Dolly Parton and fundies

[quiversR4hunting]

16 minutes ago, Cat Damon said:

@VelociRapture those places sound amazing! I wish I lived closer, I would absolutely go to those.

In Indiana, we have a place called Conner Prairie, which is a living history park/ outdoor museum. I used to loooove going there, it's probably part of why I got a degree in history. They also do a really interesting program called Follow the North Star, which is a program for students and parents to "experience" what it was like to be a runaway slave on the Underground Railroad in 1836. I haven't done it, but it's really popular and I've heard good things about it. Here is some more information if anyone is interested in reading about it.

Very interesting! I have been to Sauder Village in Ohio - https://saudervillage.org/ That is neat to see pioneer settlements, native setups and what a town might have had, etc. Then they also fast forward and show what rural 1920s would have been like in that area of Ohio (I assume Sauder Village is built on that farm houses former farming land.  

There is an underground railroad house in our small town. The school kids have a tour in 3rd grade, I think. And then the older kids have done projects to help maintain the house and get the site an updated web presence with IG, FB and a new looking website. 

[formergothardite]

9 hours ago, AussieKrissy said:

I don't think someone who seems as opened minded as Dolly appears to be could be racist. I love her to much to think that of her.

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that Dolly couldn't possible participate in something racist because she seems so nice. Nice people can also have racists elements in their lives.  In reality all of us have blind spots and the glorification of the Old South might very well be Dolly's. Does that mean she would treat poc differently? Probably not, but she runs a show that for YEARS participated in the racist rewriting of the Civil War. This show has her name in it, is opened by a recording of her talking and when people leave they are wished goodbye by a gigantic picture of Dolly. When given the opportunity to publicly correct the fact that her show has been presenting a false and racist history she instead went with "we must change because attitudes change" and then they didn't really change the show. It is still a show that glorifies the Old South,lets the South win the war and has some cringe worthy co-opting of Native American culture moments. 

Do I think Dolly is a bad person would would do openly racist things? No I think she is probably genuinely kind, but in the end she does allow her name to be used in something that has racist elements. This isn't just  a hokey show from a certain time period, this is a racist show from now. There are real ramifications from continuing the narrative that the Old South wasn't really that bad  and the Civil War wasn't a fight over slavery. 

[Evangeline]

I adore Dolly but it's very likely she has a blind spot when it comes to the Confederacy and race relations, like many, many Southerners do. Racism isn't confined to "bad people." It's more than swastikas and cross burnings. The vast majority of us here have been raised in a white supremacist culture. Our prejudices are deeply ingrained and we don't often recognize how every system in our culture upholds them. I do think there's a good chance that someone like Dolly is capable of acknowledging this and changing things, so it's certainly worth asking her to do it. But the answer isn't denying the show is racist or that she could be complicit in it. She is. We all are. 

And @formergothardite great minds!

[VelociRapture]

Yeah, add me to the list of posters saying that nice people can still be racist (or sexist or misogynistic...) af. Dolly is probably nice enough to everyone she meets and I’m glad she’s helped revitalize that area of Tennessee, but that doesn’t absolve her of the fact that she’s associated with an apparently* racist show. 

*I’ve never seen it and have no wish to, so I’m trusting other posters whose opinions I respect on this one. 

[Pecansforeveryone]

Dolly Parton is also a white, straight woman. No snark. I am, too. That does mean there are certain unkind, unpleasant things she has never experienced from the community around her that POC, the lgbt community, and non-Christians have. She also travels extensively and isnt "trapped" in any one place. Just because the nastiness isn't Dolly Partons reality doesn't mean it isn't many people's reality. I hope that makes sense. 

[formergothardite]

1 hour ago, Evangeline said:

The vast majority of us here have been raised in a white supremacist culture.

And it is so easy to be blind to how we just accept this culture as normal. In my own life, I should have recognized that any show with Dixie in it was almost certainly going to have racist overtones, but at that point I still just viewed the whole Dixie culture as harmless instead of realizing Dixie stands for the states the formed the Confederacy. And we didn't leave. We should have. We sat there through the entire program of racism. 

