Finally putting my English degree to use!!! Also, shoutout to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video and for the limited-time offer for my bestiessss! Take the quiz bit.ly/BrightCellarsShanspeare and comment your matches!! I'm tryna see something 🤔
Also, I know you prefaced the video by saying you would be saying his name "weird", but in an interview he quite literally instructed Americans to pronounce it exactly as you did, so nobody should have anything to complain about!
Took the quiz! I wish there was an option for those who are more into wine to have more questions that were wine specific. Don't get me wrong I love how accessible they are, but I'd like more customization. Got the same recs as you!
Loved this video! I swear Humbert is the most evil villain in the history of fictional villains. Yet somehow it flies over a shocking amount of people's heads! Also you look so pretty! I love the outfit and hair and makeup!
14:56 I heard somewhere that some kids that experience abuse from pdf files don't shower in order to repulse their abuser into not wanting to take advantage of them/r-pe them. I think Dolores wanted to illicit disgust in Humbert Humbert in order to keep distance between them and her to not get r-ped by him.
One thing I find amazing is the people who claim it is a "romance story" don't seem to realize that Nabokov is 100% on Dolores's side. In face, Nabokov himself is believed to have experienced childhood sexual abuse from a family friend as a young boy.
Nabokov makes it 100% clear through his writing that Humbert is a vile lying liar high on his own narcissism as he horrendously abuses and SAs Dolores, it's terrifying how people can read the whole book and miss out on that. Edit: and seeing it so clearly depicted in text felt really healing and validating. I have thankfully never suffered sexual abuse as a kid, just harassment from old creeps and the same kind of narcissim as Humbert's from my parents in non-sexually. Nothing was ever their fault, they had no responsibilities for their emotions while I had all the responsibility for their emotions and everything was always my fault and "I made them do it" and if it happened then I deserved it while they deserved nothing bad and acted like martyrs sometimes.
@@Call-me-Al yes exactly!!! That's what I came down here to say! The author was so upset. He said he thought he didn't have to explicitly state Humbert was evil! He said it was so obvious he is shocked how Delores was treated as anything other than an innocent victim. I agree! Humbert literally says he plans to get Delores pregnant than have kids with his daughter and get her pregnant etc so he would always have a young girl whenever the first one gets too old! Like how is that not the most evil thing a villain has EVER, in the history of fiction, planned to do. If he had said he planned to take over the world instead I guess that would make it more clear for the low 1... Q... people. 🙄
@@WhitneyDahlinIt's so vomit inducing how he had to say that the man who wanted to have children with his own daughter was a villain. Like yeah, I expect the fact that he groomed and manipulated a child to pass straight over their creepy heads, but the fact that he literally wanted to impregnate his daughter didn't tip them off???
I think it's an accidental glimpse into a cultural male perspective (or at least the Hollywood male perspective). Brooke Shield's story immediately comes to mind when I think of mainstream media and Dolores-- the child sexualized by the predatory (overwhelmingly male) gaze and many viewers don't pause to consider the issue because the setup of the whole thing places the predatory gaze as our screen surrogate, directing our own gaze. We have to be able to climb out of that gaze and not get swept along with it. Not for nothing, it seems like mostly men/people with internalized patriarchal beliefs have trouble stepping away from their problematic screen surrogate
Pervs: I was seduced by a child. Sane people: You, a grown adult with the physical, financial, mental, and emotional strength and maturity somehow couldn't resist a child.
‼️Dude the author was so upset. He said he thought he didn't have to explicitly state Humbert was evil! He said it was so obvious he is shocked how Delores was treated as anything other than an innocent victim. I agree! Humbert literally says he plans to get Delores pregnant than have kids with his daughter and get her pregnant etc so he would always have a young girl whenever the first one gets too old! Like how is that not the most evil thing a villain has EVER in the history of fiction planned to do. If he had said he planned to take over the world instead I guess that would make it more clear for the low 1... Q... people. 🙄
The normalisation of adult male interest in female children is a project that some sections of the male population have a vested interest in propagating.
"Straight from the horses mouth" too, that forward by the writer. My interpretation is that he wanted to write the story as commentary for that very thing that can happen, an example of it.
@@janetestherina7169 “it’s a fictional character not a real child” okay bro what do you find so appealing about the fictional character who has the proportions, voice, and behavior of real children?🤨
What if it’s a brilliant book with an irredeemable monster at the center and the captivating idea of ignorance in society as the foundation? That’s how I always understood it.
I have the same understanding of it, with the addition of being written by a very courageous man who was willing to go to *very* dark and extremely uncomfortable places to shed light on a serious, serious societal problem.
@@RexytheRexy I’m not completely sure but I heard that the author of the book was actually sexually abused as a child. But again, not %100 on that fact but if it is true that can tell you more about the book’s intentions. I just think he wrote it to try to shed light on how horrible and disgusting the thought process is of these creeps and he purposely didn’t put an actual girl on the original book cover so it wouldn’t be seen as condoning the sexualization of young girls , but now people use it to sexualize kids which he didn’t want so
honestly i can’t imagine reading lolita and thinking humbert was ever meant to be glamorized-both from people who find his relationship to dolores romantic or think nabokov agrees with his actions. it’s shown pretty much every 5 sentences that he has impaired reasoning and has to jump in circles to justify his behavior, which he knows is wrong. it’s kind of like my dark vanessa (vanessa’s pov) where the constant absurd defense of the perpetrator shows how the victim feels about the situation-tied between thinking it’s ok vs being scared to leave. i think that’s why many CSA survivors identify with dolores and the book even if she’s not the narrator.
12 year old girls aren't allowed to wear shorts to school in 103 degrees because they might "distract" the male teachers, but a book that exposes this perception for how common and horrifying it is, that's disgusting!
@@berrysuper5237sadly, my younger sister was forced to go home and change as her t shirt revealed one of her shoulders and her middle aged male teacher had complained that it was distracting him. She was eleven years old at the time.
Exactly! It makes me think, maybe the readers who find it “disgusting” are the ones, who immediately sexualise young girls in their mind? I’m reading the book currently and I admit, it is weird, but when you’re into the book, you notice how well written and how both beautiful and sad worlds collide.
People have a tendency to see media (as a whole) as being entertainment, and if it's entertainment, you can't possibly be creating something to disgust an audience. Even horror media is entertainment - it's a place to enjoy being scared because you're not actually in danger. That's my theory of it, anyway. They miss the fact that media is art, and art exists to ignite the whole spectrum of human emotion, not just the fun ones.
@@straberryshinigami15g97I hate the way that pop culture has romanticised Lolita and turned her into some sultry seductress, instead of realising that Humbert Humbert is obviously an extremely unreliable narrator as he is a literal pedophile and so he’s seeing a normal, pretty twelve year old girl as sexy. She is not actually sexy, of course she’s not, she’s twelve. But, the book itself is very intelligent and thought-provoking. The whole unreliable narrator thing only further adds to that
Then they completely ignore people who romanticize and hold up serial killers and listen to podcast about them and find real life videos, audio, and pictures of victims “entertaining” this disconnect is insane! Like if you like a horror movie or movie with a morally grey character then you’re a creep but listening to a podcast about a very RECENT murder for entertainment every night and watching videos of the day it happened is somehow just innocent and normal. Even worse they say it’s “educational” when literally most cases they talk about there was little to nothing the victims could have done differently. People often get more mad about fiction characters and events than real life ones
publishers putting sexualized girls on the book cover was the worst decision ever, nabokov just wanted a plain green cover (the channel man carrying thing has a video on this very topic)
Especially after Lolita movies, even Lolita’s book publishers failed Lolita, specifically the Lolita book covers. The movies were supposed to be adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, but they were instead made into an age gap fantasy. The movie producers failed Lolita. They barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
The only, ONLY(!!) way I can reconcile with that decision is that the girl on the cover depicts how *Humbert* perceives Dolores, in his own eyes. It's his own twisted perspective of her that he is projecting throughout the story.
Yeah. It's usually always bigots who are into the sexual underage Lolita stuff. It's gross. Then they claim trans people are gross, like lloook in the mirror.
This so needed to be heard they are missing the point of the whole damn book!! And what also needs to be talked about is the real beef between the old generations and the new generations. We have all did the same stuff as kids and now teens are getting shamed like never before. At least twice a month you will see older generations make jokes about young generations. Mainly about us not being able to simply carry water to the kitchen the most dumbest stuff. Yet they claim they are more matuer than 2000s kids. I get I have seen disrepectful kids on social media but if there was social media back then for older generations there will be the same amount of disrespectful kids in the older generations when they were small. I now feel like as a 16 year old I can stand on my own two feet and say I feel like the older generation of women are jealous of the new younger generations of teens for our age and our youth. Pls let me explain and let me know if it's even a bit accurate. I've seen so many 30 year old women wearing stuff that meant for 12 year olds and down to wear. And they wear it in a sexual manner if you search lingerie you are bound to walk into school girl uniforms. I also see couples on all social media using "cute" voices to there boyfriends and husbands. And you have to short because i feel like i can protect you more excuses is sooo old. I know it's because she looks like and is built like a minor. oh and If your tall you have to be flat-chested so you can at least feel like a minor. I wonder were all the real women went. And why so menay of adults still try to find sneaky ways to be pedos with out being called one. Because the famous line of "she is 18 so it shouldn't matter". He should love you for you and not what you have to pretend to be and get mad when you aren't what he wants anymore. That why they mostly cheat with younger women. I'm just scared that at some point the men are gonna get sick of the fake kid look that is every where (or in other words the cute look)and want the real thing.
@@Ur_mindfuldiscipl3 I don't think there's anything wrong with it being an aesthetic. People dress in historical fashions that doesn't mean they have historical values.
I read Lolita at 19 and I loved it. Nabokov is a master at his craft. I think Lolita is so upsetting and uncomfortable because (other than the obvious) it holds a mirror up to the reader and society as a whole, and how normalized the sexualization of young women is - and especially how profitable it is
So common and profitable, that they literally made a movie that completely twisted the message of this book that was anti-creep to be pro-creep so it'd be profitable. The irony
the only reason there was pushback about this book is it's the few pieces of media that it exposes the horrors of grooming and child predators instead of normalizing it
Meanwhile someone like Splatt Malsh is on record straightface advocating for child brides. I unfortunately don't think the novel will ever cease to be relevant. A faction of masculine boomer "cancel victimization" is absolutely them getting side eyed or shut down by younger men around them wanting nothing to do with the casual sexualization of teen girls many are way too OK with. Obligatory not all boomer men, but u get the idea. I'm just glad it's becoming less socially permissible to make gross comments about minors even if it's not happening fast enough.
@moealiceforte there's videos explain that movie on here too and the outrage from it, what I remember is that the only bad part was the pictures they chose to put as the cover. other than that it's actually a good movie about what it's like to be a young girl.
The Lolita podcast is something I cannot recommend enough. It goes into every detail if the book, the adaptations, and actresses deemed lolitas. I think the book's curse is to be misunderstood. It's not a romance as it's often portrayed, and it's not a "disgusting" book like other describe it. I think it's genius how people who read it actually fell for humbert humbert's lies and charms and never look for Dolores in it.
How is a book about a pedo obsessing over a 12 year old little girl and moving into her home and getting with her mother to try and assault her and be close to her NOT disgusting? Are you okay in the head??
It even says that on the back of the book! The book is a tragedy, like in most tragedies, every character by the end of the book dies. It’s also a tragedy because the movie adaptations failed Lolita. Instead of being an adaptation of the novel, it was made into an age gap fantasy, which was the opposite of the author’s intention. The movies barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse. Especially after the movies, the book publishers also failed Lolita. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
@MinisDunyasi5 the book is written from the first perspective - so how else are they supposed film lolita? If we don't see it from Humbert’s point of view, then it won't be accurate to the book, changing the perspective would completely alter the story! Also, I think you have completely misinterpreted both the book and Nabokov's intentions when writing it - Nabokov has said many, many, times that there was no meaning or message in his writing, he wrote for the pleasure of writing and he hoped the reader would get a similar pleasure reading his prose.
I don’t know how anyone can read the line “she had nowhere else to go” or the part about Dolores crying herself to sleep every night, after he r@pes her, and somehow still think it’s a love story. It’s very evident that Dolores is a victim of a p3do’s abuse.
I think people's reaction to banning Lolita does a disservice to the people who read her story and have connected to her. For some of them reading Lolita helps give language and explains what happened to them and what their abuser did to them. Without the ability to recognize and speak to their experiences in the world victims won't able to articulate the harm done to them. Lolita is important in its almost banality. Humbert is almost painfully average and its through this averageness that his access to Dolores is unquestioned and he's able to harm her.
I really wish people wouldn't be so indulgent about reading Lolita. I can't speak for all SA victims, but to me, I wish at least one person in my life had read the book, and was able to see how Humbert Humbert's subtly wicked actions and behaviors mimicked some of the people around them. Maybe then I wouldn't have been groomed at the age of 7 and then r@ped when I was 8 years old.
and the other side of that is that even for people who never went through what Dolores did, it is still a very important and urgent discussion in our society. People who say it should be a banned book dont seem to realize that people who prey on kids/teens have been preying on them way before this book was ever written! The book was supposed to make people confront the awful reality of our societies and how we leave our kids vulnerable and even go as far as putting them in harm's way by never talking about abuse with them, by welcoming the Humberts of the world into our lifes and being charmed by their words, their status or wathever (like some readers apparently did). all because we choose to stay ignorant, we choose to be blind to a certain reality because it is too disgusting/too awful to us. as if choosing to pretend is isnt real was enough to make it go away. Worst of all, the Humberts out there know ignorance and silence are their greatests allies, so is better to them lolita keep being misinterpreted and banned anyways. better waste time discussing if we should be reading the book than discussing the themes of the book and getting right into what really matters, right?
Exactly. Same effect as with those wanting to ban sex ed: victims no longer have the language or can identify what happened when they try to ask for help.
“A good artist comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.” I think this phrase really describes our polarized views on this novel, where people who have experiences similar to Dolores are comforted by her and reclaim the story; while anyone who hasn’t been hurt in those ways is going to feel disgusted by the book, which they should.
