I just watched Lolita with Jeremy Irons... How the fuck did this get made into a movie?!?!

Dominique Swain was an actual 15yo doing simulated sex scenes with a 40 something Jeremy Irons. Wtf?!? Why couldn't they find someone age appropriate who looked young? Why would DS's parents allow her to do this at such a yoing age. Why did Jeremy Irons play the naration like it was a tragic love story and not what is was, child rape? So many questions...

OP has never read the book.

Irons was such a smug smartass when I encountered him at my job a few years ago.

...also, my other beef - The movie is played very seriously, until you get to the murder which is slapstick and acted like a scene from Lethal Weapon, it was so random and seemed to be from a whole other movie

Eat a dick R5 - I'm pretty sure I've forgotten more books than most people read.

Lolita is easily one of the best books written in the English language. Perhaps, OP, if you'd read it you'd understand why none of us are taking you or that shit film seriously.

Forget the more recent film, let's talk about the genius of Vladimir Nabokov's literally genius.

Though Russian was his first language, his use of English metaphors in his English translation of his novel is incomparable in its imagery.

(Want more of the same literally genius in writing and gorgeous metaphors? Read Nabokov's "Ada" or Nabokov's Short Stories = truly "Advanced Reading.")

" . . . He will receive no response from her, as she is of the fleeing species . . . "

Ummm, it was a book, OP. And a great one, at that.

I saw the film when it came out. No pearls were clutched by my boyfriend, myself, or the audience.

We're discussing the film not the book. That said, every subsequent work by Nabokov is about an underage girl having a relationship with a far older man. Sounds to me like someone was working out their own desires through their work and trying and failing to normalize hebephilia

^^ High School graduate (maybe) -

How does it not disgust anyone that an actual 15yo is doing sex scenes with a 40 something year old man. Forget the story, and the novel, that alone is inappropriate and I'm sure damaging for a 15yo child in ways they didn't even understand

Ok, i just read that thye used an 18yo body double for the sex scenes. That does make me feel a bit less skeezy about having sat through that bizarre spectacle

R12, there was universal contempt for it when it came out. The distributor dropped it and it was this big glossy Oscar bait type movie that had to premiere on Showtime which, at the time, was still considered a somewhat sleazier HBO. Your outrage was pretty commonplace twenty years ago. The movie was buried.

'Humbert Humbert,' describing 'The Hays woman,' whom he'd recently married; she, luxuriating in the family's bathtub after said nuptials' wedding night:

" . . . There she is, in her bath, the trusting, clumsy seal . . . "

The whole point of the book is that 'Lolita' might be as complicit as Humbert, OP. Did you clutch your pearls as hard when watching Jodie Foster play a sexually active child in Taxi Driver? Or was that different?

Or Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby?

I’ve read several works by VN and to be honest, I’m also repelled by the subject matter. I really enjoyed Sebastian Knight, though.

Also, Dorothy Parker’s wicked short story, Lolita, which turns the genre on its head, was reportedly a tart response. She had either read a galley of the book, or spoke to someone who had, i forget which.

I haven’t seen the Irons film.

I sometimes feel people celebrate books because they are told to or fear it says something about their intellect if they don't join in the praise. I'm not afraid to say I dislike "A Tale of Two Cities" "Catcher in the Rye" "The Great Gatsby" "The Old Curiosity Shop" "Zen and the Art of Motorscycle Maintenance" - none of those books did anything for me, but I dont think that means I am dumb, just as liking or enjoying those books doesn't necessarily make one smart.

Lolita was inspired by the kidnapping of Sally Horner. Sally also had a tragic end.

Lolita was not complicit. Jesus christ she was a CHILD. HH perspective is not meant to be taken literally he is a sick man.

Even Humbert realizes at the end that he was a monster who stole Lolita's childhood.

Thank you, a child can't be complicit in their own rape even if they have given "consent." Thry don't have the decision making skills to fully comprehend the consequences of their actions.

The Irons LOLITA is superior in every way to the silly Kubrick film and the finest adaptation of the Nabokov we're likely to see for a while, given the challenges of the novel (subject matter, unreliable narrator, etc). Even Nabokov agreed it would be immoral to cast an underage actress in the role. Of course sophisticated DL posters will know that LOLITA is less about pedophilia than it is about soul murder, something Vlad knew something about, since he lived under two oppressive regimes, one of which mistakenly assassinated his father. To state LOLITA is about pedophilia is like saying the conflict at the heart of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS is about religion.