[Terrie]

19 minutes ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

Dolly Parton is also a white, straight woman.

Not just that, she's a 72 year old white woman from the rural South. Do I think she is maliciously racist? No. I have seen zero evidence of such. But with her age and background, I would expect her to be of the "Gee, I never thought about it" passive societal racism type. Most people in general fall in that category, unless they've made an effort not to, and my experience of that age group from that region is a lot of them think the end of Jim Crow laws was the same as ending racism. 

[tabitha2]

@Terrie I agree. With her age and background it would be almost unbelievable if she did not have at least some racism she does not even realize simply because it’s so ingrained from childhood .It’s evident she is a good and lovable person but let’s be realistic here. 

As to why she does not change some things about her show... It’s a Business at the end of of it all and presumably day to day run mostly by business and management people who want to make profits and know who their main attendees are. 

[Pianokeeper]

One of the things we harp on fundies for doing is being too rigid in their thinking; people, thoughts and organizations get marked as Godly or Satanic and that's it, with no room for nuance.  I do see a lot of this forced dualism in non-fundies in the USA, too, just in slightly different ways. When celebrities are accused of sexual wrongdoings, we feel we have to either condemn them entirely (and by extension all their creative output) or defend them against all logic and evidence.  It's a spectrum -- or not even the one spectrum.  We're asked to either respect people or brand them as monsters, and in the majority of cases, nobody is EXTREMELY vile or perfect.  

I catch myself doing this.  Last year somebody I thought I knew reasonably well was accused of a societally unacceptable pattern of behavior, and because it had never happened around me, and my internal spidey senses had never once gone off, I thought the allegations had to be utter horseshit.  Turns out... they weren't.  It doesn't make that person's significant contributions to their field less valid, but yes, it was correct for them to have to resign, apologize, etc. 

I'm having to confront some of this in myself with regards to Dolly Parton.  I'd count myself a relatively huge fan of her music, and I'm a queer woman who grew up in Atlanta.  I've never been to Dollywood, though I very much wanted to go at least once.  I wasn't familiar with the Dixie Stampede in general or specific, and I don't *want* to learn of her racist choices, the same as I didn't *want* to learn that Roald Dahl was a near-mouth-foaming anti-semite.  But if she has made those choices, yes, we should learn of them and discuss them -- and ultimately, hold her accountable. I had to wait a day to chime in here, because I wanted to examine the whys behind my gut reaction.  

Anyway, this got more rambling than my responses here normally are, but Dolly means something to me, and it's hard to disentangle all my thoughts. 

[HarryPotterFan]

2 hours ago, Evangeline said:

I adore Dolly but it's very likely she has a blind spot when it comes to the Confederacy and race relations, like many, many Southerners do. Racism isn't confined to "bad people." It's more than swastikas and cross burnings. The vast majority of us here have been raised in a white supremacist culture. Our prejudices are deeply ingrained and we don't often recognize how every system in our culture upholds them. I do think there's a good chance that someone like Dolly is capable of acknowledging this and changing things, so it's certainly worth asking her to do it. But the answer isn't denying the show is racist or that she could be complicit in it. She is. We all are. 

And @formergothardite great minds!

Exactly this. My dad is a few years younger than her and grew up in the south, and he was taught that the Civil War was the war of Yankee/Northern aggression. That’s probably what she was taught too. Just completely ignore the slavery part. He grew up and learned actual facts, but Dolly could be stuck in that mindset and idealize her childhood. And my dad was more willing to disconnect from those attitudes because he was born in NY and never felt like a southerner. And unlike Dolly, growing up in the South at that time wasn’t safe for my dad because he’s Jewish. Dolly wouldn’t of had good ol’ Southern boys in white robes threatening her church. So she has much less reason to challenge racist attitudes. I hope I’m making sense.

[hoipolloi]

I've always liked and respected Dolly the musician, and I love her music. Didn't know much of anything about her otherwise, apart from her impressive & sustained philanthropies like the free books. While I might visit Dollywood if I were in the area, the Stampede is absolutely NOT something I'd ever want to go to, even without knowing anything about it.

