Great NYT review of Dixie Chicks documentary, "Shut Up & Sing"

[DeepModem Mom]

In an Instant, Country Stars Became Political Casualties
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: October 27, 2006


Weinstein Company
In a scene from the film “Shut Up & Sing,” Dixie Chicks fans mobilize.

On March 10, 2003, Natalie Maines fired a shot heard ’round the world. From a London stage, Ms. Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, declared, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

Her remark, uttered on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, when President Bush’s popularity was near an all-time high, had instant, negative repercussions. Overnight, the Dixie Chicks, America’s country-pop sweethearts, who had sung “The Star-Spangled Banner” less than two months earlier at the Super Bowl, found their music banished from much of country radio.

At angry rallies in the South, Dixie Chicks CD’s were gathered and destroyed, and Ms. Maines received death threats. How she, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison coped with the furor is the main subject of Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck’s documentary “Shut Up & Sing.”... The hatred hurled at the Dixie Chicks seems outsized measured against an offhand remark at an overseas concert. As the Dixie Chicks would put it in their song “Not Ready to Make Nice”:

And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over....

***

It all makes for a sad commentary on pop culture and public relations. The movie suggests how pop stars are marketed like politicians to targeted constituencies. Given the echo chamber of mass media feeding a public addiction to high drama, when an act like the Dixie Chicks goes against the beliefs of its “base” (to use a word favored by Republican strategists), reason is drowned out by noise, and there can be hell to pay.

The movie also implies that there is a double standard when it comes to celebrities’ speaking out: women are condescendingly assumed not to know their place....

(Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.)

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/movies/27chic.html