Exploration of Nabokov's Lolita and Its Cultural Impact

most girls remember when where and why they were first introduced to Lolita for me like many girls now in their 20s I was first introduced to Lolita from stills from Adrien Lyn's 1997 film adaptation of the controversial novel Tumblr was the birthplace of many subcultures and Aesthetics and a breeding ground for questionable teenage behavior from thinspo content to nyet blogs the two often coinciding the Nim fet girl bloggers are the predecessors of the modern-day coets obsessed with Lana Del re vintage girlish fashion and as the name would suggest the titular nyet from nabokov's Lolita these nyet blogs posting photos and gift sets of Dominique Swain in her vintage two-piece sets and ribbons tied in her hair were where I was first introduced to Lolita to my honest surprise I was never really infatuated with Lolita in that way I always loved her outfits in the 1997 adaptation but I never engaged with the subject matter far beyond the superficial aesthetic of the film when I finally did read the novel I was still a teenager albeit outside of Humbert humbert's narrow nymphet age limit of 14 but 18 nonetheless I remember when I read the novel I was honestly underwhelmed by it at the time I found Humbert Humbert to be insufferable not even necessarily for his disgusting actions but but just for the crime of his lengthy Rants and Reflections being annoying and well boring to my naive 16-year-old self immediately after reading the book I watched the films I started with Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation and was thoroughly unimpressed once again not even for the horror of what went on behind the scenes or the inaccurate depiction of the story but because I found boring by this point I was no stranger to kubric I was actually going through a big kubric phase at the time and I would site A Clockwork Orange as one of my favorite films for quite a while I was likewise no stranger to Vintage Cinema especially not vintage Cinema depicting questionable age Gap romances in fact those were some of my favorites soon after watching Kubrick Lolita I moved on to Adrien Lynn's 9s adaptation with freedom from the haze code in Hollywood being much more liberal with what can be shown on screen Lind Lolita was able to follow much more closely to the source material it portrayed from my memory for this reason it was much more tragic and heart-wrenching than Kubrick's I feel as though ly's adaptation is generally more preferred however it still remains to be certainly flawed I think I enjoyed the film at the time but never enough to revisit it despite my lackluster experience engaging with the novel Lolita and and the films surrounding it Lolita continues to follow me throughout my life and my work I think about this story often in both its book and movie format and have discussed the story to various degrees in several of my essays the publishing of Lolita in 1955 truly altered the state of culture even introducing new words to the cultural lexicon to define the sexuality or perceived sexuality of young girls Webster's Dictionary defines Lolita as a as a precocious ly seductive girl likewise nyet holds a synonymous definition a sexually precocious girl barely in her teens to nabokov's likely dismay his work has been misinterpreted mishandled and outright appropriated by popular culture the reality is not all stories are made for every medium Nabokov meticulously wo Lolita over the course of several years to be the perfect book to tell a story of such taboo and sensitive subject matter he toiled for 5 years tormenting himself over the story and telling it correctly roxan gray wrote in their essay ugly beautiful in a lesser writer's hands Lolita would have been vulgar but naov is deafed in every choice he makes in telling Humbert humbert's story humbert's perversion is clear but as a 1958 review of the novel in the Atlantic notes there is not a single obscene term in Lolita and afficionados of erotica are likely to find it a dud this is not an erotic romp it is not pornography it is an incisive examination of a pedophile's downfall in the people he takes along with him for every action there is a consequence and Nabokov is Relentless in making clear the gravity of those consequences for Dolores for Humbert for everyone according to Vera novokov during the 5 years it took to write Lolita Vladimir wrote for 16 hours a day wrote until his hand cramped he became so fascinated by pedophilia by depicting it the right way that pedophilia appears in six of his stories and though he clearly holds the subject matter in contempt he does so without overly moralizing now to take a story that has been so carefully created to best serve the medium of literature while exploring such sensitive subject matter and to think that this story can be adapted onto screen effortlessly quickly or even accurately is naive and irresponsible in my opinion the story was specifically and intentionally crafted over the course of 5 years with the intended purpose to be read as a book this type of rumination that Nabokov experienced is important when telling such a story Nabokov famously stated that he didn't want any little girls on the cover of his book his preference for the cover is as stated I want pure colors melting clouds accurately drawn details a Sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts after rain and no girls if we cannot find that kind of artistic and verile painting let us settle for an Immaculate white jacket rough texture paper instead of the usual glossy kind with Lolita in bold black lettering additionally he stated outright there is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to any kind of representation of a little girl initially his request was honored the first copy of Lolita and the one I associate most with the novel is the green hard cover with simple black lettering the second version again honored his request however it would only take 2 years since publication for his request to ignored for the 1957 stockhome edition of the novel there is depicted a drawing of a little girl albeit she's not sexualized in any way she's still a young girl the limits would be pushed further in the Netherlands when a 1958 copy was released depicting a drawing of a girl looking a little more like a young woman sitting on the lawn making reference to Humbert Humbert and Lolita's first meeting this is the first time we see Lolita become Ambiguously aged rather than clearly a little girl of 12 eight different covers would be released in different countries over the next year all honoring nabokov's request having no people on the cover and certainly no little girls in 1959 the Turkish version of the book features a man holding in his arms a girl this time certainly looking more like a woman extraordinary is supposed to be I don't know what language it is uh I think I think I think it's Turkish let's say Turkish Lolita you look at the man of the girl I'm not sure who is who is older and again over the next few years various covers would be released in different countries none featuring little girls on the cover until 1962 in 1962 after the release of Kubrick's film FM there is a stark and sudden shift in the style of the book cover the first to reference the film being released in the US in 1962 the cover features a woman who looks to be about 25 She lays on a bed giving whoever glimpses at her seductive Bedroom Eyes certainly not the 90 lb 41 12-year-old Nabokov described next the book cover featuring the infamous kubric movie poster would be published the image that I'm sure comes rushing to many of our minds when the word Lolita is uttered actress Sue lion peering over her red heart-shaped sunglasses as she sucks on a heart-shaped lollipop from this point onward the cover changed forever in nearly every cover in every country from this point onward there is depicted a young girl or woman in some sort of sexualized or seductive nature many feature girls in their underwear some feature women entirely newe often featuring women with curvaceous womanly bodies who looked old enough to be Charlotte Hayes rather than Dolores many now featured phallic props such as a lipstick by the girl's mouth a lollipop or a popsicle as she stares seductively at the potential reader gone is the image of the scrawny 410 12-year-old humbert's own description of Lolita she was low playing low in the morning standing 4ot 10 in one sock becomes lost in the popular culture replaced by a slightly older Ambiguously aged girl with long flirty eyelashes and sultry red lips the man I largely blame for this sudden shift is James B Harris producer of the 1962 Lolita hello um before we dive further into the video I would like to thank today's sponsor which is myself I'm excited to announce that I will be launching a patreon you may have noticed I haven't posted in a couple months and that is because I've been trying to basically a sponsor that I was working with ended up saying something that made me feel a little uncomfortable and objectified and so I was trying to rectify the situation and come to an agreement before posting this video however because we were unable to come to a mutual agreement or understanding that both worked for the brand and for my channel I no longer felt comfortable um recommending their product to my mostly young female audience I try to work only with brands that align with my own views and I've went back and forth on whether or not I should start a patreon pretty much since I've started this channel however with this recent issue I think it might be best to switch to a more Community supportive approach as a lot of YouTubers do one of the parts that I'm most excited to announce is the book club I get a lot of questions about the books that I read for my channel so I think it would be cool if we could read the books that I often cite and that are the foundation for a lot of my own Theory together um in addition to reading new books for the first time I'm always reading new material for the channel so it would be cool if we could read them as a community in addition I will will be posting patreon exclusive content usual so if you want to support the channel or if the patreon seems like something that you'd be interested in partaking in um the link will