Sarah Smarsh, Part 2 Encore; Unknown

that's right welcome back ten k macintyre today on cape pierre presents it's a conversation with terrorists myers sees the author of she come by a natural dolly parton and the women who lived her songs in nineteen eighty dolly parton starred along with jane fonda and lily tomlin in the movie nine to five stair talk to me about the movie and dolly parton is move to the big screen well you hear i was born and so they're you know watching her television and had three channels i was the you know the year wherever and i understand that meeting the economy because the adults around him laughed when it was on just the kind of rhythms and cadences of the plot the way people speak you know he was a funny movie well decades later in most daylight time nearly thirty years living in austin

texas the great aren't really interesting right across the country days of screenings all colors are you see show up they get the crops insiders twenty nine five and it you know as as though women who had had a way of sexism and use the euro twenty sixteen as it happens when there were some of their ads that we have a female democratic candidates for president you were also experiencing a year and it was you know it was raucous and it was fun to remind us that it was also heavily and you could just feel as self included some sort of catharsis happening no movie later those listeners you you got that for you know huge valley or

jane fonda and lily tomlin all work for the kind of credited the polls show this endless nineteen ninety five was the first the first of its kind to really articulate air to call attention to workplace harassment specifically in an hour when i was sitting in the theater i can just kind of i could feel my own workplace traumas around those sorts of experiences coming up it signing in and all these women around me having a similar experience and i realized in watching the scenes of the film and old in which there's there's a murderous agencies sequin sewer the story with an oscar winner trunk of a car a week they killed him they kind of the day i realize this is a really dark movie it was billed as a comedy but it's it's really

like you know we're not talking about decades of trial we're talking about a generational centuries so that movie was one of the first to show we're the only picture of war and it really you know stands the test of that at the test of time as a radical statement right we're not even sure that they would make this city now in fact the screenwriter who was emailed questions revealed that the original version of this script how bad fantasy sequence and it kind of goes with it it turns into a dream of a kielbasa in the original script that was not a dream sequence it was and he was an actual plot point and this studio heads kind of images that saying we've got a house and your character's likeability for the female protagonists in there was very rare

on field you know ultimately led by our women at all at that time not so calm and so they were they re wrote the brilliant the murder of the last to be this kind of fantasy sequence for it doesn't really happen that all the same those images convey i just do a desperation that women feel in situations where they are being harassed or sometimes even physically assaulted i'm end or simultaneously compromise by their own it imperative to make a living at radiator calm to take care of their children or themselves in some ways it's also the perfect role for dolly parton to take on at that point in her career she plays the attractive secretary who the boss is getting sexually harassed and her female coworkers don't like her because they think she's sleeping with the boss is quite brilliant in the way that it reveals the miriam and

erasers of sexism in our society it's not just a group of male to female candidate toxic streaming it's absorbed by women themselves analysts determining who perhaps had not been quite yet it's certainly not use the lever basically of dora leader commerce secretary at the time the secretary is in chile so by her female coworkers as demeaning or by on a sunni or i am a surgeon betsy is you know basically says abbas a chance that that that would be a crime you know she would be the first to receive the criticism as opposed to the boss at some of the ways in which sex is it reveals itself out but furthermore it wasn't even true when he was an assumption that he was encouraging

end unfortunately it's real lived experience for me and then when they get to know her and i understand her heart of hearts they realize that they have been to some extent guilty of the same sorts of sexism that they themselves are fighting against and once they join forces then that's when the real fun begins circuit i share my own ninety five story with you what a teenager might he had took my cousin and me to see jane fonda speak in ames iowa to be honest i didn't really know who gene fonda was i knew she was in movies that i didn't know anything about politics i didn't know really anything about her except that she was a movie star she gave this really fiery inspirational talk and at the end of it talked about her latest project a film exploring women in the workplace and the roles of women and men i assumed she was talking about some documentary that she was involved in when the movie came out a couple

years later i sighed and die that's i can't believe this isn't from heavy movie about the roles of women and men in the workplace and yet it what's your record for any way that we're talking about it now might be ours a couple things one blue wisdom that comes with age and experience and then two and we just say you know that we see what you know and that not only had to be a comedy because it was anything else that would've been acceptable to say the things about libby was saying they had to have a child and had to be goofy and had to make people laugh so they here it's sort of the you know the deep political satire of jane fonda

