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.
That's why I like RC, they still use cane sugar, but it's getting hard to find, even down here.
<< Despite being the best-selling female act of all time, (sic) "big fans" turned into "rabid haters." >>
Seems the perfect place to stop wasting time on this functional illiterate.
I changed my FRname too...I'm still trying to figure out how I can buy back my original FRdate-of-entry. I want my pay-grade back!
LOL. Doh. Beeber appropriately set to stune. Will promise to do better next time.
Mmmmm... cookie.
This is your brain on a two-digit IQ...
Let's see:
I've been here nearly ten years, and "the Free Republic" isn't an "entity" that "sends out form letters", as far as I'm aware.
BTW - I'm on a "subscription list" for Free Republic? When did this happen?!?? Why am I ALWAYS the last one to get the memo? ;-)
Buddy Holly must be spinning in his grave right now ......
I can't imagine which industry would employ this young woman if she wasn't a professional singer.
It would be an insult to any holder of a menial job to say she could do the same job as that person.
However, Karl "Keyser Soze" Rove realized that it would look bad if you got a letter before you actually signed up, so his minions retrieved the letter from your mailbox (along with the letters for several thousand other lurkers in the same boat).
Apparently, Barbara Kopple and Natalie Maines must have found out about this covert operation...
I think this has happened to a lot of us. I had my password saved on my computer. I moved and got a new computer and isp. When I went to log in the first time on the new computer I couldn't remember my password and my password was tied to the email that I no longer had access to at my old isp, so I just typed in a new name and started over.
That's a good conspirator
please tell me what zulu means/refers to in this vernacular. It's been driving me nuts for quite some time now...
TIA
New tagline!
I'd like to do some research as to when exactly Coke switched from sugar to HFCS in their recipe. I wouldn't be surprised if it was around the same time.
Thank God it wasn't 69. I'd have never lived it down :-)
We need to ask Jim if he still has our old names floatin' somewhere in The World of FReepin' Computerdom...and if he could hook the old names up to these "new" ones.
Just shut the hell up and sing, Ladies! Count your money and then cry all the way to the bank.
We don't hate you, we just hate your Shiite for brains political statements.
Patience, little grasshopper. Jim has much more important things to concern himself with right now, like mind control and world domination.
Seriously, though. You know that she has never even bothered to read FR if this is her view. Anyone that takes the time to read this site could not go away thinking we are a bunch of remote controlled robots. It's clear from our differing views on so many subjects that we are independent thinkers who just happen to agree strongly on some subjects, like the Dixie Chicks ignorant behavior.
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