Greetings and a Happy Thanksgiving nod from here in the mountains of East Tennessee, a unique and proud region that includes the kingdom of Dollywood.
I think that folks in these parts — the ones who pay attention to elite media — are a bit bemused about the current wave of Dolly Parton-mania in places like New York City and Los Angeles. I mean, lots of people in these hills have thought, for ages, that Parton deserved more attention and respect as an artist, songwriter and business maven.
There are mysteries about Dolly, of course, and I’m not just talking about all those questions about whether her arms are covered with tattoos and where she heads every now and then — under cover — with her husband in their RV. This is one colorful lady.
But here is another mystery: It’s clear that Parton’s intense Christian upbringing is still a part of who she is, but it’s hard to know what she actually believes. This is a subject that, like politics, Parton is very careful with in public remarks. Then again, one can always listen to what she says in her music.
But this brings back to the current Dolly-mania, which recently reached the ultimate high ground — The New York Times. Once again we face the same issues that I wrote about the other day in a post with this headline: “LA and New York scribes ask: How does Dolly avoid politics while embracing gays and church folks?”
In that post I wrote the following, which also fits with this New York Times article (“Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton”):
How good, how complete, is this article? How you answer that question will probably pivot on which of the following questions matter the most to you: (1) How does Parton appeal to Democrats and Republicans at the same time? Or (2) how has Dolly, for a decade or two, managed to be a superstar with both LGBTQ and evangelical audiences?
Once again, we are talking about Parton as safe ground in the Donald Trump era.
Once again, there are nods to her unique stance in no-man’s land between drag-queen culture and Pentecostal hillbillies.
Here’s a typical passage:
When the Gen-Z sheriff and “Old Town Road” mastermind Lil Nas X wondered aloud, on Twitter, “y’all think i can get dolly parton and megan thee stallion on an old town road remix?,” Parton (or at least someone on her team) was quick to respond with a very appropriate unicorn emoji. “I was so happy for him,” Parton said recently of Lil Nas X. “I don’t care how we present country music or keep it alive,” she added. “I’m all about acceptance.”
That quote is classic Dolly: Anyone can see himself or herself in it, no matter which side of the country traditionalists vs. Lil Nas X debate they land on. Both-sides-ism rarely feels as benevolent as it does when coming from Parton, but that’s nothing new. When asked, in 1997, how she was able to maintain fan bases within both the religious right and the gay community, she replied, “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.”
OK, what about her actual life in a giant, poor family in the Tennessee mountains?
What about all that singing in church and the endless river of biblical images and themes in her art? I mean, “Coat of Many Colors” is THE touchstone for how Dolly sees Dolly. And listen to the last verse that Dolly added to her audacious gospel-music cover version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
Here is the biographical part of this article.
Don’t blink, or you will miss the one attempt to nod at the role of religious faith in her life and story:
Parton was born in January 1946, to parents so poor, they paid the doctor who delivered her in cornmeal. Their home at the foot of East Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains had “running water, if you were willing to run and get it” — one of Parton’s many, oft-repeated “Dollyisms” that makes light of her hardscrabble upbringing.
As a child — one of 12 — she had no exposure to movies or television, rarely even magazines, so her earliest ideas of glamour came from two seemingly disparate sources: the glittering kings and queens she heard described in fairytales and Bible verses, and from the “streetwalkers,” and “strumpets and trollops” she’d see when her family went into town. “I was impressed with what they called ‘the trash’ in my hometown,” she later mused. “I don’t know how trashy these women were, but they were said to be trashy because they had blond hair and wore nail polish and tight clothes. I thought they were beautiful.”
She started making up little songs before she even knew how to write — her mother would jot them down for her. She sang with a voice like a rainbow: clear, bright, so cartoonishly pretty it’s almost hard to believe it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon. Early on, she realized it was her surest ticket out of her hometown, so she got to work.
The Times team knows that many of the key Dolly mysteries have to do with her beliefs and convictions.
After all, there is this wave of the editorial hand in that direction:
It’s not that she believes nothing, it’s that she seems to believe deeply in certain things she’d rather keep close to the vest. Or maybe, to the forearm.
So what did I miss in this story?
Also, if there are GetReligion readers who are listening to the WNYC “Dolly Parton’s America” podcasts, I would be interested in knowing your thoughts about that. For example, is “Jolene” really a secret lesbian love song, as opposed to being a wife’s plea for a temptress not to steal her husband?
You see, New York City has a somewhat different take on Dolly than all those simple folks here in the hills. And all of that Bible talk? Why go there?