I finally read the book this year and it’s almost like Humbert is grooming the reader as well as Dolores. Like the first ~questionable~ scene of her sitting on his lap made me scream internally but the full-on sex scenes later were just like “yep, that’s happening.”
IMO the first questionable scene is before that, when he licks her eye to get an eyelash out. To me, it’s a more realistic and subtle first attempt to break down boundaries. He has plausible deniability, he’s getting her used to him being close to her, he pushes what is acceptable, and he pushes past the expected boundary by licking the other eye.
Just a note: I think it’s really important to distinguish between “nymphet fashion,” aka girls trying to look like a young Dolores Haze, and “lolita fashion.” Lolita fashion began in Harajuku in the 1980s and has NOTHING to do with the book or the sexualization of children. The whole point of lolita fashion is presenting over-the-top femininity without appealing to sexuality or the male gaze. The silhouettes are inspired by Victorian and Rococo fashion.
Lolita fashion was named after the book because it was a rebellion against creepy men looking at teenage them in a sexualized creepy way. That's the only link. They wanted to reclaim their bodies and reclaim fashion for themselves instead of the fashion adult men liked seeing them in.
Tru tru, while nymphet is based off of dolores haze's clothing but in the pop culture depiction of her, althought it is separate in the camps that want to be dolores cuz they see her as a tragic hero and people who wear it to reclaim their lost youth and to reclaim their own personhood. lolita is just over the top feminity away from the male gaze and patriarchal expectation and view of femininity and women and cuteness. Althought i hate how some people sexualised it tho like icky people in this case and esp women truly cant have anything.
@@moonlight4665 the same fringe way feet have, right? Please? As in ignorable weirdos that have no real impact on anything, right? I mean there are even people who sexualize balloons, and nobody pays attention to them.
As one of those rare male survivors of SA? I was relieved to see this handled with such care. Thank you. ❤. I never realized that the book could help people realize that what was done to them was wrong.
Nabokov was a survivor of childhood SA, there are scenes from the book literally taken from his own experiences. I think it's very natural to find a sort of understanding and healing in the book.
Yeah I remember in the comments of Doki Doki Discourse's Lolita vid I got the Japanese fashion style confused with the widespread misunderstanding of the book. I was corrected and felt really bad about it
I could not agree with you more. I wore a lot of gothic Lolita fashion was back in the day when Malice Mizer was popular amongst the gothic scene in Japan, Europe, and parts of the counter-culture in the U.S. (yes, I am old, decrepit Millennial). I know that singer and violinist, Manna, is kind of credited with the rise of visual Kei culture and the aesthetic in Japan. Gothic Lolita fashion actually made me feel confident in my body and I never viewed it as anything sexual or to be fetishized. In all honesty, it seen as a rebellion against sexualization of teens and gender norms. Lolita fashion is in no way connected to the novel as you previously mentioned.
I feel that the romanticism behind Lolita also has to do with how it is marked. The bright colored covers (heart sunglasses, red lollipop) or the romantic one like the one Shanspeare has. The covers take away from the story and make it look as a quote tragic lovestory. I feel that the best cover is the one for i think Australia that shows a photo of Humbert where he is all sweaty and looks uncomfortable and make you look at the man who destroyed the life of a child. The way media is presented influences how we digest it and come to perceive it.
I think that’s one of the points that Nabokov was also trying to address in this book though. Humbert is meant to be “charming” in society and to make you realized pdf files are not just the “weirdos”/social outcasts that you imagine but can in fact be anyone around you. This in fact is why people end up misinterpreting the message of the book and blaming Dolores, and why in real life, they will also refuse to believe victims or they believe in what shanspeare was talking about in the video w “nymphets” in pop culture because they end up believing pdf file over victims because of their image/words. To your point though, I believe Nabokov was also against depicting Dolores on the cover and I also agree… Her image in the novel is extremely warped due to the narrator being biased and putting an image of her on the cover is wrong and untrue to how she actually is.
I like the cover that is an extreme closeup of a little girls face, completely neutral and blank expression. The girl also looks like she could be 8 or 9 years old.
Especially after Lolita movies, even Lolita’s book publishers failed Lolita, specifically the Lolita book covers. The movies were supposed to be adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, but they were instead made into an age gap fantasy. The movie producers failed Lolita. They barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
Nabakov was also very clever with the naming of Dolores and the book. Dolores’ name is sad and poetic. It’s Spanish and means sorrows, sorrowful and pain. Lolita is a word/name Humbert fabricated; it wasn’t used before the book was published. Humbert made up Lolita. By calling her Lolita, he erases her personhood and her pain in their interactions. He's hiding her pain within his sick fantasy. Dolores never calls herself “Lolita”. The name "Lolita" is used only by Humbert. Other characters refer to her as "Lo", "Lola", or "Dolly". Humbert calling her Lolita denies her subjectivity. Humbert also says, "Lo-lee-ta" Humbert tears Dolores' whole essence to shreds. He rips her apart and dehumanises her. In real life, it's part of how abusers can attack the victim; by renaming them, they're erasing their prior identity and exerting control over them.
I'm not shaken by much, especially when reading but Lolita was a horror story encased in sunshine and plaid dresses. The way that some people portray the relationship in a good or sexual light is both terrifying and sickening
As a survivor, Lolita is an extremely important book for us. Dolores was a very relatable character, and I always feel very personally offended and disgusted when she is sexualized.
I was readying Lolita, when I was 17 old, not a child but not an adult. Even through the beautiful language only Nabokov knows how to write I clearly sensed that Lolita hates the protagonist.
One thing to remember is that her name is Dolores. Referring to her by Lolita kinda misses the point because she hated that nickname and it was the name her predator gave her. Not hating, I totally agree.
You don't even have to sense it. It's not subtext. She tells him directly that he ruined her life. He describes her as emotionally absent with him, and by the end even he realizes what he did was horribly wrong and calls it a tragedy.
@@alexba1ley The people who like this book for the wrong reasons probably read that part and thought "it's so tragic how Dolores betrayed him and put him to jail, what a tragic love story 😢😢😢😢 she was a deceitful nymphette after all"
I think the only way Lolita can be adapted to a film is via the use of animation. That way we can avoid the obvious issue with the use of child actors (lots of skilled voice actors can do child voices) while keeping Dolores looking like a kid. The explicit sexual abuse scenes (that are actually very few) can be walked around with visual metaphors like in other animated media like “the belladonna of sadness”. To be honest I don’t think this is a story that has to be adapted, but it’s the only way I see it being done ethically
It's funny you brought up You because when I read You, Lolita is exactly what I thought of while I was reading it. The books have very similar vibes of taking you inside the mind of the worst sort of men in society and the ways they justify their monstrous behavior.
I actually never knew You was an adaptation from a book! I only known it as a Netflix show and felt kinda weird about it because I had friends who felt it was so "romantic" for someone to love you so much that they'll stalk you??? it all makes sense now that it used to be a satirical book but damn I guess it got lost in translation
@@liliesstarlight That book had me fucked all the way up. I read it the year it came out and the author, in my opinion, did such an incredible job getting into the mind of this guy who is delusional and behaves like a monster but who does not see things that way at all... and telling it from his point of view was genius because there were moments where I forgot that this is all made up in his head and the reality is he is a dangerous monster stalking his prey and I would find myself rooting for him. Then I would remember.... I would recommend that book to anyone. I have never watched the show because I was sure the show could not do what the book did but I recommend the book to anyone.
This reminds me of a book I read as a teen in which the preteen girl gets a crush on her new neighbors whos in his 30s. She doesn’t do anything really crazy, but tries to hang out around him and is saving up for a pretty dress to get noticed by him... and guess what, he does nothing. He acts like a normal adult would around a child, I'm not sure if he even notices her "advances". Because thats what a normal person would do. So no matter how much Lolita tried to seduce Humbert, him engaging was all on him, not her. I can't believe people can think it's a romance when its a critique of his lies and actions blaming her for his disgusting actions. Ps: At the end of the book the guy's son or nephew shows up who is the girl's age and also has the same features she liked about him, so that was a pretty sweet ending.
I found it!... But it's not available in English 🙁 It's "Születésnap" by Szabó Magda Translated: "Birthday" by Magda Szabó It's in Hungarian, which I thought it might be. I was hoping maybe the book was a translation or had translations into other languages, but it doesn't. So if anyone knows Hungarian, I recommend it, otherwise I'm sorry I couldn't be more help.
This also reminds me of how in Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the main characters, Asuka, has a huge crush on her primary caretaker. There are several scenes where she tries to seduce him, to get him to see her as a “woman”, but every time Kaji doesn’t engage with it, and at one point firmly tells her that she’s still a child. I remember finding that scene in particular really moving when I first watched it, because a adult man refused to take advantage of and abuse a vulnerable child. Of course, NGE is also infamous for its sexualisation of it’s characters (including pre-teen/teen girls), and the debates around the purpose and intention of this (especially when a lot of the “waifu-ing” of the two female leads comes from merchandising, marketing, etc., because in the show both of them are subversions of their respective tropes, and their unresolved traumas define their characters and ultimately define them as distinctly not romantic interests for the main character - although i’m sure you could have a discussion at length about how things are presented visually versus the written text itself). But, I still think about Kaji a lot, and how he was the ONLY adult in that show who actually treated those children AS children, and seemed to have their best interests at heart.
@alexandraboth7052 Ja, hát az kár ha az bezárt, de elég népszerű könyv vagyis nem tudom elképzelni, hogy a legtöbb másik könyvesboltban nem lenne ott, vagy ne lehetne be szerezni. Vagy ha még sincs ott, online könyves boltba tuti rá találni.
I could definitely appreciate the tonal similarities and thematic alignments, however, seeing the beautiful writing of Nabokov followed by the awful writing (my opinion, obviously) of that other book that I couldn't be bothered to look up made me cringe.
I wonder why the author wrote the novel on index cards and then was going to set it on fire. The reason why the novel exists was because his wife saved the book.
sometimes i feel like most of the media or people on social media do understand lolita but just actively choose to make an aesthetic out of it or sexualize it, just because of the way the movie was filmed i feel like any person with common sense gets the message but just ignores it, which is very disturbing tbh
your comment actually answered my question on how do people misunderstand that book when it was clearly stated in the beginning and Dolores herself stated it was abuse? yeah people just ignore it because I feel like it is pretty straightforward how disgusting Humbert is Jordan Theresa's video on Lolita actually talked about how she thinks Lolita should be filmed if people REALLY wanna adapt it again, show Dolores as maybe just a figure. an idea. a piece of clothing, a bow or something. like never actually show the person. I mean that is how Humbert sees her anyway
It's a world where there are countdowns to celebrities turning 18 so that everyone can bring out all the material they have had in secret that has freshly become legal to fawn over in public. Of course they think this book is a romance.
Even on the back of the book, it says Lolita isn’t a love story. The book is a tragedy, like in most tragedies, every character by the end of the book dies. It’s also a tragedy because the movie adaptations failed Lolita. Instead of being an adaptation of the novel, it was made into an age gap fantasy, which was the opposite of the author’s intention. The movies barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse. Especially after the movies, the book publishers also failed Lolita. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
I read Lolita in HS as a requirement in English class. It was instructional in a lot of areas: consuming graphic media, dealing with the strong feelings it produces, taking a critical eye to the literature (as you do here). the most valuable thing i took from this book was a practical look at what manipulation and abuse look like.
I'm sorry you went through that. And i hope you can heal. You were failed by those around you and what happened was abhorrent. I hope you're doing ok now, and i wish you the best.
I can definitely see in the initial reaction to the book how society in general reacts to victims of csa. Our daring to speak about our trauma is much more offensive to them than an actual pedophile and even by speaking of what happened to us as children we are labeled as pedophiles or potential predators. This has happened to me in person with a therapist assuming I was a pedophile the very first session when I told her I had been raped as a child and now fear children because they trigger my memories. The worst part was she was okay with it, she thought I was a danger to children and was okay with it, I felt deeply violated and immediately switched therapists
That bit about the silence of Dolores really hit me. I remember one of the very first times I finally got my husband to _talk_ to me about just how bad our relationship had become. He soberly noted that he wasn't getting back massages and hugs anymore. I tried to tell him that he had begun to act and react in ways that made me feel very unsafe with him -- much less in any mood for closeness or intimacy. I gently tried to ask him *why* his behaviors -- why all of the implications he had put forth during the courtship about how he wanted to co-exist and support each other and have our home together -- had seemingly gone up in a smoke of incompetence and sabotage at the most, annoyed and snappish apathy at the least. He interrupted me with a sad smile and said: "It's okay. The you in my head always hugs me and says 'good night'." I could tell that he wanted me to feel sorry for him, but the hair stood up on my head. That was the moment I knew that our marriage had been a terrible, terrible mistake. This video is the first time ever since that I'm hearing a similar sentiment spoken by a man either in fiction or out of it -- but goodness if this shoe doesn't fit the foot! I wonder if this is a pattern with men, especially toxic and abusive men? How many wives discovered, in growing horror, that they were reduced to little more than a penciled drawing of a person: erased and redrawn by their man the very *moment* they had their wives "tied down"? Just how many men, in sacrifice to the patriarchy, and in aspiring feverishly to the fondly-remembered, yet *poisoned,* awful marriages of their parents, slew the reality of the woman _standing right in front of them,_ on the altar of their hollow imaginations? How many women throughout the history of modern patriarchy have been similarly swathed in that quiet, smothering, tomb-like cocoon?
Every once in awhile something comes along and describes a concept in such a way it leaves me suddenly feeling stripped bare of protective layers with an irrational urge to huddle. The feeling of being an animal of prey suddenly thrust into an open, exposed area without a crack to hide in and the world so dark anything could be about to reach for you. Perhaps it's the sudden opening of the unrealized or even the ripping of denial... But today it was this video and you. I mean this as a compliment though, in case you're worried. Those moments may be unsettling and even painful but they are moving nonetheless and help push me to expand my world. Every terrifying expanse I stumble into and make it back alive makes one more unnamed or unspoken fear into something that I know can be conquered. You shook me but I am pleased to be moving.
