Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Dolly Parton

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

America's favorite buxom, rhinestone-clad Southern songstress, Dolly Parton, has a "cult following" like no other celebrity. Thanks to her unmistakable image, her "Dollyisms," her theme park, her illustrious music, and her ability to transcend politics, "Saint Dolly" has become so much more than your average country star. But are there any risks to worshiping a singer as your spiritual idol? Tune in as Amanda, Isa, and special guests Claire and Ashley from Celebrity Memoir Book Club attempt to break down Dolly Parton's iconic "cult." To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here! Thank you to our sponsors! Go to Zocdoc.com/CULT and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Visit AURA.com/CULT for a 14 day free trial. Get 10% off your first order sitewide & free shipping on orders over $60 with code CULT at OSEAMalibu.com.

ZockDoc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them, and treat almost every condition under the sun. Go to ZockDoc.com slash Colt and download the ZockDoc app for free. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Colt. ZockDoc.com slash Colt. Did you know your personal info is out there for anyone to find? For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14-day free trial plus a check of your data to see if your personal information has been leaked online, all for free when you visit Aura.com slash Colt. That's Aura.com slash Colt to sign up for a 14-day free trial and start protecting you and your

loved ones, certain terms apply. Spring into your most radiant skin yet with clean vegan skin care and body care from OSEA and get 10% off your first order site-wide with code Colt at OSEAMallaboo.com. You'll get free samples with every order and free shipping on orders over $60. Head to OSEAMallaboo.com and use code Colt for 10% off. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Colt, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This is Sounds Like a Colt, a show about the modern day Colt we all follow. I'm Issa Madina and I'm a comedian performing every week in Los Angeles. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book

Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week on our show, we discuss a different contemporary group that puts the Colt in culture, from the Supreme Court to the skin care industry, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a Colt, but is it really? I feel like extremely relaxed today. Well, I've been noticing and enjoying you are getting more and more relaxed the longer you are in Italy. It is definitely like you're in Italy and our time difference is psychotic, but I'm like, Amanda is doing her thing and I am benefiting from it because she's relaxed. Yeah. Well, you're going to come find me later, but you know, I'm in the cult of toxic productivity hustle grind culture and I needed to reconnect with my unbothered

alter ego and I'm finally two and a half weeks in. I'm doing it and it feels amazing. That's actually how long it takes. It takes 10 days to unwind and truly relax. That's why I think a vacation needs to be minimum three weeks, which is obviously like a privilege that not all iced Americanos can take. I arrived in iced Americano with like three shots in it, like shaking and vibrating and now I'm a single shot cappuccino at 11am. Yes. Today we're talking about a very light and fun Colt that like you would never think is a Colt, but it's giving Colt vibes, which is the Colt of Dolly Parton. Yes, she is America's favorite buxom rhinestone clad southern songstress Dolly Parton. She certainly has a Colt following that

is very distinct unlike no other celebrity really and that's due to a lot of things. It's due to her unmistakable image, her Dolly isms or famous cashphrases, her theme park, her illustrious music of course, her ability to transcend politics. People call her Saint Dolly and she has become so much more than your average country star. But the question is, are there any risks to worshiping a singer as your spiritual idol? And we're going to be joined later by the hosts of the podcast Celebrity Memoir Book Club to help us analyze whether Dolly just has a Colt following in the sort of innocent metaphorical sense or is something darker going on? This is the sort of very lighthearted metaphorical interpretation of the word Colt. We have covered several celebrity

Colts and Colt followings on the show before like we've done Jared Leto, he's kind of purposefully starting a Colt, we've done Elon Musk same thing, he's trying to take people to Mars. And then we've covered people like Taylor Swift who are just so good at being famous in the 21st century that they're able to strategically utilize the internet to kind of like radicalize their stand-in in the best way don't come for me. But Dolly Parton feels a little bit different. I mean what does her Colt following mean to you out of the gate? It feels different immediately and we talk about this with our guest in more detail. But she started in a time period where there really like was not a social media following actually social media literally did not exist. So she had

to cultivate her Colt following from the ground up. And how did she do it? And why is it so unique and fun? She did it with boobs. Literally genius because like everybody loves boobs men love boobs women love boobs. And Dolly was like I will give you more. That's not just it. She also obviously is like an amazing musician. She has so many extremely distinct one-of-a-kind qualities that I think really have contributed to her deification in a certain way. She is a sort of idol that people worship. Let's rewind let's go back to that pre-social media era in which Dolly was born and came up and glue up because I wasn't really aware of her origin story before we started researching this episode. Let's get into a little bit of the biography of our girl Dolly.

