by Anne Gabriel
On Tuesday, Dolly Parton’s nephew Bryan Seaver announced that the country music legend had died. The outpouring of love on social media from all sectors of society was palpable—unmixed, unironic and vastly out of proportion to the amount of love any other given country musician/actress/philanthropist might expect from our deeply confused nation. Dolly Parton had managed to survive into the era of the Internet Hellscape as a beloved public figure in a way no other man, woman or child ever had.
Parton was undeniably talented, funny, warm in interviews and on stage, beautiful, glamorous, and well-known for her charitable contributions and rags-to-riches story. On the other hand, that neatly describes the public persona of a half-dozen actors despised on the Right for their smarmy arrogance and Republican wives despised on the Left for their hypocrisy. Dolly though? The Left would see hating on Dolly as punching down, and the Right would see it as punching your best friend’s wife.
It’s worth considering: Why was Dolly Parton the only-, and perhaps final-, person on Earth that was hated by no-one?
Dolly Got In Before The Culture War
Dolly’s crossover hit “Jolene” came out in 1973, the year after Watergate began and the year before it ended—with a bipartisan vote to impeach. The country was undeniably in turmoil but not in a turmoil into which Dolly neatly fit—in a world of protesting hippie waifs and buttoned-up Nixon moms, Dolly was neither. Likewise, the song itself partook in that radio-friendly mid-’70s songwriting stew where a sad song might be as likely to manifest as country ballad, singer-songwriter folk song, catchy pop hit or disco diva-divagation into torch song territory—and all of these were equally likely to catch the public eye. By the time an older Dolly was taking any public stands on Feminism or vaccines that she might’ve caught flak for, she was already royalty.
Her Songs Were Not Annoying
Although Dolly was undeniably a Country musician in every sense of those two words, nothing about her biggest hits—such as “9 to 5” and the aforementioned “Jolene”—had anything about them likely to snag on the sensibilities of a genuine Country-hater. On the most famous songs, there were no honky-tonk violins or pokey square-dance rhythms and Dolly’s undeniable Tennessee lilt was used to add flavor to pop-style choruses rather than warbly trad-country tongue twisters. If you loved tradtional Country and Western—or Broadway musicals, or sentimental lunacy—Dolly could and did do that—but if your awareness of Dolly Parton extended only to what got to a mainstream radio station, movie soundtrack, or boob joke it was hard to find anything objectionable.
She Was Individual But Not Confrontational
There’s nobody like Dolly Parton, but Dolly didn’t make a big deal out of that. In fact, her individuality seemed to be less an ingredient of her fame than something that emerged out of it. From the ‘70s to the 2010’s, a public deeply aware of her breasts slowly became aware of her acting talent, of her sense of humor, of her facility with every kind of musical instrument from electric guitar to auto-harp, of Dollywood, of her charities, and the story of her increasingly impressive life. A woman initially allowed into the drunken barn dance of public fame for her beauty and voice managed to stick around long enough for people to begin to notice everything else she was bringing to the table. Dolly did not set out to change the world—but as the world changed it saw her better.
She Presented As Smart But Not Intellectual
Friends and fans go out of the way to point out that Dolly was smart, in a way they don’t with, say, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, or PJ Harvey. The obvious reason is out of a need to counteract a bimboish public image that literary-reference-forward brunettes never needed to worry about. Like so much about her, her intelligence was not the draw but contributed powerfully to her staying power. It also manifested itself in ways stupid people found unthreatening: in business-savvy, and jokes. To a world that could be hard on smart women, Dolly presented herself as the kind of smart where she won’t forget to pick the dog up from the vet, not the kind that is bored with you because you don’t understand the French movie she made you sit through. However, it’s important to note that this, too, was the product of a cleverly-cultivated public image. Dolly’s charm was a product of her intelligence—she knew who she was talking to and what they expected out of her.
She Came By Her Faith—And Her Boobs—Honestly
In addition to all the other wonderful and unarguable things about Dolly, Dolly Parton was a Christian woman who traded on her sex appeal. Somehow, she managed to do this in a way that upset literally nobody.
Her story about the birth of her look is frequently quoted: “I make jokes about it, but it’s the truth that I kind of patterned my look after the town tramp. I didn’t know what she was, just this woman who was blond and piled her hair up, wore high heels and tight skirts, and, boy, she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. Momma used to say, ‘Aw, she’s just trash,’ and I thought, That’s what I want to be when I grow up. Trash.”
Urban sophisticates like Madonna seem to invite the brand of cynicism that questions why she’s showing you her tits or her crucifix—or both at once—but something about a girl who grows up in poverty in rural Tennessee diffuses any questions about why she would want to be pretty or thank Jesus for it, and every kind of person is ok with that. Even the most censorious and condescending mind seems to take any cognitive dissonance that Dolly causes as proof that the poor girl just can’t help it. It’s hard to pick a fight with someone who you know is just going to smile, shake her perfect perm, and pray for you.
Image: Kris Harris King