R22 The whole point is that it's ambiguous. We're lead (expertly) by the author to see different possibilities for Humbert. It is entirely suggested that 'Lolita' was complicit in her 'seduction' of Humbert since it's suggested she's gone on to do it again. If Nabokov hadn't been so masterful in creating such an ambiguous air, the book would have been forgotten as some kind of paedophilic porn, which it is most certainly not.

R17 the whole point was not that Lolita was complicit, but that HH was an unreliable narrator...

Yes, R27, Humbert Humbert is one of fiction's great unreliable narrators. He is convinced that he loves Lolita and that she is "complicit" in her own seduction, but we know that he is deceiving himself. (He, after all, is a man who tells us how amazing handsome he is). In fact, when the opportunity presents itself, she runs away from him.

"The whole point of the book is that 'Lolita' might be as complicit as Humbert, OP."

So you totally missed the point of the book.

"Why did Jeremy Irons play the naration like it was a tragic love story and not what is was, child rape? "

Because the character is a pedophile, Rose.

Nabokov was a great writer. Too bad about the homophobia though. Kind of fucks up his legacy. Nabokov's brother Serge was gay and murdered by Nazis during the WWII. Nobokov's uncle, also gay, left Vladimir Nabokov a considerable fortune.

The problem with Adrian Lyne’s Lolita is that while it was in post-production laws were passed in the U.S. that even if the actor/actress were of legal age, if they were depicting underage sex it was illegal. So you could not even present them illusion of such a dynamic without it legally being considered child pornography or exploitation of some sort. It left the film in limbo, without a distributor. It is a much admired film.

R25 I totally get what your saying. But I still think it's problematic to use the theme of Hebephilia/pedophilia to address those deeper themes. At least in an ambiguous way. Had the author made a greater attempt to villianize Humbert rather than wanting the audience to sympathize with him, maybe I'd feel differently. The fact that we mever get Lolita's point of view nor do we know what she is thinking leaves us only Humbert to sypathize or identify with.

R31, Humbert's perspective is completely subverted at the end by his own admission that he is a villain, even if the reader had failed to grasp that throughout the book.

That's not true, R10. The hero and heroine of "Ada" (my favorite Nabokov novel) are the same age--they are brother and sister. The narrator of "Pale Fire" is a gay man.

We're not intended to sympathize with Humbert, R31; we are given plenty of reason to have complete sympathy for Lolita.

Nabokov's use of the unreliable narrator makes every character unreliable, which is part of the work's genius. So is Humbert a lost soul lusting after the love he lost in youth? Is Dolores Senior as horrible as she comes across? It's suggested Lolita is complicit in the sexual stuff. Is this in Humbert's mind or is she actually a sexually active person who goes on to leave him for someone else?

Regardless of our different interpretations I am glad to hear everyone's differing points of view om this work. Nice change of pace for DL. Nice opportunity for some of the professors among us to school us

That makes no sense, r30, it was released on Showtime without any consequences.

Well, r31, it's ambiguous enough to have courted controversy for 60 years! And does anyone NOT feel for Dolores by story's end, when even HH grudgingly acknowledges that he robbed her of her childhood (even if it's a manipulative bid for sympathy on his part)?? Personally, I wouldn't change a word of it. In my experience LOLITA shares pride of place with THE FOUNTAINHEAD as the greatest, most profound novels I have ever read, with WAR AND PEACE, ANNA KARENINA and GATSBY bringing up the rear.

Lolita doesn't enjoy sex with Humbert. She endures it because she has no choice.

It was shown here in the UK on terrestrial TV. BBC2 if I remember correctly.

For me, the bottom line is you cannot divorce a work of art from the cultural climate in which it locates itself. Thus, with pedophilia being a billion dollar business online couoled with children being sexualized at younger and younger ages, this work is rather problematic in its moral ambiguity

@R33 - They were cousins.

