Lolita: Lost in Adaptation
By Sophia Zhang
Literature Editor
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, was published in 1955. It has been critically acclaimed, become a renowned classic, and been adapted for the movie screen, but it has also been controversial. This story details the grooming and the molestation of twelve-year-old Dolores Haze through the eyes of her abuser, Humbert Humbert. Because the narrator is the perpetrator of these crimes, the words on the page do not reflect the reality of the young girl being raped by her stepfather and instead, tell of these events through the lens of a charismatic speaker whose perspective is muddled by his sexual fantasies. Nabokov was intentional in his prose to contrast further the beauty of the words on the page with the horror of the subject matter.
Initially denied by multiple publishers, Nabokov decided to get his manuscript published in France after five years of working on it. While garnering mixed reviews, it sold well and, in 1962, was turned into a movie by Stanley Kubrick, who transformed the carefully crafted exploration of Humbert’s twisted obsession with his daughter into a dark comedy starring the fourteen-year-old Sue Lyon. They intended to turn this story of sexual abuse into a sensualized love story, with the (aged-up) fourteen-year-old as the seductress. Because Lyon looked older than her age, producer James B. Harris could explain their casting choice by saying: “We knew we must make [Lolita] a sex object […] where everyone in the audience could understand why everyone would want to jump on her.” There was an adamant effort to justify Humbert’s perverseness by turning Lolita into a “definite sex object,” as Harris stated in a Film Comment interview. When the allegation that Harris had been involved with Sue Lyon during the movie’s filming, despite being married and eighteen years older than the teenage girl, the parallels between real life and the unsettling subject matter of the book became clear. Later in her life, Lyon commented about the damage being sexualized in such a manner at such a young age had on her psyche.
Following the success of Kubrick’s adaptation, Lolita was transformed into a femme-fatale archetype which became ingrained in popular culture. This shift was further cemented as new editions of the novel were published with covers reflecting this distorted interpretation of the story. From the start, Nabokov was very precise in his instruction for the cover of his book, stating that “there is one subject which [he is] emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl.” Although his wishes were in large part respected, after the 1962 movie, there was a surge of covers that depicted little girls and naked women, all echoes of the iconic imagery from the Kubrick film. The young girl with red lips, a lollipop, and heart-shaped sunglasses became the definite representation of Lolita. Every element of the cover conveys the sexuality of this girl, which is senseless, especially when compared with the prepubescent girl Nabokov was picturing. The media’s distortion of this girl into a hyper-sexualized seductress is a prime example of life imitating art, with general audiences seeing the skewed, perverted perspective of Humbert Humbert. Such misrepresentation has led to an idealization and aestheticization of the look of Lolita, with young girls attempting to copy the late-summer Americana aesthetic from the Kubrick movie and the 1997-Adrian Lyne adaptation.
Films often carry a greater cultural reach than literature due to their accessibility and immediate impact on audiences. Adapting a book, especially one as heavy as Nabokov’s Lolita, is impossible. For a movie to have the same effect the book had, which is to say that there is an underlying current of sexual abuse under a rose-tinted filter, the character of Lolita would need to be represented by an actress who resembles a twelve-year-old girl in stature and composure. Yet, subjecting a real twelve-year-old to such a role, even on set, would be deeply unethical, as seen with Sue Lyon’s traumatic experience.