be in the description and I'm excited to see you guys over there when director Stanley Kubrick and producer James beara sought to adapt Lolita onto screen they contacted Nabokov to write the script at the time one of the main issues when adapting the story was navigating around the production code Administration or PCA which had strict guidelines in reference to the haze code on what was allowed to be shown on screen the haze code prohibited profanity suggestive nudity graphic or realistic violence sexual Persuasions and rap amongst other things which as one could expect made the adaptation of Lolita very challenging Nabokov initially refused the offer to write the screenplay however after having experienced a small nocturnal illumination of diabolical origin as he said himself he composed a 400 page screenplay nabokov's screenplay would be then edited by kubric to an almost unrecognizable State during the pre-production phase of the film Nabokov would quit several times over disagree ances with the story Direction one of the early suggestions made to Nabokov when adapting the script was suggesting making one big change to pacify the PCA make Humbert and Dolores a married couple Nabokov hated this concept obviously and quit over it in his essay nabokov's rocking chair Tom Bissell writes about this encounter between Nabokov Kubrick and Harris in 1959 kubri formally asked Nabokov to write the screenplay for Lolita intrigued the Nabokov drove on to Los Angeles to meet kubric things got off to a poor start when Nabokov was told that the film version of Lolita would have to end with Humbert and Dolores getting married with the blessing of a relative preferably in the novel Dolores has no other living relatives that's kind of the point of course this suggestion struck Nabokov as the height of insanity but Harris had already sat down for initial meetings with the MPAA the trade Association that represents film studios to discuss ways to maneuver around the production code when the MPAA argued that Humbert and dolores's relationship was too immoral to depict Harris pointed out that it was perfectly legal in several States for a man of humbert's age to marry a 12-year-old girl provided she had her parents blessing yeah I just want to note keep that in mind that as we move forward that Harris eagerly pointed out that it was legal for someone of humbert's age to marry a 12-year-old Nabokov would later return to the project after kubric and Harris dropped the marriage plotline their new solution was to age 12-year-old Alita up so she would instead be 15 years old therefore in order to make a releasable film kubri and Harris were tasked with hiring an actress who appeared older than the Dolores Haze that Nabokov described in the book of 800 audition 14-year-old Sue lion was chosen to play the role Sue lion appeared slightly older than 14 and this was only further emphas ized by the way in which they styled her in the film in the article the troubling Legacy of the Lolita Story 60 years on stuff green States when watched today the final film is a bag of contradictions lion is made up with eyeliner syy eyelashes and permanently quaffed hair and yet she sleeps in the night dress of a Victorian doll all Ruffles ribbons and bows when we first meet her she's rigidly placed and poised gazing at Humbert over the top of her sunglasses she looks imperious knowing and appears to be at least 18 she is not as Nabokov described in the book standing 4 10 in one sock in a 1974 forward to Lolita a screenplay Nabokov admitted that the Frills of Miss Lion's elaborate night gown were painful Nabokov would later go on to say that Katherine de moo the scrappy Tom boyish then 12-year-old of zy in the Metro would have been the ideal Lolita instead and ever since I have read this statement by Nabokov I constantly think about it the Stark difference in the way in which Nabokov saw Dolores Haze and the way in which the media so desperately wanted to depict her especially when we contrast the image of Katherine de moo against not only suon in the film but also the book covers intending to depict Dolores this to me is a testament to the way in which Nabokov saw her as Dolores a little girl whereas the media sees her as Lolita a sex symbol to me this is a testament to the way in which our media is primed to view a little girl Through The Eyes of men like Humbert and to advertise to and prioritize the Gaze of men like Humbert determined to adapt this controversial book despite these strict censorship laws kubric and Harris made an effort to divert Focus away from Sue lion and thus Lolita's age Harris disturbingly went on record saying we knew we must make her a object where everyone in the audience could understand why everyone would want to jump on her and in a 2015 interview Harris once again affirmed his opinion we made sure when we cast her that she was a def in object not something that could be interpreted as being perverted we wanted it to come off as a love story and to feel very sympathetic with Humbert and as mentioned this is when we see the image of Lolita altered in the popular Consciousness James B Harris successfully transformed Dolores Hayes from a scrawny 12-year-old girl into a international underage SE symbol Harris like Humbert transformed Dolores into Lolita and it is frightening the way that the dynamic between Lolita actress Sue lion and producer James B Harris began to mirror the relationship between Lolita and Humbert lion was 14 when she was cast in the film and spent several months in 1960 and 1961 on the film set in London according to Lion's childhood friend Michelle Phillips singer for The Mamas and Papas it was on set that lion began a relationship with producer James B Harris when filming wrapped Sue lion returned home and Michelle Phillips described Sue lion as completely changed the next time she saw her lion revealed to Phillips that she had lost her virginity to James B Harris Phillips was shocked stating I saw a picture of him he looked like her grandfather at the time lion would have been 14 years old while James B Harris was 32 years old remember how Harris was so eager to point out that it was legal for a man of humbert's age to marry a 12-year-old with parental consent yeah interesting Harris and lion never married and it's unclear how long they were seeing each other and what the nature of their relationship exactly was to Harris Beyond an exploitation of lion's Youth and naivity when Sue lion was 16 years old and still doing publicity work to promote Lolita her brother committed suicide one interviewer thought it appropriate to ask this girl if her brother had killed himself because his little sister played Lolita I was once on a television show a talk show my brother had just died two days before that the interviewer opens his show by saying and now I was 16 years old he said did your brother kill himself because you played Lolita I didn't say thing I got up and I walked off and I didn't I mean I had there was I couldn't even dignify that with with you know don't you have good sense sir I didn't I had no words I left that and that's typical of the reason that I can't be a movie star I never could Lion's daughter Nona Harrison Gomez explains that the reputation of Lolita negatively impacted her mother's career she was so much stronger than this Twisted complicated interpretation of what a girl or woman is they had her in a contract she was supposed to do something like five or six movies after Lolita and instead she had to keep promoting Lolita for years afterwards that movie pigeon hold her in a way that didn't allow her to move forward with her career Sue lion became withdrawn from speaking to the Press giving a rare statement in 1996 that highlighted the impact that Lolita had had on her life my destruction as a person dates from that movie I defy any pretty girl who is rocketed to stardom at 14 in a nyet role to stay on a level path thereafter and this quote from Lion is the exact reason as to why Lolita should never have been adapted in the first place and should never be adapted again the destruction of a girl's life is not worth it and despite the horror story that was the production of Lolita 1962 in the 1990s the book was adapted again Steven Schiff who at the time was primarily a journalist was brought on to write Lolita as his first feature film screenplay I find this to be a little troubling because as mentioned Nabokov toiled for several years in order to tell this story perfectly additionally Nabokov was already a seasoned writer by the time he wrote Lolita having been writing for three decades so to bring on someone to adapt such a story as their first screenplay is actually quite irresponsible in my opinion this version of Lolita certainly followed closer to the source material than the 1962 adaptation now with freedom from the haze code however the film was of course still met with a lot of polarizing controversy Schiff responded to the criticism and said that the movie critics in America come from a very jumpy keep it in the dark maybe it will go away kind of culture and ensured that the film won't encourage pedophiles because Humbert comes to an awful end and that if you make a film about a murderer you're not advocating for murder this comment from shiff is very frustrating and further solidifies my opinion that shiff was definitely never suited to adapt this story into a screenplay I find that if you make a film about a murderer you're not advocating for murder comment to be the most frustrating part of this sentiment because it makes an irrelevant comparison it's almost like pedophilia and murder aren't the same thing and to compare them is redundant murder is exclusively a physical act by simulating murder on screen you are not partaking in Murder obviously as shiff suggests however pedophilia is not an exclusively physical act you can and people often do engage in pedophilia without physically touching children this can commonly take place in the form of child pornography for example by simulating pedophilia or child pornography in an eroticized way on screen using real child actors you are essentially coming as close as possible to creating legal child pornography therefore you are creating content to be consumed by pedophiles for their viewing pleasure that may not