R37 Did you Sincerely enjoy AK or W&P or TF. I found all those books to be terribly boring and up their own ass. I may give AK a pass because that at least keot my attention. What is it about those books that make them so great in your mind (and the mind of most readers) I'd sincerely like to know, because ive always felt guilty about not seeing the greatness in thise works

Can someone break down the Quilty character for me? He seems so unnecessary to the plot. Almost like a Deus Ex Machina for the author so he could wrap up the story.

r38 You're missing the point. If we have established that Humbert is an unreliable narrator, then his version of sex with Lolita is unreliable. It could be true, it could be false. Just because a narrator is unreliable, it doesn't mean their version is necessarily false.

All we have to go on for Lolita's character is Humbert's unreliable narrative. He's shown to be good, bad, wrong, right, honest, a liar so some of that has to come through in his description of Lolita. Yes, the scene where it's suggested she is fully aware she's turning him on might be complete fantasy or it might be completely true. We don't know.

Watch the Kubrick film OP. James Mason and Shelley Winters are wonderful. Of course, it's beautifully photographed. A lighter film for Kubrick but still brilliant.

R41, they are ostensibly cousins. They discover that they are, in fact, brother and sister as the novel progresses; they have the same father.

R44 And that's my issue with this work. Without a single relaible narrator one can easily misinterpret this story and see it as condoning the desires of Humbert. Not every reader/watcher is a sophisticated one. I'm not saying artists should play to the lowest common denominator, but they should also be Cognizant of how a work may be misinterpreted.

This reminds me of the Dutch film "For A Lost Soldier." While it was produced by the real Jerome (I think?) it was pretty shocking to see a sex scene depicted in the film. Scandalous!

He's not an unreliable narrator in the usual sense, R44. He's a paedophile, therefore he's a manipulator who twists reality to fit his purposes. Until the end, when he admits the truth.

@R43, "Cue" (get it??) was necessary in order to offset HH's fatal obsession: Lo' was no innocent.

R50 but wasn't that established when she admitted she wasn't a virgin when she first had sex with HH? Or when it.is implied she had sex with that kid at camp? Do we really need yet another pedo to get that point across? It also feels slut shamey to me.

How a work is received or (mis) interpreted is not the artist's concern nor his responsibility, r47. R42, I read W&P and AK as an 8th grade altar boy (I read it waiting for Mass to begin) and appreciated it for its melodrama (the scene in which a certain character endures an amputation lingers in memory), along with the soap opera dynamics of the plot (on some level I identified with Pierre). I will confess the Kutuzov (sp?) war campaigns, along with the episodes of Levin and his agrarian commune in AK, went over my head and left me cold. But even at that tender age, I realized my little mitts were holding a book of inestimable greatness.

Thank you, R46 - Yes, they were.

The intricacies of this novel are mind bending; hence the slip.

R49 Which comes first? The unreliable narrator or the paedophile? Are we to understand him and sympathise with him because of his lost love in youth or is that just a part of his manipulation as a paedophile and/or unreliable narrator?

R52 I guess art hits each of us differently. While those books left me cold, "Forever amber" "David Copperfield" and "1984" among others had the same effect on young me. The last paragraphs of 1984 left me so pulverized I couldn't start another books for weeks.

Criticizing Nabokov for a moral ambiguity with no center in LOLITA is like vilifying Picasso for the ambiguities of perspective in LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON.

R54 Great question! Would love to hear an answer from someome who enjoyed this work

We don't know what happened between Lolita and the boy at camp. Humbert uses it as a convenient out. "She wasn't a virgin so she seduced me!" Lolita could have been lying to Humbert or he could have been lying to us.

@R54 - Earlier in the novel/film, at the 'prom' dance, Cue asks Lo's mother about 'Lo. Lo's mother's response: "She's having a cavity filled; by your uncle."

Lo was no innocent.

R58 Yes. One of the continuing themes in Lolita is that everyone is lying to everyone. It's up for debate whether Humbert was a pure innocent and victim or was as bad as everyone else. There's ambiguity in every other line.

@R60 - Nabokov wrote the screenplay based on his novel's dialogue, word for word.

I hear you re:1984, r55. I reread the latter in the past decade and am terrified to see how the literary has become reality.

Not in the least, r59. It's all about art, baby. And may I remind the LOLITA decriers: it's a FICTION-- no children were molested in the writing of this novel. And that freedom of imagination is EXACTLY what the novel is about.

