When you hear that opening to the 1980 Dolly Parton hit,
you naturally start preparing yourself for what's coming next -
♪ Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living ♪
♪ Barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving ♪
That may seem like a weird characterization
of an Academy Award-nominated song
by a woman who’s been dubbed the queen of qountry -
a national treasure,
who’s been nominated for 47 Grammys,
won over 150 awards,
has composed over 3,000 songs,
a broadway musical
and she’s released 64 studio albums.
And a woman who has said for years
that she modeled her look after the so-called town tramp.
The people they called trash - in my home town,
here in Sevier county, the loose women,
well that was the women that I thought were, were, beautiful.
So, I’ve been at it all my life trying to be gaudy.
But when you start to break '9 to 5' down lyric-by-lyric,
by the end, you're almost expecting Parton to call for the overthrowing
of the bourgeois in her sweet Appalachian tones.
It’s such a perfect embodiment of the radical labor movements
that were taking place in the United States throughout the 1960s and 70s.
But the song is also an unintentional melody of the sort of radical politic
that Dolly Parton, herself, represents in her life and work.
♪♪
Dolly Parton is an American icon.
Her look, her sound, her whole damn existence.
Now that I’ve made it, no matter how hard it gets,
I’m not about to b*tch about it now.
She was born in a small town in Tennessee,
in a small log cabin, one of 12 kids.
We had a roof over our head,
I always say, even if it did leak.
We had something to eat on our table,
even if it wasn’t exactly what we wanted.
We had a bed to sleep in, even if there was a bunch of us in it.
She started singing at the age of 10,
but her career really launched in 1967
when she became a regular on the Porter Wagoner show.
Right now I want to call out a little gal here
that her and I have had a lot of luck with a couple single records-
I haven't called you out yet, wait just a minute there, kiddo.
Within a few years, she became the queen of country, with hits like
♪ He said you can just call me Joshua ♪
♪♪
♪ Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene ... ♪
♪ And I will always love you ♪
I wanted more than to, just be a farmer’s daughter,
even though I’m proud to be. I just wanted pretty things,
I wanted money to buy things that I had always been impressed with as a child.
But, at the foundation of what makes her iconic is how Parton stands as both
a rebuke to and embrace of the expectations of a woman from the
poverty-stricken foothills of Appalachia.
We were a very proud people, people with a lot of class.
It was country class but it was a great deal of class, and
most of my people were not that educated but they are very very intelligent.
Good common sense, 'horse sense' we called it.
And while Parton herself stays away from talking politics,
her own life has been a testament to how she has stood with people.
I don’t care what - whether it’s your race,
or whether you’re green, blue, black, red, or alien grey,
or whether you’re male or female, or transgender.
If you do work, you should be paid and appreciated for it,
and you should be respected and appreciated for who and what you are.
She makes people feel good about who they are, whether they're
an evangelical Christian or gay drag queen,
or both of those things combined, right?
Dolly represents, she's their avatar. She's somebody who can be someone's icon.
And to fully understand Parton as that kind of radical everyperson icon,
we have to look at '9 to 5' - the film, the song, and the album.
'9 to 5' was the title song for an office revenge comedy
with the same name, and it starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton.
The premise of the film is pretty straight-forward:
These three women work for this guy.
He's rude, lies, gives opportunities earned by women to less-deserving men,
and he genuinely seems to believe that sexual harassment is
as necessary as his morning coffee.
Mr. Hart I’ve told you before, I’m a married woman!
And I’m a married man. That’s what makes it so perfect.
Oh Mr. Hart... [screams]
- Look I want you. - Oh for heaven’s sake!
What are you doing? Mr. Hart!
Call me Frank.
One day, during a particularly inspired weed-smoking sesh,
the three women relish in fantasies about how they'd like to exact revenge.
And a series of events lead them to, eventually, kidnapping him.
♪♪
While they've held him hostage, the women take over the office
and start enacting a series of reforms - like equal pay between men and women,
better work hours, even an in-house daycare for parent employees.
The movie ends with a happy ending for the ladies,
and the boss gets what he deserves -
abducted by the Indigenous of the Amazon.
Because, why not?
Now, again, on a superficial level the movie comes across as your
run-of-the-mill cute office comedy.
But it was released in 1980 - a year that ended the decade of
one of the most militant and successful eras for labor and women's rights.
Throughout the late 60s and 70s,
the United States experienced a labor upheaval.
