any strumpet playing band.
That aint what I'd call Rock and Roll!
LOL
It's nice to be select!
AND it's nice for Jim's Amazing Brain-Child to be noted for its good deeds!!!
I meant Jones not strait...sorry...
Dixie Chix are DOA as a musical group.
Next week its the velvet lounge at the holiday in on exit 132 on highway I-Nowhere.
How many times are they going to spin a failed comeback.
ROFLMAO!!!
I want mine.
I changed my first FReeper name: Can I have my old number back, please? I didn't know about the seniority thing back when I gave it up. Heck, I'd'a stayed married to the guy who gave me my other name if I had to--anything to keep my cherished First FReeper Number.
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