![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
This is probably not a surprise to most of my flist, but I'm a big believer in the Death of the Author, that a text should be taken on its own, without the creator stepping in to explain or justify his/her creative choices. (That said, I deliberately try not to know details about authors/actors/etc, because if I learn things I don't like it will forever taint the text for me).
Last night, I was listening to Not Ready To Make Nice:
(please give this song a listen, especially if you are not familiar with the Dixie Chicks or the specific background of this song).
What I was wondering was, does this song make any sense without the context of the Iraq War? If you don't know that the Dixie Chicks spoke out against Bush and had a lot of hate-mail because of it, what do you think this song is about? Even if you do know, does the song's overt political bias make it easier/harder to relate to?
Inquiring minds want to know. Speaking personally, while I greatly enjoy this song, I think it's cementation in one particular time period of American history is actually a weakness. I think Unsteady Ground:
has a much more nuanced touch with the politics of the Iraq War and For What It's Worth is a much more universal protest song.
Although, granted, neither one of those has the anger or righteousness of Not Ready To Make Nice, which I certainly don't want to devalue.
Last night, I was listening to Not Ready To Make Nice:
(please give this song a listen, especially if you are not familiar with the Dixie Chicks or the specific background of this song).
What I was wondering was, does this song make any sense without the context of the Iraq War? If you don't know that the Dixie Chicks spoke out against Bush and had a lot of hate-mail because of it, what do you think this song is about? Even if you do know, does the song's overt political bias make it easier/harder to relate to?
Inquiring minds want to know. Speaking personally, while I greatly enjoy this song, I think it's cementation in one particular time period of American history is actually a weakness. I think Unsteady Ground:
has a much more nuanced touch with the politics of the Iraq War and For What It's Worth is a much more universal protest song.
Although, granted, neither one of those has the anger or righteousness of Not Ready To Make Nice, which I certainly don't want to devalue.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I think over all it was a dumb move- the Dixie Chicks had already pissed off most of their fanbase (remember the videos of radio stations rolling over stacks of Dixie Chicks CDs with bulldozers?), and then they turn around and spit at them again. There's making a statement, and then there's no having enough PR sebse to prevent screwing yourself over.
'Goodbye Earl,' 'Cowboy Take Me Away,' and 'Ready to Run' are still great though. :D
no subject
But I really see your point about NRTMN not being the savviest pr move ever.
no subject
Toby and Tim esp are great at being *really* supportive of the troops (if I remember right from the Toby/Trace Akdins concert from the summer, which AWESOME, Toby's been on almost 20 USO tours) even if they aren't into how/why the troops are where they are.
If the Chicks *had* had some public counter PR measure (USO/something) they might have been able to sail through the "ashamed he's from Texas" firestorm. As it was, all their fans saw was Natalie going to Great Britian and bashing her country's eleted leader and follow up with a song about how she's not sorry, which is all very bad news bears because the group made such great music. :(
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Angry break-up! Yes, that is the perfect alternate explanation for this song!
no subject
no subject
no subject
Like take the works of Machiavelli, a 'Machiavelli' is now used to describe a power-hungry ruthless tyrant, based of a single one of his works. Machiavelli was a writer of politics I can't remember how long ago, he wrote a book that was how he became used as this title saying things like "end always justifies means,
even if you have to starve and kill hundreds of your people". Etc, etc. He is remembered as one of the cruelest thinkers in memory.What everyone forgets? The work was entirely sarcastic. Every other one of his books talks about helping and saving people, how rulers should be compassionate. But everyone forgot that and the context in which he was writing, now only remembering this one book.
Context is very important x_x
no subject
no subject
no subject
I'd like to think he'd get a job with the Daily Show and issue epic smack downs instead.
no subject
no subject
no subject
"Caesar no one does that any--"
"LOSER, PFFT."
I always loved that line "I made my bed and I sleep like a baby."
From what you're saying you feel that the universal appeal of the song is dependent on its maleability and the room it allows for people to impress on it their own current expectations. Yet it's impossible to separate any piece of art from the circumstances of its inception/creation, and while some songs feel easy to take outside of that framework, that framework never truly disappears. It's just overlooked for the viewer's convenience.
I'd also argue that part of the universality of art that it can do the reverse: rather than you bringing a song into current events and finding similarities there, art can take you somewhere and somewhen else, and help you find the similarities [to that past situation] in yourself.
Re: I always loved that line "I made my bed and I sleep like a baby."
Not quite. I think that there are pieces of art that require the viewer understand less context than others while still retaining the original meaning. Take some of Shakespeare's sonnets, for example; some of them don't require more context than, say a Pablo Neruda poem, because they're working with themes that seem to stay largely the same (love) regardless of time period. One the other hand, you have the pre-Impressionist paintings and NRTMN, with which if you're not in on the code (what specific items in paintings represented, the context of some of the stories being illustrated, what was going on politically in the US) you're going to miss a lot of information.
What I shouldn't have done was say that a text being heavily coded is automatically a negative; requesting that the viewer put some effort into the work isn't automatically a bad thing, and I can think of several pieces of art and literature that would not be considered such if they didn't ask the reader/viewer to make the effort.
no subject
The first half of the song makes sense out of context, although I suspected what it was actually about; the second half, to me, does not. I instantly went "oh, this is a song about the hate mail they received after they spoke out against the war," and trying to think of it as someone who didn't know the context at all, I would have been confused.
I'd go further and say that, while I like this song too, I don't think it can stand outside the specific instance that sparked it, never mind the war itself. And it's odd, because I'm a huge fan of songwriters like Alanis Morrisette who are frequently accused of being way too damn specific and bringing more baggage into their songs than they should.
Maybe it's because there's a certain universality to that kind of confessional songwriting. Even if you didn't have an ex named Matt who used to use your toothbrush and otherwise disregarded your stuff and, eventually, you, you as a human being can relate to the experience of a neglectful ex. It's kind of like a novel that way.
And I think that's why Unsteady Ground works in a way the Dixie Chicks song doesn't. It's at the same time a song about the Iraq War--the specifics of it--and the follies and horrors of war itself. It's the same reason why I can hear Big Muddy by Pete Seeger, a song written about Vietnam, and have it resonate with me today.
It's a weird balance to strike, storytelling in both song and, well, story. I'm talking about songs like these that are specifically trying to tell a story, not music as a general rule (which, like poetry, has the ability to be far more nonspecific than fiction), but yeah. You need a certain degree of specificity when you're telling a story so your reader has something to latch on to, but you also need some way to bridge that gap and reach out to the reader so the reader's own emotions are drawn in. What the ingredients are to make that balance are different for everyone, but speaking broadly I'd say the Dixie Chicks song, for whatever reason, just doesn't do it, and the other song you linked to, for whatever reason, does.
Any thoughts on that?
no subject
Agreed. And I think the experience of being hated by people who don't really know you has happened to many people (or at least, it happened to me as the result of some really bitchy 11-year-old girls), the Dixie Chicks put a little too much of there specific situation into the song to have it feel really relatable.