Let's get into it Dolly. I mean if that's even your real name because it does sound like kind of a contrived persona but literally and like no spoiler alerts but I feel like she has this ability to cultivate extreme artifice and pure authenticity at the very same time and her name is like a personification of that like the name Dolly sounds fake but it's real. It does very much speak to the fact that like she was just born a character like that's like her whole vibe according to the country music hall of fame's website Dolly Rebecca pardon pardon pardon pardon Dolly Rebecca pardon wait hold on I don't know why I felt like when you add Rebecca I literally forget how to pronounce her last name Dolly part Dolly Parton wait I literally already forgot what

is it again Dolly Pardon it's Parton but you can you can flap it you can say pardon but hey Dolly Parton like part of Dolly Parton I remember that now Dolly Rebecca Parton was born into a large family she was the fourth of literally 12 children okay cold it 100% is giving cold and it's also giving like no birth control yeah pre-pandemic I feel like we should just start calling all the year like and our children probably will start calling all the years before 2020 pre-pandemic. She was born in 1946 in Locust Ridge Tennessee so she is an authentic Appalachian girlie she came from deep in Appalachia where music was like a really profound and meaningful part of the lives of working class or blue collar families like Dolly's who struggled to make ends meet and so

music was kind of a coping mechanism for her from a very young age I mean she was born the year after World War two ended which is like okay immediately welcome to the world okay and then just like a large family tighten it but I can just see her being this like little girl who was like Dolly oh look it's Dolly she's dancing around the kitchen she was Dolly the whole time I also what I love about Dolly and we get into this a lot with our guests but she is this unproblematic fave figure who has managed to be a real representative of feminist movements but has also appealed to the entire political spectrum and this is really encapsulated by the fact that her first top 40 hit song in 1967 was a song called Dumb Blonde which really

attacked traditional feminine stereotypes but it did so in a way that felt palatable for everyone not only you know radical leftists she pretty quickly became beloved by swaths of Americans and that same year in 1967 she joined the Porter Wagner show and that's really when she became a household name yeah I love that she was like one of the first to be like oh you have a stereotype for me immediately turn it around bitch because I'm gonna prove you wrong make some art makes me kind of want to go blonde if I'm being completely honest what an era for you that would be so before we get into some of the cultier analysis let's maybe walk through some of her major career moments because she is so perennially impressive so she had a bunch of back-to-back

hits her first solo number one hit was her song Joshua in 1971 which led to three more number one songs in 74 those being Jolene okay classic hit love is a butterfly and I will always love you Jesus Christ that song breaks me the fact that she had a song that popped off called Joshua and then it led to Jolene and then it led to love is like a butterfly is bisexual bisexual culture yes because it's like Josh and then Jolene and then she was like whoa love is like a butterfly two wings both sides like I do feel like Dolly Parton is bisexual in a way no one has ever met her husband and she is very traditional in that she does have a husband she's been married for over 50 years and the internet still only knows the man is like Dolly Parton's husband

but I am speculating here and this is just my opinion allegedly allegedly allegedly what if she's gay and she doesn't have a husband because like I feel like before it was like she just wants to keep her life private but now it's like okay why is it so private and who is Jolene I mean I I do think that the secrecy and mystery she's able to maintain about her personal life and her appearance you know like who knows what Dolly looks like underneath all of that makeup I I think that also contributes to her sort of spiritual allure yeah it is very much literally Hannah Montana totally totally totally it is funny that you say that because despite the fact that her look her image from her sky high platinum blonde hair to her giant tits to her flashy

sparkly fringe clad outfits she has this ability to be like a mirror where everyone feels like they can relate to her so you as like a bisexual comedian can look at Dolly and be like I see myself in you and at the very same time because I have a boob job too the sort of the opposite side of the boob job spectrum from Dolly you yours are very tasteful but I think like anybody can look at Dolly and feel seen and I think that is part of why she's been able to cultivate this cult following in the sort of cheeky hyperbolic sense because she has managed to craft this really really unique mass appeal while also saying exactly what she wants to say listen the woman has recorded 65 different albums and has 26 number one songs she's earned 11 Grammys and two Oscar

nominations she's written eight books and secured honors from the rock and roll of fame country music hall of fame Kennedy Center honors and national medal of arts like amongst all of these incredible accomplishments she has built a persona that people really do worship I mean I have seen her face printed on religious prayer candles I've seen graphics on Instagram that say Saint Dolly yeah and I feel like now if a musician started doing that which like they do sometimes it's very camp like it's very sarcastic yeah but I do feel like because religion is so prevalent in the south people genuinely feel a spiritual attachment and inspiration by Dolly Parton and not to mention that like again she was born in 1946 so it was like obviously she didn't pop off like right out