be and I hope is not one's intended audience however when you are making a film with children this is and I cannot stress this enough something you need to be aware of and thinking of when you write a script and direct a film feature ing children especially a story of this nature I don't care child welfare is more important than your art the safety of children is more important than any story you want to tell because as said when you are making a film you require the real bodies of real little girls to tell your story this isn't just words on a page these are real children Brook Shield's first real kiss was when she was 11 with 29-year-old co-star Keith keran whilst doing a for pretty baby suon was a real 14-year-old girl being groomed by 33-year-old James B Harris Dominique swne was a real 15-year-old girl made to kiss 49-year-old Jeremy Irons American Beauty star Mina Suvari was a real teenager being groomed and taken advantage of by multiple older men on sets since she was 12 years old Natalie Portman was 13 years old when she was cast in Leon the Professional a film director Luke Besson Loosely based on his relationship with actress and now director myn whom he met when she was 12 and started dating when she was 15 and he was 32 Portman has since openly discussed the negative impacts that being sexualized at such a young age by adult male viewers of the film had on her these girls have acted as sacrificial Lambs in order to benefit the egoic Pursuits of grown men I keep hearing a particular gripe about this cultural shift and maybe you have to some people have been calling this movement puritanical or return to Victorian values where men can't behave or speak sexually around dainty delicate fragile women to these people I want to say the current system is puritanical maybe men can say and do whatever they want but women cannot the current system inhibits women from expressing our desires wants and needs from seeking our pleasure let me tell you about my own experience I turned 12 on the of my first film The Professional in which I played a young girl who befriends a hit man and hopes to avenge the murder of her family the character is simultaneously discovering and developing her Womanhood her voice and her desire at that moment in my life I too was discovering my own Womanhood my own desire and my own voice I was so excited at 13 when the film was released and my work and my art would have a human response I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me a countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts and reviews I understood very quickly even as a 13-year-old that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort so I quickly adjusted my behavior I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene and talked about that choice deliberately in interviews I emphasized how bookish I was and how serious I was and I cultivated An Elegant way of dressing I built a reputation for basically being prudish conservative nerdy serious in an attempt to feel that my body was safe and that my voice would be listened to at 13 years old the message from our culture was clear to me I felt the need to cover my body and to inhibit my expression and my work in order to send my own message to the world that I'm someone worthy of safety and respect the response to my expression from small comments about my body to more threatening deliberate statements serve to control my behavior through an environment of sexual terrorism and if anyone shares the opinion of shiff that this type of criticism I'm presenting stems from a prudish sensibility I implore you to develop critical thinking skills and stay away from from school zones no one is suggesting that you can't tell a story about pedophilia I have mentioned in previous videos that gregar Aki's 2004 film Mysterious Skin tackles this subject matter incredibly well this film is also based on a book however it is a very different book and is told from the perspective of the victimized child rather than the pedophile which is part of what makes Lolita so complicated to adapt additionally another film that I believe tackled this subject matter incredibly well is the Diary of a teenage girl similarly to Mysterious Skin the Diary of a teenage girl is adopted from a book told from the child's perspective the film is adapted from Phoebe ganner's 2002 diaristic graphic novel when I recently watched this film I found myself relating to many in a lot of ways where films that tackle this topic often fail is by making the teenager an eroticized object for the viewer as can be seen with Dolores Hayes in both adaptations of Lolita and with Angela in American Beauty for example seemingly in an attempt to Showcase to the viewer or prove that the teenager is someone that can be lusted after as if to say see look how hot she is except we don't need her to look like Mina suari in American Beauty to conceptualize why a grown man would be attracted to a little girl she doesn't need to be uniquely beautiful to qualify as Minnie States in her opening monologue to the film I was a very ugly child my appearance has not improved so I suppose it was a lucky break when he was attracted to my youth likewise the point of Lolita that is often lost in the film adaptations is Lolita is not a uniquely striking or seductive child despite what hbert would like us to believe she is just a child and as many suggests it is the youth that is appealing that is the point the Diary of a teenage girl however beautifully explores The Grooming of Minnie and Minnie's burgeoning sexuality without her ever feeling like an eroticized sight to be consumed by the viewer this is especially impressive when one is aware that the actress playing 15-year-old Minnie was actually 22 at the time of filming and this is actually a decision I agree with I think when one can avoid subjecting minors to acting out these types of stories we should for the reasons mentioned above however in the wrong hands the casting of an 18 plus actress an 18 role can likewise backfire and be used as a vessel to further exploit the fetish of teenage sexuality this can be seen by the adult casting decisions in Euphoria which were often exploited and used to merely showcase the teenage characters in highly eroticized scenarios B poy the actress playing mini never felt overtly sexualized she passed for a believable teenager but it never felt in a fetishized way there are are scenes that depict mini nude or having sex however they never Linger on her body in the way Euphoria does with Cassie for example we can see how the men in the film sexualize Minnie however we as the audience are not viewing her through this lens and rightfully so this is assisted by the fact that the Diary of a teenage girl is told through well the Diary of a teenage girl rather than the reflections of the pedophile we are watching the story through Minnie's perspective rather than the man who Grooms her and therefore we the audience are not viewing her through his fetishized perspective of her but rather her awkward and real perspective of herself as I will later discuss this perspective difference is what makes Lolita impossible to ethically and accurately adapt whilst staying true to the original context of the book this criticism is not coming from a so-called very jumpy keep it in the dark maybe it will go way kind of culture as shift suggests however because film is a different medium it requires a different set of responsibilities in order to tell this type of story ethically if you actually read and understood the book you should understand the flaw in turning the story into a vessel to be voyerism and enjoyed by the exact type of gays people and culture that Nabokov criticizes if you feel so passionately about telling a story like Lolita I suggest you take the same care as Nabokov write your script for 16 hours a day for 5 years because that is the minimum it takes to intimately comprehend this subject matter roxan gray wrote in their essay ugly beautiful the Aesthetics of Lolita in narrative and film are choices and those choices undo or at the very least diminish the ugliness of the story they represent those choices seduce the reader or viewer they lull us into believing that violation is perhaps not so bad in most movies that deal with sexual violence we see beautiful men doing terrible things to beautiful women rap is ugly but Rus never are what intrigues me most about Lolita is that the novel introduces so many questions it forces us to Grapple with not only what the novel is about but how the subject matter is handled whether or not it should be handled and who has the right to tell this kind of story furthermore shiff displays very evidently that he should have never been the person to adapt the story by his degrading comments directed at suion in the introduction to his screenplay shiff writes Lolita was an enormous difficult role and we wanted to avoid above all the mistake we felt kubri had made in casting suon a 15-year-old who nevertheless looked like a 20-year-old hooker need I remind you that this is what suon looked like during the filming of Lolita as mentioned she certainly doesn't fit the image of Dolores Hayes Nabokov described however however neither does Dominique Swain in shift's 1997 adaptation their aesthetic depiction is only marginally better in my opinion to publicly degrade a 14-year-old girl for the sexualization she experienced as the result of Grooming by much older men makes it clear to me that shiff failed to understand the source material he sought to adapt and should never have been hired to write the Lolita screenplay in the book Lolita Dolores Hayes is not a real little girl she only exists within the confines of the pages of a book and the idea of her as Lolita as a seductress of sorts is even more Fantastical existing only within the confines of Humbert humbert's fictional imagination there are no real people involved when reading a book beyond the author themsel however when you adapt a novel onto screen the character remains fictional however you are now relying on the body of a real life person to bring that story to life in this case the story of Lolita is dependent on putting a real life little girl into the shoes of Dolores Hayes Sue lion and Dominique Swain were like Dolores ordinary