you know i knew exactly what they were doing and not you know to be sure did it which i'm sure she was offered many scripts since she chose that as her first though you're speaking of who is completed from way but you know at that time in nineteen eighty this unless it right on the heels of the vietnam war she had a very you know a very fresh memory and will fight for her criticisms of that war and i did it i think we did it turns out you know again to talk about how ben society progress isn't their ability to grapple with some big shifts ira kurzban somehow or has he's very well since mentor to her had shifted to the positive part of the reason that movie you know maybe go out and say here's this or here's our political statement

but it said they just they just told the story as a deliberate has always been about and i think that's why she probably responded to that script and then wanted to play two really sarah's mars is the author of see come by natural dolly parton and the women who lived her songs did you go about doing the research for this book well you know as i said your porch forum magazine over the course of a year so you know my new research strategy that the book is it's fairly chronological in trees here for part so they're kind of research chunks along the timeline where we've only and has as you mentioned there's like nearly infinite information out there potentially about the subject and nato's present where i turned shoo on you know there's a lot of archival research that went into it in terms of power

i'll also says read some more academic ratings on gender and class you know i as a journalist and an agenda has another think of myself as a generalist so i'm not someone who is was ever steeped in feminist theory as a specialist but i am a woman who thinks a lot about the intersection of gender and class and i wanted to you know make sure that not only what was being written at that intersection there's a little little bit as you know traditional academic research also what was going on in the on social media and the people were saying about her also a lot of old magazine articles and of course herd sheep ear and nineties are published at an autobiography of sorts so i'm sure wasn't with a ghost rider ish but other whenever secrets and

old shtick you know there's no each year what a lot of folks to monterey something about her cause i wasn't right you're interested in writing a celebrity biography i wanted to look at what was she doing at particular moments in time in one place her in a context where does that tell us about her and her career in her credit under some role as a feminist certainly of sorts even if she is somewhat reversed that herself and a leader in many ways as a progressive voice again in history that it is often associated with conservatism to try to to interview her for science an hour on the project a you know what

our credit to see you were right the magazine i was reading for once again to remind listeners that this book was originally a series of other essays farmland seem the right or the time it doesn't count against readership it's very well recorded with their circles a recent country music performers and fans can order in terms of exposure in the interviews she's being offered that's a desk you think early in my career iraq for all weeklies that it covered a wide as our cultural events and shows an edge because i know what real countries musical journeys to cover art shows in along the way i've interviewed a lot of people who are famous political journalist the same in that spirit

and so on i never dazzled by celebrity and i don't worry about the streets that sort of thing but i but i do think they can attach a dolly my deeply personal regard for her even when it is it might not serve the product tragic well i were sort of dazzled by her you know i mean she's you know oscar us being the interviewee and yet kind of taking control of the narrative and actually for the project in some ways answer to when i wanted to represent that it ultimately operating around her rather than engaging directly you know because there is already an undercurrent of real gratitude that i feel towards her and the women of her generation i find temporary ban on right is insane for a compromising way felt beholden to her or you know not that she would have me i'm sure she could care less you know janis joplin or people wrote about her a long time ago but

it is my only the field against humanity might have thought oh you know this section right to critique some of that stuff up now dixie stampede air how this tourist attraction as she owns or so i get a real racial critique i had to write in order to get those sorts of things it's if i felt like me you know we were best easier i mean they ask you then as you say dolly parton doesn't identify herself as a feminist that you assert that seat is living a life of feminism that is feminism on her own terms what do you think she would make of your answers said well i've got a response to twofold assertion that are making because what i'm talking about when i say he she wants the locals there isn't even necessarily talk the talk

when it went well there is that there were no there were no feminist texts there were no no one was using that word a lot of the women who helped raised me didn't finish high school let alone go to college i mean there were it was a labour survival you know just undeniable strength and fortitude simultaneous with your gender the idea's philosophy intel i was a first generation college doing that was the moment when i started stacking rules were sort of the last line that with my that in now way in many ways lived into world i have the virtual kind she says about class because they don't even seen that i'm talking huge rural kansas citizens and then i read the rearview mirror why i'm still very close

to the family that i wrote about in our land and to end their reality isn't she's not a lot so that's a long way of saying that this book is in some ways a class critique of a movement that has often left margin right to the most marginalized women out of the conversation whether it's women of color or women without financial means or whether without college educations and so i yeah yes suggesting that's dolly parton fits all of the descriptions of a feminist and if you're using my working definition of that term which is someone who believes that all genders are equal and should be treated equally but i'm also you know as i made the suggestion