of the womb and start singing top songs but like she did grow up in a time period that was like let's all like figure our stuff back out let's build from the ground up and like she carries that with her in her music she is the queen of trinkling like she trinkles messages into her music and into her persona that like very subtly change the way people like view women and women in business yeah I mean she really has this very very unique representation of nine to five feminism I'm working nine to five making a living recording pots that's here and there but she at the very same time has really embraced and capitalized on this southern bell caricature that she embodies one of her famous Dali isms and this is very culty as well that she has these sort of extremely quotable almost

biblical proverbs called Dali isms one of them goes there's a heart beneath the boobs and a brain beneath the wig I can just imagine like women in that time period just like kneeling by their bed at night and being like there's a heart beneath these boobs I feel like as funny as they are they were like the original like live life loves very much I do think we should talk about how the saint dolly persona has become so cult followed in the eyes of certain vulnerable populations like dolly's queer fans because perceiving dolly as a kind of cult leader very well could have been a way for people lacking community to feel seen another dolly quote that is really giving queer is like if I hadn't been born a girl I'd have been a drag queen yes that is

very queer which isn't inherently culty by the way I just like wanted to talk about it in general she has managed to again on one hand appeal to conservatives and then on the other hand been this mouthpiece for queer culture for so long like female pop stars have served as a kind of surrogate for queer men who couldn't express their femininity outwardly and I think dolly parton is totally an example of that along with like lady gaga these these people who like may or may not be queer themselves but are totally icons and the fact that she was like so quote unquote like hot and like traditionally like a sex appeal figure and like on playboy like it was a very cool secretive way for like these men to be like oh yeah no like I just think dolly parton is hot I'm just

creating this like whole narrative in my head of like all these closeted men in like the no I love it I love dolly and like actually loving her for like her queer idleness but then like pretending to love her for her big huge tits oh that's such a good point that is totally the cult appeal of dolly is just like you can love her for any number of reasons and everybody will just accept it yeah I think that's that's really unique and that's why she's so different from a sort of cult polarizing figure like a Jared Leto or like an Elon Musk like she is sort of the leader that we want and that can unify us yeah I mean I can definitely see a lot of closeted married men probably listening to dolly parton and making it seem like oh it's just like on the radio and it's

just fun and it's like they were probably just very much loving what she was saying instead for I obviously am like joking when I'm like assuming that dolly parton is bisexual but I mean okay who knows but nope it's a joke okay but I do want to say like she has always been a huge advocate for the queer community in 2005 she outraged a lot of her fans by writing a song for trans america which was a movie about a trans woman and she donated another song to love rocks an LGBTQ benefit album so as much as like it seems like a lot of the things that she does to be welcoming to the queer community seem unintentional I think those actions kind of prove that like she is very much accepting and loving of that community and so maybe it was intentional

all along who knows but we don't know the reason I think this is important to talk about is because it's very cult leader like to not do something for obvious reasons like Amanda you always say a lot of cult leaders aren't evil geniuses they're just opportunists and so I think all these queer allyship things that dolly parton has done and not made them very clear it's like is she doing it as a cult leader is it opportunism we don't know and she is an icon in a political and philanthropic sense as well dolly could very well be a billionaire several times over because of all her hits all the opportunities that could have come her way but she famously gives away tons of money each year according to billboard she donated a million dollars to disease research

at vanderbilt university which helped fund maderna's COVID-19 vaccine and I think that moment when she donated all of that money to help with the COVID vaccine that renewed her cult falling because that's the thing with dolly is that her career is so long and illustrious she has managed to surge in cult following at so many different periods in her life for so many different reasons yeah always able to skirt cancellation or drama just because she keeps like following her truth yeah she has the presence and the aura of someone who could definitely like use her power for evil and like build a cult following that becomes toxic but even just the fact that she like gives her money away I mean she is such a green cult flag so up next we're going to talk to Claire Parker and

Ashley Hamilton who are the hosts of celebrity memoir book club they read a celebrity memoir literally every week and then talk about it which is more reading than I've done in my entire life and I admire them for it but they did read dolly parton's memoir and so we wanted to interview them to ask is it too good to be true or is there a dark side here like what is going on and how has dolly parton stayed loved for so long here's Claire and Ashley now for a quick break to hear from our favorite sponsors who help keep the show going you're extremely unlikely to find quality medical advice in your group chat but you can find it from a doctor on ZockDoc ZockDoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need and deliver the type of

