{"id":25194,"date":"2021-02-03T14:13:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T14:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/02\/dolly-parton-9to5-squarespace\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T16:31:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T16:31:01","slug":"dont-hate-the-dolly-hate-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/03\/dont-hate-the-dolly-hate-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Hate the Dolly, Hate the Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

A collective wail of anguish went up after news broke that Dolly Parton's working-class anthem \u201c9 to 5\u201d has been repurposed for a Squarespace ad lauding \u201cworking, working, working.\u201d Our grief is justified. But the song's deformation into a hollow jingle says more about capitalism than Dolly.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Dolly Parton performing in Sydney, Australia, 2014. (Mark Metcalfe \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

When I learned that Dolly Parton had rerecorded<\/a> her hit 1980 working-class anthem \u201c9 to 5<\/a>\u201d as a jingle called \u201c5 to 9\u201d for Squarespace, website builder of choice for \u201ccreatives,\u201d as an ode to side hustles, I joked on Twitter asking some unknown entity to \u201cpls hold all my calls\u201d because I was \u201ccoping.\u201d<\/p>\n

I love \u201c9 to 5.\u201d I\u2019ve sung it at karaoke countless times, despite its basic incompatibility with my voice. I\u2019ve put it on at Democratic Socialists of America meetings. It\u2019s one of the greatest musical odes to class struggle in American history. Now it\u2019s being repurposed to laud how capitalism forces us to work endlessly just to survive.<\/p>\n

Then I thought about it for thirty seconds. It\u2019s not surprising in the least that a song with such widespread appeal would be turned on its head \u2014 literally, formally, figuratively, in every goddamned way \u2014 and pointed away from its original message (fuck the boss) and toward a new one (be the boss and never stop working), all in service of selling a product and lionizing our contemporary economy\u2019s grotesque features.<\/p>\n

Nor is it surprising\u00a0 that Dolly herself would participate in such a flipping of her own song.<\/p>\n

Dolly has long avoided explicitly political stances. At the 2017 Emmys<\/a>, she, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda, who starred together in the 1980 comedy 9 to 5, <\/i>for which the song was written, presented the award for Best Supporting Actor. During their speech, Tomlin and Fonda called Donald Trump a \u201csexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot\u201d \u2014 which is what they call the boss in 9 to 5<\/i>. Dolly stood between them, looking thoroughly displeased.<\/p>\n

Recently, Dolly revealed<\/a> that she refused to accept an offer for the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump twice during his term in office\u00a0 \u2014 less a rejection of Trump and more a refusal to be associated with politics at all. When asked<\/a> on NBC\u2019s Today<\/i> if she would accept the medal from President Joe Biden, she demurred. “Now I feel like if I take it, I’ll be doing politics, so I’m not sure,” she said. Politics, she has told other interviewers, are \u201cnot my place.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m an entertainer,\u201d she says. And I take her at her word.<\/p>\n

Dolly has not put her life in the service of politics. She makes music. She also owns a theme park where she, like any boss, exploits her workers and exploits them badly<\/a>. Sometimes, she funds philanthropic projects. Most recently she donated<\/a> a million dollars to COVID-19 vaccine development. She also grew up \u201cdirt-poor\u201d (her words) in rural East Tennessee and worked to make a living before she became a CEO \u2014 a position pointed out in the Squarespace ad in question, which features a shot of Dolly on the cover of a magazine with the headline \u201cSINGER, SONGWRITER, CEO.\u201d<\/p>\n

But of course, the song \u201c9 to 5\u201d is deeply political. It even follows the structure of a good organizing conversation:<\/p>\n

Identify the issues<\/p>\n

Barely gettin’ by<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s all takin’<\/em><\/p>\n

And no givin’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agitate<\/p>\n

They just use your mind<\/em><\/p>\n

And they never give you credit<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s enough to drive you<\/em><\/p>\n

Crazy if you let it<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Name the enemy<\/p>\n

Want to move ahead<\/em><\/p>\n

But the boss won’t seem to let me<\/em><\/p>\n

I swear sometimes that man is out to get me<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Find common ground<\/p>\n

You\u2019re in the same boat<\/em><\/p>\n

With a lot of your friends<\/em><\/p>\n

Waitin’ for the day<\/em><\/p>\n

Your ship’ll come in<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the movie whose soundtrack the song appears on and which Dolly stars in is an unabashed portrait of militant feminist workplace struggle<\/a>. But to hear Dolly tell it<\/a>, her decision to do the movie wasn\u2019t about politics. In fact, she worried about what her more conservative fans would think about her doing a movie with \u201cHanoi Jane<\/a>.\u201d But the movie\u2019s politics can fly under the radar because they don\u2019t take a position on any one politician or political party. That seems to be where Dolly draws the line, too. She\u2019ll give hundreds of thousands of dollars to victims of fires<\/a>, but denouncing Trump is a step too far.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s fine. I don\u2019t need her to have my politics to appreciate the political aspects of her songs like \u201c9 to 5.\u201d I also don\u2019t need her to share my politics to recognize the way My Tennessee Mountain Home<\/i> captures<\/a> the lived experience of so many poor and working-class people in Appalachia. And I don\u2019t need her to share my leftist politics to know that Dolly gives millions of people, in particular Tennesseeans, a reason to be proud of the place they come from, when much of mainstream culture dismisses them as backward and beyond hope.<\/p>\n