Shut up and Sing?

I won't bother to rehash what Natalie Mains the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks said in March of 2003 from the stage in London. If you want to see it, well there are plenty of sites that have covered the subject. What I am interested in is the reaction to her statement and the subsequent reaction to the new documentary film Shut Up & Sing (Barbera Kopple and Cecilia Peck, 2006). I have not yet had the opportunity to screen the film but judging from the trailer, and what has been written, I can guess that the film tries to strike at the central question of the conflict: should artists be political and what (if any) consequences should they face for their opinions?

From the dark ages on, one of the roles of the artist has been to question, mock and comment on society and culture. The court jester would be the only person who could question the King and get away with it. Artists express their opinions through their work, whether obvious or subtle, every day in life. Art without social comment or political significance is, well.... kinda useless decoration.

For those who think I am being cynical, let me put it a different way. Life is an incredibly complex web of conflicts, love, passion, stress, politics, culture, society (the list could go on for pages) and when our art over simplifies these issues, we end up with a false impression that life is easy. When we ignore what is happening around us, the problems which face each and every one of us compound and before long, they end up finding their way into our lives anyway, usually in incredibly violent and deadly ways.

Artists, remind us of what our world looks like. They hold a mirror up to the world and show us for our glory, beauty and ugliness. Artists should be passionate about the world in which they live and channel that passion through their work, that is how they should work. Of course it is up to the public to decide what they do with that opinion and maybe even use it to open some sort of dialogue between sides, but that isn't what happened with the Dixie Chicks. What happened to them was an attempt to silence the voice of an artist, literally and figuratively, and that is unacceptable. The reaction to the Dixie Chicks is still passionate and once again I believe that bigots and bullies relish in the anonymity of the internet to spread their message.

If we end up silencing the artistic voices, then who will be there to remind us of our humanity whether just or unjust?