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fits their needs and schedule just right go to ZockDoc.com slash cult and download the ZockDoc app for free then find and book a top rated doctor today many are available within 24 hours that cocdoc.com slash cult ZockDoc.com slash cult it seems like there's a new data breach in the news every other day okay not to be alarmist but in 2022 alone there were over 1800 data breaches that exposed personal information of over 422 million individuals oh I know not good victims of data breaches are easy targets for all sorts of cyber crimes even the most tech advanced companies and social media telecom and crypto have been breached because of the vast sensitive data they possess that's why we are truly stoked to partner with aura aura is an all-in-one online safety solution

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free trial and start protecting you and your loved ones that's a u r a.com slash cult certain terms apply so be sure to check the site for details springtime famously the season of renewal there's nothing I like more than to pretend like I have received the best consecutive nights of sleep and nothing says refreshed more than bright wide awake looking eyes which I only have thanks to ocia's ocean ice serum I actually used their beautiful luscious face wash this morning I love the ocia face wash my mom accidentally used it as body wash one time and I almost kicked her out of the house it's like lady this is mine and it's precious don't even get me started on the ocean ice serum it is like a shot of espresso for the eyes it brightens the look of your eyes it diminishes

puffiness and dark circles which we all know we have because we're tired we're working girls we're working gorillies and it smooths the look of fine lines and wrinkles which we love all of ocia's products are clean vegan cruelty free climate neutral powered by seaweed and conceived in california spring into your most radiant skin yet with clean vegan skincare and body care from ocia and get 10 off your first order site wide with code colt at ocia malibu.com you'll get free samples with every order and free shipping on orders over 60 dollars head to oseamalibu.com and use code colt for 10 off we're so excited to have you on the podcast could you introduce yourselves to our listeners and your work and who you are i'm claire parker i am the co-host

a celebrity memoir book club with my friend ashley hamilton where we read the book so that you guys don't have to and basically every week we read a different celebrity memoir and then we summon up and we're both stand-up comedians so beware but it's a good time every week we go into a new celebrity and whatever their version of their life story is which is varied that is so cool i remember when i met ashley at like a comedy show do you remember that like in new york it was a long time ago i was like you read one book a week i feel like that's the one thing that people always say everyone's always floored at how fast we read and i don't actually feel like we're fast readers it really i think that school taught us that books are longer than they are i

went to public school and i remember having to read a chapter or two a week and being like how am i gonna get through this homework and now i'm like oh if i sit down for two hours unbroken you get through 120 pages and most of these books are 200 to 250 pages so really if you sit down for about three hours like one morning you can knock out a book yeah and you're not reading like the great gad speed it's christelle stouse's like magazine article that they stretched out over 200 pages with photos so we are here ultimately to talk about dolly parton would you say that you are a part of dolly parton's culton anyway and what are your relationships to her as she's come back into pop culture i feel like there's been this renaissance of people come in and out of vogue

she's definitely had a comeback moment where you know we look back at all the icons the y2k she's definitely somebody who has cycled through the pop culture cycle six or seven times at this point and i don't think anyone has a bad thing to say about her and every time you learn something new you love her i think during the pandemic her work with vaccine came to the forefront i feel like she's come out politically she's just one of the few people where you look back at their 60 year history in the spotlight and their history is like untarnished she's never had a bad take she's never been on the wrong side of history and that is so rare to find somebody born in the hills in 1948 i feel like people have dug and found there are like random little things but it is like a

deep dive dig where it's like we must find problems with everybody like you guys said dolly parton has always been on the right side of history it seems like and like a lot of the bad things about her are kind of like hidden that's kind of hollywood culty to me at the time when she was on the right side of history was she ever like controversial i don't want to diminish this but i mean we read dolly parton's book she like really comes out against racism there were racist figures in the dolly parton theme park review like in the show that they do at the dolly parton theme park there is like but also it's a southern review and there is a lot of racism in the history of the south so it is kind of up for question and i don't want to like minimize it but like that is the thing

that they found i don't think most people want to find anything the author tracy macmillan cotton wrote an amazing newsletter post about dolly parton and in the title it says like we stan our post racism queen and i think like we want an unproblematic fave to worship like dolly parton because we want someone to save us tressy was saying that like the most problematic parts of us us want an unproblematic fave to stan and worship like dolly because it takes the pressure off of us yeah it's it sucks to have to be like i love this person but and it to like look at yourself and i think that's part of why people have such a hard time condemning chris brown and woody allen is they're like well if he's a bad guy but i loved annie hall what does that say about me we'll just

say he's not a bad guy it's easier for us to not have to look within ourselves and be like how do we handle complex people we just read parasolans memoir this week for example and there is a tricky case of when you look into our history she has said some pretty horrible things i would not sit here for a minute and say that woman is above racism homophobia anti-semitism and i'm like and not in a way where it was like oh she tries to play it off in her book like i knew the words to a song and it was not that it was like hateful mean stuff that being said we really believe the work she did in her memoir that just came out about the treble teen industry is valuable and doing more than almost anything else is to save kids today and of the past so are we gonna say no those kids can't