Nabokov wrote a short story very similar to Lolita when he was in Paris. I forget the name and I think it was in French. Anyway it was long before the kidnapping of Sally Horner so it was a motif that was on his mind for many, many years and not just inspired by current American events. And “Ada, or Ardor” isn’t very far removed from straight up literary kiddie porn a la Henry Miller.

I do see the mastery of the language by a non-native speaker (in both French and English) and I did really enjoy King, Queen, Knave, but I think Dymitri protested too much about his father’s obvious fascination with the topic.

R63 I don't like seeing the similarities of 1984 and where we are going as a country and world. It truly terrifies me. I sincerely hope I'm dead before we get there

R64 Exactly! He wrote about it too many times for it not to be an issue he was struggling with or at the very least thinking about quite often.

I hope OP never sees Salo

Lolita not being an "innocent" seems to be used as a justification of Humberts sexual involvement with her which I think is baloney. A grown man should still know better - it shouldn't take incarceration and murder to realize what aonster he was

R67 Oh my God! I forgot about that movie. One could argue that Lolita was art manifested through uncomfortable themes. Salo was straight up sadomasochistic porn trying to disguise itself as art. Those kids shouldn't have been exposed to that disgusting nonsense

So I suppose it’s official that Datalounge has been overrun with fraus.

Why not as a potent metaphor of his own devising, r66? Composer Benjamin Britten wrote major operas that focused on children/youths as objects of obsession or exploitation: PETER GRIMES, DEATH IN VENICE, THE TURN OF THE SCREW, BILLY BUDD...was he himself a victim of child abuse? I have no idea. Did he harbor pedophiliac lusts? If he did, there 's no record that he ever acted on it. But it was a subject that interested him INTENSELY--why shouldn't he write about it? An artist, like Nabokov, like Britten, can redeem any subject matter.

R70 I think it might be a certain age of person rather than frau.

This is the first time I've ever been confronted by so many people convinced Humbert is a monster. The whole point of the fucking book is you can't be CONVINCED of anything, you stupid triggered imbeciles.

R72 Calm down - It's a discussion. No need to name call like a 12 year old.

[quote]This reminds me of the Dutch film "For A Lost Soldier." While it was produced by the real Jerome (I think?) it was pretty shocking to see a sex scene depicted in the film.

If OP wants to clutch his pearls, that would be the film to do it with. The boy is supposed to be about 12/13, but the young actor LOOKED about 10, truly a child, and there was no body double there. For all Jeroen's misty sentimentalization of his soldier, there is no way to read him but as a pedophile. The whole thing is gross.

EXACTLY, r72. That is how totalitarianism works.

@R64 did not/could not finish reading "Ada" through its completion: very Advanced Reading, with its deliberate, intricately related metaphors, imagery, and complex characterizations.

R64, are you able to recall, from Nabokov's novel, Uncle Van's encounter with the family's pet and the children's descriptive curiosity, which Nabokov expresses in hilarious metaphors?

(Didn't think so.)

Of course, Humbert isn't a simply a monster. In the opening pages of the book, Humbert talks about his great childhood love, a young girl who is long dead. Her name was Annabel Leigh (obviously an allusion to creepy Edgar Allen Poe and Annabel Lee). Humbert believes that he sees Annabel again when he meets Lolita. He describes a photograph of himself as a boy, taken with Annabel, and describes how beautiful he himself is in the photograph. It is clear then how intensely narcissistic he is, and how he much he wants to return to his own lost childhood through Lolita. Humbert is not aware of how much he reveals of himself during the course of the book, but the reader is.

Here's a modern metaphor per Nabokov's writings: the story is in the writing, the glorious writing. The content is superfluous.

OP, you can unclench because the sex scenes were filmed with a body double.

R29, bullshit.

The book was one of the most well written books ever.

JFC, what is wrong with some of you??? I don’t believe you’ve read anything by Nabakov, including Lolita.

That was for r20, not r29. Freakin’ iPhone.

What r15 said. Your opinion was common place. The movie struggled to find any distribution and was a big commercial flop.

And yes, as you have since realized there was a 19-year old body double used for the sex scenes. They did not actually ask the 15 year old girl to do sex scenes.

OP, you might be surprised to learn that young pubescent females were married off to older men throughout history and just because they are young doesn’t make them unwilling. Lolita was not raped.

