"Dixie Chicks" may not belong in "pop," music, but we don't have a country or southern section and "Dixie Chicks" only caught our attention because of controversy on their stand on the Iraq War of 2003. The "Dixie Chicks" singer Natalie Maines told a London audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
For those who do not know, "Dixie" is a word referring to the southern region of the U$A. The U.S. Civil War was about Dixie's attempt to form its own country apart from the U$A. A "chick" is a light-hearted but offensive reference to a young adult female.
Originally the "Dixie Chicks" said on March 12th, "We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our governments' position. The anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding. While we support our troops, there is nothing more frightening than the notion of going to war with Iraq and the prospect of all the innocent lives that will be lost."
Maines further stated, "I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world. My comments were made in frustration and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view."(1)
Unfortunately, "Dixie Chicks" apologized on March 14th: "As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect. We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers' lives are lost. I love my country. I am a proud American."(1) MIM was very sorry to hear the March 14th apology, because a war criminal and the world's greatest international terrorist deserves no respect whether he was pseudo-elected or not. He wasn't pseudo-elected to carry out "regime change" in Iraq, only the U$A. Now we at MIM understand that most "Dixie Chicks" fans don't care enough about politics to have investigated why MIM says this about Bush, but surely they realize that elected officials handed power to Hitler and Hitler himself was elected to office, so we cannot always just respect people in office. We have to be right about respecting them or majority-rule will boil down to whoever manipulates the ignorant best.
According to the "Dixie Chicks" manager Simon Renshaw, the "Dixie Chicks" won't be making more apologies and stated they are in a no-win situation.(2) Meanwhile, reactionary big-mouth www.rushlimbaugh.com called for a boycott of "Dixie Chicks." Rush Limbaugh wondered whether they were trying to spur European sales. MIM does not know the motivations of the Dixie Chicks, whether or not they were frustrated with not being able to get their kind of music to breakthrough in Europe.
"In response to outrage from many Bush supporters, the country trio's songs were pulled from several radio stations' playlists, despite Maines' public explanation ("My comments were made in frustration ...") issued almost immediately after the news broke. The controversy took its toll at retail, as sales of Home fell by more than 42 percent, from 123,000 copies to 71,000. The LP, which has resided near the top of the chart for 30 weeks, will slide three spots to #7."(3) (On the other hand, the first few days of the controversy saw the album go up two spots to #4 according to Yahoo. "Dixie Chicks" were due to fall anyway after being on the charts more than 30 weeks.)
On TV, redneck protesters took "Dixie Chicks" merchandise and used a steam-roller to crush it all on the street. It's a typical reaction in the united $tates when fans don't like something their band did, going back at least to when John Lennon made some comments about god and Jesus that the redneck public did not like.
Anyway, we checked out "Home" to see if it has any content to it. Musically, it's the standard southern jangle. There's nothing innovative about it. It could have been done in 1850 except for mentions of the Vietnam War.
Fans report liking "Home," because it sounds like angels singing in harmony and has that "bluegrass feel," again another Kentucky/southern reference. Strangely, one reviewer is so enthusiastic he says the "Dixie Chicks" "rock," which most assuredly they do not, but this is the fan perception of her music. Yes, this music is polished. It will turn out that the emphasis on harmony goes for the sexual values espoused in the music as well.
The reason that "Dixie Chicks" are so popular is that they are nothing new or threatening. They are wives and mothers, so even though they benefit largely from their pictures of themselves, they give off the family aura at the same time. What we mean is that if we took the same music by a band of wimmin who were just ordinary-looking it would not sell so well. Then if we added in some lyrics with some discontent in them, the result would be disastrous for sales. "Dixie Chicks" music is uncontroversial to its audience, reactionary even.
"Travelin' Soldier" is now a famous song about a womyn who stays in love with a much older man who goes to war in Vietnam. The song fell from #1 to #3 on the country charts (a popularity measure) after the flap about Iraq.(4) In love with the military, much of the rural South and rural areas of the North which are similar still believes that it was wrong to treat returned soldiers from Vietnam as war criminals when they were just "serving their country." MIM does not believe the returned soldiers got nearly as bad a treatment from the population (leaving aside government programs and benefits) as the war-mongers say. If the treatment were as bad and radical as they make out, the world would have entered socialism by now. For this sort, having the sexy wives of "Dixie Chicks" soothe their souls and promise to be loyal even after war crimes was just the ticket to popularity.
"Truth No. 2" may have mentioned domestic violence, but it's surrounded in the usual romance pop and not threatening. "White Trash wedding" talks about a man without the money to buy a diamond ring and how father is not happy, but a baby is on the way. It's an ancient subject with no new angle from the "Dixie Chicks."
