Shut Up and Sing is not the best documentary I've seen, and indeed, not even the best documentary I've seen this year. It is, though a fascinating document of the past three-plus years of the Iraq War, a period that I think may be as seminal for the right as the sixties anti-war movement was to the left.
The title comes - in a roundabout way - from a Laura Ingraham polemic about how liberal performers (the "Hollyweird set" as the Right often refers to them) often speak out for liberal causes and insert themselves into issues where they're not needed, hence, they should just "shut up and sing." The facts in this case are pretty familiar: The Dixie Chicks were kicking off the tour for their last album in London just as the war was about to happen in 2003. Passions were running high, and Natalie Maines said to their audience, in passing, "I'm ashamed that the President is from Texas." The quote, picked up by London papers, quickly flew across the Internet, causing a massive backlash for the Dixie Chicks in the South, especially within Country radio stations, which were inundate with angry calls and calls for boycotts (it feel very reminiscent, at times, of the whole "Disco Sucks" move in 1979). The movie chronicles the Chicks (Natalie, Emily, and Marti) as they struggle with the backlash, work on their next (most recent) album and try to maintain normal lives.
Seeing this movie today, I suspect it's largely preaching to the converted - if you weren't a big fan of President Bush before, you're not going to find anything here to make you uncomfortable, let's just say. But the result is a lot of people who agree saying things they basically all agree with, and so there's not a lot of deeper examination of those who seem so angry, so extreme in their protests. Barbara Kopple has found some great footage of protests and posters - my favorite being the guy who says he's all for freedom of speech "as long as you don't do it in public." But there's no real attempt to find or interview people who served as organizers of boycotts or led protests, and so there's no real way to examine the views some of them seem to hold so passionately.
But I think a couple of great points still come across - one, as I mentioned is that the extreme views being expressed against the Chicks, and the energy behind the protests has a feeling not unlike that of student protests in the sixties; and then, as now, I think some of those extremes needed to get played out so that a middle ground could be found - and like the left and Vietnam, the right will probably need to do some deep soul searching about what kind of compromises will be needed to find common ground with people they disagree with (it's why, in the end, a conservative firebrand like Ingraham is wrong about "Shut Up and Sing" - if your ideas can't take a jab from Barbra Streisand, you really are in trouble).
I think that the "Culture War" is a war for only one side - one point the movie makes is that the Dixie Chicks aren't fighting with those who are angry so much as trying to get on with their career. Without an enemy, and without bringing people over to your way of thinking, all that anger is really energy with no place to go. Indeed, it's really strikingly un-American on the part of the right to have tried to stifle dissent in such a heavy-handed way. And that, I think, is a clear lesson from the recent elections, though I'm not sure conservatives get that yet (though I think some definitely do).
The other interesting point of the documentary is about the music business itself - because the Dixie Chicks face a real dilemma as their tour ends and their new album is expected from their label. One lesson for the music business is that album sales didn't especially suffer for the Dixie Chicks - which says a lot about the reduced power of Radio to make or break acts, and of how video, TV and alternative outlets can serve as new ways to market music.
The film is also a lesson in how the music industry is breaking down, because the Chicks are under considerable pressure from their label (Sony) to deliver a hit at a time when almost no one can. But perhaps most importantly, if anything good could come of this, it would be to prove that there's a market for country music that doesn't need the corn-pone and faux "wholesomeness" that comes reliably out of Music Row in Nashville (where the girls are blond and Southern and the men are butch and manly). A world that would celebrate Reba McEntire as one of the great singers of her generation, not just the biggest artist in Country (and would end the pop/country, often awful, hybrids that come from the likes of Shania and Faith Hill). At times, I realized, the Dixie Chicks reminded me in their sound of the Indigo Girls, who similarly drift in and out of genres while ostensibly living in Folk. It's time to end the relentless niche marketing of music, and Shut Up and Sing is a good explanation of why - no artists as talented as the Dixie Chicks should rise and fall on the whims of a small segment of the listening public.
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