I think the mainstream has a hard time with unreliable narrators. Ex., the hate Bridget Jones' Diary gets for the way that the protagonist pursues thinness. There's absolutely no indication that the ways Bridget goes about losing weight are good or healthy, but because she's the main character and we hear her story through her eyes, people think that the book/movie is about starving yourself for self esteem...when reading it makes it obvious that the author was going for the opposite. (Particularly in the book, Bridget's friends get really concerned about how emaciated she is)
"Lolita exists in pop culture, not as an influence on that culture, but a confirmation of it." I've never been one to quote a youtube video in the comments, but this line was so perfectly put that it honestly floored me. Creeps will always see themselves in Humbert and fall for his self-justifications as validation of their own feelings and actions, but I don't think it's the fault of the book for so convincingly portraying that kind of person.
also, HH is an unreliable narrator, that's the whole point. dolores might've had a childish crush on her mother's new boyfriend, but that does not excuse HH's actions. it's sadder that lolita dies at the end of childbirth
As someone who was the younger part of this horrible type of "relationship", when I read the book I realized so many things. Those guys act like the younger girl they're with are the exception and that they'd never do that under normal circumstances, but she's so special that he couldn't resist. When the truth is very much the opposite: all of his "relationships" are like that. He specifically looks for young girls and they're always the same age, while he himself ages away. As a lit major, I thought of publishing an article about this book but it got too damn personal. If I could tell every girl about the real life Humberts and protect them, I would.
Kids have crushes and try to do the embarrassing "flirting" attempts, it's totally cringe and up to the adults to not respond with anything. I wish the older guys (adults) it was so cool to be associated with as a girl treated me the way I treat children as an adult now. Lolita is too real. Nothing a child can do leads to an adult abusing them. I loved the Kubrick adaptation and I think it really got it across.
The interpretation that Deloris has brought her own abuse onto her is infuriating to me in two ways. First, there is the obviously disgusting victim blaming, the ridiculous notion that a female child has some responsibility to not be too tempting to men. But as a man, I am also infuriated at the attempt to excuse the behavior of weak disgusting men, by portraying all of us as these unaccountable lascivious losers who cannot help but assault everything with a vagina. I bristle at the notion that to be a man is to be weak before beauty, more so at the idea that the beauty of a child, innocent and devoid of sexuality, can somehow strip me of my senses and provoke me ardent violation of basic decency. There aren't powerful enough words in the English language to describe the disgust and anger I feel toward someone who strides right past refusing accountability to indicting all men with an inborn inability to be just and true and unmotivated to such vile appetites, all as a pathetic attempt to avoid the responsibility for one's own actions and choices. As we say today, miss me with that bullshit!
THANK YOU! Why are so many men okay with being portrayed like this? To just accept this idea that you're a slave to sex and a predator by nature is weird.
Thank you. Just reading the top goodreads reviews by men made me so uncomfortable. I'm glad to know there were men who didn't so grossly misunderstand the novel.
thank you for this video! I find comfort in both the book and the 90s film because I’m a CSA survivor and whenever I’ve expressed my gratitude for it, I’ve been met with comments telling me I’m a disgusting person who needs help, when their opinion is based off misinformation and a lack of understanding. this video made me feel really seen ❤
I like how you mentioned that what makes Lolita uncomfortable for many to read is how it illuminates the prominence of ordinary men who have an attraction to minors. I have always thought pedophilia was more common in ordinary people (primarily men) than people want to talk about.
Man when I first read Lolita the cover legit said something along the lines of a beautiful love story (thanks vanity fair) omg reading it was me screaming the whole time that it was not a love story but a horror idk what that reviewer was smoking
There's a bunch of songs about Lolita in the non-English speaking world. One of them, the one that shocks me the most (because it was a hit in the Hispanosphere) is Belinda's Lolita. Here are some of the lyrics translated from Spanish: "You can't resist my heart-shaped glasses. Without a doubt Nabokob wrote it [the book], but in reality it was I who invented it [the book]. My life is like a video game. I press a button and I get what I want. This is what I want: pink-colored nights, provocative lips. I am your doom, I break your heart". I hate that song so much
DISGUSTING. They're literally talking about a child that hadn't even hit puberty when the novel started. Would they say the same thing about their younger sisters or their younger relatives? Absolutely disgusting.
Pop culture really didn’t understand Lolita and failed Lolita. Such as the Lolita movies. The movies were supposed to be adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, but they were instead made into an age gap fantasy. The movie producers failed Lolita. They barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. The abuse was heavily romanticised, and made it seem like a love story. Which was the opposite of the author’s intention, even in the back of the book it says Lolita is not a love story. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse. Especially after Lolita movies, even Lolita’s book publishers failed Lolita, specifically the Lolita book covers. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
Thank you for mentioning the lack of correlation to the fashion subculture. It’s all about focusing on fashion devoid of the sexualization of femininity and so the conflating usually goes completely against the movement’s purpose.
17:33 this book is very good for young people to read. I read it in high school and it helped me to avoid older men who tried sexualised young women like me. This book sees right through them.
I was 10 when I recognized (because of a comment) that I was being sexualized just for existing in my body (pre-puberty). I remember the exact moment to this day and I’m over 60 now. Thank you for the video. I also highly recommend Jamie Loftus’ (yes, you pronounced it right) podcast on Lolita.
i think lolita sways you into the roller coasters of grooming. not only is it written in the point of view of the perpetrator, but it portrays the “good things” about him,like his gifts for her. but then throws you back into the abuse cycle.
i felt that way too while reading it. it’s an interesting undertone/undercurrent that, idk. helps me connect with her. i’ve never been assaulted as a young girl, but as a conventionally pretty girl, i relate so much with the near whiplash of the compliment of being attractive but the fact it has always come from old men from the time i was a small child. men get giddy and weirdly fascinated with pretty girls, like little girls. Literal random people telling my parents i’m gorgeous blah blah blah. it makes me sick. i couldn’t just exist as a kid. i had to be pretty to feel good enough. i feel like it left me pining for male attention, it groomed and shaped me and to only feel good enough if i was pretty enough. Culturally, i feel groomed. Society grooms little girls into messes like me who let old men give them compliments when i wish i told them to “f*ck off”. quite the double edged sword. like cool i’m pretty but like is that all men (and women who perpetuate these things) care for??? like can i walk outside and not feel like meat?? i’ve felt like meat since i was old enough to speak. it’s exhausting also sorry for long comment TLDR my girl faye is so real for this comment LOL
I recommend the double feature: Lolita, the book from the perspective of a horrible person who does a good job persuading the reader they're not so bad vs. No Longer Human, the book from the perspective of a not-so-good person who does a good job persuading the reader they're a despicable degenerate.
I remember reading this book in my English class one time and I had a male teacher who seemed pretty "weird". Like the kind of "weird" that regular kids was afraid of for no reason (fyi he was one of the best English teachers I had). So one day I was reading the book and he spotted what I was reading and asked my views about it. I simply replied "it's not a romance novel, it's literally a novel that was made as a cry for help in Nabokov's case and what happened to Dolores was never her fault and Humber Humbert should go die in a hole for eternity" and his eyes just lit up. Funny thing was that during that time other kids in my grade was reading the book and THEY called it a love story and was super relieved to find out I didn't. Oh and also the fact I called her by her actual name and not Lolita seemed to make him pleased too.
After reading Lolita - and especially the end when the reader can attest of the aftermath of Humbert absolutely destroying Dolores psychologically - I don’t get how anyone could view this story as a romance or something of that kind…
I don’t know how anyone can read the line “she had nowhere else to go” or the part about Dolores crying herself to sleep every night, after he r@pes her, and somehow still think it’s a love story. It’s very evident that Dolores is a victim of a p3do’s abuse.
don’t quote me on this but i’m pretty sure lolita fashion comes from discourse surrounding the book… lolita is about a young girl being abused and losing her childhood by being sexualized, so as a response lolita fashion is reclaiming girlhood without it being sexualized . which is why it’s girly but also based on modest victorian clothing. i think the fashion came from a feminist mindset.
From what I can tell of the history I have access to (important to note that I do not speak Japanese myself and have to rely on others translations), we will probably never know for certain the intentions/context/origin of the word being used for the fashion. But imo the focus should be on how insistent the majority of the community has been on separating itself from the novel and everything related to it for decades.
Actually, lolita fashion comes from a full understanding of the book. It's not a secret that Japanese women and girls are infantalised, and the books release in Japan allowed the discourse to be brought to light. Lolita fashion is about women and girls (or anyone) taking the cuteness and young look for themselves and saying "I want to look like this for myself, not cus it attracts men." The fashion is empowering cus it's people taking back the innocence for themselves. The history is quite interesting to look at, I recommend looking for it yourself!
@@Rene-xi3so Wow, this is interesting background. Did not know that at all. The name still disturbs me because "Loli"/"lolita" cannot be divorced from Delores who is written as a character who is harmed, and that harm makes me flinch because it can't be undone or dressed up, but knowing this potential background does help me see Loli fashion differently. Thank you for sharing
Nabokov masterfully and carefully writes Humbert Humbert as a manipulative yet hypocritical and dangerous man all in the character’s perspective. It reminds me of my ex who had groomed me. It taught me that he did not like me for me but rather for my young age and vulnerability. Hard to accept but absolutely necessary. The movies did not do this book justice. It did not show Humbert’s manipulative nature, and how he had been attracted to minor girls before Dolores. I almost would argue that the movies did this purposefully.
Thank you for the video, Shanspeare! As someone who has been dealing with unwelcome attention of adults since I was 10, I am enraged and heartbroken by the entire existence of the “loleeta” and “coquette” subcultures. One part of me wants to slap those girls and tell them to go do their homework, and the other part wants to give them a big hug and tell them they don’t have to play that part to feel valued. P.S. I’m Russian and you nailed the pronouncement of Vladimir Nabokov!
I think Lolita is also a good example of how depiction does not always equal endorsement. We should also consider HOW a heavy subject is portrayed. As you've said in the video, Dolores' absence/silence and the sudden dramatic moments that interrupt Humbert's idealized prose clearly show that Nabokov isn't romanticizing the abuse taking place, without any need to hammer the point down any further, besides what he writes in the introduction. As for the suggestion that it is impossible to make a good adaptation of the book, I think I might agree. Not because I think it can't be done without sexualizing the story (using Humbert's prose as narration throughout the movie and then contrasting it on screen with what's really happenning, Dolores' side of things, could work to convey the tone of the novel) but because filming it being as accurate as possible would surely be an harrowing experience for the director, the cast and the audience, so it would be best to avoid it, especially if the approach to the original material isn't the right one. Lastly (this comment is already uber-long, yes i'm procrastinating something, how did you know XD?), a round of applause for the point about how abuse is not justified even if young girls show interest in a relationship (even if this is clearly not the case of the novel) because THE ADULTS should clearly know better and should not be taking advantage of them.
My introduction to this book was during high school (~16 years ago) when we had to read some classic book and write an essay about it. I saw the book in second hand bookstore and bought it without knowing much about it, other than it was controversial. It was a challenging read for certain. Read it in Finnish back then, but now I kinda want to read it in English as well.
Lolita isn’t Dolores’ story. We don’t get her perspective throughout the story. It’s Lolita’s story. And Lolita isn’t Dolores. Lolita is Humbert’s delusion of Dolores. Humbert buys Dolores new clothes and accessories to make his delusion of Lolita come to life. When he explains the “love” (which in reality is pe@dophili@ and lust), he feels for her; it’s not towards Dolores; it’s towards Lolita. Dolores isn’t Lolita; she doesn’t become Lolita either. She’s still Dolores, but Humbert’s delusional and lustful mind believes she’s Lolita. Nabakov was also very clever with the naming of Dolores and the book. Dolores’ name is sad and poetic. It’s Spanish and means sorrows, sorrowful and pain. Lolita is a word/name Humbert fabricated; it wasn’t used before the book was published. Humbert made up Lolita. By calling her Lolita, he erases her personhood and her pain in their interactions. He's hiding her pain within his sick fantasy. Dolores never calls herself “Lolita”. The name "Lolita" is used only by Humbert. Other characters refer to her as "Lo", "Lola", or "Dolly". Humbert calling her Lolita denies her subjectivity. Humbert also says, "Lo-lee-ta" Humbert tears Dolores' whole essence to shreds. He rips her apart and dehumanises her. In real life, it's part of how abusers can attack the victim; by renaming them, they're erasing their prior identity and exerting control over them.
i’ve seen a lot of lolita analyses and video essays, but yours is by far my favorite!! i love how you go a step further and look into parts of our culture that no one else really talked about, and your all around editing/fashion/cadence is incredible, as usual. 100/10 video i love it :-)
I began trying to read Lolita a few weeks ago, but I wasnt really able to get through it, but I believe that it is such an important book and topic, even though I was unable to get through the entire thing. ❤
this is such an excellent video, lolita was a ridiculously hard book to get through but it is one that continues to ping into my mind, and the disconnect between the book and the culture surrounding it has been something that has bothered me for a long time. you laid it out so perfectly. this video is like a sigh of relief thank u for making it
I just watched the 1997 version & I was so shocked, disgusted, intrigued, couldn’t look away all in one damn breath. I had to know how it ended. The ending gave me Justice with his final moments of accountability of ruining an innocent child. After looking up many reviews I’ve decided to read the book and maybe even watch the earlier version to compare & contrast. The author, from what I’ve seen, is a very talented writer. When it came to where the story originated from I wasn’t able to get enough from his organized interviews.
i read and watched lolita as i was being groomed/abused by an older man (who completely endorsed it). now i reread it with a different lens and broke down crying; for dolores, for myself, for all the girls who experienced the same thing. i love coquettish fashion, gingham and the sorts, but i will always have a deep hatred for the grown women and men who used said aesthetics as a way to lure young girls into a lifestyle that is so DEEPLY dangerous to their mental and physical health. i see girls on tiktok calling themselves lolitas and posting their conversations with predatory older men. i just want more for girls.
Truly, what made Lolita grossest for me when I finally read it, is that all I knew was the pop culture depiction of it. I didn’t know it was a story of a pedophile. And it horrified me that SO MANY PEOPLE (see, straight men) saw this story as ‘romantic’ and about ‘forbidden love’ rather than grooming and abuse.
