America’s assorted “minorities” (people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, women – and, of course, people who inhabit two or more of those identity categories) have long known that fealty to symbols of patriotism are demanded of them even as the ideals behind said symbols are often violently denied them. Current raging controversies surrounding Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem (which, as more than one scholar has pointed out, is an unbridled ode to the brutality of slavery) are a reminder that many of the very people who demand respect for the flag or national anthem have nothing but disdain for people whose lives expose the brutal hypocrisy (and straight up lie) of there being “liberty and justice for all.” Freedom of speech, that most muddled, misunderstood of the freedoms we’re all supposedly allowed, is the very first thing denied those who attempt to exercise it in ways that raise questions about just who the country values and protects.
Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN The Dixie Chicks at Fire Relief The Concert for Central Texas at the Frank Erwin Center on Monday, October 17, 2011.
In 2003, when Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines made an offhand quip about being ashamed George Bush was from Texas during a London concert, no one could have predicted the vitriol that would follow. The trio, who up to that point had had an almost fairytale like existence in the world of American country music, suddenly became pariahs, with their records banned from radio and death threats flooding in. And then an unapologetic Maines went and repeated the sentiment three years later on the very same London stage. That three year period, with all its tumult, was filmed by co-directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck, who’d been fortuitously documenting the group just before all hell broke loose and the trio’s career went on life support.
The resulting documentary is a portrait of ribald, smart and brave women juggling marriage and motherhood with looming (and undesired) martyrdom. Maines in particular is what old timers used to call a firecracker: salty mouth, fearless, effortlessly funny and charming in her absolutely no-fucks attitude. What makes the politically charged content of the film potent is the way it captures the offstage humanity of Maines and her bandmates, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire. Their three-way sisterly bond crackles with love and natural tensions. Kopple and Peck cut back & forth between the endless misogyny-steeped death threats aimed at the women to the group’s quotidian artist struggles with their record label, between their feud with redneck hero Toby Keith, to their simply trying to select a new producer (the great Rick Rubin).
Dixie Chicks in a recent concert, mocking Donald Trump. Photo by Kevin Mazur for Getty Images/PMK
One of the most important points made in the film is that these women are from the American “heartland.” That’s important to note not only for the scarily violent, reactionary Americans who aim to turn this country into a place where political dissent and the actual exercising of constitutional rights is deemed un-American, but also for left-leaning types who think intellectual sparks and progressive politics (and the ovaries to stand up to the powerful, media fed reactionary forces in this country) are the domain of big-city coastal dwellers alone.
Top photo by by James Minchin.