be saved right now because the person leading the charge is a problem sometimes there is no perfect unflod leader i think parasolans there's better people than her maybe but that being said i personally was not thinking about those treble teen boarding schools until she did her documentary in her book and i know she is going down to washington and bring more light on it than anyone else could so should we stop her and you know we've had comments already being like okay but with all of her money and influence like she could do more and it's like can people do less actually i'm tired to bring it back to dolly i feel like when we're talking about does dolly have a cult i'm 30 so i can't speak for her die hard listen since the 60s fans i think if you're not

giving yourself to that parasocial relationship you can create that and so there is a distance between dolly and her fans that makes it so that you can't really have a cult because how could you follow her you don't know where she is that's so true also when she initially blew up she didn't have social media yes so she already has this like less parasocial relationship with her fans she just has a fandom that is like loving her for her music and for her work rather than for her persona i'm just thinking right now about hailey beaver if i was obsessed with hailey beaver i would know how to eat like her how to dress like her how she does her makeup in the morning i could live a day in day out life prescribed by hailey beaver and of course she's not getting

online and saying this is what you need to do but if that's how you felt about her you could take her recommendations and completely have a life that was defined by the hailey beaver way of living i do not feel i could do that with dolly parton because i think about like people who are obsessed with like the Beatles and stuff because of course pre-social media there was fandoms there was michael jackson there was the Beatles there was all of it i feel like they're not on a day-to-day basis telling you every aspect of your life they're saying oh come to my concerts buy my cds but they're not like and then go here and buy this t-shirt and then go to this workout class and then have this smoothie the way that they now take over all of our lives and you could give

yourself over to it if you wanted one of the things i think is really interesting is how like aware we are that what we know of dolly parton is a costume like have you heard the speculations that she might actually have like full sleeve tattoos and wear like yeah i've heard that loves and people say like she has dark brown hair i mean we know her hair is a wig she is hannah montana yeah if you want to be like dolly we know how much we don't know dolly okay so i completely agree and i think that the quote-unquote cult following that exists around dolly is very very different from the cult following that exists around someone with a robust social media presence who you do feel like you can get in closer proximity to and i feel like due to the fact that she is not on social

media and due to her unproblematic fave status and due to her like very unique look i think that people do sort of deify her and romanticize her in a way that they don't for other celebrities i think that also has to do with like her canon of music that like speaks so emotionally to people but like dolly parton unlike hayley beiber can be found on those religious prayer candles like st dolly there are people who wish she would run for president like because she was donating so generously to you know covid relief and vaccines and whatever nobody wants hayley beiber to run for president so i think like her cult following is maybe not as toxic and uncanny as some of the social media figures followings but i do think it is very very passionate and almost comes from like

a place of even more longing you know i wonder though if it's more ironic you know that thing where it's like you've reached icon status when you can be recognized by your silhouette i feel like she has that of the marilin the kampardashian if you saw just an outline of her and i think putting her on the candles i do feel like there's this caricature version of her do you know what i mean that you would love her the way you would love betty boo because she's also been around for eternities like a lot of people who reach her status have like died of a drug overdose or something and she just like hasn't she's kept it tight i know that people like pilgrimage to go see her and stuff but i think in this era of like camp and ironic obsession with celebrities people go to

countess louan's cabaret and they spend like a hundred dollars on tickets to go see countess louan pretend to sing the idea of like spending money and doing something doesn't necessarily mean like you truly are following them morally i feel like especially for our generation when good things come out about dolly and they're like oh run for president is because she's doing things that already like fall within our own personal moral belief system we're like oh go she agrees with me as opposed to being like i'm checking with dolly to see who she's voting for first like i think they like that there's this older woman who can come back around and fit in with today's times yeah everyone loves a mommy yeah they do and like there are other unproblematic faves who are

similar in certain ways to dolly that i think fall in her category like rest in peace queens but like betty white and ruth bader ginsberg there is this like grand mama cult leader type of figure who's like this older progressive white woman that like for some reason whether it is ironic whether it starts as ironic interns earnest which i think is a thing i think this is an archetype that we are craving we want to grant mama right now why do you think the cult worship of older female celebrities like dolly parton and betty white and ruth bader ginsberg in particular has gotten so intense in recent history i feel like we need people to like look up to and like we look for cult leaders like we want to be obsessed with something and men are all problematic