Hard-earned union rights were being rolled back,
and workers across industries pushed right back.
From postal employees to California’s Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers,
to the coal miners of Harlan Country, Kentucky,
workers were shutting down their industries to demand rights and protect their unions.
And right alongside, if not within, these movements,
there were civil rights and women’s rights groups also pushing
for economic and protective equality in the workplace.
Think, for example, the 1980 clarification that under Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
that sexual harassment was, in fact, totally illegal.
So, it's in that context that the film '9 to 5' comes out -
it mixes two of the largest movements of the previous 20 years
and uses comedy to make a radical point about workers' rights
and sexual harassment in a way that's palatable and not preachy.
I mean, think of it this way: Three female workers, feeling detached from their labor
and suffering abuse from their boss, overthrow him and
introduce reforms that benefit both men and women equally.
The film may as well be called:
Now, that's the film - what about Parton's song?
In the same way the film "9 to 5" is a worker's homage
to her sweat and toil as well as her revolt,
the song '9 to 5' is her lament, but also her hope.
This chorus - catchy and relatable -
actually does a pretty good job of
summing up philosopher Karl Marx's theory
of worker alienation, which is a huge part of
his overall critique of capitalism,
and not something you’d expect
from a catchy pop country song.
According to Marx, because workers don't control the work that they do
- in any real sense - their lives lose a sense of purpose
because they become, in that process, commodities themselves.
They're just a means to an end, the end being profit for the Boss.
In the song '9 to 5,' Parton makes this alienation pretty clear
with lyrics like, 'Yawn and stretch and try to come to life,'
'They use your mind, but they never give you credit,'
'barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin,'
'you're just a step on the boss-man's ladder.'
But, when you take that song and hold it next to the film '9 to 5,'
the song becomes a radical critique.
But there's more.
Parton released the song on her 24th studio album,
entitled 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs.
This album, filled with original
songs and covers, captures Parton's
working class sympathies and experiences,
sometimes in a surprising way.
It takes a hard look at the class struggle in America.
Songs like 'Deportee,' songs about coal miners,
songs about being poor in a small town,
songs about rural poverty.
Take, for example, 'Poor Folks Town,' an original song on the album.
And another original, 'Sing for the Common Man.'
Then there's 'Deportee,' it’s a cover of proud communist Woody Guthrie's
protest song about a group of Mexican workers
who were killed in a plane crash over Los Gatos, California in 1948.
And in media coverage, they were simply referred to as 'deportees.'
Each song in the album illustrates a different aspect of working-class America,
and, together, they create perhaps Dolly Parton’s most provocative,
definitely most radical, homage to the everyday person.
She's someone who understands what it's like to be hungry,
to be without electricity, to be lacking in basic needs and resources.
I think it gives her songwriting, and for that matter her philanthropy,
a great sense of empathy.
But Parton has notoriously stayed away from getting political.
She’s actually got a pretty good swerve.
Where do you stand on this election?
Right now, I just - I just don’t know.
It’s just the greatest show on television right now.
That, however, hasn’t stopped her from pushing policies in her own way.
Take, for example, two of her biggest philanthropic efforts:
the Imagination Library and the My People Fund.
The Imagination Library is a charitable effort that Dolly started originally
in her home county that gives books to young children
to encourage them to read.
It's since expanded into several countries, across many states,
and become one of the largest children's literacy programs in the world.
To date, the Imagination Library has given out 100 million free books to kids
all over the United States.
The My People Fund provided
$1,000 a month for six months,
with a final check of $5,000,
to 1,300 families who had had lost everything
in the 2016 Tennessee wildfires.
I know it’s been a trying time for my people
and this assistance will help.
She gave this money to the residents of her hometown with no strings attached,
didn't tell them how to spend it, understanding that they would
have the agency and the knowledge to do what they needed to recover.
In the end, the Dolly Foundation would give over $8 million to impacted families.
Nobody but you would be so kind and generous.
I’m sure anybody up here would do that. These are good people.
And that’s what Dolly Parton as a radical icon comes down to:
Someone who believes that people are fundamentally good
and that they deserve good.
Alright, how many of you guys actually thought you'd spend some time watching
a video about how Dolly Parton is a Marxist icon?
You're welcome!
Let us know what you guys thought. Also let us know what else you want
us to cover in future episodes of Pop Americana.
And we'll see you next week.
♪♪