Then why does she cry herself to sleep every night?

R72, the whole point of the book is Humbert's narrative, and how the reader is co-opted into it.

Sex between a 40 something year old man and a 14year old girl is always rape. Regardless of whether the child gives (the illusion of) consent or not

R87 Not in Europe it isn't.

R88 gets it: It's a BOOK! Getta Life!

It’s not that DL has been overrun by frauen, it’s that DL has been overrun by persons who have not had an opportunity, or perhaps a desire, to become well read.

You don’t need a formal, college education, in order to be well educated.

People are lazy. They watch a film, & outrage ensues.

I’m going to reread Lolita, now that this topic has been introduced. It is just SOOO well written, and truly, just splendidly woven.

Hi R74, I read it decades ago so I don’t remember many details, but the stubble on her legs has always stayed with me. It’s funny what a person remembers from books read so long ago. I am surprised you found Ada difficult to read. It has a playful quality to the text missing in most of his other works. But then again I enjoyed Ulysses and don’t enjoy (any) Dickens so maybe my view of what constitutes a playful read is off.

I'm revisiting my copy of Nabokov's Short Stories: "Russian Spoken Here," "The Potato Elk," "The Dragon," and the haunting "Wingstroke."

OP = SHRIEEEEEEEEEKKKK!!!

My favorite Nabokov book was Pnin. It's possible people are so stupid now they don't really understood irony or books with layers of meaning.

THEY USED A BODY DOUBLE OF LEGAL AGE.

That was heavily promoted and widely known at the time of the film's release.

I think it's safe to say that if someone criticizes how people view what is intended to be an ambiguous book by calling people "triggered," that their own personal politics have entered into their analysis and they don't realize it.

If they're that unaware of their own critical biases, then their opinion, while interesting, is not really worth getting worked up over.

We know, r98. It was mentioned hours ago.

Don't be a fool, r84. Many if not most of the young girls who were married off to older men for financial or political reasons did so unwillingly, but without any other options for their lives. You really need to read a history book.

In addition to Peter Sellers' Oscar nominated role in "Being There" (Best Actor), Sellers' depiction of "Quilty" ("Cue") in "Lolita" also warranted an acting award nomination (winner, Golden Globe).

For the love of god people. Humbert humbert is a pedophile and he is written as one.

The only words Lolita speaks in the book are "you raped me."

He was also in a french movie with Julie Binoche. sex scene. i didn't like the movie.

"Of course sophisticated DL posters will know that LOLITA is less about pedophilia than it is about soul murder, something Vlad knew something about, since he lived under two oppressive regimes, one of which mistakenly assassinated his father. To state LOLITA is about pedophilia is like saying the conflict at the heart of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS is about religion."

God, you're a pompous ass. And you have a very creepy attitude about pedophilia. No that I'm judging you.

Well, actually, I'm totally judging you.

@R104. This is not Lolita's only dialog in the book, nor is the 'quote' in the book.

But but but she wasn't an "innocent," r104!

No, definitely not the only words, but if I recall she says she should tell the police that he raped her, and he describes it as being flirty but you don't know if that's just him being unreliable or not. And doesn't she also say a second time that she was an innocent flower who was raped by him, and again he takes it as flirty?

Yes. I haven't read the book in years, but Yes, her dialogue is about her sexual victimization.

Sure there are other themes but HH is a pedophile.

He rapes her, kidnaps her, and destroys her life, yet somehow she is complicit because she's not an "innocent"? The book is a study of the depths and darkness that the human mind is capable of, and the cognitive dissonance that is created as a defense mechanism to protect this sick mind. Lolita is failed by literally every adult in her life, she is a tragic hero

I suspect R20 has read every book written by Jackie Collins.

[quote]LOLITA shares pride of place with THE FOUNTAINHEAD as the greatest, most profound novels I have ever read

I'm tempted to track you down and force feed you pages of a Constance Garnett translation until you repent. Ayn Rand was a fucking carnie compared to Nabokov.

R101 I do read history. Little Catherine Howard certainly pursued the fat Henry VIII to her detriment. All I’m dying is not all young women were unwilling whether they were pursuing wealth and power or not.

That's only because Rand is consistently misread, r 113. As for you, r106, well...

Whatever you think of the film, it has a beautiful score by Ennio Morricone.

