Revolution #71, December 3, 2006

New Film Shut Up & Sing

The Dixie Chicks: Still Not Ready to Make Nice
by C.J.

"Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States
is from Texas."

This was the famous comment dropped between songs by Natalie Maines,
lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, at a concert in Britain right before
the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's stirring documentary Shut Up & Sing
tells the story of what happened next. Within days, this immensely
popular country music singing trio--the largest selling female music
group in history--was banned from country radio stations throughout the
South. DJs broadcast uncensored threats calling for Natalie to be
"strapped to a missile and sent to Iraq." Thuggish reactionaries
picketed concerts with signs like "Deport the Dixie Twits" and
"Try the Chicks 4 treason." Mothers dragged kids to staged-for-TV
"CD-crushings" where farmers on tractors rolled over Dixie Chicks
discs. Record sales plummeted, and the band had to perform arena shows
under death threat.

Filmmaker Barbara Kopple has won two Academy Awards for documentaries
that explore moments in recent U.S. history when the social patina gets
cracked. Her many films include Winter Soldier (1972) which documents
the first GI hearing on atrocities committed in Vietnam, Harlan County,
U.S.A. (1976) about a unionization strike of coal miners, and My
Generation (2000), the story of all three Woodstock festivals. Kopple
is known for letting her subjects speak for themselves, a method that
works well with the women in the Dixie Chicks. Along with lead singer
and guitarist Natalie Maines, the band includes sisters Emily Robison
(banjo, dobro and lap steel guitar) and Martie Maguire (fiddle and
mandolin).The film is crammed with great concert footage, and these
fine musicians play their hearts out.

As the film opens, we see the Dixie Chicks, a couple months before
Natalie's Bush comment, singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Super
Bowl.

How did all this happen? Shut Up & Sing takes you on the journey.
Expect to be surprised.

The film shows footage from a Congressional hearing where the president
of Cumulus Broadcasting testifies to ordering 250 subsidiary stations
to stop playing the Dixie Chicks' songs. The "grassroots" radio
call-in campaign against the band is revealed to be organized by
powerful extreme-right websites grouped around freerepublic.com. The
fascist-bully country star, Toby Keith, volunteers as point man for
anti-Dixie Chick attacks and receives ceaseless airplay and "human
interest" coverage for adding a topical ditty about "putting his
boot up [Natalie's] ass" to his women-hating, war-mongering
repertoire.

The film offers an exposing picture of the high-level attention paid to
try to take down this band. Even Bush weighed in, telling Tom Brokaw:
"The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind...They shouldn't have
their feelings hurt just because people don't want to buy their records
when they want to speak out..."

The stakes were clearly high. Could a regime that was launching an
immoral war based on deception simply allow one of the most popular
singing groups ever to poke them in the eye? And a female country band
to boot? One can only imagine the executive freak-out: right at the
moment when a compliant populace is most needed, these voices of
dissent (widely respected virtuoso musicians who can get a real
hearing) start rising from within the patriotic home base.

There is a telling scene in a high-rise boardroom with the Dixie
Chicks' corporate tour sponsor, Lipton Tea, who have hired a consultant
to try and talk the band into toning things down. A rare moment to
capture on film, the camera moves around the room from face to face as
we watch the larger political objectives of the regime in power
intersect with the narrow commercial interests of Lipton. In a
calculating and smooth delivery, the operative tells the band: "At
the end of the day--it is true you are great musicians--but essentially
you are a brand."

But the authorities find themselves head to head with a group they
cannot simply roll over. This is the pulsing heart of the film,
leavened by the band's non-stop wit and irreverence that has you
alternately clapping and laughing out loud. Natalie at a band meeting:
"Now that we've fucked ourselves, I think we have a responsibility
to . . . continue fucking ourselves."

How did the Dixie Chicks respond when besieged for political
insubordination by the music industry, the government, and reactionary
pundits all over the country? Strip naked and defiantly cover their
bodies with the very epithets being flung in their face-"Big
Mouth," "Slut," "Saddam's Angels." Voila: the famous
Entertainment Weekly cover which must have really irritated
Bible-belters.