like they've all especially older men like every time we read a memoir from a man over the age of like 45 he's like and when i was 25 my girlfriend was 16 she left middle school to come to my concerts every night and you're like what are you saying and so i think that they're just like is first of all like women feeling empowered and like wanting to look up to other women but second of all if you care you like can't look up to most men like it's off the table can i say and i think it's funny i can't help but wonder if part of it is once you're 90 years old i'm not threatened by you anymore now i could come out and be like i'm a feminist i love betty white the woman who's going to be blown over tomorrow like i love a woman that my boyfriend would never cheat

on me with no but it's so true it's like we love dolly parton because she's not a threat to like our success yeah and i wonder if they're able to be so like benevolent leader because she's reached icon status it's indisputable and so there's no reason for her to not like come down and like grace miley cyrus with a crown and do all of these things because she's dolly so really quickly when we say the cult of dolly parton how do you interpret that we talked a little bit about it but do you think there's like a type of cult follower that dolly has in your opinion like what do you think they're so drawn to in her we actually someone dms today when i posted that we were doing a dolly episode and they're like oh i hope that you don't turn me against her i have

her tattooed on me and i have to say to have a tattoo of somebody whose life you're not really sure of i think speaks to this like i like i don't i don't even know if irony is the right word but once they've reached a peak they become representative of more than themselves which i feel like when a person's a true cult leader you it's still about you like everything good is embodied in you as opposed to like you are just an example of the bigger well this is what's interesting about celebrities as cult leaders because to your point when they're elevated so so high on a pedestal you can't even see their humanity anymore it almost doesn't even matter what they do they're way too far they've been elevated so high up now they're just a mascot and the cult

fandom self perpetuates and it's like is there even a leader do you even need one can't you have like a rabid culture and rituals and all the rest without a singular leader like this is what's funny about cult followed celebrities and i think in the stan culture right now something that we're seeing is i think that the stand-up is in a way removed from the celebrity themselves and i think like when celebrities come in and out of vogue it's like people are longing to feel a part of something and so if the zeitgeist is saying oh this is our leader it's fun to be obsessed with them because everyone else is obsessed with them and if the tide turns against them you're like well i'm sticking with the tide who is controlling the tide i think it's like such an amalgamation

of factors there is a tide that you have to catch like the way dolly has kind of cycled through pop culture a million different times like in her book you know it took her forever to come up then she hit the porter wagner show and she was beloved then she left the porter wagner show and she was hated and then she did this and then she did like she's been in and out so many times and like it is about catching a tide at the right time and i think that most people in a short career can catch a tide once and i think it'll be really interesting to like look back in 20 years and see who stayed i'm curious what were the sort of like cultiest details of dolly's book that stuck out to you i guess if you are within the cult of dolly part and like you've been following

her for a long time when this book came out i think it did give a lot of like little gifts of like here's something that you've been asking about for a long time and i'm finally gonna give you a little bit more of an in-depth answer like she does 10 pages of details about her husband carl dean who she's never really talked about before and he doesn't come to her public events he's like a very behind the scenes kind of guy and a lot of people are like who the fuck is this man that dolly has like randomly been married to for 70 years like how have we never really known anything about him and she's like here is a rundown of his personality and i think that if you like are obsessed with dolly part and you're like wow i finally know carl it's great at like reiterating the lore of

dolly part in which i think she is the antithesis of the neppo baby and that's part of why we love her so much she really is good old-fashioned americana poor she is like true like dirt poor from the mountains and we love that about her and she doesn't know how to read sheet music but she's written some of the biggest hits of all time and she just came up because she loved to sing and she's just a gifted woman who worked her butt off and made it happen and continues to work every door and believed in herself and what do we love more than that and this book really does make you be like how poor was i we were so poor that i got shoes once i turned 10 and that was the greatest like our best christmas was the christmas nobody got anything but my mom finally

got a wedding ring after 30 years of marriage to my dad like yeah i feel like we talk a lot about like the cult of capitalism on this podcast and i feel like dolly parten embodies like the american dream and in her memoir giving these little stories and these tales of like how poor she was and like how far she came it makes you not just like idolize her but like truly like believe in the american dream she is sort of like saint dolly in the religion of americana and meritocracy and the rest did she talk about her look in her book she talks about just like how she's always been very sexual and she you know got boobs early and like loved to hike them up to here she loved like looking sexy and everyone in town thought she was a horror but she's like i wasn't a horror i just

like loved looking hot and i saved myself for my husband and you're just like okay sure i wonder what your thoughts are on like how her look plays into her cult following because it is so distinctive you were talking before about how like her silhouette is recognizable do you think that her appearance means something more than just like i love my tits and i'm a southern girl like what do you think people stands or even more casual fans see in it that makes them want to follow her i think what they see is that they can define it i think that having a defined look can be so important because people can recreate it they can make a costume out of you it's so easy for a store to be like this is our dolly part in halloween costume i realized how brilliantly she's leaned