If you like Nabokov, I highly recommend his great short story "Signs and Symbols".

Catherine Howard didn't pursue Henry. It was a political maneuver arranged by the men in her life to gain favor from the crown.

Lady Margaret Beaufort was 13 when she gave birth to Henry VII. It nearly killed her and she was never able to bear another child.

To hear Irons talk about it, the production team was very careful with Swain and their interaction. He had to wear a lead lined apron on his lap when she would sit on it, scenes were shot in a way that very little skin to skin contact was made, and the shooting of every scene was itself shot by a secondary camera to make certain nothing that wasn't allowed took place.

Lead-lined? Was her vagina radioactive? Does Jeremy Irons have x-ray vision?

Christopher Hitchens wrote eloquently nf the novel before his death - highly recommend his essay/review of The Annotaed Lolita.

Lolita is a very compelling novel. The prose can be neat and clean and sparse and then suddenly very florid and poetic. The 1997 production was very brave and far more faithful to the source material. My only wish for the 1997 film would have been an older actress to play Lolita. Nothing to do with age, everything to do with acting ability. Swain looked the part but never matched the fire power of Irons' performance as Humbert. And don't get me started on Melanie Griffith.

I loved Lolita as a teenager, and now in my 30s, I still think of it as a work of first-rate technical genius. Who writes prose like that? But as an anonymous commentator once said, "Nabokov's works remind me of his butterfly collection: intricate, florid, colorful, but oh so dead. "

For me, Lolita doesn't have the "feeling" or spontaneity that I like in my favorite literary works.

[quote]Sex between a 40 something year old man and a 14year old girl is always rape. Regardless of whether the child gives (the illusion of) consent or not

It’s interesting how many people now interpret what is essentially a US legal fiction as a scientific fact.

The age of consent is 17 in New York and 16 in Pennsylvania. Does that mean that a girl in New York is incapable of giving consent, but when she crosses the border into PA she suddenly matures emotionally?

Lolita was 12 years old in the book. Her experimenting sexually with Charlie, a child her own age, is normal. Being raped and abused by a middle aged man is not, and there is no way that it can be excused. Her running away with Quilty was her only escape, and her romanticizing Quilty, a pedophile himself, was her way of normalizing her abuse. Her later inability to self-reflect on her abuse and to treat it all dispassionatly, shows a real stunting of her maturity, due to the abuse she endured.

R47, I doubt there are any pedophiles reading Lolita to get off.

The Annotated Lolita is so helpful if one wants to catch all the allusions.

Good post, R126.

There is an unfortunate tendency to judge Nabokov's novel by its film versions, both of which bump up Lolita's age to something more palatable. There's also the fact that 'Lolita' has become a term used to refer to a teenage 'temptress' type. But Nabokov's Lolita is a little girl - she's 12. And Humbert's predilection for little girls is well-established - it's not girls in their mid-teens who turn him on.

[quote]Dominique Swain was an actual 15yo doing simulated sex scenes

It was SIMULATED that's why

[quote]There is an unfortunate tendency to judge Nabokov's novel by its film versions

The idiot author of the Twilight series named two characters Quil and Claire because she was only familiar with the Kubrick version of the film, and didn't realize that Quilty was a pedo.

It helped that she was too stupid to understand literary references and cinematic allusion, which you do have to understand for the 1960s version of Lolita, because they had to be ambiguous. And stupid people don't get ambiguity. Et voila, the Twilight series.

R131 Meyers a bit of a dimwit who somehow struck gold. And a bit of a Aryan supremacist too. I remember reading that she objected to casting anyone who wasn't 100 percent white in the twilight movie. She even refused to consider an Asian character.

I meant to write Meyers IS a bit of a dimwit

Some people seem to conveniently see 15 year old girls only as children when we all probably know that's not the case in many or even most cases. I'm obviously not saying it's ok for an adult to have sex with them but there's no denying that some 15 year old girls are sex hungry beasts, just like the boys at that age. When I was 15 many couples in my class were regularly having sex and some practically lived together. It's generally accepted that girls develop mentally a year or two earlier than the boys, which is why some 15 year old girls can be quite adult-like. Obviously they are not adults but pretending that they are overgrown little kids and totally devoid of sexual feelings is the reason there are so many teen pregnancies. The reality is teens love sex, although for most of us it was something we only did by ourselves. I myself would not have been ready to have sex at 15, but most of my friends were pretty much doing it regularly at that age. I had been bullied at school for being a girly boy and I was mentally crushed in many ways so sex at that time was not an option. I was 17 when I lost my virginity with a girl a year younger, and at 18 with a boy two years younger.