careful to not take any pride in my own identification with the term so i am radio am i happy to be a feminist yes do i feel like it makes me sit on how superior to other women that my relationship to that term is positive you know because i've seen firsthand that there are a lot of women who unfortunately have pantomime i reached by political messaging that seeks to westernize that terminated its way i'm you know if we have a woman but in the context of her culture and life experience has received those messages and they've been successful at suspicious of the word feminism and yet in her day today life on the ground she is exemplifying feminism that a no then and in fact on my mind that might even be more important than hollow virtue signaling on the side of folks who happily embrace that term atm might be falling short of reading and so because of that double

i know batteries for cars i'm living with various marsh her latest book is she come by a natural dolly parton and the women who lived her songs at the deli would foundation and some of some of the things that she's done to get back to her people well in the nineteen eighties he had an idea to create any our neighbors would actually be in the realm of philanthropy but it but it has to do with giving action idea to create an amusement park called hollywood and a lot of mail accounts and business executives latin to put her and said it would be huge mistake on tuesday the tourism industry around don't i don't live in a related attractions around pigeon forge tennessee brings one point five billion dollars into the state economy i employees local people sell or even her family

members are we get really integrated or reintegrated in an economic sense be i'm gwendolyn place that she came from and so in that race and in that way it seems kind of stocky the transparent than a lot of other workplaces would face to work out you know economic device and that she built it into something bigger and more costly than it was that it was previously as for his family for me it is quite massive the crown jewel is her rage focuses on chocolate or is seeing she came up with this basically you are citizens are buried father never never learned to read so she she she knew that

people with a lot of potential and smarts are all the same as an aryan leader it's even in the midst of this very wealthy society and says he started his own imagination and i pray for the purpose of giving one free book to children from birth to age five no questions asked and utter day i believe around the world do you do needed something like a hundred and fifty million books to children who might not otherwise about something after their parents too to reach in a bad time it is a mysterious mars her latest book is see come by natural dolly parton and the women who lived her songs syrup do you have a favorite dolly parton song we are there the song at the garden store i'm not remembering exactly are from the nineteen seventies out of the city it contains everything

about dolly parton it's an incredible melody you get states it's quite haunting and i think maybe a minor key though aren't this whole arm that basically uses the drugstore or something handle we're for perhaps are heartbroken used arizona's sun she's saying and the first person i like the angels are in store you know they are in some ways is really an adult that's you go into that space even thrift shop for somebody like me you are or who you grow up like i did your life is

something that is pretty new prices for green screens statement really about her own work as a warning here a culture that would call her you know i'm a slut or gave you hughes deputy general moment we're the same opportunity was priced for would be white it's is radical its brilliance and yet if you're not listening closely it just falls on you i like a great song and that that's the signal that we're presuming that the indians world i can sum that up doesn't it start to read an excerpt from she come by a natural fact so if this is the fortress israel earlier this year one of my regrets is that i was unable to get into the

piano print version some of dollars more at the reasons for it press a visitor notebook years ago twenty twenty forward if you doubt that women have advanced much during the century since they gained the right to vote in nineteen twenty considered the president a phenomenon that is dolly parton she adorns female prisoners as a t shirt declaring power not with the term feminist but with a bagel pilot here she yearns on desks as a blasphemous for candle her image canonized with a halo above a big ol pile of hair well into her seventies she frequently holds forth on talk shows and awards ceremony stages working at a certain age a story we have gone and seen people can't get enough of value is

now as a geographic magazine pieces breathless tweets and diverse roaring audience is a test a universally beloved icon recognized as a creative genius with a goddess i start not so long ago she was best known as the punch line well actually it is there is about a korean deli for a sense an apology among some for the lifelong slut shaming now i understand better gordon projected a sweetly defiant self possession throughout her career in a man's world one doesn't get the impression as she expected or cared whether such validation would come but it's a magnificent thing to witness an atonement countless women have deserved but never received flour and

while the one is alive to see it that's farris marsh reading from her latest book she come by a natural dolly parton and the women who lived her songs sarah thank you so much for talking with us today this was great and k macintyre came here present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas in schools may have just like they need to take for instance they still grow in the us intentionally create fantasy you

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