girls plucked from obscurity to satisfy a fetishistic gaze but whilst humbert's gaze remains internalized The Gaze of the filmmaker translates on the big screen for the world to see this is an incredibly dangerous position for any little girl these conversations are especially important when we exist in the time of family influencers and even baby influencers like Ren Elanor Ren Elanor and her mother Jaclyn have recently been at the center of a lot of controversy and discussion surrounding the ethics of how people post their children online many of the videos jacine posts of Ren feature the toddler in seemingly innocent scenarios however could be and likely are being seen as suggestive for child Predators online these videos include Ren eating a hot dog Ren eating frozen honey Etc and this is unfortunately far from a one-off case it's not hard to fall down rabbit holes on Instagram when you look at the followers of young girls who post Dance videos or gymnastics videos for example on reals and notice how disturbing their comment sections and follower lists are and then you click on these men's profiles and they exclusively follow little girls who post similar content this type of content is not dissimilar to the footage that can be found in the Lolita film adaptations especially the 1997 version technically legal however still dangerous so you may use a body double to depict the nude scenes of Dolores you may place a board between Dominique Swain and Jeremy Irons when she sits on his lap however despite all this you are still actively creating a fantasy in which a little girl is being sexualized and eroticized on screen even when we consider American Beauty a film that was written with the intention of subverting this idea of the teenage seductress the the lingering image in popular culture is not the cracking of Angela's facade when she cries and admits to Lester that she is in fact a virgin and afraid of sex rather when we think of American Beauty we are left with the image of Lester's Fantastical mirages of Angela of her laying nude in a bed of roses we remember Angela as a seductress a teenage temptress Al Lolita Tom Bissell aptly reflects on this in his essay while I assembled my notes for this essay I found myself thinking about the twin Lolas Sue lion and Dominique Swain quite a lot I tried to imagine being 14 years old and put into the position of portraying a character whose very name has become synonymous with jailbait a great though appropriate irony of filming a story about a young girl whose life is ruined is knowing that you could ruin some girl's Life by filming it you could tell yourself we'll be great we'll make her comfortable we'll be exceptional will stuff aboard between her and every middle-aged dire on set in literature no one gets hurt because literature is not real yet film and television sort of are real when you're talking about children being tasked with roles whose impact on their lives they are in no position to understand I find the way that our culture inevitably warped the depiction of Lolita to become a sexualized blossoming young woman rather than the victimized child that she is reminds me of the way in which our culture likewise perpetuated the aspects of The Hunger Games that Suzanne Collins sought to comment on in The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins explores our media's tendency to ignore horrific and devastating current events in order to sensationalize frivolous aspects of celebrity culture Collins has stated that she observed this dichot whilst flipping through channels on her television on one channel she'd find reality TV stars competing for a superficial prize and on the next she saw footage of the Iraq War she described how the two combined in an unsettling way to create her first ideas for the series Collins highlights this fixation on The Superficial in The Hunger Games by the way in which the capital becomes completely engrossed with the idea of this romance Arc between Katniss and Peta focusing on the spectacle of their relationship rather than the fact that these are two children who will likely be murdered in a violent display of pageantry when the Hunger Games was adapted into film and became a huge sensation it was interesting to witness the way in which our real life media directly replicated the behavior of the capital in an ironic mirrored Labyrinth the real life media pushed this idea of the largely unimportant love triangle between Katniss Peta and Gail in an attempt to Echo The Sensation that was the love triangle in Twilight a large part of the appeal of the Twilight boom was the Team Jacob versus Team Edward element and so in an attempt to capitalize off of the recently ended Twilight franchise Breaking Dawn part two released the same year as the first Hunger Games movie the media swapped out Team Edward versus Team Jacob for team Gail versus Team Peta the most uninteresting and unimportant aspect of the film just like the capital does in a parallel sense Nabokov wrote Lolita as a cultural criticism on the normalization and fetishization of pedophilia in our culture he set out to write a commentary on how normalized the pedophilic Gaze of men like Humbert is and in my opinion does so masterfully the point of the novel was of course to Showcase that there is no such thing as a child seductress Nets don't exist beyond the confines of the imagination of sick and twisted adults however through the marketing we can see how much of our culture's instinct is to appeal to this exact pervasive pedophilic gaze that Nabokov was commenting on it was merely muscle memory the way the marketing for Lolita ended up sexualizing her repeatedly turning her into the exact fetish Nabokov sought to comment on it is honestly frightening and absurd how seemingly intertwined this pedophilic gaze is woven into our culture now abov reflected on the mishandling and appropriation of Lolita in a 1975 interview Lolita isn't a perverse young girl she's a poor child who has been debauched it is equally interesting to dwell as journalists say on the problem of the inept degreg that the character of the nymphet Lolita whom I invented in 1955 has undergone in the mind of the broad public not only has the perversity of this poor child been grotesquely EXA exaggerated but her physical appearance her age everything has been transformed by the illustrations in foreign Publications in reality Lolita is a little girl of 12 whereas Humbert Humbert is a mature man and it's the abyss between his age and that of the little girl that produces the vacuum the vertigo the seduction of mortal danger secondly it's the imagination of the sad seder that makes a magic creature of this little American school girl outside of the maniacal gaze of Humbert there is no nymphet Lolita the nymphet exists only through the obsession that destroys Humbert herein an essential aspect of a unique book that has been betrayed by factitious popularity what's tricky about adopting Lolita is as Nabokov stated and as I've stated multiple times throughout this video Lolita isn't real not even in the story she exists as a fantasy in the mind of Humbert though as Humbert tells the story as an unreliable narrator through his warped gaze when translating this warped gaze onto screen using real people and most importantly a real little girl the fetishized Fantastical image of Lolita the net becomes real thus perpetuating what is sought to criticize the writing of Humbert is intentionally manipulative the novel is written in a way so that the reader is tempted to sympathize with Humbert he is charming even on paper as many child predators are that's the point he as a character wants you to believe he has done nothing wrong he's trying to convince you that what he is doing is completely normal and Justified Lauren gra writes in her essay when I look again at Lolita from this stance of shame I see very clearly the ways in which Nabokov set out to seduce his readers strike that far darker than seduction the novel aims to groom Us in its opening Pages it is careful to establish that Humbert humbert's predilections Are Not Unusual they are almost too common in order to accurately adapt Lolita the film would need to be made considering this grooming of the viewer and with humbert's gaze in mind as the story is told through his warped perspective of reality though just because this is effective in a book does not mean it would translate ethically onto screen I don't believe it is possible to ethically adapt this perspective into into a film without endangering the actors portraying Dolores hay in short if you want to adapt this story you need to be someone who understands the source material and its cultural context enough to understand the way in which our culture actively fetishizes targets and endangers little girls and if you understand that enough to adapt the film you shouldn't want to adapt the film Tom Bell concluded in his essay nabokov's rocking chair had I been asked to adapt Lolita if I were asked tomorrow to adapt Lolita I know what I would do what I would do would be no different from what any other striving literary man would do I would work hard to be true to a book that I love I would ignore my conscience about putting a young woman in the position our production had put her in I would tell myself that great art is worth the risk what I wonder what I truly don't know is exactly how many days would go by before I realized that this was humbert's logic too when he decided to destroy Dolores Hayes if you enjoyed this video video and want to engage more with this subject I suggest checking out my video on the sexy baby archetype and film in which I discussed the tropes that fall under the sexy baby archetype in cinema and why they are harmful there is a section on the Lita in which I discuss some of what I've discussed here um but there I also go more in depth talking about Charley Temple and Mina suari and Natalie Portman Etc and how Hollywood has failed so many young women thank you for watching see you in the next one bye

