How Relevant Is Context?

[redbrunja]

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.

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

See, I feel hugely different about it, which I know is because of the political climate. There were so few public figures (it felt like to me) who were speaking out, so it was great to hear artists I respected saying things I agreed with and not backing down from their position.

But I really see your point about NRTMN not being the savviest pr move ever.

[natural-blue-26.livejournal.com]

As far as the PR and knowing your own audience goes, HUGE namesin country music (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill, Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, etc) are Democrats and still manage to jive with their mainly Red State audience without causing any kind of friction.

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. :(

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I did not know that about those country artists. Thanks for the info.

[natural-blue-26.livejournal.com]

Not a prob :)