The formula for wimmin pop stars continues to the letter with "A Home" the title of the album. Although it does not mention genders or sexual preferences, with the Dixie Chicks singing it reads as a heterosexual womyn regretting that she turned away the love of a man who could have built her a "home." Now she spends her time wondering what the "home" would have been like.
Then there is "More Love" and "I Believe in Love." "Godspeed" also mentions love and "Top of the World" mentions Jesus. There's not a word of intelligent discontent on this album and that's what makes it popular.
We are not saying the patriarchy is any more fierce in the South than the North. There are some reactionary patriarchal religions such as Mormonism that are above average in oppressiveness. Mormonism promotes child abuse masked as polygamy, but a large swath of Country-listening Amerikkka is probably not that excessively religious.
Being in harmony with patriarchy like the "Dixie Chicks" has its downsides, but most of what calls itself "feminism" is really more of the same, sometimes worse. It's an open question whether southern wimmin will be able to make the transition to communism more easily than say pseudo-feminist Northern wimmin. The problem with this audience that used to buy "Dixie Chicks" albums is that it's a lot easier to say you are for "true love" and "support our troops" than to know what's wrong with gender relations generally or what caused 911. It's clear that albums like "Home" are actually working hard to avoid "politics." It's not easy to come up with this material that is so consistently non-controversial to southern whites. Our questions to "Dixie Chicks" are as follows: What if you love someone who was a mass-murderer in Vietnam? What if he was one of the troops going around raping and killing wimmin and children? What then Dixie Chicks? What if "support our troops" becomes a substitute for addressing the causes of war? What if every country supported war just because its troops were in a perilous position on the border of another country? These "support our troops" types claim to be non-political, but they are not. Their emotions support war. We say "support our troops" emotions and naive patriotism in past wars actually caused 911.
Even though the "Dixie Chicks" apologized and their music is ultra-conservative, they oppose the war. For that, we love them. People who are going to buy this sort of tripe anyway might want to keep that in mind.
It is our hope that the "Dixie Chicks" manage to remake themselves, maybe abandon their musical roots on the next album if they have to. If they go beyond the pure emotions of love, maybe they can keep a fraction of their old audience and build for an audience in Amerikkka and Europe ready to hear some discontent.
Something the "Dixie Chicks" are going to have to realize is that what they are talking about is way beyond the vast majority of Amerikkkans who choose not to know more about politics, because of their contentment, ironically expressed partly as obsessing over Dixie Chicks. According to UPI, "A Knight-Ridder poll asked, 'How many of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens?' Only 17 percent gave the right answer: none."(5) The war-mongers are the ones who buy Dixie Chicks albums: "Overall, those sectors of the public that supported Bush in 2000 have been most eager for war today. White evangelical Protestants and rural citizens, for example, are big Bush advocates today, as they were in 2000."(5) People who do not understand the 100 million people of the Amerikkkan "Bible Belt" and other rural evangelicals should really encounter some before assuming that all people are the same in Amerikkka, which is a huge territory with 290 million people and with more justification for having more countries than some of those in Eastern Europe or the Arab world created by British colonialism. Our advice to "Dixie Chicks" is that the trouble with marketing music is that marketing political discontent is not easy. However, it would not be hard for the "Dixie Chicks" to change to folk singers. They could write peace songs for the world and not be tied down to the country music audience. That is our most realistic and best hope for the Dixie Chicks.
Not all Amerikkkans care that much what the Europeans say: "One reason for this was suggested by the Pew analysts: 'In the U.S., college graduates are much more supportive of maintaining close ties with Western Europe compared with those with no more than a high school education (77 percent vs. 55 percent).'"(5) The "Dixie Chicks" are proof that the criticism of Amerikkkans by Europeans does count. If we can find some whites in Europe to say the right things, it does matter: keep it up Europeans. Whether it is Mumia Abu-Jamal's case or the Iraq war, there is definitely a little adjustment that Amerikkkan people can make from looking at Europeans. Although France and Germany are major imperialist powers, the people there can sometimes help whites to see themselves a little more objectively in Amerikkka.
Notes:
1. www.dixiechicks.com
2. http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/entertainment/2065117/detail.html
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1470769/20030326/50_cent.jhtml?headlines=true
3. http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/entertainment/2065117/detail.html
4. http://www.nynewsday.com/entertainment/local/newyork/ny-3194944mar30,0,2866443.story?coll=ny-nyc-entertainment-headlines
5. http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030314-022023-3781r