Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
Panic!: Shut Up & Sing
- Thursday, May 29, 2025 / 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (PDT)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 2K digital projection (93 minutes)
- With Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck (directors)
In the early 2000s, the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) reached new career heights, topping the country music charts, winning multiple Grammy Awards, and smashing commercial records left and right. However, during their 2003 Top of the World Tour, a single political remark by lead vocalist Natalie Maines denouncing the war in Iraq and then-President George W. Bush sparked fierce backlash from conservative groups. The fallout was swift and severe: the group was blacklisted by the country music industry, faced death threats, and saw their songs disappear from radio airwaves and the Billboard charts, sparking a larger national debate over free speech and political expression. Shut Up & Sing (2006), directed by Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck, captures this firestorm of political and cultural panic. The documentary follows the band over three turbulent years of public outrage and scrutiny, all fueled by a wave of reactionary nationalism at the height of the Bush administration. Through remarkable behind-the-scenes footage and candid interviews, the film offers a vital portrait of artists who refused to be silenced in the wake of widespread political panic.
Directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck will join moderator Chelsea Roesch (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Shut Up & Sing.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Director Barbara Kopple
Barbara Kopple is a two-time Academy Award-winning and ten-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 44th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards in 2023. Throughout her career, she has directed and produced upwards of fifty films, including Harlan County, USA (1977), American Dream (1991), My Generation (2000), Bearing Witness (2005), Havoc (2005), Running from Crazy (2013), Miss Sharon Jones! (2015), and Desert One (2019). Her most recent documentary is Gumbo Coalition (2022), which follows civil rights leaders Marc Morial and Janet Murguía during a pivotal time in American history.
Director Cecilia Peck
Emmy-nominated filmmaker Cecilia Peck has always been drawn to stories of individuals who stand up for their beliefs. She was showrunner, director, and writer of the 2020 STARZ four-episode documentary series Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult. She directed and produced the Netflix Original Brave Miss World, the story of Miss World Linor Abargil’s fight for justice and triumph over trauma following a brutal rape. Cecilia produced A Conversation with Gregory Peck, an intimate portrait of her father, which premiered as a Special Selection at the Cannes Film Festival, for TCM and American Masters. She also directed and produced Justice For All, an examination of capital punishment through the eyes of one death row prisoner.
Moderator Chelsea Kai Roesch (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
Chelsea Kai Roesch is a PhD candidate in Film and Media Studies at the UCSB, where she studies digital media, internet culture, and tech labor. She is a University of California Regents Fellow and has received awards from the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB, and Spain’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. Chelsea is the organizer of the Alt-Right Media Literacy Series—a speaker series aimed at understanding the new visual language of the Right online. Chelsea is currently conducting research on women workers in digital casinos.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.
CWC Presents: Panic!
The Carsey-Wolf Center’s 2024-25 feature series Panic! explores the complex relationship between media, an anxious public, and the turbulent currents of social, cultural, and moral panic. The series will examine how such panics have appeared on screen over the decades, but also consider how the screen itself—as technology, as gathering space, and as a site of fantasy and desire—becomes the object of reactionary backlash. Panic! will be a yearlong showcase of the films, discourses, and cultural practices that have tested the limits of public acceptability, and that have much to teach us about the cycles of panic that define our own political moment.
CWC Docs
The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.