>>PREVIEW
SHUT UP AND SING
STARRING: The Dixie Chicks
DIRECTED BY: Barbara Kopple
Opens Friday, November 17
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"Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
Those 15 spontaneous words, spoken by Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines at a London concert on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, ignited a preposterous political fervour within the idiom that is American patriotism. Thanks to intimate documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, American Dream) and her cameras, the tumultuous three years that were to follow this off-the-cuff remark have now been immortalized in her latest film Shut up and Sing.
As stated, the film follows Maines and her bandmates (Emily Robinson, Martie Maguire) for three years, starting with the now infamous concert and conveniently ending with the release of their latest album in June 2006. We receive a personal, behind-the-scenes account of the political firestorm that quickly engulfed them and the effects it had on their personal and professional lives. Though it offers no great revelations to those even mildly attuned to the realities of corporate music and their politics, Kopple does do a commendable job establishing a fly-on-the-wall presence during these trying times. The director refrains from anchoring her picture with the standard talking-head interviews, giving the picture a more versatile, even objective, feel.
For those unfamiliar with the story behind the backlash, Maines’ remark led the Dixie Chicks (the highest selling female group at the time) into a political shit storm that was, for the most part, heavily orchestrated by one right-wing publication. It was, however all too easily embraced (or at least tolerated) by much of the main-stream media at the time. The time, of course, being one where the majority of Americans were standing behind their president as he marched them into a war against an "imminent threat" and the American press (heeding the opinion polls) all too graciously swallowed everything they were spoon-fed from the White House. And so, one comment delivered the girls into a downward spiral. Radio station after radio station banned their music and repeated death threats were made on their lives.
God bless America for making us proud to be Canadian.
Well, times have changed in America. The Republicans have just lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Bush’s approval rating would make a good round of nine-hole golf and the Dixie Chicks now have their own movie – a mediocre movie.
Though you’d never know it by the outpouring of belated praise now coming from the American press. |
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