Can i just say i love your videos so much 😭 your sense of narrative + intertwining it with costume design and aesthetic choices is so good!!!! I was another teen who read lolita out of a feeling of kinship with dolores and have been following dialogue around it as an adult. tysm for your contribution to the discussion + keeping it going +++ it's absolutely crucial for material (not even just literature) like lolita to be available to the the public, esp young people. silencing discussion about CSA, SA, and even just s3x is how predators get away with being predators.
I would love to see you talk about The Virgin Suicides next 👀 I feel it's another book that's been taken and aestheticized on social media too (not to the same extent as Lolita though)
Thank you for this video. I consider Lolita to be one of the most important books I have, so far, read. I absolutely think it should be on the reading list for schools, it can replace Romeo and Juliette in English Lit, it's far more worthwhile. It's such an easy read, until it becomes almost unbearably hard to read. Nabokov does the single most important thing any piece of media tackling abuse has ever done - he make Humbert real, really real, he is likeable, amiable, polite, utterly vile, educated, handsome, and witty. Nearly 80 years after it's publication, society still clings to physiognomy, parents are warier of those whose appearance does not fit within the window of "normal", whilst dropping their guard around the handsome, and urbane. It's ableist, and it's a useless metric for the protection of children. I can absolutely see why it could be beneficial to those who see their own experiences reflected in Dolores' story, and I can see why the media that surrounds the novel would easily deter those same people. It's difficult, and in it's difficulty it reflects our society's two-faced view of our girls, and young women, consuming them with the eyes of Humbert Humbert, we victim blame in his words, whilst we hold them up as insouciant embodiments of purity, and virtue. Until we make our treatment of, and relationship to, our girls less difficult, we will continue to need this difficult book. Until we start seeing Dolores, as Dolores, we will continue to need Lolita.
When I was a teenage girl, I also wanted to be lolita. I wanted to be seen as innocent, loved unconditionally, and be spoiled by an older man with money, who would coddle me. It wasn't until I got older, and finally took a step back, and saw the bigger picture. My heart hurts for lolita, as she was targeted and forced into this grown man's world. She never had a chance for a normal begining.
*standing ovation* she said there was nothing left to contribute to the eternal ocean of Lolita discourse, but it was really just to get us to let down our guards. Iconic nymphette behavior.
9:57 I wish people would understand the difference between reading, comprehending and critical engagement with a book . Just because one reads a book doesn’t mean you understand said book. This video truly shows that 😊
I know death of the author, but it is interesting to go back and read Lolita within the context of the afterwards. He states that it is almost reflection of his romanticism of his mother tongue, his relationship with the English language, and his missing of Russia, the country he had to abandon as a young man in the wake of the October Revolution. The Russian afterward adds another layer to romanticism of his mother tongue because he expressed that the “story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick." Granted, it’s certainly…A CHOICE to express his relationship with his heritage language through a CSA unreliable narrator, which but it adds an interesting lens to the intended condemnation of Humbert. Nabokov’s POV on his mother tongue is something that I’ve seen expressed by a number of heritage language learners. Even in all of today’s resources, media in their heritage language can still be incredibly difficult to obtain, making the immersion aspect of language an idealized struggle.
Speaking of death of the author, Nabokov's second most famous novel is called Pale Fire, and it's abouts the interpretation of art and literature and how divorced they can be from the writer's original meaning
This was a really interesting essay. It's so important to point out that regardless of any way Humbert portrayed Delores, that she could never have consented and that she in no way deserved what happened. Also what you said about the throwing the book away in disgust was so true. I feel like the eyeball stuff was Nabokov trying to tell people like "snap out of it, this guy's a creep" if they ever got to entranced by the writing. I really think you will enjoy the podcast. You both have a lot of similar points that you share, and I think Jamie Loftus adds a good investigation of the way media has changed the narrative surrounding the book. Something I found very important, was her acknowledgement of how the book and the culture surrounding it has been used to abuse others. I feel like it goes too far to say he annihilated her, destroyed her, or that she is just a stock character. She is incredible brave and active throughout the book. She does many actions to try to undermine Humbert (flushing the toilet when he showers, insulting him, other events I can't remember cause I don't have the book) and makes an attempt to escape, and succeeds! This is one of the loudest things she could ever have done, its only from Humbert's perspective (who is lessening this event before he admits it to the reader by saying that he already killed her, that he already destroyed whatever was part of her) that we are supposed to think she is dead/destroyed. Imaging this escape attempt from her perspective, she's making an attempt to escape her abuser, knowing even that he killed her mother, and she is able to leave (although obviously there is the complication of the fact that Quincy becomes a new abuser). I'm sure in her life, this is one of the most important moments for her, and her obvious strength completely disproves any of Humbert's claims of having destroyed her. He says she is alive as long as she is under his control, its once she leaves and can regain her self-determination that he claims she has been killed by him (which I interpret as him trying to regain any sense of power over her). I know that for many people, CSA can feel like it destroys parts of themselves, and I wouldn't want to speak over that feeling, saying that it's not a valid interpretation of how Delores would feel about her experiences. I just feel like it's leaning into his perspective to say she is this silent void in the book that he controls. Her attempts for freedom/regaining control happen quiet loudly, so much so that she still makes her way into his retelling of the events, despite his attempts to write her out. Although I wonder if I'm misunderstanding the language and what you mean, as I'm interpreting the language around "silencing her, destroying her" to mean that she becomes a shell of her former self and that she loses her voice. I could see how this may mean "silenced" in the sense that he under cuts her self-expression, and hides her from the reader behind his own telling of the story, which I definitely agree with. His narrative is made to be one-sided and unrepresentative.
Would you consider doing a follow-up regarding the movies now that the strikes are over? As well-made as this video is, I feel like it’s missed potential to talk about Lolita without being able to mention the movie adaptations and how massively they shifted perception of the story within the cultural zeitgeist.
Aside from the book , Girl lolita fashion was my whole life when I was in middle school, sadly I was too poor to actually afford the clothes but now that I'm an adult I CAN YO
The discourse surrounding the perception of Lolita in pop culture is so fascinating!! I'm currently working on a film adaptation of the novel myself with the aims of correcting misinterpretations of the novel in film etc (mainly using a lot of abstract elements and having a doll puppet thing instead of an actress for Dolores) so this video was really inspiring xx (also I wouldn't have read Lolita in the first place without Shanspeare's infantilisation video so tysm
Even as someone who never experienced SA the book gave me something when i read it the first time with 16. I was suddenly very thankful for the adults in my life who always protected me and that i was protected. I grew up in what was once east Germany and my whole family are east germans and nudity on beaches is very normal here especially for children because they are small no one should think sexually about them so why would they need to cover up? So everytime i had an adult that even looked weirdly at me that person was reprimanded and removed and not me, oftentimes before i could even feel uncomfortable and by that i think it gave me the confidence to clearly vocalize when i did feel uncomfortable once i was a teenager (looking old enough that i could be mistaken for a barely adult woman) because i just had to state clearly that u felt uncomfortable or how young i was to be sure that someone would help me beacuse when I was younger people also intervened before i could evwn say anything and I'm very happy that at least until now it actually always worked out. But i don't know if i would have the confidence if i didn't had the experience to be protected as a child
I was born in the West. When the wall fell and we were dealing with "immigrants", I remember plenty of scorn on their part. One of the accusations I kept hearing over and over again was that we were prudes because we don't go to the beach in the nude. Which isn't even true, by the way. Naturism used to be a thing before WWII, and even in the West, it was never completely given up. You had to join a club, though, to be allowed on a naturist camping site or use their section of the beach, and back then, you needed somebody to vouch for your character and you had to provide proof that you were never convicted of a sex crime. Also, discreet skinny dipping was condoned. If the police spotted you swimming in a lake on your own, in the nude, they didn't have you charged with indecent exposure.
Excellent commentary about how pop culture doesn't understand Lolita novel The Nympet idea went away long time ago when we became more aware of being proud of our sexuality but using it in the right way ,not falling victim to it. I hate to see how some young women today have misinterpreted it Everyone needs to read the book .Both movies were a very different interpretation. You did a great job explaining it😊
Her silence is deafeningly loud and un-ignorable. I’d argue it’s a third of what the novel is, her being silenced by him while she’s alive and then finally when he kills her.
I think lolita is an excellent book, but I feel weird about film adaptations. I know literally nothing about child acting and how logistically one would do lolita, but as a femme minor myself, a young girl acting out the things that happen in lolita would be pretty traumatic.
There's one quote from my American Lit class that I often use for a quick explanation: 'Lolita is basically a Law & Order episode, but from a different pov", which might be a very silly description, but hey, I've read much worse summaries 🤣 Jokes aside, 'Lolita' is one of my favourite books. I loved it when I read it for personal interest and I loved it even more when I studied it at university. I had wonderful teachers, super clever classmates, and I wrote one of the essays I enjoyed the most about it. The use of the unreliable narrator is 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻I fell in love with a theory/interpretation we explored (I'm going to sum it up very quickly, it's definitely not a comprehensive explanation of course) that the book is a cage created by the author to trap and torture Humbert, in attempt to "avenge" Dolores. Going out into the world and seeing the way people talked about it, used it and just overall understood it was a shock. As much as I love the book so much, I usually choose not to talk about it wit anyone who isn't a close friend, because I am too scared of where the conversation might go. I absolutely loved your video! You pointed out very well some of my favourite passages in the books - the moments where Humbert "slips" and let us see Dolores as a child, alone and helpless (the article about the kidnapped girl broke my heart), or how the other adults are portrayed as clueless and incapable of understanding Dolores's behaviour (I'm thinking of the school part). I will definitely check out both the comments to your post and the essays, it's been a while since some Lolita-related material sparked my interest, so thank you for that 😊❤️
For me personally, the horrific beauty of Lolita is that it leaves you with the knowledge that there are people out there who manage to justify anything. Not only mindless monsters lurking in dark alleys, but also eloquent and even intelligent ones, who manage to paint horrible crimes in pretty colours. Hearing someone talk about the topics that Lolita is about is bad enough, but hearing it through the lens of someone like Humbert makes it so much worse. I always thought that thats the entire point. Like someone describing a car accident as if they where looking at something pretty, it just makes your skin crawl in a certain way.
Finally putting my English degree to use!!! Also, shoutout to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video and for the limited-time offer for my bestiessss! Take the quiz bit.ly/BrightCellarsShanspeare and comment your matches!! I'm tryna see something 🤔
Also, I know you prefaced the video by saying you would be saying his name "weird", but in an interview he quite literally instructed Americans to pronounce it exactly as you did, so nobody should have anything to complain about!
Took the quiz! I wish there was an option for those who are more into wine to have more questions that were wine specific. Don't get me wrong I love how accessible they are, but I'd like more customization. Got the same recs as you!
Loved this video! I swear Humbert is the most evil villain in the history of fictional villains. Yet somehow it flies over a shocking amount of people's heads! Also you look so pretty! I love the outfit and hair and makeup!
My matches included Rose which is by far my favorite wine besides sweet red. 🥰👌🏾💜
14:56 I heard somewhere that some kids that experience abuse from pdf files don't shower in order to repulse their abuser into not wanting to take advantage of them/r-pe them. I think Dolores wanted to illicit disgust in Humbert Humbert in order to keep distance between them and her to not get r-ped by him.
One thing I find amazing is the people who claim it is a "romance story" don't seem to realize that Nabokov is 100% on Dolores's side. In face, Nabokov himself is believed to have experienced childhood sexual abuse from a family friend as a young boy.
Yes, Nabokov was horrified that people didn’t understand what a pretentious liar pdf file Humbert was.
Nabokov makes it 100% clear through his writing that Humbert is a vile lying liar high on his own narcissism as he horrendously abuses and SAs Dolores, it's terrifying how people can read the whole book and miss out on that.
Edit: and seeing it so clearly depicted in text felt really healing and validating. I have thankfully never suffered sexual abuse as a kid, just harassment from old creeps and the same kind of narcissim as Humbert's from my parents in non-sexually. Nothing was ever their fault, they had no responsibilities for their emotions while I had all the responsibility for their emotions and everything was always my fault and "I made them do it" and if it happened then I deserved it while they deserved nothing bad and acted like martyrs sometimes.
@@Call-me-Al yes exactly!!! That's what I came down here to say! The author was so upset. He said he thought he didn't have to explicitly state Humbert was evil! He said it was so obvious he is shocked how Delores was treated as anything other than an innocent victim. I agree! Humbert literally says he plans to get Delores pregnant than have kids with his daughter and get her pregnant etc so he would always have a young girl whenever the first one gets too old! Like how is that not the most evil thing a villain has EVER, in the history of fiction, planned to do. If he had said he planned to take over the world instead I guess that would make it more clear for the low 1... Q... people. 🙄
@@WhitneyDahlinIt's so vomit inducing how he had to say that the man who wanted to have children with his own daughter was a villain. Like yeah, I expect the fact that he groomed and manipulated a child to pass straight over their creepy heads, but the fact that he literally wanted to impregnate his daughter didn't tip them off???
@@essies4294I'm sorry, but pdf file 😂
*Mother, I have arrived.*
Sidenote: I didn't like how mainstream media depicted Dolores being a seductress... She's literally a child...
Right!?
I think it's an accidental glimpse into a cultural male perspective (or at least the Hollywood male perspective). Brooke Shield's story immediately comes to mind when I think of mainstream media and Dolores-- the child sexualized by the predatory (overwhelmingly male) gaze and many viewers don't pause to consider the issue because the setup of the whole thing places the predatory gaze as our screen surrogate, directing our own gaze. We have to be able to climb out of that gaze and not get swept along with it. Not for nothing, it seems like mostly men/people with internalized patriarchal beliefs have trouble stepping away from their problematic screen surrogate
Mainstream= Malestream
Pervs: I was seduced by a child.
Sane people: You, a grown adult with the physical, financial, mental, and emotional strength and maturity somehow couldn't resist a child.
‼️Dude the author was so upset. He said he thought he didn't have to explicitly state Humbert was evil! He said it was so obvious he is shocked how Delores was treated as anything other than an innocent victim. I agree! Humbert literally says he plans to get Delores pregnant than have kids with his daughter and get her pregnant etc so he would always have a young girl whenever the first one gets too old! Like how is that not the most evil thing a villain has EVER in the history of fiction planned to do. If he had said he planned to take over the world instead I guess that would make it more clear for the low 1... Q... people. 🙄
The normalisation of adult male interest in female children is a project that some sections of the male population have a vested interest in propagating.