into so many of like the truest american tropes of what like american society so she talks in her book about she has three main passions in life and it's god sex food and even the way she talks about finding god she was dragged to church her whole life and she never felt it and then one day she was in the attic plucking away at a mandolin she made herself and she felt like she talked to god and from then on she always knew god had her back and even that story of being like i'm a believer and not just in some cheesy it was fed to me way but in a true way where i was a skeptic who was changed and now she's like this direct speaker of god she thinks god spoke to her she's the prophet and now god is tied to literally to her music she is you know what i mean she was

given the gift of music by god himself and she's using it to help us and god wants her to be sexy because he wouldn't have given her such bang and tits if he didn't want that and i do think even the way she played into the sex thing of america of i think by meeting america where it is where women need to be sexy and then doubling down in this way that it's absurd she owns it she subverts that she plays into it she has something for everyone you know what i mean i think like when you look at a dolly partner and anyone could find a way to look at her look and make it work for their personal morality if you are a sexist man you go here's this blonde bimbo with huge tits just as women should be if you're a feminist you go here's a woman who took what was being used

against her doubled down made it work for her reclaimed it reclaimed it she is so absurd that you can find anything you want and if you're gay you can just be like wow those are some nice tits like people forget the power of nice boobs if you're traditional you can be like okay and she's had this husband at home the entire time she's been with one man she goes home to him every night and if you are more progressive you can say like she has this husband at home but she is the head bitch in charge in public yeah okay now we're really getting into it because a cult leader pattern is they are populist they can code switch or whatever it is like no matter who's standing in front of them they can meet them where they are and also being the conduit

for god's message and being able to excuse or justify or promote whatever she likes and whatever she stands for by saying that it's god's will i mean it doesn't get more cult leaders than that and i think that being so unapologetically extreme nobody knows what to do you can say oh ryan is too sexy britney and her little crop top is too sexy and you can kind of criticize her and twist the knife because britney is very human i feel britney is not a good cult leader she couldn't even control her own life and i say that someone who loved britney but like i do think britney is somebody if you were mean to her face you can make her cry dolly is somebody who what are you gonna tell her her tits are too big she knows they started too

big and then she made them four times as big of course they're too big and that's not even big enough and i think when you have that kind of suit of armor that you've made out of your own body you become impenetrable and then you have a new power where what are they going to do criticize you they can't you've absorbed their criticisms and become bigger i feel like her boobs are almost a bulletproof vest like literally like protecting her heart from being shot and you can see clips of her like flustering these late night talk show hosts johnny carson and all these guys because they want to make her uncomfortable and she refuses and it makes them uncomfortable and then she'll write down write it down and be like yeah that was uncomfortable

like what the fuck were they doing but in that moment she will just turn anyone on their head because she won't budge i love that she's a professional dude she shows up and she's like i'm gonna be present and i'm not gonna let people get to me dolly especially i think one of the things that makes her like a prime candidate for being our idol is that she has a whole life outside of the dolly character so we we don't even know what she looks like for the most part like you will be hard pressed to find her like out on a date with her husband because and like see the real her and be like oh my god she's the demois era like the real dolly was so rude to me no she never will be like when she's in dolly get up when you see dolly part in she's always

gonna be the dolly that you want because she's in a costume playing a character and when she is her real self which maybe is smart and generous and sweet and amazing but we'll never fucking know because we don't even know her that's such a good point she showed up to the social media era fully formed as this alter ego at least and so it was polished she had her dolly isms she had her extremely distinctive look and then we don't ever have to like confront the like nooks and crannies and crags and like unflattering bumps of her humanity because it's just like simply not a part of the persona unlike all these celebrities I think she's very very unique in that she's just been able to like pinball machine her way through like all these traps that the

