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You didn’t have to be tuned into the entertainment shows back in ’03 to hear the furor over Natalie Maines’ between-song chatter. Hearing it in soundbite form, the debate could easily lean towards it being an easy way to bring a non-U.S. crowd to brainwashed applause. But hours earlier, as the film shows, the ladies are backstage getting an update on the war in Iraq and Maines may have felt something deeper when she told the audience, “we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” The American media picked up on the story like a vulture and soon their #1 status on the country charts (including being the best-selling female country group of all time – can you think of another?) is going down in flames. Literally. People began throwing out their beloved CDs and burning them in effigy as if they had just raped the country.

Hearing the experience of this sudden downfall would carry a stiff “poor you” quality to it, but by some bit of serendipity cameras were rolling to capture it all as it happened. They watch the coverage on television as their manager suggests spin control and we uneasily await the moment when Maines’ bandmates, Emily Robison and Martie McGuire, turn to her and ask why she couldn’t just keep her big mouth shut. To our surprise and delight, that moment never arrives. We can speculate all we want at what may have happened some night off-camera, but there’s a genuine feeling of the comraderie between the three that we can believe them when asked point blank by Diane Sawyer about any growing sense of anonymosity over a few words possibly changing their lives forever.

The anti-Chicks sentiment fuels any liberal’s expectations for the film’s bias towards the assault on common sense and national I.Q. and thus remains the easiest section of the film to pull off. You have to love their reaction when fellow country crooner and good ol’ pro-war boy, Toby Keith, takes up the position against them (how’d YOUR movie do, Toby?) but cringe at the prospect of death threats providing dates and times. Where the film truly hits on something is the flip-flopping of their travails between the time of the controversy in 2003 to 2005 when they are back in the studio trying to decide on the direction of their first album since the hullabaloo. If they play it safe and just try to get the country stations back on their side, is it a cowardly sell-out? Do they ignore their fan base completely and try to shoot for more mainstream pop avenues? Maine’s insistence on not backing down on those who abandoned them may have the aura of stubbornness, but who in their right mind wants to get back in the good graces of those who betrayed them even if the other party felt their beloved music group was the betrayer? On the other hand, there’s a virtuous bravery in embracing the match they struck and trying to craft a personal statement that doesn’t come off as just another ostentatious attempt to court a reaction from those just waiting to pounce on them all over again.

It’s astounding how fickle we’ve become in this country thanks to the media playing down to its citizens. Unfortunately the lower denominator appears to be winning in greater numbers but it also makes stories like Shut Up and Sing so much richer; not as a chance to grumble at one-track idiots whose color-triggered patriotism is a political tool but as a reminder of what the paint on the flag represents. If this was a purely fictional narrative, than the Dixie Chicks’ closing anthem, “The Long Way Around” would be an Oscar-worthy summation. Instead, it’s something more powerful and meaningful in how the beauty of the right song cuts through all barriers and provides us with something that petty politics and ignorance can never take away from us. Going in with just a rudimentary knowledge of their music, by the time Natalie Maines utters one of the best closing lines of the year, I had never been so proud to be an American.

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originally posted: 10/04/06 12:22:36
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