It hurts how true this is
"Straight from the horses mouth" too, that forward by the writer. My interpretation is that he wanted to write the story as commentary for that very thing that can happen, an example of it.
lolicon community basically
@@janetestherina7169 “it’s a fictional character not a real child”
okay bro what do you find so appealing about the fictional character who has the proportions, voice, and behavior of real children?🤨
@@_kaleidonot to mention the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia includes fantasies of children!!
What if it’s a brilliant book with an irredeemable monster at the center and the captivating idea of ignorance in society as the foundation? That’s how I always understood it.
Humpert ability to rationalize every horrible thing he ever did is so scary
I have the same understanding of it,
with the addition of being written by a very courageous man who was willing to go to *very* dark and extremely uncomfortable places to shed light on a serious, serious societal problem.
@@RexytheRexy I’m not completely sure but I heard that the author of the book was actually sexually abused as a child. But again, not %100 on that fact but if it is true that can tell you more about the book’s intentions. I just think he wrote it to try to shed light on how horrible and disgusting the thought process is of these creeps and he purposely didn’t put an actual girl on the original book cover so it wouldn’t be seen as condoning the sexualization of young girls , but now people use it to sexualize kids which he didn’t want so
honestly i can’t imagine reading lolita and thinking humbert was ever meant to be glamorized-both from people who find his relationship to dolores romantic or think nabokov agrees with his actions. it’s shown pretty much every 5 sentences that he has impaired reasoning and has to jump in circles to justify his behavior, which he knows is wrong. it’s kind of like my dark vanessa (vanessa’s pov) where the constant absurd defense of the perpetrator shows how the victim feels about the situation-tied between thinking it’s ok vs being scared to leave. i think that’s why many CSA survivors identify with dolores and the book even if she’s not the narrator.
That’s how I did too! This book was written from Humbert’s eyes, not author’s
12 year old girls aren't allowed to wear shorts to school in 103 degrees because they might "distract" the male teachers, but a book that exposes this perception for how common and horrifying it is, that's disgusting!
wtf, if the male teachers can get distracted by *children* wearing shorts then they shouldn't be in the school in the first place.
@@berrysuper5237sadly, my younger sister was forced to go home and change as her t shirt revealed one of her shoulders and her middle aged male teacher had complained that it was distracting him. She was eleven years old at the time.
@StrangerBillie
🤮
@@StrangerBilliewhat?? Ew that's horrible 😭
Exactly! It makes me think, maybe the readers who find it “disgusting” are the ones, who immediately sexualise young girls in their mind? I’m reading the book currently and I admit, it is weird, but when you’re into the book, you notice how well written and how both beautiful and sad worlds collide.
people being disgusted by a book and missing the point that youre supposed to be disgusted by the book never fails to surprise me with lolita.
People have a tendency to see media (as a whole) as being entertainment, and if it's entertainment, you can't possibly be creating something to disgust an audience. Even horror media is entertainment - it's a place to enjoy being scared because you're not actually in danger. That's my theory of it, anyway. They miss the fact that media is art, and art exists to ignite the whole spectrum of human emotion, not just the fun ones.
i still hate it
@@straberryshinigami15g97you missed the point of the whole video
@@straberryshinigami15g97I hate the way that pop culture has romanticised Lolita and turned her into some sultry seductress, instead of realising that Humbert Humbert is obviously an extremely unreliable narrator as he is a literal pedophile and so he’s seeing a normal, pretty twelve year old girl as sexy. She is not actually sexy, of course she’s not, she’s twelve. But, the book itself is very intelligent and thought-provoking. The whole unreliable narrator thing only further adds to that
Then they completely ignore people who romanticize and hold up serial killers and listen to podcast about them and find real life videos, audio, and pictures of victims “entertaining” this disconnect is insane!
Like if you like a horror movie or movie with a morally grey character then you’re a creep but listening to a podcast about a very RECENT murder for entertainment every night and watching videos of the day it happened is somehow just innocent and normal. Even worse they say it’s “educational” when literally most cases they talk about there was little to nothing the victims could have done differently.
People often get more mad about fiction characters and events than real life ones
publishers putting sexualized girls on the book cover was the worst decision ever, nabokov just wanted a plain green cover (the channel man carrying thing has a video on this very topic)
Ikr
LOVE Man Carrying Thing. He never misses, the absolute legend!
Especially after Lolita movies, even Lolita’s book publishers failed Lolita, specifically the Lolita book covers. The movies were supposed to be adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, but they were instead made into an age gap fantasy. The movie producers failed Lolita. They barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse.
Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
The only, ONLY(!!) way I can reconcile with that decision is that the girl on the cover depicts how *Humbert* perceives Dolores, in his own eyes. It's his own twisted perspective of her that he is projecting throughout the story.
The absolute legend, he never misses!
i hate how people have turned ‘lolita’ into a sexual thing, it’s disgusting
Yeah. It's usually always bigots who are into the sexual underage Lolita stuff. It's gross. Then they claim trans people are gross, like lloook in the mirror.
Nabokov had requested the book covers to never feature girls...
Well we know how that turned out...
This so needed to be heard they are missing the point of the whole damn book!! And what also needs to be talked about is the real beef between the old generations and the new generations. We have all did the same stuff as kids and now teens are getting shamed like never before. At least twice a month you will see older generations make jokes about young generations. Mainly about us not being able to simply carry water to the kitchen the most dumbest stuff. Yet they claim they are more matuer than 2000s kids. I get I have seen disrepectful kids on social media but if there was social media back then for older generations there will be the same amount of disrespectful kids in the older generations when they were small. I now feel like as a 16 year old I can stand on my own two feet and say I feel like the older generation of women are jealous of the new younger generations of teens for our age and our youth. Pls let me explain and let me know if it's even a bit accurate. I've seen so many 30 year old women wearing stuff that meant for 12 year olds and down to wear. And they wear it in a sexual manner if you search lingerie you are bound to walk into school girl uniforms. I also see couples on all social media using "cute" voices to there boyfriends and husbands. And you have to short because i feel like i can protect you more excuses is sooo old. I know it's because she looks like and is built like a minor. oh and If your tall you have to be flat-chested so you can at least feel like a minor. I wonder were all the real women went. And why so menay of adults still try to find sneaky ways to be pedos with out being called one. Because the famous line of "she is 18 so it shouldn't matter". He should love you for you and not what you have to pretend to be and get mad when you aren't what he wants anymore. That why they mostly cheat with younger women. I'm just scared that at some point the men are gonna get sick of the fake kid look that is every where (or in other words the cute look)and want the real thing.
now it's an aesthetic... EW
@@Ur_mindfuldiscipl3 I don't think there's anything wrong with it being an aesthetic. People dress in historical fashions that doesn't mean they have historical values.
I read Lolita at 19 and I loved it. Nabokov is a master at his craft. I think Lolita is so upsetting and uncomfortable because (other than the obvious) it holds a mirror up to the reader and society as a whole, and how normalized the sexualization of young women is - and especially how profitable it is
So common and profitable, that they literally made a movie that completely twisted the message of this book that was anti-creep to be pro-creep so it'd be profitable. The irony
I was thinking of reading it for awhile, now. Should I check my library or go for an ebook version?
I WATCHED Lolita (1997) at age 11... Safe to say I'm scarred
@@princesskittygvI recommend "Annotated Lolita" if the original book is too hard for you.
the only reason there was pushback about this book is it's the few pieces of media that it exposes the horrors of grooming and child predators instead of normalizing it
Only for everyone to miss the message anyway and see it as "hot".
Meanwhile someone like Splatt Malsh is on record straightface advocating for child brides. I unfortunately don't think the novel will ever cease to be relevant.
A faction of masculine boomer "cancel victimization" is absolutely them getting side eyed or shut down by younger men around them wanting nothing to do with the casual sexualization of teen girls many are way too OK with. Obligatory not all boomer men, but u get the idea.
I'm just glad it's becoming less socially permissible to make gross comments about minors even if it's not happening fast enough.
@moealiceforte I heard the books were actually better and they were anti-CSAM, only for the movies to fumble and be softcore CSAM instead.
@moealiceforte That's what I heard, but I looked it up and there apparently were no books. Strange. Either way, terrible film.
@moealiceforte there's videos explain that movie on here too and the outrage from it, what I remember is that the only bad part was the pictures they chose to put as the cover. other than that it's actually a good movie about what it's like to be a young girl.
The Lolita podcast is something I cannot recommend enough. It goes into every detail if the book, the adaptations, and actresses deemed lolitas. I think the book's curse is to be misunderstood. It's not a romance as it's often portrayed, and it's not a "disgusting" book like other describe it. I think it's genius how people who read it actually fell for humbert humbert's lies and charms and never look for Dolores in it.
Jamie Loftus does great work.
Well, it is disgusting in that the main character is gross and horrible. But I get what you're trying to say.
yes the lolita podcast is a must listen!!!!!!
It’s excellent and I’ve relistened multiple times.
How is a book about a pedo obsessing over a 12 year old little girl and moving into her home and getting with her mother to try and assault her and be close to her NOT disgusting? Are you okay in the head??
Say it with me: LOLITA IS NOT A ROMANCE NOVEL!
P.S AND PEOPLE WHO S3XULIZE IT NEED THERAPY
Oh come on - next you are going to say that Joker & Harley are toxic! /s
It even says that on the back of the book! The book is a tragedy, like in most tragedies, every character by the end of the book dies.
It’s also a tragedy because the movie adaptations failed Lolita. Instead of being an adaptation of the novel, it was made into an age gap fantasy, which was the opposite of the author’s intention. The movies barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse.
Especially after the movies, the book publishers also failed Lolita. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
@MinisDunyasi5 the book is written from the first perspective - so how else are they supposed film lolita? If we don't see it from Humbert’s point of view, then it won't be accurate to the book, changing the perspective would completely alter the story! Also, I think you have completely misinterpreted both the book and Nabokov's intentions when writing it - Nabokov has said many, many, times that there was no meaning or message in his writing, he wrote for the pleasure of writing and he hoped the reader would get a similar pleasure reading his prose.
@@ambds1975they are
I don’t know how anyone can read the line “she had nowhere else to go” or the part about Dolores crying herself to sleep every night, after he r@pes her, and somehow still think it’s a love story. It’s very evident that Dolores is a victim of a p3do’s abuse.
this!!! this is the scene that still lingers in my mind and breaks my heart
I think people's reaction to banning Lolita does a disservice to the people who read her story and have connected to her. For some of them reading Lolita helps give language and explains what happened to them and what their abuser did to them. Without the ability to recognize and speak to their experiences in the world victims won't able to articulate the harm done to them.
Lolita is important in its almost banality. Humbert is almost painfully average and its through this averageness that his access to Dolores is unquestioned and he's able to harm her.
beautifully said.
I really wish people wouldn't be so indulgent about reading Lolita. I can't speak for all SA victims, but to me, I wish at least one person in my life had read the book, and was able to see how Humbert Humbert's subtly wicked actions and behaviors mimicked some of the people around them. Maybe then I wouldn't have been groomed at the age of 7 and then r@ped when I was 8 years old.
@@andrew-song I'm sooooo sorry that happened to you.💔 You matter & you're not alone. Hugest hugs 🫂& massive love 💞from this Canadian ptsd person.
and the other side of that is that even for people who never went through what Dolores did, it is still a very important and urgent discussion in our society.
People who say it should be a banned book dont seem to realize that people who prey on kids/teens have been preying on them way before this book was ever written! The book was supposed to make people confront the awful reality of our societies and how we leave our kids vulnerable and even go as far as putting them in harm's way by never talking about abuse with them, by welcoming the Humberts of the world into our lifes and being charmed by their words, their status or wathever (like some readers apparently did). all because we choose to stay ignorant, we choose to be blind to a certain reality because it is too disgusting/too awful to us. as if choosing to pretend is isnt real was enough to make it go away.
Worst of all, the Humberts out there know ignorance and silence are their greatests allies, so is better to them lolita keep being misinterpreted and banned anyways. better waste time discussing if we should be reading the book than discussing the themes of the book and getting right into what really matters, right?
Exactly. Same effect as with those wanting to ban sex ed: victims no longer have the language or can identify what happened when they try to ask for help.
“A good artist comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.” I think this phrase really describes our polarized views on this novel, where people who have experiences similar to Dolores are comforted by her and reclaim the story; while anyone who hasn’t been hurt in those ways is going to feel disgusted by the book, which they should.
comforts the disturbed? wtf are you on about bro🤣
I finally read the book this year and it’s almost like Humbert is grooming the reader as well as Dolores. Like the first ~questionable~ scene of her sitting on his lap made me scream internally but the full-on sex scenes later were just like “yep, that’s happening.”
Yeah I first read this book when I was 15-16ish It's very possible for me to get groomed from this
IMO the first questionable scene is before that, when he licks her eye to get an eyelash out. To me, it’s a more realistic and subtle first attempt to break down boundaries. He has plausible deniability, he’s getting her used to him being close to her, he pushes what is acceptable, and he pushes past the expected boundary by licking the other eye.
He licked her eye in the book?! 😭@@sdebord8707
Just a note: I think it’s really important to distinguish between “nymphet fashion,” aka girls trying to look like a young Dolores Haze, and “lolita fashion.” Lolita fashion began in Harajuku in the 1980s and has NOTHING to do with the book or the sexualization of children. The whole point of lolita fashion is presenting over-the-top femininity without appealing to sexuality or the male gaze. The silhouettes are inspired by Victorian and Rococo fashion.
Lolita fashion was named after the book because it was a rebellion against creepy men looking at teenage them in a sexualized creepy way. That's the only link. They wanted to reclaim their bodies and reclaim fashion for themselves instead of the fashion adult men liked seeing them in.
Tru tru, while nymphet is based off of dolores haze's clothing but in the pop culture depiction of her, althought it is separate in the camps that want to be dolores cuz they see her as a tragic hero and people who wear it to reclaim their lost youth and to reclaim their own personhood. lolita is just over the top feminity away from the male gaze and patriarchal expectation and view of femininity and women and cuteness. Althought i hate how some people sexualised it tho like icky people in this case and esp women truly cant have anything.