That said, she's a product of her times & upbringing, just like the rest of us so I can fully believe that she didn't "mean" to promote a racist production nor did she realize that it was. It's a business, as others here have said, and she likely has the historical & cultural blindness that characterize the upbringing of many of us American whites, whether we're from TN or WI (my home state) or RI or just about anywhere in the country. Not trying to excuse her or myself, but such ignorance & obliviousness is widely prevalent.

People in the US, especially white people, have not yet come to terms with the pervasive evil of slavery and that it was NOT just a "southern thing." The entire US economy up to the Civil War was predicated on owning, buying & selling human beings. Want to do some reading on this? For a dense economic history, read The Half Has Never Been Told. For a more personalized study, read An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery. 

 

[tabitha2]

A Quesion occurs though: Dolly was not raised in the “true” Antebellum Civil War south... Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Etc But among pretty isolated mountain people in a very small town in the Great Smokies. Would there even have been any significant presence of Blacks in that time in that area to have the usual prejudices of the time to sink in?  

 

[PennySycamore]

25 minutes ago, tabitha2 said:

A Quesion occurs though: Dolly was not raised in the “true” Antebellum Civil War south... Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Etc But among pretty isolated mountain people in a very small town in the Great Smokies. Would there even have been any significant presence of Blacks in that time in that area to have the usual prejudices of the time to sink in?  

 

@tabitha2,  you raise a very good question.  The Appalachian counties in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia tended to be at least quite divided on the question of secession in the antebellum period.  There was some sentiment for secession to be sure, but there were also strong feelings that the Union should be preserved.  Not was there much use for slavery.  Those farms in the hills just could not support widespread slaveholding.  There were more black and hence more slaves in the cities and towns, but you did not find the huge numbers of slaves that you did along the coast.  I did a census review of a plat of Greenville from both 1850 and 1860 and accidentally scrolled through this one plantation on the coast.  This plantation held more than 1000 human beings in bondage.

What you find now is very unfortunate.  Mountain towns are no less apt to discriminate against blacks and, in fact, may be more prone to do so.  This happened about 45 years ago, but a guy from my hometown played college basketball at Western Carolina.  He brought one of his teammates home for summer break and they decided to go to Hillbilly Day in Mountain Rest.  They were told to leave as the black teammate was not welcome.  Salem, SC, in my home county has a reputation as a sundown town where blacks are expected to leave by sundown.  When my husband interviewed at Young Harris Junior College in northern Georgia, he was told that there were only 2 black people in the entire county.  There were also no blacks living in Forsyth County, Georgia in 1987.  They had been expelled at the beginning of the 20th Century.  

Sundown town

Sundown towns in the US

[Lisafer]

3 hours ago, Pianokeeper said:

One of the things we harp on fundies for doing is being too rigid in their thinking; people, thoughts and organizations get marked as Godly or Satanic and that's it, with no room for nuance.  I do see a lot of this forced dualism in non-fundies in the USA, too, just in slightly different ways. When celebrities are accused of sexual wrongdoings, we feel we have to either condemn them entirely (and by extension all their creative output) or defend them against all logic and evidence.  It's a spectrum -- or not even the one spectrum.  We're asked to either respect people or brand them as monsters, and in the majority of cases, nobody is EXTREMELY vile or perfect.  

I catch myself doing this.  Last year somebody I thought I knew reasonably well was accused of a societally unacceptable pattern of behavior, and because it had never happened around me, and my internal spidey senses had never once gone off, I thought the allegations had to be utter horseshit.  Turns out... they weren't.  It doesn't make that person's significant contributions to their field less valid, but yes, it was correct for them to have to resign, apologize, etc. 

I'm having to confront some of this in myself with regards to Dolly Parton.  I'd count myself a relatively huge fan of her music, and I'm a queer woman who grew up in Atlanta.  I've never been to Dollywood, though I very much wanted to go at least once.  I wasn't familiar with the Dixie Stampede in general or specific, and I don't *want* to learn of her racist choices, the same as I didn't *want* to learn that Roald Dahl was a near-mouth-foaming anti-semite.  But if she has made those choices, yes, we should learn of them and discuss them -- and ultimately, hold her accountable. I had to wait a day to chime in here, because I wanted to examine the whys behind my gut reaction.  

