Dolly gave us all permission to love in a world that is forgetting how

“Marty operates at the speed of joy,” Tom Hanks says of comedian Martin Short in the documentary, Marty: Life Is Short. The same could have been said of singer, songwriter, philanthropist and all-round joy-giver, Dolly Parton. 

Even the famously cynical Fran Lebowitz has said repeatedly: “Who could not love Dolly?” Outside Buckingham Palace, the King’s Guard played 9 to 5, because, why not? Dolly gave all the world permission to love her, it seems. 

Parton was also the one thing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and US President Donald Trump could agree on. Trump called her “unique and amazing” but swiftly followed by saying, without evidence, as is usually the case, “she liked me a lot”. Mamdani, however, far smarter and far more attuned to the zeitgeist, recognised what Trump did not (could not?) when he said of Parton that she was “an irreplaceable champion of the working class”.

In the same week that Parton died, Trump was picking an unlikely – and let it be said, absurd – fight with Canada on trade. Fortunately, Canada has a prime minister in Mark Carney, who, while not perfect, with his banker’s sensibility constantly surprises with how unflappable he is. Trump went one step further and “renamed” Lake Ontario “Lake America”. 

Embarrassingly puerile even as the world is unsurprised by Trump’s assaults on anything and everything. The Iran war rages on illogically, the world is becoming hotter and, along with that, livelihoods are becoming more unsustainable in many parts of the world. The global movement of people has been marked by a lack of generosity and a narrowing, protectionist (and often racist) worldview. The lack of empathy in large swathes of public life and discourse has become as harmful as any other challenge the world faces. 

A life lived meaningfully

In the midst of all of this, Parton’s passing has been felt so keenly across the world, for a life lived so generously and on such a large canvas. 

One did not have to like her music (for those vehemently opposed to the catchy Jolene!) to understand that Dolly was joy at the speed of light – and that she was so much more than another country singer who made good. Her bedecked exterior betrayed her Smoky Mountain “smarts”, and doubtless she outwitted the many men who thought she was a busty, brainless blonde. Dolly was “women’s lib” and feminism long before those concepts became fashionable.

Her love for life was rooted in the folksy, but no less real for being so. Forthright about all things, for better or worse, some may say, Parton was never afraid to say that she believed in God and prayed. She was comfortable in her own skin, comfortable with her imperfections and, perhaps most significantly, comfortable in taking on causes that may have been politically incorrect to some: donating $1-million to Covid-19 vaccine research, supporting gay marriage and Black Lives Matter. 

Serious scholars and serious publications like the New Yorker continue analysing her meaning in a time of political polarisation: “She was democratic to her bones, of the people and by the people and for the people,” wrote the New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz.  

Parton was everywoman as much as she was a serious messenger about serious issues. She highlighted the role of working women everywhere in 9 to 5, alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. Through her Imagination Library, she has distributed hundreds of millions of books to children in the US and around the world. 

In a recent clip, Parton spoke about the impact John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath had on her. 

Unlikely collaborator

She transcended the divides of race, age and class in part by being an unlikely collaborator with musicians across these divides. When she knew she wanted to record Peace Train/Isitimela Sokuthula, she waited for the right collaborators and found them after hearing our own Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The result can only be described as gentle and stirring.

Much has been written about what a gift she was to the world, but one cannot help thinking that Parton’s legacy is more meaningful precisely because of the times we are living in. In a small, mean world, run mostly by small, mean men, Dolly Parton was a complete and joyful juxtaposition. 

All too often the struggle for a better world, from those for women’s rights, to access to books and words, human rights, and economic freedom, is filled with alienating rage and cynicism. None of that for Parton. She may never have spoken about politics, but she was uncannily political in a way that transcended the narrow divides of her home state, country and a bitter and divided world. 

The choices she made and the causes she supported spoke volumes without the often tiresome debates about “left” or “right” politics and about who is right or wrong. There is a lesson for the world in such a wide embrace that needed fewer words and more action.  

When asked about the environment and climate change in a 2022 National Geographic interview, Parton’s response was pared down, “we have to pay more attention” and “we need to take better care of the natural world we are freely messing up”. Through her association with the American Eagle Foundation, more than 180 bald eagles were rehabilitated back into the wild. 

Dolly Parton pretended to be neither saint nor genius, but it turns out, almost counter-intuitively, that her complexity was in her very simplicity. It also turns out that she simply embodied the empathy, authenticity and generosity of spirit that the world needs now. DM

Judith February is executive officer: Freedom Under Law and editor of Daily Maverick’s legal newsletter, Judith’s Prudence.