Tragically, the Lolita fashion movement has also been sexualized.
@@moonlight4665 the same fringe way feet have, right? Please? As in ignorable weirdos that have no real impact on anything, right? I mean there are even people who sexualize balloons, and nobody pays attention to them.
@@moonlight4665 that ain't our fault. Creepy weirdos will sexualize anything
As one of those rare male survivors of SA? I was relieved to see this handled with such care. Thank you. ❤. I never realized that the book could help people realize that what was done to them was wrong.
Nabokov was a survivor of childhood SA, there are scenes from the book literally taken from his own experiences. I think it's very natural to find a sort of understanding and healing in the book.
It’s not rare for men to be victims, it’s just rare for women to be perpetrators
i hope this isn’t weird but as a fellow female survivor, i hope you are doing well. godspeed to you my friend ❤
I think you should read it I think it would bring you some comfort if you'd find it that way 💖
As someone who wears Lolita fashion (the fashion from Harajuku Japan) THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LEAVING US OUT OF IT!!!
Yeah I remember in the comments of Doki Doki Discourse's Lolita vid I got the Japanese fashion style confused with the widespread misunderstanding of the book. I was corrected and felt really bad about it
Lolita fashion was actively created as a reaction against the sexualization of teens, so it wouldn't make sense to speak badly of it.
SAME!!
I could not agree with you more. I wore a lot of gothic Lolita fashion was back in the day when Malice Mizer was popular amongst the gothic scene in Japan, Europe, and parts of the counter-culture in the U.S. (yes, I am old, decrepit Millennial). I know that singer and violinist, Manna, is kind of credited with the rise of visual Kei culture and the aesthetic in Japan. Gothic Lolita fashion actually made me feel confident in my body and I never viewed it as anything sexual or to be fetishized. In all honesty, it seen as a rebellion against sexualization of teens and gender norms. Lolita fashion is in no way connected to the novel as you previously mentioned.
Do you mean mana the guitarist from malice mizer or someone else? if so I'd like to know what band they are from please
I feel that the romanticism behind Lolita also has to do with how it is marked. The bright colored covers (heart sunglasses, red lollipop) or the romantic one like the one Shanspeare has. The covers take away from the story and make it look as a quote tragic lovestory. I feel that the best cover is the one for i think Australia that shows a photo of Humbert where he is all sweaty and looks uncomfortable and make you look at the man who destroyed the life of a child. The way media is presented influences how we digest it and come to perceive it.
I think that’s one of the points that Nabokov was also trying to address in this book though. Humbert is meant to be “charming” in society and to make you realized pdf files are not just the “weirdos”/social outcasts that you imagine but can in fact be anyone around you. This in fact is why people end up misinterpreting the message of the book and blaming Dolores, and why in real life, they will also refuse to believe victims or they believe in what shanspeare was talking about in the video w “nymphets” in pop culture because they end up believing pdf file over victims because of their image/words.
To your point though, I believe Nabokov was also against depicting Dolores on the cover and I also agree… Her image in the novel is extremely warped due to the narrator being biased and putting an image of her on the cover is wrong and untrue to how she actually is.
I like the cover that is an extreme closeup of a little girls face, completely neutral and blank expression. The girl also looks like she could be 8 or 9 years old.
Especially after Lolita movies, even Lolita’s book publishers failed Lolita, specifically the Lolita book covers. The movies were supposed to be adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, but they were instead made into an age gap fantasy. The movie producers failed Lolita. They barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse.
Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
The whole point of calling her Lolita was to remove her identity and therefore her agency
Nabakov was also very clever with the naming of Dolores and the book.
Dolores’ name is sad and poetic. It’s Spanish and means sorrows, sorrowful and pain.
Lolita is a word/name Humbert fabricated; it wasn’t used before the book was published. Humbert made up Lolita. By calling her Lolita, he erases her personhood and her pain in their interactions. He's hiding her pain within his sick fantasy.
Dolores never calls herself “Lolita”. The name "Lolita" is used only by Humbert. Other characters refer to her as "Lo", "Lola", or "Dolly". Humbert calling her Lolita denies her subjectivity.
Humbert also says, "Lo-lee-ta" Humbert tears Dolores' whole essence to shreds. He rips her apart and dehumanises her.
In real life, it's part of how abusers can attack the victim; by renaming them, they're erasing their prior identity and exerting control over them.
I'm not shaken by much, especially when reading but Lolita was a horror story encased in sunshine and plaid dresses. The way that some people portray the relationship in a good or sexual light is both terrifying and sickening
As a survivor, Lolita is an extremely important book for us. Dolores was a very relatable character, and I always feel very personally offended and disgusted when she is sexualized.
I was readying Lolita, when I was 17 old, not a child but not an adult. Even through the beautiful language only Nabokov knows how to write I clearly sensed that Lolita hates the protagonist.
One thing to remember is that her name is Dolores. Referring to her by Lolita kinda misses the point because she hated that nickname and it was the name her predator gave her. Not hating, I totally agree.
You don't even have to sense it. It's not subtext. She tells him directly that he ruined her life. He describes her as emotionally absent with him, and by the end even he realizes what he did was horribly wrong and calls it a tragedy.
@@alexba1ley The people who like this book for the wrong reasons probably read that part and thought "it's so tragic how Dolores betrayed him and put him to jail, what a tragic love story 😢😢😢😢 she was a deceitful nymphette after all"
I started reading lolita when I was 17 and I don't know for some reason it made me nauseous
@@himanipant7788 It's literally a story from the viewpoint of a predator, feelings of nausea are very normal.
How to spot a nuclear red flag:
Ask someone how they view Lolita if they know about it.
If they say romance, do not walk away, *RUN* away.
But if you say comedy instead of social satire, it might be take wrong too.
**Call FBI and CIA told them to put those people on their watchlist**
I think the only way Lolita can be adapted to a film is via the use of animation. That way we can avoid the obvious issue with the use of child actors (lots of skilled voice actors can do child voices) while keeping Dolores looking like a kid. The explicit sexual abuse scenes (that are actually very few) can be walked around with visual metaphors like in other animated media like “the belladonna of sadness”. To be honest I don’t think this is a story that has to be adapted, but it’s the only way I see it being done ethically
There are no sex scenes in the novels.
It's funny you brought up You because when I read You, Lolita is exactly what I thought of while I was reading it. The books have very similar vibes of taking you inside the mind of the worst sort of men in society and the ways they justify their monstrous behavior.
I actually never knew You was an adaptation from a book! I only known it as a Netflix show and felt kinda weird about it because I had friends who felt it was so "romantic" for someone to love you so much that they'll stalk you??? it all makes sense now that it used to be a satirical book but damn I guess it got lost in translation
@@liliesstarlight That book had me fucked all the way up. I read it the year it came out and the author, in my opinion, did such an incredible job getting into the mind of this guy who is delusional and behaves like a monster but who does not see things that way at all... and telling it from his point of view was genius because there were moments where I forgot that this is all made up in his head and the reality is he is a dangerous monster stalking his prey and I would find myself rooting for him. Then I would remember....
I would recommend that book to anyone. I have never watched the show because I was sure the show could not do what the book did but I recommend the book to anyone.
This reminds me of a book I read as a teen in which the preteen girl gets a crush on her new neighbors whos in his 30s. She doesn’t do anything really crazy, but tries to hang out around him and is saving up for a pretty dress to get noticed by him... and guess what, he does nothing. He acts like a normal adult would around a child, I'm not sure if he even notices her "advances". Because thats what a normal person would do. So no matter how much Lolita tried to seduce Humbert, him engaging was all on him, not her. I can't believe people can think it's a romance when its a critique of his lies and actions blaming her for his disgusting actions.
Ps: At the end of the book the guy's son or nephew shows up who is the girl's age and also has the same features she liked about him, so that was a pretty sweet ending.
I found it!... But it's not available in English 🙁
It's "Születésnap" by Szabó Magda
Translated: "Birthday" by Magda Szabó
It's in Hungarian, which I thought it might be. I was hoping maybe the book was a translation or had translations into other languages, but it doesn't. So if anyone knows Hungarian, I recommend it, otherwise I'm sorry I couldn't be more help.
Sounds better than the garbage Crush movie with Alicia Silverstone.
This also reminds me of how in Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the main characters, Asuka, has a huge crush on her primary caretaker. There are several scenes where she tries to seduce him, to get him to see her as a “woman”, but every time Kaji doesn’t engage with it, and at one point firmly tells her that she’s still a child. I remember finding that scene in particular really moving when I first watched it, because a adult man refused to take advantage of and abuse a vulnerable child.
Of course, NGE is also infamous for its sexualisation of it’s characters (including pre-teen/teen girls), and the debates around the purpose and intention of this (especially when a lot of the “waifu-ing” of the two female leads comes from merchandising, marketing, etc., because in the show both of them are subversions of their respective tropes, and their unresolved traumas define their characters and ultimately define them as distinctly not romantic interests for the main character - although i’m sure you could have a discussion at length about how things are presented visually versus the written text itself).
But, I still think about Kaji a lot, and how he was the ONLY adult in that show who actually treated those children AS children, and seemed to have their best interests at heart.
@@kissszonjab Aszem láttam azt a könyvet egyszer a könyves boltban. Van egysejtésem hogy melyikben, de az a bolt már sajnálatos modon már bezárt.
@alexandraboth7052 Ja, hát az kár ha az bezárt, de elég népszerű könyv vagyis nem tudom elképzelni, hogy a legtöbb másik könyvesboltban nem lenne ott, vagy ne lehetne be szerezni. Vagy ha még sincs ott, online könyves boltba tuti rá találni.
lolita is a horror story from dolores's perspective, and painfully tragic in the way that it remains misunderstood
It’s so validating to see someone else make the ‘Lolita’ and ‘You’ comparison!
I could definitely appreciate the tonal similarities and thematic alignments, however, seeing the beautiful writing of Nabokov followed by the awful writing (my opinion, obviously) of that other book that I couldn't be bothered to look up made me cringe.
i was JUST thinking that ‘you’ would never exist if it weren’t for lolita. they’re very different but i can see the connection
I wonder why the author wrote the novel on index cards and then was going to set it on fire. The reason why the novel exists was because his wife saved the book.
sometimes i feel like most of the media or people on social media do understand lolita but just actively choose to make an aesthetic out of it or sexualize it, just because of the way the movie was filmed
i feel like any person with common sense gets the message but just ignores it, which is very disturbing tbh
I agree, it is that sexualisation and misogyny some ppl prefer over reason.
your comment actually answered my question on how do people misunderstand that book when it was clearly stated in the beginning and Dolores herself stated it was abuse? yeah people just ignore it because I feel like it is pretty straightforward how disgusting Humbert is
Jordan Theresa's video on Lolita actually talked about how she thinks Lolita should be filmed if people REALLY wanna adapt it again, show Dolores as maybe just a figure. an idea. a piece of clothing, a bow or something. like never actually show the person. I mean that is how Humbert sees her anyway
It's a world where there are countdowns to celebrities turning 18 so that everyone can bring out all the material they have had in secret that has freshly become legal to fawn over in public. Of course they think this book is a romance.
Even on the back of the book, it says Lolita isn’t a love story. The book is a tragedy, like in most tragedies, every character by the end of the book dies.
It’s also a tragedy because the movie adaptations failed Lolita. Instead of being an adaptation of the novel, it was made into an age gap fantasy, which was the opposite of the author’s intention. The movies barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse.
Especially after the movies, the book publishers also failed Lolita. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way. Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
I read Lolita in HS as a requirement in English class. It was instructional in a lot of areas: consuming graphic media, dealing with the strong feelings it produces, taking a critical eye to the literature (as you do here).
the most valuable thing i took from this book was a practical look at what manipulation and abuse look like.
Lolita isn't really graphic. It has no sexual content.
I was a victim of sexual grooming in my early teens often remarked as a Lolita type… now I’m in my 20s and I was literally just a girl
I'm sorry you went through that. And i hope you can heal. You were failed by those around you and what happened was abhorrent. I hope you're doing ok now, and i wish you the best.
Her name is literally *DOLORES.* As in 'pains', 'suffering'.
How could this book be a love story? It's clearly a thriller, a horror story.
It's actually a comic novel. Nabokov was a comic writer.
@@Tolstoy111Why can’t it be both?
I can definitely see in the initial reaction to the book how society in general reacts to victims of csa. Our daring to speak about our trauma is much more offensive to them than an actual pedophile and even by speaking of what happened to us as children we are labeled as pedophiles or potential predators. This has happened to me in person with a therapist assuming I was a pedophile the very first session when I told her I had been raped as a child and now fear children because they trigger my memories. The worst part was she was okay with it, she thought I was a danger to children and was okay with it, I felt deeply violated and immediately switched therapists
That bit about the silence of Dolores really hit me.
I remember one of the very first times I finally got my husband to _talk_ to me about just how bad our relationship had become.
He soberly noted that he wasn't getting back massages and hugs anymore. I tried to tell him that he had begun to act and react in ways that made me feel very unsafe with him -- much less in any mood for closeness or intimacy.
I gently tried to ask him *why* his behaviors -- why all of the implications he had put forth during the courtship about how he wanted to co-exist and support each other and have our home together -- had seemingly gone up in a smoke of incompetence and sabotage at the most, annoyed and snappish apathy at the least.
He interrupted me with a sad smile and said: "It's okay. The you in my head always hugs me and says 'good night'."
I could tell that he wanted me to feel sorry for him, but the hair stood up on my head.
That was the moment I knew that our marriage had been a terrible, terrible mistake.
This video is the first time ever since that I'm hearing a similar sentiment spoken by a man either in fiction or out of it -- but goodness if this shoe doesn't fit the foot!
I wonder if this is a pattern with men, especially toxic and abusive men?
How many wives discovered, in growing horror, that they were reduced to little more than a penciled drawing of a person: erased and redrawn by their man the very *moment* they had their wives "tied down"?
Just how many men, in sacrifice to the patriarchy, and in aspiring feverishly to the fondly-remembered, yet *poisoned,* awful marriages of their parents, slew the reality of the woman _standing right in front of them,_ on the altar of their hollow imaginations?
