| Dollywood
2005 (7.05) |
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Dollywood is Dolly Parton's themepark. It's the star attraction
of a place called Pigeon Forge, which is a town that doesn't seem
much more than a very long strip of tourist hellholes, including
dinner theatres, crazy golf courses, cheap motels, souvenir stands
and the crappiest of crap amusements. It's not a very nice place
and although there's a great statue of Dolly up in Sevierville,
it gets worse the close to the Smoky Mountains you get, merging
into Gatlinburg, a place immortalised as Redneck Heaven (or hell,
depending on your point of view).
I'd been to Dollywood before, back in 1994. Not much has changed in eleven years, apart from the fact that more people have an idea that such a place as Dollywood exists now, thanks to the Grahame Norton TV special. I don't have to explain it so much, but people still roll their eyes in the same way. The park existed before Dolly Dollywood didn't exist before 1986, but the themepark was originally built in 1961 as a Civil War attraction. Over the years it mutated into the Wild West themed Goldrush Junction and later became Silver Dollar City Tennessee. Many of the rides and the steam train that circumnavigates the park, as well as the, er, historic reproduction working Grist Mill, are pre-Dolly. It's not hard to imagine Dollywood as a redneck playground because it still is. Although there are some great Dolly touches to the place, it's a pretty standard themepark, not really a Land o' Parton. If you're thinking of making a pilgrimage, you should bear this in mind. The Lezzers Kay and I wore our home made customised Dolly t-shirts. Simon painted the shirts for the Unskinny Bop Dolly and Kenny night. Mine says "love is like a butterfly" on the front and "a rare and gentle thing" on the back. Kay's says "and I cannot compete with you" and "Jolene" on the back. Although we looked like major league lesbians, dressed more-or-less-alike, we thought, perhaps naively, that the good folks of Dollywood would make a fuss of us, what with our cute t-shirts and extra-cute English accents. Maybe they'd let us cut in line, or slip an extra Dollywood keyring into our souvenir bags, or lavish us with some other perk. No one said a thing, so we spent the whole day under sweltering Tennessee skies dressed up like pillocks for nothing. As Kay said later on in the day, Dollywood had turned us simple. Dolly We decided to ignore the generic themepark rides and focus on stuff that was especially Dollyfied, or Tennessee-ish. Our route took us to the snazzed-up Dolly museum (now renamed something meaningless and forgettable like Inspirations), which showcased her Coat of Many Colours, and a whole lot of rhinestoned outfits. Dolly has tiny feet! The highlight of the museum was a strange video projection of Dolly singing I Will Always Love You in vibrato whilst being shaken around by one of those old electric slimming belt machines. V good. I also enjoyed the computerised Try On A Dolly Wig game, which superimposed my big moony face under a pile of blonde artificial fibres, and Kay patted Dolly's ample bosom in another superimposed video projection jamboree that involved singing a duet with a virtual Ms Parton. On the Back Porch with the Kinfolks Dolly comes from a huge family, which means that there are a lot of Parton mouths to feed and greedy grabbing hands that want a piece of her fortune. What to do? Dolly came up with a solution: employ your relatives in your themepark. Hence the four times daily On the Back Porch with the Kinfolks show. This half hour of fun stars a host of cousins and uncles and weird, smiley hangers-on. They take you through a series of scripted anecdotes and a song or two. We watched Dolly's foxy and slightly chubby niece work the audience, and Uncle Bill, who is probably responsible for Dolly's entire career, go through the same old motions about how he heard her singing as a kid and knew she had star potential. It's corny but still good, although the performers had to encourage the deadbeat audience to give them a round of applause, continuously. Oddly enough, the show does actually take place on the back porch, only this back porch is behind a replica of the shack where Dolly grew up. It's just down the way from the largest wind chime in the world, which is quite big, close to the concession stand where you can buy a pickle on a stick, and other tasty treats. More Dolly Got a little 'un to dress? Why not buy them a flouncy Li'l Dolly frock? Hungry? Sink your teeth into a Dolly Delight, a bun shaped like a breast with a big cherry on top. Feelish flush? Buy a fist full of Dolly Dollars - yes, she prints her own currency! Tired? Rest your bones in the porch swing and listen to disco versions of Dolly songs. More trash Dollywood boasts its own church. It's true. It also has a garden commemorating dead country stars. We couldn't quite stomach the gospel show, or the xtian inspired kid's show about eating up your vegetables, and the RonaldReagan teddies in the patriotic shop left us numb, but we got suckered in to Country Crossroads. This performance features six winsome youngsters in co-ordinating country outfits singing the country hits that we know and love. Unfortunately, because it would take too long to sing the whole song, they sing only the chorus or the best known lines and then somebody else cuts in with another song. It's like listening to something on fast-forward and it creates a weird, frantic atmosphere. Later on, we find that this show has been running for a while, and although the cast has changed, the outfits have remained the same. It's strangely dehumanising, but makes me thing that these kids have got it good, at least they can move on to other jobs, whilst the kinfolks are condemned to a lifetime of lacklustre shows to audiences who couldn't care less. Heartsong In 1994 Simon and I saw Heartsong, Dollywood's fabulous new live cinema attraction. The idea is this: there's a film of 1980s Dolly talking about life in the Smoky Mountains, plus little vignettes built around her songs. When the storm comes to the mountains, we meek people in the audience are squirted with water from hidden pipes, and when she sings Love is Like a Butterfly, a string of plastic butterflies on a pulley bob and dart around the auditorium. In 1994 there were live dancers too, but by 2005 they were probably considered too expensive, so it was just us and the screen, and a load of tatty and dusty plastic foliage. But look: on both visits this hokey nonsense has moved me to tears. In 1994 I put it down to being overtired from a long drive, but here I was again, bawling my eyes out. The trigger? Film of a girl dancing in a field, dancing delightedly amongst a flutter of animated butterflies. The girl looks so happy and free, like girls should, but how most girls aren't. How I wasn't. Kay was weeping too, it wasn't just me. And so we left Dollywood and stood in line with the most complainy, idiotic, wanker-ish Americans waiting for the shuttle bus to take us to the car park, and we reflected on how this tacky monument to cheap entertainment could have inspired such a quiet and profound emotional memory within us. |
    
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