Anyway, this got more rambling than my responses here normally are, but Dolly means something to me, and it's hard to disentangle all my thoughts. 

Thank you for this eloquent and nuanced view. It's true that it is so much easier to view people (especially ones we don't know personally) as either "good" or "bad" when we are all flawed. If people love Dolly or another celebrity/star/athlete/whatever, that's fine. Just don't allow hero-worship to get in the way of recognizing wrong from any source.

Be an admirer, not a sycophant.

If we had to throw out all music and art created by less-than-perfect people, well, there wouldn't be much left. I respect people's decisions not to support certain artists, of course, but there's nobody perfect out there.

Except Keanu Reeves. He's perfect. Fight me.

[tabitha2]

I suggest anyone who is interested in the subject Find and Watch  Pharaohs Army Starring Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson. Based on a true story of How the Civil War destroyed families, the land and made life a literal living hell for the  Mountain people who resided in the Cumberland Gap region of Kentucky  that  were confederate supporters   It’s wonderful but brutally honest and searing.  

[FeministShrew]

Back in the mid-90s one of my mom's coworkers moved to Sevier County because, according to him, there were no black people there. (He was a nasty, racist piece of work. He was helping my mom move in with us & told us about his impending move, and used a racial slur. My mom got mad at me because I told him to get out of my house & not come back.)
 

Also, my sister's second husband was related to Dolly. His grandfather was Dolly's uncle, or great-uncle. He never met Dolly, but his mother had a couple of times when they were kids. BIL's mother's family moved to NC before long Dolly became famous & rarely went back to TN. We did get to meet Dolly's sister Stella once when she was in Spartanburg for a concert.

[Alisamer]

I like Dolly. I'd love to meet her, she seems really nice but down to earth, yet fabulous at the same time. But yeah, she's an older white woman from a very rural part of the south. She's not going to be perfect, but no one is.

That said, Dollywood is very very different than Dixie Stampede. Dollywood is full on amusement park. I've only been once and it was hot as blazes, everything we wanted to do was uphill, and we had an unmedicated ADHD kindergartner with us, so we didn't end up staying all day. However, my roller coaster enthusiast cousin will make special trips out there to ride the coasters, so I know they must be good! 

Someone mentioned Ober Gatlinburg. That place is kind of amazing. It's like stepping back in time to the late 70's. Every time we go up there we walk in and wonder why we bothered, but we still go there anyway!

[tabitha2]

According to the Great and Almighty Wikipedia Sevier County is 97% white and 0.56% black now so in the 40’s there would have been none to meet at all.People, particularly the old ones, would have despised  Yankees though.

[tankgirl]

To add another nuance to it all, is Dolly also afraid to change things too much, so as not to rock the boat? She might be getting some good advice as to what is wrong with the show, since obviously some changes were made, but this is a woman who made a lot of strides to get employment opportunities to her area, is she afraid of killing the golden goose and putting people out of jobs? Or is her contract with the show more about her name and less about her ability to have a real say on content?

 

I am curious if the people involved with the show, Dolly included are more a full lack of getting "The South fought a war to let them keep black people as slaves" due to age and raising?  Or a mix of other things? Clearly, she or those running things, got the memo there is an issue, because they did make some changes, but either they feel they did enough and are blind to the bigger issues, or they do know, and don't care or they do know, but have no idea how to fix it with out loosing the customers, so choose to ignore the issues and just continue on.

 

No person is perfect, I can see how Dolly might not fully get the issues, but I hope she can get there.

[formergothardite]

7 minutes ago, tankgirl said:

Clearly, she or those running things, got the memo there is an issue, because they did make some changes, but either they feel they did enough and are blind to the bigger issues, or they do know, and don't care or they do know, but have no idea how to fix it with out loosing the customers, so choose to ignore the issues and just continue on.

There was a lot of attention brought to it when someone went and wrote about how it glamorized the Confederacy and even more attention when John Oliver talked about it on his show, I think the changes happened around that time because of the bad publicity. Superficial changes and in my opinion an attempt to placate both sides. They could say they took out the Confederacy and the people who loved that part still get to come and cheer for the South. 

