Essay Questions

Why title the film Nashville?

Because Nashville is a metaphorical microcosm of America. Why choose Nashville as the microcosmic city? Because Nashville is a city uniquely identified with a very specific form of entertainment. Nashville is, in a sense, a company town that is associated with a specific industry: like Pittsburgh and steel or Detroit and cars at one time. The industry associated with Nashville differs from other company towns because the industry is entertainment and the film seeks to make a connection between the marketing of entertainment and the marketing of politics. One of the connections that filmmakers seek to establish is that just as musical genres exploit certain conventions and stereotypes to become a tool of self-image and self-identity for fans, so do political parties. Country music more than any other genre at the time—and since equaled only by rap music—presents a façade of uniformity that immediately identifies the fan both to others and to outsiders through dress. The cowboys hats, rhinestones and other familiar accoutrement of country music is a means of creating community immediately just like certain conventions associated with the Republican or Democratic party immediately do the same thing.

Nashville was released in 1975, the same year as a film about how athletic competition had devolved in the near future into wickedly violent. How are the two films similar and in what way is Nashville a more prescient work of speculative fiction?

The connection between entertainment and politics in 1975 was only starting to evolve. Because this connection was not nearly as manifestly apparent in 1975, Nashville is best viewed not as a document of of the 1970’s, but more as a speculative fiction. Rollerball, by contrast, specifically situates itself as a work predicting how the world of professional sports will evolve as an adjunct of political interests in its advertising tagline:

“In the future there will be no war. There will only be Rollerball.”

Rollerball forecasts a not-too-distant future in which business interest and political ideology have conjoined to transform sports into a tool for controlling aggression while at the same time diminishing the capacity and desire for dissent. Many decades later, nothing about this future has come to pass. The world of the second decade of the 21st century looks absolutely no more like that in Rollerball than did the world of 1975. On the other hand the Presidential election of 2016 bears a far greater resemblance to the world projection in Nashville than did the Presidential election of 1976. With each passing year, America as a whole has come to look more and more like the microscosmic metaphor of Nashville to the point where it has now actually exceeded even its most unlikely of satirical scenarios.

How is Sueleen the thematic center of the film?

The film is all about illusion and delusion. The country music stars are all part of illusion about a world of entertainment populated by regular folk. Country stars are presented as more down to earth, humble and accessible than movie stars—notably movie star Elliott Gould appears in a cameo as himself—when the truth is that they are just as removed from the real world as celebrities in any other form of entertainment. The same, of course, can be said about politicians whose job often depends on presenting the illusion of being just a “regular guy.” This illusion only works, of course, if those on the other side buy into the self-delusion allowing country music fans to actually believe their stars are not down to earth, humble and accessible and that the politicians they vote for really are just “regular guys.” Sueleen is a combination of the illusion and delusion at the heart of the film: she has totally bought into the illusion of the country music industry and as a result has deluded herself into believing either that she actually has talent or that talent is less important than authenticity. Sueleen suffers from a dearth of the former and an overabundance of the latter and her great tragedy is that neither is enough to convince her she’ll never make it. Why? Because the bill of goods she’s been sold just runs too deep; Sueleen has reached the point where the marketing shill has displaced truth and likely forever will.