00:20:23.920She often will say pretty vague statements that are not necessarily leaning one way or the other, but kind of touch back to those themes that she cares about, like love and kindness and respect.
00:20:37.120You know, I think one of the most interesting interviews she's had in recent years was with Billboard magazine in 2020.
00:20:44.040And she was asked a few different questions about like her choice to remove Dixie from the title.
00:20:49.600She also was asked a few other things about like what was currently happening with like
00:20:52.760the Black Lives Matter movement in the country.
00:20:55.240But a few quotes that I think might be worth thinking about.
00:20:59.120One of them is so when she was called out, you know, about the Dixie Stampede.
00:21:03.040So she told Billboard in 2020 about her choice in 2018 to drop Dixie.
00:21:06.900She said, quote, there's such a thing as innocent ignorance.
00:21:17.680We'll just call it the stampede, end quote. And so you can see there a few things are happening. She doesn't want to offend anyone, but also this is a business. And so I think she realizes there's a piece of that that's important for the brand, right? She doesn't want to maybe dissuade any customers or any type of person who would be engaging with her enterprises.
00:21:36.500but she also said in this same interview um there was a bit of a question of black lives matter and
00:21:42.580where she might feel uh feel towards that movement and how she might relate and she said quote i
00:21:47.560understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen and of course black lives matter0.95
00:21:53.100do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter no end quote and so i think there0.95
00:21:59.200we get a little bit of that kind of touch of maybe what could be um politics right or what0.95
00:22:04.300folks might try to you know make assumptions about her politics but really what this comes back to
00:22:08.520is this idea of what she says wanting people to feel um seen and heard and known and that they
00:22:14.500can be appreciated for who they are and i think that is a universal quality of kindness and and
00:22:19.620love you know back to kind of the church of delhi parton thinking in those themes that people on
00:22:24.740both sides of the aisle people of any identity would care about and would appreciate um we've
00:22:29.820further seen other ways that politics have come up or she's been asked about it you know uh in
00:22:35.820recent years there was when when with the recent election she was asked you know oh will you run
00:22:40.880for president um there was an interview i want to say it was in i think 2023 with um with metro uh
00:22:49.420mega the metro publication and and she said something along the lines of like we have enough1.00
00:22:54.640boobs in the white house when they asked like if she would run for president and so she does this1.00
00:22:59.000thing where she tries to use humor to deflect from any sort of like political notion of how1.00
00:23:05.760she votes or how she feels. And so she often uses humor to kind of diffuse these types of
00:23:10.440questions when she's asked or probed about her politics. Right. But I mean, I do just love,
00:23:17.340and I said this before, but I'm a broken record, but, you know, Dolly's ethos of kindness and
00:23:23.480openness. I mean, when we have two political parties that are just at each other's throats
00:23:28.980all the time. That's right. I'm very here for this. I would vote for Dolly Parton for president.
00:23:34.260I would too. I would too. And I think, you know, she's been quoted before in interviews and things
00:23:39.300saying like, you know, oh, I'm like not meant for politics. I think there was a great quote
00:23:44.180a few years back where she said something that was similar to like, I'm not smart enough to be
00:23:48.160in politics, or maybe I'm too smart. And I think that sums her up so well, because she often is
00:23:55.080too smart, I think, to make a claim, right, or to say something that would be possibly detrimental
00:24:01.980to this community she's built across party lines. And I think it also then does create a division,
00:24:07.700right, or create a sense of being divisive. And that detracts from these ideas of joy or of love
00:24:40.720Thinking about like the way she dresses
00:24:41.940and this character and this persona she's built,
00:24:44.180But just thinking about her position as a woman in country music is really important to know.
00:24:51.000Like there's a context here that I think matters that many people may not think about.
00:24:54.680But like even still today, female artists getting airplay on country radio, the number is so small.
00:25:03.120The percentage waivers over the years from year to year from anywhere from like 8% to maybe 18, I think, was a recent high was like 18% or 19%.
00:25:12.100So like, these women artists are being played, you know, if you think about that, at best, at best, like one out of five songs are featuring a female artist. So the industry itself was not set up for her to succeed. And so I think that is still true today, right? And that's important that when we think about any woman in country music, but Dolly, you know, created this persona that has afforded her to not only laugh at herself and make fun of herself before others could,
00:25:39.020But it also created this character that I think she's been able to create this brand off of, right? And to create this idea of like, yeah, she often will say how she looks like a drag queen or she's fake, right? Or she says it costs a lot of money to look this cheap. And I think that is her way of being able to carry the narrative and write it as she wants about the way she wants to dress and appear and the persona she wants to emulate.
