In addition to endless ways we can self-limit and self-censor our creative expression, there are often subtle - and not so subtle - forms of censorship that can impact creative endeavors, sometimes even before they can find an audience.

A new example is the response of tv network NBC to ads for the new Dixie Chicks documentary “Shut Up & Sing”:

(From Reuters press release) - Citing its policy barring ads dealing with “public controversy,” NBC said it rejected a TV commercial for the documentary because the ads “are disparaging of President Bush.”

The ad features footage of lead singer Natalie Maines declaring during a London concert in March 2003 that the band was “ashamed” to come from the same state — Texas — as Bush.

NBC, a unit of General Electric Co. denied they were engaging in political censorship, and said it was merely following its “policy of not broadcasting ads that deal with issues of public controversy.”

“Shut Up & Sing,” directed by Cecilia Peck and Oscar winner Barbara Kopple, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the backlash sparked by Maines’ anti-Bush outburst in 2003.

Maines later said she was sorry for “disrespecting the office of the president” but fanned flames anew when she retracted her apology in a Time magazine interview this year, saying: “I don’t feel he is owed any respect whatsoever.”

Many country music radio stations reacted by refusing the play the Chicks’ records, and some even boycotted ads for their current “Accidents & Accusations” tour, leading the band to cancel numerous dates in the South and Midwest. [Reuters/VNU Fri Oct 27 2006]

In her AlterNet post “The Sexist Backlash Against the Dixie Chicks,” Melissa Silverstein [Women's Media Center] comments about the new album:

Recording it and writing their own songs for the first time functioned as a catharsis for the hell they went through. Their dismay with the country world is clear in the first single, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” an anthem of unrepentant anger.

Theirs is the best sort of feminist story: all about what happens when women stand up for what they believe in. At the end of the documentary, [Director Barbara] Kopple shows the Dixie Chicks returning to the arena in London where the controversy began. Maines restates her comment, this time with a big smile on her face.

Kopple got to know her subjects well while following them around for over a year. “I think, more than anything,” she says, “their experience has highlighted that — although the cost of speaking your mind and being yourself can be high — the cost of being silenced is much higher.”

See trailer for “Shut Up & Sing” at myspace.com/shutupandsing

Their new CD is Taking The Long Way

[The photo is The Dixie Chicks on the cover of Entertainment Weekly magazine, April 24, 2003 - from the page nudity: art identity activism3]

An Excerpt from a summary of the book Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands & Censored Songs notes there have been “firestorms of controversy that have engulfed brave artists like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Billie Holiday, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Dead Kennedy’s, Madonna, N.W.A., Public Enemy, Ice-T, Nirvana, the Dixie Chicks.. and many others.” [From the page: censorship

George Orwell wrote in his book “Animal Farm” that the “chief danger to freedom of thought and speech.. is not the direct interference of the MOI [the British Ministry of Information] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face..”

And Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451” once commented, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture; just get people to stop reading them.”
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10.28.06 |
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