It wasn't until after watching “Shut Up and Sing”, the Dixie Chicks documentary, that I realized that I really was the intended audience for the film. I went into it thinking, “I hate country music, I really don't want to have to watch this stupid movie with these women playing their awful country hits. I can't even relate to them or the culture that they're in.”. Little did I know that this wasn't some music documentary chronicling the Chicks' success in the country music world. It was actually about how they were cast out. In 2003, when the former president, George Bush, announced that we would be going to war, most of the country was in dismay. Now our generation has a war, and what is it really based on? The Chicks were well aware of this and felt very strongly on the matter. At their show in London, the lead singer stated, “I'm ashamed that the president is from Texas”, since this was her home state. Well, the rest of Texas, and the rest of the country world felt a little different. Next thing the girls knew they were being dropped from their Lipton Tea sponsored deal, plethora of hate mail started coming in, even death threats. All because of one tiny opinion stated about a state that was an ocean away. One mean line that stuck out in particular for me was, “Strap her to a bomb and send her to Baghdad!”.
From the Dixie Chicks' start they had already grown into a new beast. No longer were they performing old time country with hoop skirts on, but they were selling contemporary country music to the masses. They were a hit in 2003, and their song “Traveling Soldier” had potential to be at the charts for a long time. That is until that slip up happened, and the song plummeted. The girls got shit from all angles and it scared them a bit. Years passed before they regained the American people, that is win over the non-liberals.
The biggest problem was that they were being hit for freedom of speech. Although their target audience weren't of the same opinion, they should have at least respected that the girls use one of the great girts America gives us. Wouldn't they be “unamerican” and “commies” if they didn't?
The film instead of chronicling success, chronicled the hardships that they faced and the loss they encountered. Even with a whole family on the tour bus—they still felt fear. Holly, the one who originally said the “words that shook America”, commented that, “The people who banned us, I'll never talk to again and the people that supported us are gonna get more love than they've ever seen.”
Even with the dangers of angry fans and the humiliation of being banned, the girls never stopped saying what they believed in. They posed on the cover of Entertainment Weekly almost completely nude, with all the words they had been called since the incident.
It was all about sticking to your guns, which should be appreciated by any liberty-loving American. The country chewed them up, spit them out, and they're still going. They even went to the same gig in London years later, and don't you know she said the same damn thing. “I'm still ashamed that our president is from Texas.” Now kids, what's more American than that?
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