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.
Welcome to FreeRepublic!
Sorry, I just read your tagline formerly Trampled by Lambs.
"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."
Everyone involved should pat themselves on the back.
the Moose thought they were my sister!
S'ok. I'm starting to doubt the wisdom of changing my name since I'm likely to get zotted as an FR newbie.
I spent 3 years building up whatever little credibility I have around here, I'm not sure I want to start over lol.
I've always considered the "New Coke" to be a PR stunt. IMO, they knew it would never fly, but the Coca-Cola/Pepsi war of the 80's was a perfect opportunity to boost sales and generate free PR. They roll out the new formula, everybody hates it, then after about three months or so, announce they were bringing back the old formula and sales went through the roof.
Numbers don't necessarily mean credibility. That said, I've just got a bad habit of "mousing over" to check sign up date.
Another Freeper in this thread, I think it was bannie, wishes she'd kept her first id and she got reissued in '99.
One the one hand it's the many FReepers protested, and on the other it's the bad guys at the top. As far as DJs, they haven't had much power in play list selection since the 70s.
Obviously this is a lie. What they'll do to support the lie, if challenged, is produce a thread on FR that contains addresses to various country stations, since such threads probably exist, and claim that urging a write-in campaign to country stations calling for a DC boycott satisfies the charge they've made. They'll just fudge the "form-letter" part.
That's how sleaze stats are created.
Next, you'll be telling me that you didn't get Rove's Kennedy memo this afternoon.
Boy, do I feel slighted. I never got one of those letters.
;)
Now that was funny, I have to clean my screen now...
If they were into fact checking, they would never have made the original statement.
I am SO not worthy to be a member of the VRWC. I will turn in my super secret decoder ring in the morning. Please be warned, apparently it is not working.
Red-headed step-children at that!
(pouting)
I didn't get a letter. (sniff)
Yeah, but at least 1/2 of those are that idiot who keeps reposting that thread on how the government was behind 9/11, even after JimRob let one of that moron's threads stand. He keeps getting banned, but keeps finding new proxies and handles. I guess living in his mother's basement with no job gives him lots of spare time.
Mark
It was much more than that. Remember how Old Coke never quite tasted the same again?
New Coke was a dodge to change up the original formula. It's now made with HFCS or corn syrup, instead of cane sugar.
The new war will be between the greens wanting the corn for fuel, and the starving peoples of the world wanting to eat!
It was terrific marketing, plus it's even got a conspiracy theory wild to make Art Bell proud: The word is that before they rolled out "New Coke," the original Coke had suger. By getting all the original coke off the shelves, and shutting down the production lines, they were able to replace the sugar with high fructose corn syrup in the "original formula," but since there was none left to compare, they were able to get away with it, changing the taste of original coke. To tell you the truth, every year around Passover, I hit the Kosher butcher shop and get a couple of 2 liter bottles of "real" original Coke, and you can tell the difference between the soda sweetened with sugar, and that with HFCS.
Mark
It's working. Just turn your beeber down.
How do u tell the sign up number?
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