most girls remember when where and why they were first introduced to Lolita for me like many girls now in their 20s I was first introduced to Lolita from stills from Adrien Lyn&#39;s 1997 film adaptation of the controversial novel Tumblr was the birthplace of many subcultures and Aesthetics and a breeding ground for questionable teenage behavior from thinspo content to nyet blogs the two often coinciding the Nim fet girl bloggers are the predecessors of the modern-day coets obsessed with Lana Del re vintage girlish fashion and as the name would suggest the titular nyet from nabokov&#39;s Lolita these nyet blogs posting photos and gift sets of Dominique Swain in her vintage two-piece sets and ribbons tied in her hair were where I was first introduced to Lolita to my honest surprise I was never really infatuated with Lolita in that way I always loved her outfits in the 1997 adaptation but I never engaged with the subject matter far beyond the superficial aesthetic of the film when I finally did read the novel I was still a teenager albeit outside of Humbert humbert&#39;s narrow nymphet age limit of 14 but 18 nonetheless I remember when I read the novel I was honestly underwhelmed by it at the time I found Humbert Humbert to be insufferable not even necessarily for his disgusting actions but but just for the crime of his lengthy Rants and Reflections being annoying and well boring to my naive 16-year-old self immediately after reading the book I watched the films I started with Stanley Kubrick&#39;s 1962 adaptation and was thoroughly unimpressed once again not even for the horror of what went on behind the scenes or the inaccurate depiction of the story but because I found boring by this point I was no stranger to kubric I was actually going through a big kubric phase at the time and I would site A Clockwork Orange as one of my favorite films for quite a while I was likewise no stranger to Vintage Cinema especially not vintage Cinema depicting questionable age Gap romances in fact those were some of my favorites soon after watching Kubrick Lolita I moved on to Adrien Lynn&#39;s 9s adaptation with freedom from the haze code in Hollywood being much more liberal with what can be shown on screen Lind Lolita was able to follow much more closely to the source material it portrayed from my memory for this reason it was much more tragic and heart-wrenching than Kubrick&#39;s I feel as though ly&#39;s adaptation is generally more preferred however it still remains to be certainly flawed I think I enjoyed the film at the time but never enough to revisit it despite my lackluster experience engaging with the novel Lolita and and the films surrounding it Lolita continues to follow me throughout my life and my work I think about this story often in both its book and movie format and have discussed the story to various degrees in several of my essays the publishing of Lolita in 1955 truly altered the state of culture even introducing new words to the cultural lexicon to define the sexuality or perceived sexuality of young girls Webster&#39;s Dictionary defines Lolita as a as a precocious ly seductive girl likewise nyet holds a synonymous definition a sexually precocious girl barely in her teens to nabokov&#39;s likely dismay his work has been misinterpreted mishandled and outright appropriated by popular culture the reality is not all stories are made for every medium Nabokov meticulously wo Lolita over the course of several years to be the perfect book to tell a story of such taboo and sensitive subject matter he toiled for 5 years tormenting himself over the story and telling it correctly roxan gray wrote in their essay ugly beautiful in a lesser writer&#39;s hands Lolita would have been vulgar but naov is deafed in every choice he makes in telling Humbert humbert&#39;s story humbert&#39;s perversion is clear but as a 1958 review of the novel in the Atlantic notes there is not a single obscene term in Lolita and afficionados of erotica are likely to find it a dud this is not an erotic romp it is not pornography it is an incisive examination of a pedophile&#39;s downfall in the people he takes along with him for every action there is a consequence and Nabokov is Relentless in making clear the gravity of those consequences for Dolores for Humbert for everyone according to Vera novokov during the 5 years it took to write Lolita Vladimir wrote for 16 hours a day wrote until his hand cramped he became so fascinated by pedophilia by depicting it the right way that pedophilia appears in six of his stories and though he clearly holds the subject matter in contempt he does so without overly moralizing now to take a story that has been so carefully created to best serve the medium of literature while exploring such sensitive subject matter and to think that this story can be adapted onto screen effortlessly quickly or even accurately is naive and irresponsible in my opinion the story was specifically and intentionally crafted over the course of 5 years with the intended purpose to be read as a book this type of rumination that Nabokov experienced is important when telling such a story Nabokov famously stated that he didn&#39;t want any little girls on the cover of his book his preference for the cover is as stated I want pure colors melting clouds accurately drawn details a Sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts after rain and no girls if we cannot find that kind of artistic and verile painting let us settle for an Immaculate white jacket rough texture paper instead of the usual glossy kind with Lolita in bold black lettering additionally he stated outright there is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to any kind of representation of a little girl initially his request was honored the first copy of Lolita and the one I associate most with the novel is the green hard cover with simple black lettering the second version again honored his request however it would only take 2 years since publication for his request to ignored for the 1957 stockhome edition of the novel there is depicted a drawing of a little girl albeit she&#39;s not sexualized in any way she&#39;s still a young girl the limits would be pushed further in the Netherlands when a 1958 copy was released depicting a drawing of a girl looking a little more like a young woman sitting on the lawn making reference to Humbert Humbert and Lolita&#39;s first meeting this is the first time we see Lolita become Ambiguously aged rather than clearly a little girl of 12 eight different covers would be released in different countries over the next year all honoring nabokov&#39;s request having no people on the cover and certainly no little girls in 1959 the Turkish version of the book features a man holding in his arms a girl this time certainly looking more like a woman extraordinary is supposed to be I don&#39;t know what language it is uh I think I think I think it&#39;s Turkish let&#39;s say Turkish Lolita you look at the man of the girl I&#39;m not sure who is who is older and again over the next few years various covers would be released in different countries none featuring little girls on the cover until 1962 in 1962 after the release of Kubrick&#39;s film FM there is a stark and sudden shift in the style of the book cover the first to reference the film being released in the US in 1962 the cover features a woman who looks to be about 25 She lays on a bed giving whoever glimpses at her seductive Bedroom Eyes certainly not the 90 lb 41 12-year-old Nabokov described next the book cover featuring the infamous kubric movie poster would be published the image that I&#39;m sure comes rushing to many of our minds when the word Lolita is uttered actress Sue lion peering over her red heart-shaped sunglasses as she sucks on a heart-shaped lollipop from this point onward the cover changed forever in nearly every cover in every country from this point onward there is depicted a young girl or woman in some sort of sexualized or seductive nature many feature girls in their underwear some feature women entirely newe often featuring women with curvaceous womanly bodies who looked old enough to be Charlotte Hayes rather than Dolores many now featured phallic props such as a lipstick by the girl&#39;s mouth a lollipop or a popsicle as she stares seductively at the potential reader gone is the image of the scrawny 410 12-year-old humbert&#39;s own description of Lolita she was low playing low in the morning standing 4ot 10 in one sock becomes lost in the popular culture replaced by a slightly older Ambiguously aged girl with long flirty eyelashes and sultry red lips the man I largely blame for this sudden shift is James B Harris producer of the 1962 Lolita hello um before we dive further into the video I would like to thank today&#39;s sponsor which is myself I&#39;m excited to announce that I will be launching a patreon you may have noticed I haven&#39;t posted in a couple months and that is because I&#39;ve been trying to basically a sponsor that I was working with ended up saying something that made me feel a little uncomfortable and objectified and so I was trying to rectify the situation and come to an agreement before posting this video however because we were unable to come to a mutual agreement or understanding that both worked for the brand and for my channel I no longer felt comfortable um recommending their product to my mostly young female audience I try to work only with brands that align with my own views and I&#39;ve went back and forth on whether or not I should start a patreon pretty much since I&#39;ve started this channel however with this recent issue I think it might be best to switch to a more Community supportive approach as a lot of YouTubers do one of the parts that I&#39;m most excited to announce is the book club I get a lot of questions about the books that I read for my channel so I think it would be cool if we could read the books that I often cite and that are the foundation for a lot of my own Theory together um in addition to reading new books for the first time I&#39;m always reading new material for the channel so it would be cool if we could read them as a community in addition I will will be posting patreon exclusive content usual so if you want to support the channel or if the patreon seems like something that you&#39;d be interested in partaking in um the link will be in the description and I&#39;m excited to see you guys over there when director Stanley Kubrick and producer James beara sought to adapt Lolita onto screen they contacted Nabokov to write the script