How many women throughout the history of modern patriarchy have been similarly swathed in that quiet, smothering, tomb-like cocoon?
Every once in awhile something comes along and describes a concept in such a way it leaves me suddenly feeling stripped bare of protective layers with an irrational urge to huddle. The feeling of being an animal of prey suddenly thrust into an open, exposed area without a crack to hide in and the world so dark anything could be about to reach for you. Perhaps it's the sudden opening of the unrealized or even the ripping of denial... But today it was this video and you.
I mean this as a compliment though, in case you're worried. Those moments may be unsettling and even painful but they are moving nonetheless and help push me to expand my world. Every terrifying expanse I stumble into and make it back alive makes one more unnamed or unspoken fear into something that I know can be conquered. You shook me but I am pleased to be moving.
SCREAAMIIIIINGGGGG
I think the mainstream has a hard time with unreliable narrators. Ex., the hate Bridget Jones' Diary gets for the way that the protagonist pursues thinness. There's absolutely no indication that the ways Bridget goes about losing weight are good or healthy, but because she's the main character and we hear her story through her eyes, people think that the book/movie is about starving yourself for self esteem...when reading it makes it obvious that the author was going for the opposite. (Particularly in the book, Bridget's friends get really concerned about how emaciated she is)
"Lolita exists in pop culture, not as an influence on that culture, but a confirmation of it." I've never been one to quote a youtube video in the comments, but this line was so perfectly put that it honestly floored me. Creeps will always see themselves in Humbert and fall for his self-justifications as validation of their own feelings and actions, but I don't think it's the fault of the book for so convincingly portraying that kind of person.
also, HH is an unreliable narrator, that's the whole point. dolores might've had a childish crush on her mother's new boyfriend, but that does not excuse HH's actions. it's sadder that lolita dies at the end of childbirth
He’s not unreliable so much as just monstrous.
As someone who was the younger part of this horrible type of "relationship", when I read the book I realized so many things. Those guys act like the younger girl they're with are the exception and that they'd never do that under normal circumstances, but she's so special that he couldn't resist. When the truth is very much the opposite: all of his "relationships" are like that. He specifically looks for young girls and they're always the same age, while he himself ages away. As a lit major, I thought of publishing an article about this book but it got too damn personal. If I could tell every girl about the real life Humberts and protect them, I would.
Kids have crushes and try to do the embarrassing "flirting" attempts, it's totally cringe and up to the adults to not respond with anything. I wish the older guys (adults) it was so cool to be associated with as a girl treated me the way I treat children as an adult now. Lolita is too real. Nothing a child can do leads to an adult abusing them. I loved the Kubrick adaptation and I think it really got it across.
The interpretation that Deloris has brought her own abuse onto her is infuriating to me in two ways. First, there is the obviously disgusting victim blaming, the ridiculous notion that a female child has some responsibility to not be too tempting to men. But as a man, I am also infuriated at the attempt to excuse the behavior of weak disgusting men, by portraying all of us as these unaccountable lascivious losers who cannot help but assault everything with a vagina. I bristle at the notion that to be a man is to be weak before beauty, more so at the idea that the beauty of a child, innocent and devoid of sexuality, can somehow strip me of my senses and provoke me ardent violation of basic decency. There aren't powerful enough words in the English language to describe the disgust and anger I feel toward someone who strides right past refusing accountability to indicting all men with an inborn inability to be just and true and unmotivated to such vile appetites, all as a pathetic attempt to avoid the responsibility for one's own actions and choices. As we say today, miss me with that bullshit!
THANK YOU! Why are so many men okay with being portrayed like this? To just accept this idea that you're a slave to sex and a predator by nature is weird.
Fr 😭😭 men aren't "creatures" that can't control themsemves ffs
Thank you. Just reading the top goodreads reviews by men made me so uncomfortable. I'm glad to know there were men who didn't so grossly misunderstand the novel.
Omg👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Freaking hate how there are people claiming it's a forbidden love story, nah man it's psychological horror/crime drama
Well it’s a comic novel as well.
thank you for this video! I find comfort in both the book and the 90s film because I’m a CSA survivor and whenever I’ve expressed my gratitude for it, I’ve been met with comments telling me I’m a disgusting person who needs help, when their opinion is based off misinformation and a lack of understanding. this video made me feel really seen ❤
The way that I was just listening to lolita podcast this morning
You and Lola Sebastian absolutely crushing it 😭😭
I
@@ShanspeareJamie interviews Lola during the podcast, as well! That's how I discovered Lola, under the name Miss Lola at the time.
I like how you mentioned that what makes Lolita uncomfortable for many to read is how it illuminates the prominence of ordinary men who have an attraction to minors. I have always thought pedophilia was more common in ordinary people (primarily men) than people want to talk about.
Man when I first read Lolita the cover legit said something along the lines of a beautiful love story (thanks vanity fair) omg reading it was me screaming the whole time that it was not a love story but a horror idk what that reviewer was smoking
There's a bunch of songs about Lolita in the non-English speaking world. One of them, the one that shocks me the most (because it was a hit in the Hispanosphere) is Belinda's Lolita. Here are some of the lyrics translated from Spanish:
"You can't resist my heart-shaped glasses. Without a doubt Nabokob wrote it [the book], but in reality it was I who invented it [the book]. My life is like a video game. I press a button and I get what I want. This is what I want: pink-colored nights, provocative lips. I am your doom, I break your heart".
I hate that song so much
Ewwwww
DISGUSTING. They're literally talking about a child that hadn't even hit puberty when the novel started. Would they say the same thing about their younger sisters or their younger relatives? Absolutely disgusting.
@@ettaetta439 100% agree with you, I hate Lolita-inspired works that romantizise the whole ordeal.
Pop culture doesn't understand Lolita... but Shanspeare does ❤
Pop culture really didn’t understand Lolita and failed Lolita.
Such as the Lolita movies. The movies were supposed to be adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, but they were instead made into an age gap fantasy. The movie producers failed Lolita. They barely showed Dolores (nicknamed Lolita) suffering, they made it seem like a “fun” relationship. The abuse was heavily romanticised, and made it seem like a love story. Which was the opposite of the author’s intention, even in the back of the book it says Lolita is not a love story. Lolita turned into a sex symbol, even though she was an underage girl going through abuse.
Especially after Lolita movies, even Lolita’s book publishers failed Lolita, specifically the Lolita book covers. Most of the book covers try to make Lolita look “sexy” and while they’re trying to do that, they’re over-sexualizing an underage girl. The author of the book made it clear that he didn’t want any girls on the cover, he said “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.” This shows how the author understood the ways the story could be misinterpreted and wanted the prevent the risk of the image of Lolita being sexualized or represented in a physical way.
Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita) knew what kind of story he was writing: an ugly, disturbing story meant to serious discussions of difficult subject matter. It's not a romance or an erotic thriller or anything close to the sort. It’s a shame publishers don’t care about the author’s intentions.
Thank you for mentioning the lack of correlation to the fashion subculture. It’s all about focusing on fashion devoid of the sexualization of femininity and so the conflating usually goes completely against the movement’s purpose.
17:33 this book is very good for young people to read. I read it in high school and it helped me to avoid older men who tried sexualised young women like me. This book sees right through them.
I was 10 when I recognized (because of a comment) that I was being sexualized just for existing in my body (pre-puberty). I remember the exact moment to this day and I’m over 60 now. Thank you for the video. I also highly recommend Jamie Loftus’ (yes, you pronounced it right) podcast on Lolita.
i think lolita sways you into the roller coasters of grooming. not only is it written in the point of view of the perpetrator, but it portrays the “good things” about him,like his gifts for her. but then throws you back into the abuse cycle.
i felt that way too while reading it. it’s an interesting undertone/undercurrent that, idk. helps me connect with her. i’ve never been assaulted as a young girl, but as a conventionally pretty girl, i relate so much with the near whiplash of the compliment of being attractive but the fact it has always come from old men from the time i was a small child. men get giddy and weirdly fascinated with pretty girls, like little girls. Literal random people telling my parents i’m gorgeous blah blah blah. it makes me sick. i couldn’t just exist as a kid. i had to be pretty to feel good enough. i feel like it left me pining for male attention, it groomed and shaped me and to only feel good enough if i was pretty enough. Culturally, i feel groomed. Society grooms little girls into messes like me who let old men give them compliments when i wish i told them to “f*ck off”. quite the double edged sword. like cool i’m pretty but like is that all men (and women who perpetuate these things) care for??? like can i walk outside and not feel like meat?? i’ve felt like meat since i was old enough to speak. it’s exhausting
also sorry for long comment
TLDR my girl faye is so real for this comment LOL
I recommend the double feature: Lolita, the book from the perspective of a horrible person who does a good job persuading the reader they're not so bad vs. No Longer Human, the book from the perspective of a not-so-good person who does a good job persuading the reader they're a despicable degenerate.
Thank you for the recommendation!
I remember reading this book in my English class one time and I had a male teacher who seemed pretty "weird". Like the kind of "weird" that regular kids was afraid of for no reason (fyi he was one of the best English teachers I had). So one day I was reading the book and he spotted what I was reading and asked my views about it. I simply replied "it's not a romance novel, it's literally a novel that was made as a cry for help in Nabokov's case and what happened to Dolores was never her fault and Humber Humbert should go die in a hole for eternity" and his eyes just lit up. Funny thing was that during that time other kids in my grade was reading the book and THEY called it a love story and was super relieved to find out I didn't. Oh and also the fact I called her by her actual name and not Lolita seemed to make him pleased too.
Was your teacher Sting? :)
Where did you get the Cry for Help thing? Brian Boyd’s definitive 3 volume bio of Nabokov doesn’t mention that.
After reading Lolita - and especially the end when the reader can attest of the aftermath of Humbert absolutely destroying Dolores psychologically - I don’t get how anyone could view this story as a romance or something of that kind…
I don’t know how anyone can read the line “she had nowhere else to go” or the part about Dolores crying herself to sleep every night, after he r@pes her, and somehow still think it’s a love story. It’s very evident that Dolores is a victim of a p3do’s abuse.
i always think about how the name of my favorite fashion subculture (japanese lolita) might have been born from this lack of understanding
emphasis on might
don’t quote me on this but i’m pretty sure lolita fashion comes from discourse surrounding the book… lolita is about a young girl being abused and losing her childhood by being sexualized, so as a response lolita fashion is reclaiming girlhood without it being sexualized . which is why it’s girly but also based on modest victorian clothing. i think the fashion came from a feminist mindset.
From what I can tell of the history I have access to (important to note that I do not speak Japanese myself and have to rely on others translations), we will probably never know for certain the intentions/context/origin of the word being used for the fashion. But imo the focus should be on how insistent the majority of the community has been on separating itself from the novel and everything related to it for decades.
Actually, lolita fashion comes from a full understanding of the book. It's not a secret that Japanese women and girls are infantalised, and the books release in Japan allowed the discourse to be brought to light. Lolita fashion is about women and girls (or anyone) taking the cuteness and young look for themselves and saying "I want to look like this for myself, not cus it attracts men." The fashion is empowering cus it's people taking back the innocence for themselves.
The history is quite interesting to look at, I recommend looking for it yourself!
@@Rene-xi3so Wow, this is interesting background. Did not know that at all. The name still disturbs me because "Loli"/"lolita" cannot be divorced from Delores who is written as a character who is harmed, and that harm makes me flinch because it can't be undone or dressed up, but knowing this potential background does help me see Loli fashion differently. Thank you for sharing
Nabokov masterfully and carefully writes Humbert Humbert as a manipulative yet hypocritical and dangerous man all in the character’s perspective. It reminds me of my ex who had groomed me. It taught me that he did not like me for me but rather for my young age and vulnerability. Hard to accept but absolutely necessary. The movies did not do this book justice. It did not show Humbert’s manipulative nature, and how he had been attracted to minor girls before Dolores. I almost would argue that the movies did this purposefully.
Thank you for the video, Shanspeare! As someone who has been dealing with unwelcome attention of adults since I was 10, I am enraged and heartbroken by the entire existence of the “loleeta” and “coquette” subcultures. One part of me wants to slap those girls and tell them to go do their homework, and the other part wants to give them a big hug and tell them they don’t have to play that part to feel valued. P.S. I’m Russian and you nailed the pronouncement of Vladimir Nabokov!
I think Lolita is also a good example of how depiction does not always equal endorsement. We should also consider HOW a heavy subject is portrayed. As you've said in the video, Dolores' absence/silence and the sudden dramatic moments that interrupt Humbert's idealized prose clearly show that Nabokov isn't romanticizing the abuse taking place, without any need to hammer the point down any further, besides what he writes in the introduction.
As for the suggestion that it is impossible to make a good adaptation of the book, I think I might agree. Not because I think it can't be done without sexualizing the story (using Humbert's prose as narration throughout the movie and then contrasting it on screen with what's really happenning, Dolores' side of things, could work to convey the tone of the novel) but because filming it being as accurate as possible would surely be an harrowing experience for the director, the cast and the audience, so it would be best to avoid it, especially if the approach to the original material isn't the right one.
Lastly (this comment is already uber-long, yes i'm procrastinating something, how did you know XD?), a round of applause for the point about how abuse is not justified even if young girls show interest in a relationship (even if this is clearly not the case of the novel) because THE ADULTS should clearly know better and should not be taking advantage of them.
Yep. People forget that artists and writers showing something in their art doesn’t mean they think it’s OK,
i love when you talk to me about literature for half an hour from a chaise longue. this is my Poetic Cinema.
My introduction to this book was during high school (~16 years ago) when we had to read some classic book and write an essay about it. I saw the book in second hand bookstore and bought it without knowing much about it, other than it was controversial. It was a challenging read for certain. Read it in Finnish back then, but now I kinda want to read it in English as well.
Lolita isn’t Dolores’ story. We don’t get her perspective throughout the story. It’s Lolita’s story. And Lolita isn’t Dolores. Lolita is Humbert’s delusion of Dolores. Humbert buys Dolores new clothes and accessories to make his delusion of Lolita come to life. When he explains the “love” (which in reality is pe@dophili@ and lust), he feels for her; it’s not towards Dolores; it’s towards Lolita. Dolores isn’t Lolita; she doesn’t become Lolita either. She’s still Dolores, but Humbert’s delusional and lustful mind believes she’s Lolita.
