Performing Authenticity in the Country Music Biopic
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MINING THE PAST: PERFORMING AUTHENTICITY IN THE COUNTRY MUSIC BIOPIC Molly Brost A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2008 Committee: Erin Labbie, Advisor Kevin Quinn Graduate Faculty Representative Vivian Patraka Becca Cragin ii ABSTRACT Erin Labbie, Advisor Both country music and the biographical film are genres that are evaluated by strict (yet constantly changing) standards of authenticity. However, “authenticity” means different things when applied to both genres; in country music, it refers to the artist’s respect for tradition and ability to relate to their audience, while in the biographical film, the term typically denotes factual accuracy and the filmmaker’s ability to emphasize the “correct” aspects of the subject’s life. Mining the Past: Performing Authenticity in the Country Music Biopic argues that when a biographical film about a country musician is made, it must negotiate standards of authenticity applicable to both country music and the biographical film. Further, it posits that when the subject of the film is female, the standard for living an “authentic” life and having an “authentic” career changes drastically and, for the artist, is a constant negotiation. Via analyses of four films chronicling the lives of female country musicians, this dissertation examines the ways in which the films (and their heroines) negotiate genre- and medium-specific standards of authenticity. Using the 1980 film Coal Miner’s Daughter as a case study, Chapter I argues that country biopics must successfully negotiate authenticity relative to four models: the country model; the narrative model; the emphasis model; and the “time and space” model. Chapter II, in turn, argues that Sweet Dreams failed to achieve the acclaim of Coal Miner’s Daughter largely because the subject’s death made it impossible to authenticate the film’s emphasis. Chapter III contends that Walk the Line actress Reese Witherspoon was considered authentic due to her ability to negotiate, first, June Carter’s struggle between “home” and “the road,” and, second, her own star persona with that of the character’s. Finally, Chapter IV uses the documentary Shut Up iii and Sing to examine how standards of authenticity change over time, as well as how authenticity is negotiated in a different film genre. Ultimately, this project seeks to contribute to the fields of film studies, country music studies, and women’s studies, providing an analysis of authenticity in genres in which women’s roles have been largely overlooked by scholars. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Erin Labbie, for her patience, guidance, and feedback throughout the development and completion of this project. Additionally, I would like to thank Vicki Patraka, Becca Cragin, and Kevin Quinn for their participation on my committee. I would also like to thank Brad Gosche, Jason Kirby, Kelly Watson, Nathan and Michelle Crook, Neil Shepard, and Erica Kubik for their friendship and support throughout the dissertation process. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, Tim and Renita Brost, for their continuing encouragement. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER: SETTING THE STANDARD FOR COUNTRY BIOPIC AUTHENTICITY...................... 19 CHAPTER II. “I JUST WANT TO MAKE IT RIGHT”: SWEET DREAMS, EMPHASIS, AND CAPTURING THE “REAL” PATSY CLINE........ 44 CHAPTER III. BECOMING AUTHENTIC: LEAVING HOME IN WALK THE LINE.............................................................................. 72 CHAPTER IV. SIX STRONG HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL: SHUT UP AND SING, THE DIXIE CHICKS, AND CONTEMPORARY COUNTRY AUTHENTICITY….. ............................................................................................................ 93 CONCLUSION…….. ................................................................................................……… 117 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 122 1 INTRODUCTION A biographical film can seemingly simply be defined as a film that dramatizes the life of an individual. Even such a straightforward characterization, however, hints that the biographical film label might easily be applied to an extremely large number of films that are more different than they are alike. Indeed, the biographical film genre can be seen to encompass films about musicians, artists, scientists, political figures, writers, sports heroes, and serial killers (to name only a few); one might easily imagine that even two people who received notoriety for similar reasons might have lived incredibly divergent lives. Further, the biographical film genre can be seen to encompass films that take extremely different approaches to dramatizing lives; some biopics attempt to give a comprehensive view of the subject’s entire life, while others might dramatize only one significant period in the depicted person’s life. With such a wide variety of films existing under the generic label of “biographical film,” it is perhaps unsurprising that only two scholars have attempted to write comprehensive works on the genre: Robert Milton Miller, whose Star Myths: Show-Business Biographies on Film, presents a history of the biographical film, and George F. Custen, whose Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History goes a step further by not only identifying the conventions of the studio era biopic, but also examining the role that such films played in shaping public history. Unsurprisingly, given the extremely wide range of films included under the “biographical film” banner, much of the scholarship on biographical films has been contextualized within studies of other genres, such as the historical film (of which biopics can inarguably be considered a part) and the movie musical (to which many musician biopics also belong). The scattered nature of biopic scholarship speaks to the hybridity of the biopic genre and, 2 indeed, of many popular genres. As Derek Longhurst notes in Gender, Genre, and Narrative Pleasure, popular genres “are not rigidly self-contained categories” but “evolve interactively and in relation to specific historical formations” (5). Placing a film firmly in one specific genre can be difficult; as Barry Langford notes in Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond, “no individual genre film can ever embody the full range of attributes said to typify a genre; by the same token—as volumes of frustrated critical effort attest—no definition of genre, however flexible, can account equally well for every genre film” (vii). In History Goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film, Marnie Hughes-Warrington introduces yet another problem with labeling a given film as part of a specific genre: such labels are often laden with value judgments, and can serve to imbue a film with a sense of importance or, alternatively, denigrate its perceived worth; as she wonders, “Is calling a work a ‘historical film’ an act of approval, or might it also be used perjoratively, as with ‘chick flick’ or ‘women’s weepie’” (37)? Defining films according to generic boundaries, then, can be problematic for reasons other than that a film might contain characteristics of several genres. Even as categorizing according to genre becomes increasingly problematic, issues of genre remain crucial in shaping the expectations placed upon, and the subsequent reception of, popular films and popular music. Roberta Garrett acknowledges this in Postmodern Chick Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film; as she notes, While post-classical Hollywood is defined through its production of ‘metageneric’ blockbusters and the self-conscious postmodernist blending of prior cinematic codes…the widespread media circulation and availability of classic Hollywood and the expansion of a cineaste’s awareness of genre codes has also reinforced the cultural significance of genre distinctions as a means of understanding and categorizing filmic 3 forms. (26) Thus, while the practice of blending genres is common, genre distinctions continue to be important to media consumers. Literary scholar Mary Gerhart further notes that genre also continues to be an important concern for scholars. She argues in Genre Choices, Gender Questions that genre analysis enables us “to become aware of questions that would otherwise go unnoticed. How do generic predispositions set up expectations about the ways in which a text should be read? How do traditions provide both restraints and incentives to the development of new genres” (7)? Further, she asks, how does the recognition of genre “reduce the possibility of misinterpreting a text and at the same time invite maximum reinterpretation” (7)? Langford further notes the continuing importance of genre for both audiences and scholars, observing that “genre remains an essential critical tool for understanding the ways that films are produced and consumed, as well a their broader relations to culture and society” (vii). When one embarks on a study of the biographical film, he or she must do so with the knowledge that though the biographical film might be an increasingly hybrid genre, it is still a genre that filmmakers, viewers, and critics approach with specific expectations, and that the relative “success” of any given film will be partially based on how