at the time one of the main issues when adapting the story was navigating around the production code Administration or PCA which had strict guidelines in reference to the haze code on what was allowed to be shown on screen the haze code prohibited profanity suggestive nudity graphic or realistic violence sexual Persuasions and rap amongst other things which as one could expect made the adaptation of Lolita very challenging Nabokov initially refused the offer to write the screenplay however after having experienced a small nocturnal illumination of diabolical origin as he said himself he composed a 400 page screenplay nabokov&#39;s screenplay would be then edited by kubric to an almost unrecognizable State during the pre-production phase of the film Nabokov would quit several times over disagree ances with the story Direction one of the early suggestions made to Nabokov when adapting the script was suggesting making one big change to pacify the PCA make Humbert and Dolores a married couple Nabokov hated this concept obviously and quit over it in his essay nabokov&#39;s rocking chair Tom Bissell writes about this encounter between Nabokov Kubrick and Harris in 1959 kubri formally asked Nabokov to write the screenplay for Lolita intrigued the Nabokov drove on to Los Angeles to meet kubric things got off to a poor start when Nabokov was told that the film version of Lolita would have to end with Humbert and Dolores getting married with the blessing of a relative preferably in the novel Dolores has no other living relatives that&#39;s kind of the point of course this suggestion struck Nabokov as the height of insanity but Harris had already sat down for initial meetings with the MPAA the trade Association that represents film studios to discuss ways to maneuver around the production code when the MPAA argued that Humbert and dolores&#39;s relationship was too immoral to depict Harris pointed out that it was perfectly legal in several States for a man of humbert&#39;s age to marry a 12-year-old girl provided she had her parents blessing yeah I just want to note keep that in mind that as we move forward that Harris eagerly pointed out that it was legal for someone of humbert&#39;s age to marry a 12-year-old Nabokov would later return to the project after kubric and Harris dropped the marriage plotline their new solution was to age 12-year-old Alita up so she would instead be 15 years old therefore in order to make a releasable film kubri and Harris were tasked with hiring an actress who appeared older than the Dolores Haze that Nabokov described in the book of 800 audition 14-year-old Sue lion was chosen to play the role Sue lion appeared slightly older than 14 and this was only further emphas ized by the way in which they styled her in the film in the article the troubling Legacy of the Lolita Story 60 years on stuff green States when watched today the final film is a bag of contradictions lion is made up with eyeliner syy eyelashes and permanently quaffed hair and yet she sleeps in the night dress of a Victorian doll all Ruffles ribbons and bows when we first meet her she&#39;s rigidly placed and poised gazing at Humbert over the top of her sunglasses she looks imperious knowing and appears to be at least 18 she is not as Nabokov described in the book standing 4 10 in one sock in a 1974 forward to Lolita a screenplay Nabokov admitted that the Frills of Miss Lion&#39;s elaborate night gown were painful Nabokov would later go on to say that Katherine de moo the scrappy Tom boyish then 12-year-old of zy in the Metro would have been the ideal Lolita instead and ever since I have read this statement by Nabokov I constantly think about it the Stark difference in the way in which Nabokov saw Dolores Haze and the way in which the media so desperately wanted to depict her especially when we contrast the image of Katherine de moo against not only suon in the film but also the book covers intending to depict Dolores this to me is a testament to the way in which Nabokov saw her as Dolores a little girl whereas the media sees her as Lolita a sex symbol to me this is a testament to the way in which our media is primed to view a little girl Through The Eyes of men like Humbert and to advertise to and prioritize the Gaze of men like Humbert determined to adapt this controversial book despite these strict censorship laws kubric and Harris made an effort to divert Focus away from Sue lion and thus Lolita&#39;s age Harris disturbingly went on record saying we knew we must make her a object where everyone in the audience could understand why everyone would want to jump on her and in a 2015 interview Harris once again affirmed his opinion we made sure when we cast her that she was a def in object not something that could be interpreted as being perverted we wanted it to come off as a love story and to feel very sympathetic with Humbert and as mentioned this is when we see the image of Lolita altered in the popular Consciousness James B Harris successfully transformed Dolores Hayes from a scrawny 12-year-old girl into a international underage SE symbol Harris like Humbert transformed Dolores into Lolita and it is frightening the way that the dynamic between Lolita actress Sue lion and producer James B Harris began to mirror the relationship between Lolita and Humbert lion was 14 when she was cast in the film and spent several months in 1960 and 1961 on the film set in London according to Lion&#39;s childhood friend Michelle Phillips singer for The Mamas and Papas it was on set that lion began a relationship with producer James B Harris when filming wrapped Sue lion returned home and Michelle Phillips described Sue lion as completely changed the next time she saw her lion revealed to Phillips that she had lost her virginity to James B Harris Phillips was shocked stating I saw a picture of him he looked like her grandfather at the time lion would have been 14 years old while James B Harris was 32 years old remember how Harris was so eager to point out that it was legal for a man of humbert&#39;s age to marry a 12-year-old with parental consent yeah interesting Harris and lion never married and it&#39;s unclear how long they were seeing each other and what the nature of their relationship exactly was to Harris Beyond an exploitation of lion&#39;s Youth and naivity when Sue lion was 16 years old and still doing publicity work to promote Lolita her brother committed suicide one interviewer thought it appropriate to ask this girl if her brother had killed himself because his little sister played Lolita I was once on a television show a talk show my brother had just died two days before that the interviewer opens his show by saying and now I was 16 years old he said did your brother kill himself because you played Lolita I didn&#39;t say thing I got up and I walked off and I didn&#39;t I mean I had there was I couldn&#39;t even dignify that with with you know don&#39;t you have good sense sir I didn&#39;t I had no words I left that and that&#39;s typical of the reason that I can&#39;t be a movie star I never could Lion&#39;s daughter Nona Harrison Gomez explains that the reputation of Lolita negatively impacted her mother&#39;s career she was so much stronger than this Twisted complicated interpretation of what a girl or woman is they had her in a contract she was supposed to do something like five or six movies after Lolita and instead she had to keep promoting Lolita for years afterwards that movie pigeon hold her in a way that didn&#39;t allow her to move forward with her career Sue lion became withdrawn from speaking to the Press giving a rare statement in 1996 that highlighted the impact that Lolita had had on her life my destruction as a person dates from that movie I defy any pretty girl who is rocketed to stardom at 14 in a nyet role to stay on a level path thereafter and this quote from Lion is the exact reason as to why Lolita should never have been adapted in the first place and should never be adapted again the destruction of a girl&#39;s life is not worth it and despite the horror story that was the production of Lolita 1962 in the 1990s the book was adapted again Steven Schiff who at the time was primarily a journalist was brought on to write Lolita as his first feature film screenplay I find this to be a little troubling because as mentioned Nabokov toiled for several years in order to tell this story perfectly additionally Nabokov was already a seasoned writer by the time he wrote Lolita having been writing for three decades so to bring on someone to adapt such a story as their first screenplay is actually quite irresponsible in my opinion this version of Lolita certainly followed closer to the source material than the 1962 adaptation now with freedom from the haze code however the film was of course still met with a lot of polarizing controversy Schiff responded to the criticism and said that the movie critics in America come from a very jumpy keep it in the dark maybe it will go away kind of culture and ensured that the film won&#39;t encourage pedophiles because Humbert comes to an awful end and that if you make a film about a murderer you&#39;re not advocating for murder this comment from shiff is very frustrating and further solidifies my opinion that shiff was definitely never suited to adapt this story into a screenplay I find that if you make a film about a murderer you&#39;re not advocating for murder comment to be the most frustrating part of this sentiment because it makes an irrelevant comparison it&#39;s almost like pedophilia and murder aren&#39;t the same thing and to compare them is redundant murder is exclusively a physical act by simulating murder on screen you are not partaking in Murder obviously as shiff suggests however pedophilia is not an exclusively physical act you can and people often do engage in pedophilia without physically touching children this can commonly take place in the form of child pornography for example by simulating pedophilia or child pornography in an eroticized way on screen using real child actors you are essentially coming as close as possible to creating legal child pornography therefore you are creating content to be consumed by pedophiles for their viewing pleasure that may not be and I hope is not one&#39;s intended audience however when you are making a