Hollywood industry and social media have set up to like make these people we lionize fall to their knees and she's just like navigated it so well so now we're gonna play a little game this is a classic sounds like a cult game it is called culty quotes and this is how it works we're gonna read you a sequence of quotes and each one is either going to have been said by a notorious cult leader from history or dolly parton and you're gonna have to guess which the formal education that I received made little sense to me that's dolly I'm gonna say famous cult leader it was a famous cult leader it was marshal apple light damn but I feel like dolly would agree yeah yeah she says in her book that she like struggled through high school but she graduated yeah that

was the leader of heavens gate but I chose it because it seemed it really like hunky dory down home dolly yeah like I just learned notes by hearing the crow sing quote number two I always count my blessings more than I count my money I don't work for money never did that's not dolly no dolly loves money and she worked her ass off for it yeah but I feel like she's like obsessed with her blessings so what what do you each think I think not dolly I think dolly it was dolly it was dolly I feel like that was like in a Tennessee newspaper to like really like woo the god people and be like yeah you god it was a lie her blessing is her money she talks about money it's a character if her tits are a gift from god then her money is a gift from god yeah what is funny though is that

like I actually think this is the hardest round of this game that we've ever put together because even I reread them and I was like I have no idea the next quote is if I can hold god's attention I can hold the world I would say dolly because I've been wrong so many times and I do think that she thinks she spoke to god that one time and I bet that gave her the confidence to then speak to the audience I'm gonna say not dolly because I don't think that she thinks of god as like specific attention maybe she did it was dolly I think that was a quote from her book I think I just read that it's really pithy it sounds like the written word to me it sounds like she was like showing god her cleavage and she was like look into my boobs if I can get god's attention yeah okay next quote

a man's gotta make at least one bed a day else he could be walking around lucky and never know it I'm gonna say dolly that feels very dollish but it could also be like a cult leader who like makes you clean up yeah I'm gonna say a cult leader who makes you clean I'm saying dolly that's a pretty famous quote from Jim Jones I will say they are cult leaders for a reason because they have some good foundational points I think I don't make a bed every day but if I was the version of myself I wish I was I was making a bed every day next quote there are many crooked lines and one straight line the truth is always the shortest distance between two points I don't know that could literally be from the bible that could be any that's a fortune cookie I don't know I'm gonna say dolly

because that makes no fucking sense I'm going cult leader I guess it was a cult leader reverend moon of the unification church the moonies yeah I know the moonies okay last quote I'm very real where it counts and that's inside that has to be dolly yeah yeah we all know what she's alluding to there splendid this was like a pretty juicy convo I feel if our listeners want to follow your find you where can they do that we are celebrity memoir book club everywhere on instagram on podcast places on tiktok find us wherever you listen to podcasts or follow social media and i'm claire the scare on instagram and tiktok and i'm ashley ham with three n's okay amazing thank you for coming on the podcast thanks for having us thank you for having us

so isa out of our three cult categories live your life watch your back and get the fuck out what do you think the cult of dolly parton falls into well I gave a little sneak peek in the beginning but before we talk to our guests and I do still think even after talking to our guests it is a live your life for sure mostly because even if there is some suss stuff that like dolly has done on a personal level first of all who hasn't okay and second of all again like it is a cult vibe like everything we cover is a cult but it's a live your life like it's a it's a fun it's exciting it it gives people like the freedom that they want to need I know I think it is the live your lifiest cult we have ever covered it really does embody that innocent

fanaticism that vibe where like yes you look at a bunch of people worshiping dolly parton who like have the religious votives who are like queen dolly dolly for president st dolly I worship her I stan her like I want dolly to mother me all this stuff and that does feel fringe and religious but I don't think she's leaned into it in a dangerous way whatsoever and because it could get so spiritual so quickly like she hasn't told people how to live their life not once and it's like that's what the bible does that's why like religions I feel like are low key to get the fuck out because it's like you're not allowed to be gay you're not allowed to listen to this kind of music like blah blah blah no sex for you and so like but I think that with dolly she just says

things that are so big picture and so general that it's like up to your interpretation totally it's not even possible to weaponize her interpretations I mean you can also look at her stand them because some celebrities have a cult following that has totally spun out of control and become its own monstrosity separate from them and she doesn't seem to have a super toxic following you know like no and I do think that could be attributed again like we mentioned earlier to the fact that a lot of her fans aren't as young and involved in social media but either way it doesn't matter the reason why they just are fun and safe I think she has such a solid grasp on her place in the culture and doesn't care to transgress any further than that or capture any more power than

that and yeah she's a classic of your life yes Pam well that's our show thanks so much for listening we'll be back with a new cult next week but in the meantime stay culty but not too culty sounds like a cult was created hosted and produced by Issa Nadina and Amanda Montell our theme music is by Casey Colt this episode was edited and mixed by Jordan more of the pod cabin to join our cult follow us on instagram at sounds like a cult pod I'm on instagram at Amanda underscore Montell and feel free to check out my books cultish the language of fanaticism and wordslet a feminist guide to taking back the English language and I'm on instagram at Issa Nadina ISAA M-D-I-N-A where you can find tickets to my live stand-up comedy shows or tell me

where to perform we also have a patreon and we would appreciate your support there at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult and if you'd like our show feel free to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts and if you don't like our show rate other podcasts the way you rate us