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.”
On the surface, “Shut Up & Sing” is a modest film with no obvious axes to grind. As it follows the Dixie Chicks around for three years, it takes Ms. Kopple’s usual route and lets events speak for themselves. No talking heads appear to debate the politics of the Bush administration. Neither the group nor its manager, Simon Renshaw, sat for a formal interview.
Shifting back and forth between 2003 and the more recent past, as the trio prepares its newest album, “Taking the Long Way,” with the producer Rick Rubin, the movie offers a revealing case study of the relationship between politics, celebrity and the media in today’s polarized social climate. 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.
The movie also brings up the skirmishes between the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith, the rowdy country star and superpatriot, which began in 2002 and heated up when Ms. Maines wore a T-shirt to the Academy of Country Music Awards bearing a four-letter acronym that could be interpreted as an obscene dig at him.
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.
The first question facing the Dixie Chicks after the incident: Should Ms. Maines eat her words and apologize? No way, she decides; she backtracks only so far as to say she supports American troops. The second question: Will the consequences of her decision rupture the solidarity of three women who call themselves a sisterhood? Another emphatic no.
To Ms. Maines’s surprise, the controversy doesn’t blow over in a week or two. The Dixie Chicks are forced to reassess their career and public image. Should they cultivate a blue-state audience? And if so, how far toward rock should they go? In their flashiest publicity stunt, they appear nude, their bodies stenciled with slogans, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly; they also go on the Bill Maher and Howard Stern shows.
The new album, “Taking the Long Way,” is finally released in May 2006 and sells one million copies within three weeks. But in the South the boycott persists. In a revealing scene of the concert business in action, ticket sales for a coming tour are monitored by computer from the moment they begin. It’s immediately apparent that sales in the South are weak, and so the itinerary is changed to take the group across Canada.
Although the movie focuses on Ms. Maines, it spends enough time with Ms. Maguire and Ms. Robison for us to get a sense of them. We meet Ms. Maguire’s twin daughters and observe the pregnancy of Ms. Robison, who had twins (a boy and a girl) in 2005. Ms. Maines has a historical perspective on it all. Coming from Lubbock, the birthplace of Buddy Holly, she recalls a time when Holly, an early rock ’n’ roller in a country music bastion, was no local hero.
The film’s generous helpings of the Dixie Chicks’ music culminate with thrilling performances of “The Long Way Around” and “Not Ready to Make Nice” from the recent album. Performing these anthems expressing passionate defiance and solidarity, the group has never sounded more vital and engaged.
“Shut Up & Sing” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for language.
SHUT UP & SING
Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.
Directed by Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck; directors of photography, Christine Burrill, Luis Lopez, Seth Gordon, Gary Griffin and Joan Churchill; edited by Bob Eisenhardt, Jean Tsien, Aaron Kuhn and Emma Morris; music by the Dixie Chicks; produced by Ms. Kopple, Ms. Peck and David Cassidy; released by the Weinstein Company. Running tim