film with children this is and I cannot stress this enough something you need to be aware of and thinking of when you write a script and direct a film feature ing children especially a story of this nature I don&#39;t care child welfare is more important than your art the safety of children is more important than any story you want to tell because as said when you are making a film you require the real bodies of real little girls to tell your story this isn&#39;t just words on a page these are real children Brook Shield&#39;s first real kiss was when she was 11 with 29-year-old co-star Keith keran whilst doing a for pretty baby suon was a real 14-year-old girl being groomed by 33-year-old James B Harris Dominique swne was a real 15-year-old girl made to kiss 49-year-old Jeremy Irons American Beauty star Mina Suvari was a real teenager being groomed and taken advantage of by multiple older men on sets since she was 12 years old Natalie Portman was 13 years old when she was cast in Leon the Professional a film director Luke Besson Loosely based on his relationship with actress and now director myn whom he met when she was 12 and started dating when she was 15 and he was 32 Portman has since openly discussed the negative impacts that being sexualized at such a young age by adult male viewers of the film had on her these girls have acted as sacrificial Lambs in order to benefit the egoic Pursuits of grown men I keep hearing a particular gripe about this cultural shift and maybe you have to some people have been calling this movement puritanical or return to Victorian values where men can&#39;t behave or speak sexually around dainty delicate fragile women to these people I want to say the current system is puritanical maybe men can say and do whatever they want but women cannot the current system inhibits women from expressing our desires wants and needs from seeking our pleasure let me tell you about my own experience I turned 12 on the of my first film The Professional in which I played a young girl who befriends a hit man and hopes to avenge the murder of her family the character is simultaneously discovering and developing her Womanhood her voice and her desire at that moment in my life I too was discovering my own Womanhood my own desire and my own voice I was so excited at 13 when the film was released and my work and my art would have a human response I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me a countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts and reviews I understood very quickly even as a 13-year-old that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort so I quickly adjusted my behavior I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene and talked about that choice deliberately in interviews I emphasized how bookish I was and how serious I was and I cultivated An Elegant way of dressing I built a reputation for basically being prudish conservative nerdy serious in an attempt to feel that my body was safe and that my voice would be listened to at 13 years old the message from our culture was clear to me I felt the need to cover my body and to inhibit my expression and my work in order to send my own message to the world that I&#39;m someone worthy of safety and respect the response to my expression from small comments about my body to more threatening deliberate statements serve to control my behavior through an environment of sexual terrorism and if anyone shares the opinion of shiff that this type of criticism I&#39;m presenting stems from a prudish sensibility I implore you to develop critical thinking skills and stay away from from school zones no one is suggesting that you can&#39;t tell a story about pedophilia I have mentioned in previous videos that gregar Aki&#39;s 2004 film Mysterious Skin tackles this subject matter incredibly well this film is also based on a book however it is a very different book and is told from the perspective of the victimized child rather than the pedophile which is part of what makes Lolita so complicated to adapt additionally another film that I believe tackled this subject matter incredibly well is the Diary of a teenage girl similarly to Mysterious Skin the Diary of a teenage girl is adopted from a book told from the child&#39;s perspective the film is adapted from Phoebe ganner&#39;s 2002 diaristic graphic novel when I recently watched this film I found myself relating to many in a lot of ways where films that tackle this topic often fail is by making the teenager an eroticized object for the viewer as can be seen with Dolores Hayes in both adaptations of Lolita and with Angela in American Beauty for example seemingly in an attempt to Showcase to the viewer or prove that the teenager is someone that can be lusted after as if to say see look how hot she is except we don&#39;t need her to look like Mina suari in American Beauty to conceptualize why a grown man would be attracted to a little girl she doesn&#39;t need to be uniquely beautiful to qualify as Minnie States in her opening monologue to the film I was a very ugly child my appearance has not improved so I suppose it was a lucky break when he was attracted to my youth likewise the point of Lolita that is often lost in the film adaptations is Lolita is not a uniquely striking or seductive child despite what hbert would like us to believe she is just a child and as many suggests it is the youth that is appealing that is the point the Diary of a teenage girl however beautifully explores The Grooming of Minnie and Minnie&#39;s burgeoning sexuality without her ever feeling like an eroticized sight to be consumed by the viewer this is especially impressive when one is aware that the actress playing 15-year-old Minnie was actually 22 at the time of filming and this is actually a decision I agree with I think when one can avoid subjecting minors to acting out these types of stories we should for the reasons mentioned above however in the wrong hands the casting of an 18 plus actress an 18 role can likewise backfire and be used as a vessel to further exploit the fetish of teenage sexuality this can be seen by the adult casting decisions in Euphoria which were often exploited and used to merely showcase the teenage characters in highly eroticized scenarios B poy the actress playing mini never felt overtly sexualized she passed for a believable teenager but it never felt in a fetishized way there are are scenes that depict mini nude or having sex however they never Linger on her body in the way Euphoria does with Cassie for example we can see how the men in the film sexualize Minnie however we as the audience are not viewing her through this lens and rightfully so this is assisted by the fact that the Diary of a teenage girl is told through well the Diary of a teenage girl rather than the reflections of the pedophile we are watching the story through Minnie&#39;s perspective rather than the man who Grooms her and therefore we the audience are not viewing her through his fetishized perspective of her but rather her awkward and real perspective of herself as I will later discuss this perspective difference is what makes Lolita impossible to ethically and accurately adapt whilst staying true to the original context of the book this criticism is not coming from a so-called very jumpy keep it in the dark maybe it will go way kind of culture as shift suggests however because film is a different medium it requires a different set of responsibilities in order to tell this type of story ethically if you actually read and understood the book you should understand the flaw in turning the story into a vessel to be voyerism and enjoyed by the exact type of gays people and culture that Nabokov criticizes if you feel so passionately about telling a story like Lolita I suggest you take the same care as Nabokov write your script for 16 hours a day for 5 years because that is the minimum it takes to intimately comprehend this subject matter roxan gray wrote in their essay ugly beautiful the Aesthetics of Lolita in narrative and film are choices and those choices undo or at the very least diminish the ugliness of the story they represent those choices seduce the reader or viewer they lull us into believing that violation is perhaps not so bad in most movies that deal with sexual violence we see beautiful men doing terrible things to beautiful women rap is ugly but Rus never are what intrigues me most about Lolita is that the novel introduces so many questions it forces us to Grapple with not only what the novel is about but how the subject matter is handled whether or not it should be handled and who has the right to tell this kind of story furthermore shiff displays very evidently that he should have never been the person to adapt the story by his degrading comments directed at suion in the introduction to his screenplay shiff writes Lolita was an enormous difficult role and we wanted to avoid above all the mistake we felt kubri had made in casting suon a 15-year-old who nevertheless looked like a 20-year-old hooker need I remind you that this is what suon looked like during the filming of Lolita as mentioned she certainly doesn&#39;t fit the image of Dolores Hayes Nabokov described however however neither does Dominique Swain in shift&#39;s 1997 adaptation their aesthetic depiction is only marginally better in my opinion to publicly degrade a 14-year-old girl for the sexualization she experienced as the result of Grooming by much older men makes it clear to me that shiff failed to understand the source material he sought to adapt and should never have been hired to write the Lolita screenplay in the book Lolita Dolores Hayes is not a real little girl she only exists within the confines of the pages of a book and the idea of her as Lolita as a seductress of sorts is even more Fantastical existing only within the confines of Humbert humbert&#39;s fictional imagination there are no real people involved when reading a book beyond the author themsel however when you adapt a novel onto screen the character remains fictional however you are now relying on the body of a real life person to bring that story to life in this case the story of Lolita is dependent on putting a real life little girl into the shoes of Dolores Hayes Sue lion and Dominique Swain were like Dolores ordinary girls