There is a history here. Even before Natalie's public dis of Bush it
was hard for true-believing Christian fundamentalists to get behind the
Dixie Chicks. Certainly not after they hit the charts with "Goodbye
Earl"-a song about the permanent removal of an unrepentant
wife-beater. Then there was that whole "Earl's in the Trunk" bumper
sticker movement-not exactly in line with the Ten Commandments.

After Natalie's Bush comment, country radio never relented on the Dixie
Chicks and the episode did not blow over. They were faced with either
going along with a stay-safe logic that says they should shut up, or
standing up for principle and risk losing it all. The band thought
people should have the right to free speech. And faced with all the
reactionary attempts to censor them, the Dixie Chicks had to decide
whether to submit and go along with the dictates, or insist on their
right to exercise free speech. The band decided to fight, with
gusto--which is quite a good thing.

Band member Martie Maguire said in a recent interview: "Before
[Natalie] said what she said, I don't ever think I took a stand about
anything. Then the bottom fell out, and I found myself at age 34. I
knew what I believed in, but I always saw both sides...In the past I
tried to micro manage everything to ensure that this career would last
forever . . . [Then] the light just went on. I went, okay, now I know
who I am and what I stand for and it doesn't matter what we lose
along the way."

The Dixie Chicks are sustained by their fans, some old and some new,
who are thrilled to see these artists take on the colossus--something
that's still far too rare in our culture. Homemade signs ("Thank
you, Dixie Chicks!") held by cheering young women show up at every
concert.

As Barbara Kopple lets the tape roll, we watch how the band comes to
grips with the fact that country radio is not allowing them back in.
They look at who they are as artists in a different light. During the
past year, the band released an exciting new album, "Taking the Long
Way," which branches out musically and is the first album they wrote
in its entirety. Emily Robison: "I feel that fire you get when
you've been knocked down. ... it's like being given a second
life." They are now adding a whole new set of listeners, drawn by the
new music, and for many, the band's passionate defiance.

"Lubbock or Leave It," one of the new songs, takes a scorching look
at the Bible Belt, returning to Texas and specifically Lubbock,
Natalie's hometown, a city that also drove out rebel rocker Buddy
Holly for not following the buttoned-down Christian path. (At a recent
concert, Natalie is quoted saying, "I heard we've been nominated to be
nominated for an Academy Award, but I just saw Jesus Camp [a film
exposing Christian-fascist indoctrination camps for children], and I
think I'd vote for it instead. It was very eye-opening.")

* * *

At one point early in the film, the Dixie Chicks are counseled: "Try
not to be judgmental of the president. I'll tell you why, he's got
sky-high approval. The war couldn't be going better." Watching Shut
Up & Sing today, with Bush's poll ratings tanking and the Republicans
losing Congress as the U.S. imperial quagmire deepens in Iraq, it's
heavy to note how much the national mood has shifted since 2003. Makes
you think about the potential for even more profound ruptures in the
future.

The Dixie Chicks are still not played on most country radio, and this
past October as the film was about to be released, NBC refused to
broadcast TV commercials for Shut Up & Sing , stating that the "ads
are disparaging to President Bush."

NBC eventually relented under pressure. Which is one lesson of the film
and the whole Dixie Chicks story. When you know you're right, go find
your allies, fight the odds, and don't reconcile with the enemy. This
is a work in progress. Natalie on Larry King last May: "I don't have
any respect for the decisions [Bush has] made and where he has led our
country. And Katrina was more bizarre than watching everyone agree to
go to a war that we didn't really know the reasons for. You definitely
didn't know what country you were living in, watching those images."

At a concert last week a reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle
remarked that "the night's high point came with Maines' raging
delivery of the single "Not Ready to Make Nice," during which the
audience roared non-stop..."

... I've paid a price, and I'll keep paying.
I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round....

(To watch the video:
http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/dixie_chicks/videos.jhtml)

Towards the end of Shut Up & Sing, a member of the Dixie Chicks back-up
band proposes a song on the unity theme--being "undivided" as a
band and as a society. Natalie: "Does that mean we would have to
forgive all those people that did that to us?" He says, "Well, for
the sake of the song, maybe it would." Natalie, flinging a dismissive
hand in the air, says, "Nope."