Do I want to have sex with teens? Nope, but neither do I pretend they are these totally innocent little lambs who are totally unable to make up their minds about anything. And yes, they should be protected from the predators who love teens. That said if teens older than 16 want to have sex with older people who am I to condemn them. I thought about this long and hard when Bryan Singer rumors started appearing, and tried to remember how I would've reacted at that age. The thing is if teens look for sex with older people they probably do want it and will find it. Things get different if they are manipulated into it, or obviously if they are physically forced.

Teen porn has always been huge. Just look at the so-called educational porn clips from the 70s and you see what I mean. Now, Lolita in Nabokov's novel was only 12, and that's way way too early to have sex with adults, or with anyone really. I had a female friend who told me she'd had an affair with her male teacher when she was 13 and he was around 30. I was absolutely appalled by this but she tried to play it down saying she had wanted it just as much. I doubt it was that simple but since the confession happened when she was trying to seduce me (she was 16, I was 17) while I was secretly having an affair with her 16 year old best female friend I was like well, life is complicated. Still, it's obvious her teacher was a total asshole.

I want more Jeremy Irons gossip from R2.

Whatever happened to Dominique swain? I'm always curious why some actors have such longetivity and others seem to lose their momentum.

There are many DLers who seem to have an impressive body of knowledge about the novel. It's been quite a few years since I read it.

I'm curious about the name Humbert Humbert. Does the narrator refer to himself by that name and what is its significance ? Can we guess what his real name is ? I recall reading somewhere that the desk clerk at The Enchanted Hunters hotel reacts badly at seeing the name signed by the narrator in the register - the implication being that it sounds Jewish to his ears.

That was because of a mistake R137. The clerk thought his name was Humberg and said there were no rooms but when HH corrected him, all was well.

R136, she has worked consistently since Lolita, but it's all been B-movies, straight to dvd/cable/streaming, TV sorts of things. Her only credit prior to Lolita was Face/Off. She doesn't seem to have gotten another role in a project that even approaches the kind of creative company and quality she was surrounded with in Lolita.

Is this some hysterical frau or a gay man doing a lot of pearl-clutching?

Speaking of girls being sex hungry beasts, my nephew who is 14 has girls offering to strip, give blow jobs and just about everything else. They are the aggressors, calling and texting all hours of the night. A year ago my sister caught him in bed with his clothes off and the girl, fully clothed, jerking him off.

A neighbor intercepted texts to her 16 year old from a 14 year old offering sex. These girls are exploring the power their sexuality has over guys.

The casualty of a hyper-eroticized, decadent, morally-relativistic society...

People in the movie are ACTING. It's not real.

They are telling the story of pedophilia, which is a story that should be told.

R141, teen girls are the worst--VERY aggressive sexually

In the book she was 11.

I seem to remember Jeremy Irons blowing his mouth off during the press tour saying it was ok to molest kids.

He's kind of a crazy cunt.

R141 It doesn't matter how sexual a kid is. It's the adults job to be an adult and say no. Teenagers are idiotic that's why there are laws to protect them.

I loved Dominique in the smokers, tart, and totally awesome.

My sisters and her friends were 17 when this was released. They all went in a gang into the city to watch LOLITA in an Arthouse cinema because they were in love with Jeremy Irons.

R17

[quote]The whole point of the book is that 'Lolita' might be as complicit as Humbert, OP.

It’s not, you dolt.

R17 I've never.. EVER read a less accurate summation of Lolita.

I enjoy the Kubrick version of LOLITA for the wry wit of his direction and the sheer amoral awfulness James Mason played. The scene in which he is lying in the bath, blithely enjoying a scotch, before being shocked into pretending he is mourning his wife is a hoot. It is one of Kubrick’s greatest films, and an excellent adaptation for the time. Kubrick really understood the tone of the novel, the New World vulgarity and appetites.