plucked from obscurity to satisfy a fetishistic gaze but whilst humbert&#39;s gaze remains internalized The Gaze of the filmmaker translates on the big screen for the world to see this is an incredibly dangerous position for any little girl these conversations are especially important when we exist in the time of family influencers and even baby influencers like Ren Elanor Ren Elanor and her mother Jaclyn have recently been at the center of a lot of controversy and discussion surrounding the ethics of how people post their children online many of the videos jacine posts of Ren feature the toddler in seemingly innocent scenarios however could be and likely are being seen as suggestive for child Predators online these videos include Ren eating a hot dog Ren eating frozen honey Etc and this is unfortunately far from a one-off case it&#39;s not hard to fall down rabbit holes on Instagram when you look at the followers of young girls who post Dance videos or gymnastics videos for example on reals and notice how disturbing their comment sections and follower lists are and then you click on these men&#39;s profiles and they exclusively follow little girls who post similar content this type of content is not dissimilar to the footage that can be found in the Lolita film adaptations especially the 1997 version technically legal however still dangerous so you may use a body double to depict the nude scenes of Dolores you may place a board between Dominique Swain and Jeremy Irons when she sits on his lap however despite all this you are still actively creating a fantasy in which a little girl is being sexualized and eroticized on screen even when we consider American Beauty a film that was written with the intention of subverting this idea of the teenage seductress the the lingering image in popular culture is not the cracking of Angela&#39;s facade when she cries and admits to Lester that she is in fact a virgin and afraid of sex rather when we think of American Beauty we are left with the image of Lester&#39;s Fantastical mirages of Angela of her laying nude in a bed of roses we remember Angela as a seductress a teenage temptress Al Lolita Tom Bissell aptly reflects on this in his essay while I assembled my notes for this essay I found myself thinking about the twin Lolas Sue lion and Dominique Swain quite a lot I tried to imagine being 14 years old and put into the position of portraying a character whose very name has become synonymous with jailbait a great though appropriate irony of filming a story about a young girl whose life is ruined is knowing that you could ruin some girl&#39;s Life by filming it you could tell yourself we&#39;ll be great we&#39;ll make her comfortable we&#39;ll be exceptional will stuff aboard between her and every middle-aged dire on set in literature no one gets hurt because literature is not real yet film and television sort of are real when you&#39;re talking about children being tasked with roles whose impact on their lives they are in no position to understand I find the way that our culture inevitably warped the depiction of Lolita to become a sexualized blossoming young woman rather than the victimized child that she is reminds me of the way in which our culture likewise perpetuated the aspects of The Hunger Games that Suzanne Collins sought to comment on in The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins explores our media&#39;s tendency to ignore horrific and devastating current events in order to sensationalize frivolous aspects of celebrity culture Collins has stated that she observed this dichot whilst flipping through channels on her television on one channel she&#39;d find reality TV stars competing for a superficial prize and on the next she saw footage of the Iraq War she described how the two combined in an unsettling way to create her first ideas for the series Collins highlights this fixation on The Superficial in The Hunger Games by the way in which the capital becomes completely engrossed with the idea of this romance Arc between Katniss and Peta focusing on the spectacle of their relationship rather than the fact that these are two children who will likely be murdered in a violent display of pageantry when the Hunger Games was adapted into film and became a huge sensation it was interesting to witness the way in which our real life media directly replicated the behavior of the capital in an ironic mirrored Labyrinth the real life media pushed this idea of the largely unimportant love triangle between Katniss Peta and Gail in an attempt to Echo The Sensation that was the love triangle in Twilight a large part of the appeal of the Twilight boom was the Team Jacob versus Team Edward element and so in an attempt to capitalize off of the recently ended Twilight franchise Breaking Dawn part two released the same year as the first Hunger Games movie the media swapped out Team Edward versus Team Jacob for team Gail versus Team Peta the most uninteresting and unimportant aspect of the film just like the capital does in a parallel sense Nabokov wrote Lolita as a cultural criticism on the normalization and fetishization of pedophilia in our culture he set out to write a commentary on how normalized the pedophilic Gaze of men like Humbert is and in my opinion does so masterfully the point of the novel was of course to Showcase that there is no such thing as a child seductress Nets don&#39;t exist beyond the confines of the imagination of sick and twisted adults however through the marketing we can see how much of our culture&#39;s instinct is to appeal to this exact pervasive pedophilic gaze that Nabokov was commenting on it was merely muscle memory the way the marketing for Lolita ended up sexualizing her repeatedly turning her into the exact fetish Nabokov sought to comment on it is honestly frightening and absurd how seemingly intertwined this pedophilic gaze is woven into our culture now abov reflected on the mishandling and appropriation of Lolita in a 1975 interview Lolita isn&#39;t a perverse young girl she&#39;s a poor child who has been debauched it is equally interesting to dwell as journalists say on the problem of the inept degreg that the character of the nymphet Lolita whom I invented in 1955 has undergone in the mind of the broad public not only has the perversity of this poor child been grotesquely EXA exaggerated but her physical appearance her age everything has been transformed by the illustrations in foreign Publications in reality Lolita is a little girl of 12 whereas Humbert Humbert is a mature man and it&#39;s the abyss between his age and that of the little girl that produces the vacuum the vertigo the seduction of mortal danger secondly it&#39;s the imagination of the sad seder that makes a magic creature of this little American school girl outside of the maniacal gaze of Humbert there is no nymphet Lolita the nymphet exists only through the obsession that destroys Humbert herein an essential aspect of a unique book that has been betrayed by factitious popularity what&#39;s tricky about adopting Lolita is as Nabokov stated and as I&#39;ve stated multiple times throughout this video Lolita isn&#39;t real not even in the story she exists as a fantasy in the mind of Humbert though as Humbert tells the story as an unreliable narrator through his warped gaze when translating this warped gaze onto screen using real people and most importantly a real little girl the fetishized Fantastical image of Lolita the net becomes real thus perpetuating what is sought to criticize the writing of Humbert is intentionally manipulative the novel is written in a way so that the reader is tempted to sympathize with Humbert he is charming even on paper as many child predators are that&#39;s the point he as a character wants you to believe he has done nothing wrong he&#39;s trying to convince you that what he is doing is completely normal and Justified Lauren gra writes in her essay when I look again at Lolita from this stance of shame I see very clearly the ways in which Nabokov set out to seduce his readers strike that far darker than seduction the novel aims to groom Us in its opening Pages it is careful to establish that Humbert humbert&#39;s predilections Are Not Unusual they are almost too common in order to accurately adapt Lolita the film would need to be made considering this grooming of the viewer and with humbert&#39;s gaze in mind as the story is told through his warped perspective of reality though just because this is effective in a book does not mean it would translate ethically onto screen I don&#39;t believe it is possible to ethically adapt this perspective into into a film without endangering the actors portraying Dolores hay in short if you want to adapt this story you need to be someone who understands the source material and its cultural context enough to understand the way in which our culture actively fetishizes targets and endangers little girls and if you understand that enough to adapt the film you shouldn&#39;t want to adapt the film Tom Bell concluded in his essay nabokov&#39;s rocking chair had I been asked to adapt Lolita if I were asked tomorrow to adapt Lolita I know what I would do what I would do would be no different from what any other striving literary man would do I would work hard to be true to a book that I love I would ignore my conscience about putting a young woman in the position our production had put her in I would tell myself that great art is worth the risk what I wonder what I truly don&#39;t know is exactly how many days would go by before I realized that this was humbert&#39;s logic too when he decided to destroy Dolores Hayes if you enjoyed this video video and want to engage more with this subject I suggest checking out my video on the sexy baby archetype and film in which I discussed the tropes that fall under the sexy baby archetype in cinema and why they are harmful there is a section on the Lita in which I discuss some of what I&#39;ve discussed here um but there I also go more in depth talking about Charley Temple and Mina suari and Natalie Portman Etc and how Hollywood has failed so many young women thank you for watching see you in the next one bye

Transcript for:Exploration of Nabokov's Lolita and Its Cultural Impact

Transcript for:
Exploration of Nabokov's Lolita and Its Cultural Impact