On the Loss of Dolly Parton

 

The last meeting of a seminar Curmie took in grad school was held at the prof’s house.  We’d all read everyone else’s final research paper for the course, and we gathered to discuss them: to think of ways the essay could be improved, to ask questions, to contemplate what the next step in the process might be.  Asked what he had to say about one fellow student’s work, Curmie started by saying, “This is the paper I wish I’d written.”  He feels that sentiment today in reading the multitudinous encomia to the recently deceased Dolly Parton.  There were many he appreciated; the one he wishes he’d written was by Rebecca Solnit.

Solnit points out many of the reasons that losing Dolly (it’s significant that we think of her by her first name) hit so many of us so hard.  She was a woman of faith and most of the songs she wrote and/or sang would be classified as “country,” making her seem to align with right-wing values.  But she also wrote songs that could be regarded as feminist, and there was certainly some of that philosophy in what is probably her best-known film role, in “9 to 5.”  She supported the BLM movement and seemed genuinely confused that there would be any objection to gay marriage.

Perhaps it was all an act, a carefully coordinated strategy to avoid controversy and thereby be about as universally beloved as anyone on the planet.  But Curmie has a reasonably well-tuned BS detector, and he doesn’t see anything inauthentic there; she was just, well, a particularly good person.  Perhaps he’s just appreciating her wit and self-deprecating humor.  One of her most famous lines was that she was unconcerned with people calling her a “dumb blonde”: “I know I’m not dumb… and I know I’m not a blonde.”  Curmie absolutely believes her when she said, “My boobs are fake, my hair’s fake but what is real is my voice and my heart.”

Curmie has often said that the difference between theatre and politics is that theatre is about telling the truth in a fictive world and politics is about lying in the real world.  (Cynical?  Moi?)  In this sense, Dolly was nothing if not theatrical, both shying away from overt political statements, or at least from partisanship, and creating her own little universe in which she could dress “trashy” (her word, not Curmie’s) and be a savvy businesswoman while maintaining something of the aura of an ingenue.

President Trump has ordered flags to be at half-mast in her memory.  There are those on the left who are righteously indignant that he would do so: that it’s hypocritical for the head of a political party that slashed funding for her Imagination Library program would suddenly choose to honor her.  Curmie is shocked (shocked, I tell you!) that any politician might behave hypocritically, but regards the gesture as, at worst, a stopped clock moment.  And those detractors would no doubt be similarly outraged if Trump hadn’t done so, having done it for a far more divisive figure like Charlie Kirk.  Such, alas, is the way of the world.

Dolly was about as close to a polar opposite of Trump as it’s possible to be, of course.  She grew up in poverty so severe that most of us can’t imagine it, let alone contemplate enduring it; Trump was coddled all along and got tens of millions of dollars from his father, one way or another.  She avoided publicity unless, as in the Imagination Library case, her popularity might generate more support for a good cause; Trump wants credit for anything positive even if he had nothing to do with it, and splashes his name on any edifice he can. 

She told self-deprecating jokes; he is incapable of even attempting humor except in the form of insulting someone else.  She has donated millions of dollars to educational and medical causes; he stole millions from a charity he’d established.  Most of all, her driving passion was love: a love that manifests in everything from paying special attention to her LGBTQ+ fans to praying for Trump himself.  She knew he was flawed; so are we all.  Trump, of course, came to political power by sowing hatred.  It didn’t matter against whom: Muslims, Latinos, gays, whoever happened to be handy at a particular moment.

At the end of a piece on Cynthia Erivo’s intervention when her friend and co-star Ariana Grande was grabbed by a young man at the Singapore premiere of “Wicked: For Good,” Curmie wrote this: 

No one can solve every problem or prevent every bad thing from happening.  And it’s easy to be empathetic if it doesn’t cost us anything more than a few hollow words.  What’s harder and far more admirable is to recognize what can be done and to do it.  Female singers don’t have a monopoly on this stuff, but a lot of them sure do seem to be good at it: Dolly Parton.  Taylor Swift.  Ariana Grande.  And now Cynthia Erivo.  Whether we’re fans of their music or not, we need to recognize that the world is a better place for their presence in it.

It’s no surprise that Dolly topped the list.  Curmie also notes that he’s not a particular fan of any of them as singers.  He knows only a handful of the songs that launched Dolly to superstardom whether as songwriter or singer or both: “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5”… there are probably a couple more he could think of if given the time, but not a lot.  But that doesn’t matter.  Curmie, who can’t sing a lick, isn’t going to judge anyone by whether he likes their voice or their choice of musical styles.  But in a world in which “multi-millionaire” and “asshole” are all but synonyms, Dolly was different.  She will be missed.  A lot.

A final note: Dolly’s family has encouraged those who wish to remember her to consider supporting the Imagination Library.  This was the program Dolly established in 1995, inspired by her father’s illiteracy.  To date, this project has placed something on the order of 350,000,000 books, free of charge, in the hands of children in five English-speaking countries.  Getting kids interested in reading is our best hope for a future that is not dominated by AI slop and the amoral moneygrubbers who churn it out.  Curmie made a contribution.  If you have a few dollars to spare, Gentle Reader, please consider doing so, as well.