00:26:04.180there's one joke that i love so much i forget where she told it um tell me if you've heard
00:26:10.000this one which you probably have because you are such an expert in all things dolly
00:26:13.200it was where they were talking about the sheep that had been cloned oh yeah i love this one
00:26:20.360so much could you tell could you explain it to us yeah so she um you know dolly the sheep was
00:26:26.740cloned and parton was talking about how um like basically that the cell was named after dolly
00:26:33.840part and because the sheep's uh mammary gland was what was cloned essentially and and she was
00:26:39.460they were boob clones like they were boob cell clones yeah yeah and so that's you know why it
00:26:45.660was basically dolly um and she said something along the lines of like uh it was i think like0.52
00:26:51.040i'm sorry when i that dolly the sheep died but i don't want to be cloned it was something like
00:26:55.680that and so it was like we have to use the sheep's mammary gland because we can't use dollies
00:26:59.420And so she, again, is making a boob joke to try to, like, create this way of diffusing any sort of tension or whatever might be in the way of the response when she's interviewed on these things. And you'll see she often resorts to joking about her breasts or about her persona or her character.
00:27:15.800And I think there's something in that humor that Dolly is a master of. She's a master when it comes
00:27:21.500to using humor in an interview setting and being able to crack jokes and deflect and be able to0.99
00:27:26.720make everything be about, again, this persona she's created and remind folks how fun and funny
00:27:32.060she is rather than actually having to make a stance on something. Yeah, exactly. I mean,0.56
00:27:36.760it's a really great way to deflect criticism too, right? Just to bring more joy into the world.
00:28:12.680lean into and take a breath when she cracks a joke. Even if it's a joke about her boobs,1.00
00:28:17.000we've heard 100 times. It's like, well, you know, she's bringing some levity to the situation in0.74
00:28:21.620this moment, instead of just continuing this, this very divisive discourse that continues to
00:28:26.820happen day after day, hour after hour. Yeah, I'm never gonna get sick of Dolly Parton telling
00:28:30.700jokes about her own boobs. I'm not. Okay. No, it's great. She should. She should. She should.1.00
00:28:36.480Okay, let's take one more quick break. And then I want to hear a little bit about what the students
00:28:40.240have had to say. I want to hear about their reactions to this class. Sounds good.
00:28:51.260We are back. What are some of the projects that the students have been working on around Dolly?
00:28:57.260So their final project was able to be a creative project where they got to
00:29:02.000bring in kind of their own experience and knowledge of what they're studying at the
00:29:06.720university. And so these ranged, as you can imagine, they were as diverse as the disciplines
00:29:12.420in the room were. One was an architecture student who imagined what, if Dolly's Imagination Library
00:29:19.960became sort of like a presidential library, like what would that building look like? And made all
00:29:25.360the plans, made like a small 3D model, like basically showed us what Dolly's Imagination
00:29:30.580Library would look like as an actual construction if it was like based a la a presidential library.
00:29:35.540And I thought that was just fascinating. And they were able to bring all of that technical expertise and knowledge into their craft, which was great. Another student who was a bit unfamiliar with Dolly coming in, made this amazing like board game about Dolly Parton. And it was all about like some trivia of her life, but also choices. And like, how would you if you were Dolly, like, how would you make the choice in this scenario? And it was very much like the game of life. But it was all about Dolly. And I thought that was just fabulous.
00:30:04.040other students did everything from you know a traditional kind of research poster looking at
00:30:09.420survey data that they did within the washi community surveying students on dolly parton
00:30:14.860and where they think her politics may lie i thought that was a very interesting project
00:30:18.800and we also had other ones where you know students made videos they made songs one
00:30:23.960reimagined the stampede another time you know what would be the third iteration of the stampede if we
00:30:29.160were truly to make it not be the north versus the south how might we finally yeah remove the civil
00:30:34.280war entirely from this this piece um so yeah i mean they clearly had love for dolly and love for
00:30:41.040what she's doing in all of her enterprises and i think you know we landed on this idea of kind of
00:30:46.980what you and i were chatting about today where she is someone who really uses humor uses love
00:30:53.460uses kindness as these values that are her North stars. And that's how she makes her choices,
00:31:00.020right? Those are how she makes her decisions and all of her enterprises. And like, I can't fault1.00
00:31:04.440her for wanting to think about the brand when she's worried about, you know, making certain
00:31:08.360statements. Because I do think it's like when the time comes for her to have to do something,
00:31:13.420she does it. She does it. She says what she needs to say when there was anti trans legislation
00:31:18.400happening in Tennessee, she spoke about how she has, you know, people in her family who are and
00:31:24.060she has songs dating back to, you know, I mean, I think of her song, I'm family from, I think it
00:31:30.980was in 1991, on Eagle When She Flies album, and there's a lyric in there, which is some are
00:31:37.100preachers, some are gay, you know, so she has talked about how her family, you know, encompasses
00:31:42.860all of these folks as well. And so she tries to be inclusive, because she cares about her family.