I love the Adrian Lyne version, too. It is a more serious version and more thorough in plot, but a little too taken with Humbert and with the “romance” of the situation. As with all his films it looks and sounds beautiful.

Fun fact: Roman Polanski cast Frank Langella in the THE NINTH GATE after admiring his balls-out performance as Clare Quilty. It is one of Polanski’s most uneven films and Johnny Depp is quite terrible but Langella is the best thing in it.

R17, next time you spy a copy of LOLITA, read the forward, then the afterward.

Then HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME.

FOREWORD (preface); AFTERWORD

if they made a movie with John C Reilly not irons or mason, no one on this thread would be projecting about teens giving it up for old dudes.

Between this movie and “Damage” I desperately wanted Jeremy Irons inside my teenage mussy at the time. Too bad he turned out to be such a dumbass.

There was a blind gossip post which said that both Irons and the director were banging Swain.

FFS the unreliability of Humbert's narration is central to why the book is still so unnerving to this day. We don't just take his word for everything, but we don't know if we should just take the opposite view either, as we have nothing else to go on.

It's an entirely valid viewpoint to say that Humbert raped Lola. It's also an entirely valid viewpoint to say Lola knew what she was up to and was an active participant. Both are suggested within the novel but have enough ambiguity surrounding them that we don't know for certain which is true. It's a very central part of what makes the book so important.

We are supposed to believe the other side of the story, r157.

There are indicators all through the book that whilst Dolores is a sexually inquisitive and sexually pretending teen who flirts with her step dad because she and her mother hate each other, she is immediately is way in over her head, when he takes her on the run and hates what he is doing to her. She doesn’t like it at all.

To give just one example out of many, did you miss the bit where she cried herself to sleep every night?

R158 - Did she cry herself to sleep every night because she missed her mother? Because she felt guilt for her death? Any and all of these theories are plausible because Nabokov, in his genius, made them all possible.

She was crying herself to sleep because she was anticipating the day she would no longer get to sample Humbert Humbert’s BWC!

R158 also when she starts screaming in the car and he realizes she's bleeding heavily from the " sex". He blames her hysterical reaction on her mercurial nature as a nymphette. Not her perfectly normal reaction as a recently raped orphan who thinks her rapist murdered her mother.

And also runs off with a child pornographer just to escape him.

And then there's the fact that he wants to knock her up so he can rape the babies.

Also the fact that she dies in childbirth because she ends up a trailer park wife at 14 and gets pregnant too young. He mentions it once as an aside and never again. The only tragedy for him is that she hit puberty and didn't remain a child forever.

Also she's not even a teen in the book. She's 11 years old the first time he rapes her. He never sees her for what she actually is. Only for what he wants her to be in order to justify his actions. Right down to the fact that he never even uses her real name.

People really don't read that book very closely.

R156 I wouldn't be surprised given the fucked up stuff he's said over the years.

R161, did you actually read the book???

The ambiguity within the narrative is central to the story telling.

Yes, it is wrong to abscond away with one’s stepdaughter, who is a child, but one has to allow themselves to recognize the ambiguity coming from HH’s POV, in order pick a side, or not, once completing the novel.

I think R161 read the book, R163. Yes HH is an unreliable narrator. Thanks for clueing us in.

R123 What about Melanie Griffith?

“ It's also an entirely valid viewpoint to say Lola knew what she was up to and was an active participant.”

11 year old girls aren’t into getting raped by old men. This “valid viewpoint” is valid to child rapists only.

r17/r161

[quote]“ It's also an entirely valid viewpoint to say Lola knew what she was up to and was an active participant.”

It's only a valid viewpoint if you view Humbert Humbert as a RELIABLE narrator.

Sorry r161, I meant r17/r163

I just found this review. It's kind of hilarious. Especially the last line!

Has anyone else read Frank Langella’s memoir chapter about William Styron? It’s ALL about dick size.

God bless Frank Langella, for such a proud am vain man he sure is game. Someone needs to make an animated gif of his lil weiner twirling about as he flees down that hallway.

I was obsessed with DAMAGE as a kid. My dad had taped A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE on VHS, assuming correctly I would need to watch it one day for school. The movie after it when it was televised was DAMAGE. Quite an eye-opener.

Charlotte: Hum, you just touch me, and I go as limp as a noodle. It scares me.

Humbert: Yes, I know the feeling.