Nabakov was also very clever with the naming of Dolores and the book.
Dolores’ name is sad and poetic. It’s Spanish and means sorrows, sorrowful and pain.
Lolita is a word/name Humbert fabricated; it wasn’t used before the book was published. Humbert made up Lolita. By calling her Lolita, he erases her personhood and her pain in their interactions. He's hiding her pain within his sick fantasy.
Dolores never calls herself “Lolita”. The name "Lolita" is used only by Humbert. Other characters refer to her as "Lo", "Lola", or "Dolly". Humbert calling her Lolita denies her subjectivity.
Humbert also says, "Lo-lee-ta" Humbert tears Dolores' whole essence to shreds. He rips her apart and dehumanises her.
In real life, it's part of how abusers can attack the victim; by renaming them, they're erasing their prior identity and exerting control over them.
i’ve seen a lot of lolita analyses and video essays, but yours is by far my favorite!! i love how you go a step further and look into parts of our culture that no one else really talked about, and your all around editing/fashion/cadence is incredible, as usual. 100/10 video i love it :-)
I began trying to read Lolita a few weeks ago, but I wasnt really able to get through it, but I believe that it is such an important book and topic, even though I was unable to get through the entire thing. ❤
this is such an excellent video, lolita was a ridiculously hard book to get through but it is one that continues to ping into my mind, and the disconnect between the book and the culture surrounding it has been something that has bothered me for a long time. you laid it out so perfectly. this video is like a sigh of relief thank u for making it
the 30 year old man who """"dated""" me at 15 read this book.
he.
read.
Nabokov's
'Lolita'
beforehand.
In Polish a lolita means a woman (typically a young adult) who acts a bit snobbish and high brow, great video LOVE your work
I just watched the 1997 version & I was so shocked, disgusted, intrigued, couldn’t look away all in one damn breath. I had to know how it ended.
The ending gave me Justice with his final moments of accountability of ruining an innocent child. After looking up many reviews I’ve decided to read the book and maybe even watch the earlier version to compare & contrast. The author, from what I’ve seen, is a very talented writer. When it came to where the story originated from I wasn’t able to get enough from his organized interviews.
i read and watched lolita as i was being groomed/abused by an older man (who completely endorsed it). now i reread it with a different lens and broke down crying; for dolores, for myself, for all the girls who experienced the same thing.
i love coquettish fashion, gingham and the sorts, but i will always have a deep hatred for the grown women and men who used said aesthetics as a way to lure young girls into a lifestyle that is so DEEPLY dangerous to their mental and physical health. i see girls on tiktok calling themselves lolitas and posting their conversations with predatory older men. i just want more for girls.
Truly, what made Lolita grossest for me when I finally read it, is that all I knew was the pop culture depiction of it. I didn’t know it was a story of a pedophile. And it horrified me that SO MANY PEOPLE (see, straight men) saw this story as ‘romantic’ and about ‘forbidden love’ rather than grooming and abuse.
I can tell that this video is really in depth and something that was well researched about. Love your content, can't wait to get into this discussion.
Can i just say i love your videos so much 😭 your sense of narrative + intertwining it with costume design and aesthetic choices is so good!!!! I was another teen who read lolita out of a feeling of kinship with dolores and have been following dialogue around it as an adult. tysm for your contribution to the discussion + keeping it going
+++ it's absolutely crucial for material (not even just literature) like lolita to be available to the the public, esp young people. silencing discussion about CSA, SA, and even just s3x is how predators get away with being predators.
I would love to see you talk about The Virgin Suicides next 👀 I feel it's another book that's been taken and aestheticized on social media too (not to the same extent as Lolita though)
I love the virgin suicides movie I haven’t read the book yet but I heard there was a lot of stuff left out of the movie from the book
@@Cupidsdestinyit’s sooo good!! I definitely would recommend it :)
Thank you for this video. I consider Lolita to be one of the most important books I have, so far, read. I absolutely think it should be on the reading list for schools, it can replace Romeo and Juliette in English Lit, it's far more worthwhile. It's such an easy read, until it becomes almost unbearably hard to read. Nabokov does the single most important thing any piece of media tackling abuse has ever done - he make Humbert real, really real, he is likeable, amiable, polite, utterly vile, educated, handsome, and witty. Nearly 80 years after it's publication, society still clings to physiognomy, parents are warier of those whose appearance does not fit within the window of "normal", whilst dropping their guard around the handsome, and urbane. It's ableist, and it's a useless metric for the protection of children. I can absolutely see why it could be beneficial to those who see their own experiences reflected in Dolores' story, and I can see why the media that surrounds the novel would easily deter those same people. It's difficult, and in it's difficulty it reflects our society's two-faced view of our girls, and young women, consuming them with the eyes of Humbert Humbert, we victim blame in his words, whilst we hold them up as insouciant embodiments of purity, and virtue. Until we make our treatment of, and relationship to, our girls less difficult, we will continue to need this difficult book. Until we start seeing Dolores, as Dolores, we will continue to need Lolita.
We‘re in for a treat today girlies :)
When I was a teenage girl, I also wanted to be lolita. I wanted to be seen as innocent, loved unconditionally, and be spoiled by an older man with money, who would coddle me. It wasn't until I got older, and finally took a step back, and saw the bigger picture. My heart hurts for lolita, as she was targeted and forced into this grown man's world. She never had a chance for a normal begining.
so glad i paused my tiktok video of a woman making vile mac and cheese to watch this x
Dandruff Mac and cheese 😍
*standing ovation*
she said there was nothing left to contribute to the eternal ocean of Lolita discourse, but it was really just to get us to let down our guards. Iconic nymphette behavior.
9:57 I wish people would understand the difference between reading, comprehending and critical engagement with a book . Just because one reads a book doesn’t mean you understand said book. This video truly shows that 😊
I know death of the author, but it is interesting to go back and read Lolita within the context of the afterwards. He states that it is almost reflection of his romanticism of his mother tongue, his relationship with the English language, and his missing of Russia, the country he had to abandon as a young man in the wake of the October Revolution. The Russian afterward adds another layer to romanticism of his mother tongue because he expressed that the “story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick." Granted, it’s certainly…A CHOICE to express his relationship with his heritage language through a CSA unreliable narrator, which but it adds an interesting lens to the intended condemnation of Humbert. Nabokov’s POV on his mother tongue is something that I’ve seen expressed by a number of heritage language learners. Even in all of today’s resources, media in their heritage language can still be incredibly difficult to obtain, making the immersion aspect of language an idealized struggle.
Speaking of death of the author, Nabokov's second most famous novel is called Pale Fire, and it's abouts the interpretation of art and literature and how divorced they can be from the writer's original meaning
@@kjarakravik4837 fascinating, thank you for pointing me towards new reading material.
This was a really interesting essay. It's so important to point out that regardless of any way Humbert portrayed Delores, that she could never have consented and that she in no way deserved what happened. Also what you said about the throwing the book away in disgust was so true. I feel like the eyeball stuff was Nabokov trying to tell people like "snap out of it, this guy's a creep" if they ever got to entranced by the writing.
I really think you will enjoy the podcast. You both have a lot of similar points that you share, and I think Jamie Loftus adds a good investigation of the way media has changed the narrative surrounding the book. Something I found very important, was her acknowledgement of how the book and the culture surrounding it has been used to abuse others.
I feel like it goes too far to say he annihilated her, destroyed her, or that she is just a stock character. She is incredible brave and active throughout the book. She does many actions to try to undermine Humbert (flushing the toilet when he showers, insulting him, other events I can't remember cause I don't have the book) and makes an attempt to escape, and succeeds! This is one of the loudest things she could ever have done, its only from Humbert's perspective (who is lessening this event before he admits it to the reader by saying that he already killed her, that he already destroyed whatever was part of her) that we are supposed to think she is dead/destroyed. Imaging this escape attempt from her perspective, she's making an attempt to escape her abuser, knowing even that he killed her mother, and she is able to leave (although obviously there is the complication of the fact that Quincy becomes a new abuser). I'm sure in her life, this is one of the most important moments for her, and her obvious strength completely disproves any of Humbert's claims of having destroyed her. He says she is alive as long as she is under his control, its once she leaves and can regain her self-determination that he claims she has been killed by him (which I interpret as him trying to regain any sense of power over her).
I know that for many people, CSA can feel like it destroys parts of themselves, and I wouldn't want to speak over that feeling, saying that it's not a valid interpretation of how Delores would feel about her experiences. I just feel like it's leaning into his perspective to say she is this silent void in the book that he controls. Her attempts for freedom/regaining control happen quiet loudly, so much so that she still makes her way into his retelling of the events, despite his attempts to write her out.
Although I wonder if I'm misunderstanding the language and what you mean, as I'm interpreting the language around "silencing her, destroying her" to mean that she becomes a shell of her former self and that she loses her voice. I could see how this may mean "silenced" in the sense that he under cuts her self-expression, and hides her from the reader behind his own telling of the story, which I definitely agree with. His narrative is made to be one-sided and unrepresentative.
Would you consider doing a follow-up regarding the movies now that the strikes are over? As well-made as this video is, I feel like it’s missed potential to talk about Lolita without being able to mention the movie adaptations and how massively they shifted perception of the story within the cultural zeitgeist.
Aside from the book , Girl lolita fashion was my whole life when I was in middle school, sadly I was too poor to actually afford the clothes but now that I'm an adult I CAN YO
The discourse surrounding the perception of Lolita in pop culture is so fascinating!! I'm currently working on a film adaptation of the novel myself with the aims of correcting misinterpretations of the novel in film etc (mainly using a lot of abstract elements and having a doll puppet thing instead of an actress for Dolores) so this video was really inspiring xx (also I wouldn't have read Lolita in the first place without Shanspeare's infantilisation video so tysm
I just wanted to emphasise how absolutely brilliant the editing of this episode is. Eveything is so cool, creative and well executed !
Even as someone who never experienced SA the book gave me something when i read it the first time with 16. I was suddenly very thankful for the adults in my life who always protected me and that i was protected. I grew up in what was once east Germany and my whole family are east germans and nudity on beaches is very normal here especially for children because they are small no one should think sexually about them so why would they need to cover up? So everytime i had an adult that even looked weirdly at me that person was reprimanded and removed and not me, oftentimes before i could even feel uncomfortable and by that i think it gave me the confidence to clearly vocalize when i did feel uncomfortable once i was a teenager (looking old enough that i could be mistaken for a barely adult woman) because i just had to state clearly that u felt uncomfortable or how young i was to be sure that someone would help me beacuse when I was younger people also intervened before i could evwn say anything and I'm very happy that at least until now it actually always worked out. But i don't know if i would have the confidence if i didn't had the experience to be protected as a child
I was born in the West. When the wall fell and we were dealing with "immigrants", I remember plenty of scorn on their part. One of the accusations I kept hearing over and over again was that we were prudes because we don't go to the beach in the nude. Which isn't even true, by the way. Naturism used to be a thing before WWII, and even in the West, it was never completely given up. You had to join a club, though, to be allowed on a naturist camping site or use their section of the beach, and back then, you needed somebody to vouch for your character and you had to provide proof that you were never convicted of a sex crime. Also, discreet skinny dipping was condoned. If the police spotted you swimming in a lake on your own, in the nude, they didn't have you charged with indecent exposure.
I love the line "a fever you can't sweat out" a perfect encapsulation; of Lolita.
Excellent commentary about how pop culture doesn't understand Lolita novel
The Nympet idea went away long time ago when we became more aware of being proud of our sexuality but using it in the right way ,not falling victim to it.
I hate to see how some young women today have misinterpreted it
Everyone needs to read the book .Both movies were a very different interpretation.
You did a great job explaining it😊
I think people forget Lolita is supposed to be gross. Media comprehension 0%
Her silence is deafeningly loud and un-ignorable. I’d argue it’s a third of what the novel is, her being silenced by him while she’s alive and then finally when he kills her.
Thanks for mentioning "You". I just picked it up from the library and it's fascinating.
Blessed with another video!!! TYSM for all the work you put into these 😭💕🙇♀️
I think lolita is an excellent book, but I feel weird about film adaptations. I know literally nothing about child acting and how logistically one would do lolita, but as a femme minor myself, a young girl acting out the things that happen in lolita would be pretty traumatic.
There's one quote from my American Lit class that I often use for a quick explanation: 'Lolita is basically a Law & Order episode, but from a different pov", which might be a very silly description, but hey, I've read much worse summaries 🤣 Jokes aside, 'Lolita' is one of my favourite books. I loved it when I read it for personal interest and I loved it even more when I studied it at university. I had wonderful teachers, super clever classmates, and I wrote one of the essays I enjoyed the most about it. The use of the unreliable narrator is 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻I fell in love with a theory/interpretation we explored (I'm going to sum it up very quickly, it's definitely not a comprehensive explanation of course) that the book is a cage created by the author to trap and torture Humbert, in attempt to "avenge" Dolores. Going out into the world and seeing the way people talked about it, used it and just overall understood it was a shock. As much as I love the book so much, I usually choose not to talk about it wit anyone who isn't a close friend, because I am too scared of where the conversation might go. I absolutely loved your video! You pointed out very well some of my favourite passages in the books - the moments where Humbert "slips" and let us see Dolores as a child, alone and helpless (the article about the kidnapped girl broke my heart), or how the other adults are portrayed as clueless and incapable of understanding Dolores's behaviour (I'm thinking of the school part). I will definitely check out both the comments to your post and the essays, it's been a while since some Lolita-related material sparked my interest, so thank you for that 😊❤️
For me personally, the horrific beauty of Lolita is that it leaves you with the knowledge that there are people out there who manage to justify anything. Not only mindless monsters lurking in dark alleys, but also eloquent and even intelligent ones, who manage to paint horrible crimes in pretty colours. Hearing someone talk about the topics that Lolita is about is bad enough, but hearing it through the lens of someone like Humbert makes it so much worse. I always thought that thats the entire point. Like someone describing a car accident as if they where looking at something pretty, it just makes your skin crawl in a certain way.
As someone studying Russian, you pronounce "Vladimir Nabokov" just fine! You got the syllabic stress right :)