If she changed the entire show plot, kept the horses, lost the North/South/Southern Belles and it would almost certainly still sell out. The Celebration Show, also in Pigeon Forge is a huge hit and isn't racist. She removed the Dixie Stampede at Myrtle Beach and put in an pirate show and it is hard to get tickets to it because it is so popular. So I don't think dropping the racist stuff would cost jobs. Sure some people would whine but people love her shows. 

 

 

[hoipolloi]

23 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

There was a lot of attention brought to it when someone went and wrote about how it glamorized the Confederacy and even more attention when John Oliver talked about it on his show, I think the changes happened around that time because of the bad publicity. Superficial changes and in my opinion an attempt to placate both sides. They could say they took out the Confederacy and the people who loved that part still get to come and cheer for the South. 

These articles from Slate have good before and after descriptions of the changes made. 

[Beermeet]

10 hours ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

Dolly Parton is also a white, straight woman. No snark. I am, too. That does mean there are certain unkind, unpleasant things she has never experienced from the community around her that POC, the lgbt community, and non-Christians have. She also travels extensively and isnt "trapped" in any one place. Just because the nastiness isn't Dolly Partons reality doesn't mean it isn't many people's reality. I hope that makes sense. 

I can see her "getting it" but, she would lose sales.  Board meetings and all, you know.  Maybe she just makes friends with LGBT because it's a core fan base.  People in entertainment with a brand do these things.  So, most likely she is all of that.  She's an independent talented woman who also makes money off the confederacy.  We want our entertainers, we want our fav Dolly song to be simple and pure. But, this is the reality; they are their own people and we may not like who they really are or could be.  I'm really not familiar with her shows. I watched a bit of the southern belle video up there and it seemed pretty hokey. Tbh. I also don't like the southern belle thing in general.  Besides some cute dresses,  I don't find anything about that era as palatable because fn slavery.  So yeah, now that I've digested this a bit, Dollywood is glorifying the good ol' slave havin' south.  Well, damn. The right thing to do is to make it more historically accurate but, would lots still go? Would we still make lots of money? I gather that's the owner's of these venues real deep thoughts on the subject.  

ETA: Not Dollywood but that Dixie Stampede it seems.  But still, if we support one, we support it all kinda thing. Honestly, if she never made parks, we'd never know. I think. I really hate racists. It's hardvto know here. Does she have her head up her ass here due to not being *woke* or is this just a business thing. Idk. I am bummed out though.  

[sleepy_doggos]

Just popping in to say thanks for all the informative commentary, and also I loved Dumplin. Turns out it's based on a book and the author is queer and Texan and has written other books that are now on my reading list!

[Hane]

I remember seeing Dolly with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as presenters on an award show (the Tonys? Can’t remember) doing a presentation (of the Broadway musical “9 to 5,” I think).  Jane and Lily were wisecracking about the current administration, but Dolly was hanging back and looking downright uncomfortable. It gave me the very strong impression that, although she may not personally be racist or homophobic, from a political perspective she doesn’t want to rock the boat with a certain element of her fan base by appearing too “liberal.”

[tankgirl]

23 hours ago, formergothardite said:

There was a lot of attention brought to it when someone went and wrote about how it glamorized the Confederacy and even more attention when John Oliver talked about it on his show, I think the changes happened around that time because of the bad publicity. Superficial changes and in my opinion an attempt to placate both sides. They could say they took out the Confederacy and the people who loved that part still get to come and cheer for the South. 

If she changed the entire show plot, kept the horses, lost the North/South/Southern Belles and it would almost certainly still sell out. The Celebration Show, also in Pigeon Forge is a huge hit and isn't racist. She removed the Dixie Stampede at Myrtle Beach and put in an pirate show and it is hard to get tickets to it because it is so popular. So I don't think dropping the racist stuff would cost jobs. Sure some people would whine but people love her shows. 

 

 

Sadly John Oliver is near impossible to find here, and dfont have experience with the show at all so thank you. My comments werent to let her off the hook at all, just was pondering the other side of things. So again thanks, cause that helps to gave the extra info.