The most prominent characters include Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), a socially conservative, arrogant country music star; Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a gospel singer and mother of two deaf children; Del Reese (Ned Beatty), her lawyer husband and Hamilton's legal representative, who
works as the local
political organizer for the Tea Party - like Hal Philip Walker Presidential campaign; Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), an insufferably garrulous and pretentious BBC Radio reporter on assignment in Nashville, or so she claims; talented but self - involved sex - addict Tom Frank (Keith Carradine), one - third of a moderately successful folk trio who's anxious to launch a solo career; John Triplette (Michael Murphy), the duplicitous campaign consultant who condescendingly tries to secure top Nashville stars to perform at a nationally - syndicated campaign rally; Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), the emotionally - fragile, beloved Loretta Lynn - like country star recovering from a burn accident; Barnett (Allen Garfield), Barbara Jean's overwhelmed manager - husband; Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn), whose never - seen ailing wife is on the same hospital ward as Barbara Jean; groupie Martha (Shelley Duvall), Green's niece,
ostensibly there to visit her ailing aunt but so personally irresponsible that she instead spends all her time picking up men; Pfc. Glenn Kelly (Scott Glenn), who claims his mother saved Barbara Jean's life but who mostly seems obsessed with the country music star; Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles), a waitress longing for country music fame, despite her vacuous talent; Bill and Mary (Allan F. Nicholls and Cristina Raines), the other two - thirds of Tom's folk act, whose ambition overrides constant personal rancor; Winifred (Barbara Harris), another would - be singer - songwriter, fleeing to Nashville from her
working - class husband, Star (Bert Remsen); Kenny Frasier (David Hayward), a loner who rents a room from Mr. Green and carries around a violin case; Bud Hamilton (Dave Peel), the gentle, loyal son of the abrasive Hamilton; Connie White (Karen Black), a glamorous country star who is a last - minute substitute for Barbara Jean at the Grand Old Opry; Wade Cooley (Robert DoQui), a cook at the airport restaurant where Sueleen
works as a waitress and who tries unsuccessfully to convince her that she has no talent; and the eccentric Tricycle Man (Jeff Goldblum), who rides around in a three - wheel motorcycle, occasionally interacting with the other characters, showing off his amateur magic tricks, but who has no dialogue.
No less a figure than the artist Hans Haacke — whose long - standing commitment to rendering transparent economic, social, and aesthetic structures throughout culture has led him to be immanently associated with the paradigm — used the phrase «consciousness industry» as early as the mid-1980s to describe the sophisticated networks of institutional support necessary to make visible
ostensibly adversarial avant - garde artistic gestures.4
Works seeking to emphasize the moral,
political, and intellectual forces that determine and enforce culture, he observed, were nevertheless dependent on a museum or gallery platform designed to privilege aesthetic experience.