00:31:48.400Right. And she genuinely cares about all human beings, to be honest, is really the Dolly ethos
00:31:55.140in so many ways. And I also think about Dolly, despite not leaning into one or the other political
00:32:02.720party, as being one of the very early influencers, because the different kinds of influence that she's
00:32:09.840had on our culture have been so profound. I mean, particularly starting with the movie
00:32:16.060nine to five, which was built out of the work of the women's union movements,
00:32:23.340trying to showcase and give better visibility to women in the workforce and their issues facing
00:32:29.400women in the workforce. That's right. That's right. And I think, you know, that is work that
00:32:35.740she's doing when you think about like the arc of feminism, right? And what this film and the story0.88
00:32:40.620of this film was about and and how it still is questioning i mean it's we we watched it as part
00:32:46.060of the syllabus and it was amazing hearing the students say wow this feels like it could be set
00:32:51.220today it really holds up i i recommend for everyone to re-watch it uh yeah what was the
00:32:58.320students reaction to nine to five you know there were certain there are certain um like moments of
00:33:04.440the film i think that are like definitely showing their time of like being from the 1980s where
00:33:09.040you're like oh i don't know like if you can say that today or do that today um but they were very
00:33:14.820much like yeah these issues are still real like this film i so many of them loved it and so many
00:33:20.860of them had not seen it but they were like this film still holds up today it's still important
00:33:25.400and we looked a bit at you know she uh made a musical adaptation of nine to five and so we
00:33:32.500watched some clips of that and talked a little bit about what does that look like you know it
00:33:36.360moving it into a musical space where she's bringing her original music into the story
00:33:40.120of the film that she starred in, right? And kind of that started her film career. But, you know,
00:33:46.020the story is still important. And the story still matters today. And I think that that's why we still
00:33:49.640care about it. We still watch it. It still comes up documentaries are still featuring it and talking
00:33:53.860about nine to five, you know, and the musical is still running, right? Like people are still
00:33:57.700producing it all around the country at regional theaters. So there's something about that story
00:34:02.320that clearly is still resonating with today. There really is. I'm actually excited. I'm not
00:34:07.940ready to show it to my five-year-old daughter, although girlfriend has been watching the Marvel
00:34:12.740movies lately. So I'm like, what am I so afraid of? What am I so afraid of? Because there is some
00:34:17.620stuff that there's a few things that don't hold up, but I'm excited to show it to her because I
00:34:21.360think it was a landmark moment that got culture talking about the women's movement in a way that
00:34:27.300they hadn't been talking about it before absolutely absolutely and i think you know you have um lily
00:34:33.700tomlin and jane fonda right like you have folks who even today are very uh i i think they're they're
00:34:40.600very squarely in like a social activism today right we see them uh for different things that
00:34:45.480they're that they're believing in and standing out and speaking up for and so i think it's
00:34:50.540interesting to think about not only the film but also like how the influence of the actors of the
00:34:55.200film is still moving forward in that direction today. Here's the big question. Does Dolly know
00:35:01.100about the class? Um, I don't, I honestly don't know. I don't know. Um, I was just like excited
00:35:07.620to do the class and thrilled that I had the opportunity to do so and had students interested
00:35:12.140in it. So I'm, I'm not sure. I don't know if like the university reached out or anything like that,
00:35:16.740but you know, we did our work as like many scholars, like many academics, you do your work
00:35:21.360kind of in a vacuum in the lab, right? And so, you know, we were happy to have such an amazing
00:35:27.080subject to study and to have so much just valuable insight into her life through all of these. She's
00:35:33.360a very generous woman when you think about it, not only in her philanthropy, but she is constantly