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.
DS,
Sorry for the late reply.
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I also had an earlier sign in date, but didn't log in for a couple of months or so after I started (just kinda lurked more) and forgot the password. Oh well. Xin Loi
Let me know if Jim can help you. Oh yes ...... and you can peek at my decoder ring anytime the spirit moves ya cutie. (wink - wink)
Nam Vet
Maybe in your dreams, honey, but not any of my dreams of any moisture level.
For TIA and all those that have FReep mailed about the alert........
The "old note jm17" is in fact still in effect and kicking around. It's ok if you don't have it because there are others that have the same precedence.
To TIA.....From NASA
"The world is divided into basically 24 time zones. For easy reference in communications, a letter of the alphabet has been assigned to each time zone. The "clock" at Greenwich, England is used as the standard clock for international reference of time in communications, military, aviation, maritime and other activities that cross time zones. The letter designator for this clock is Z." Some say GMT....Greemwich Mean Time
"I can't name ONE major publication or television network that hasn't run a huge story pimping their new album and pontificating about how unfairly the Chicks have been treated by Conservatives."
Me neither...but have conservatives started buying their CDs? I doubt it.
So how come I didn't get a letter???? Seriously hurt feelings here.
Good luck getting that domain name.
Just another fat white girl screwing up orders at the Wendy's drive through.
Tell ya what.
When I expect the Dixie Chicks to make world policy, I'll expect GW to sing an Aria.
Until then they can complain all they want. It's called freedom of speech, which many here seem to discard, depending on the circumstances.
PS: I am currently listening to "Lullabye" off the last album.
The whole "such and such an artist or shoemaker or carpetcleaner doesn't agree with GW" is gettin olde.
“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.”
one paper....true, but most cities have just one
One radio station hardly.... we probably have 3-5 country stations alone and only one does not play the dixie chicks. Natalie couldn't tell the truth even if it helped her cause.
I'm still waiting on my backpay for showing up at pro-troop rallies the past five years--and my Rove Secret Decoder Ring :-)
b...b....bu....t....b...
;-)
blush....blush...
I bat my eyes at you like theees...
"All of these media types must live in the same damn vacuum."
This slack-jawed reporter Katherine Monk is clearly too thick to go over to news.google.com and type in "dixie chicks" to verify (or not) the "media exile".
Let alone Lexis/Nexis.
Doesn't that Rove Secret Decoder Ring come in Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs? I'll have to pick me up a box.
AT least it didn't turn you into BIMBOs, Natalie; you already were.
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