"Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my desires. My sin, my soul. ”
In 1953, the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote a novel in which the title, first word and last word were "Lolita", and one of the most famous female figures in literary history was born.
In the first few years, Nabokov refused to visualize Lolita in any way, and in 1958, in a letter to an American publisher about the cover design, he said: "There is a plan that I firmly oppose — the appearance of any form of little girl image." ”
Cover of the French edition published in 1955
But a few years later, as the book sold well, the artistic image of Lolita had its own life, and not only did many subsequent editions of Lolita's book seals go against Nabokov's original intentions in design.
The 1962 and 1997 films have solidified Lolita in red sunglasses, lollipops, braces, or braces and crop tops into pop culture symbols, and many people, even if they have not read the novel, have a portrait of Lolita in their hearts: young, cute, and with a precocious, seductive dangerous charm.
So when the 2019 American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for sexually exploiting minors, his private jet was naturally dubbed the "Lolita Express."
However, the image of Lolita in both versions of the film is far from the novel, and the lolita image in the novel, all from the self-description of the male protagonist Humbert, is the product of his gaze, imagination and memory, behind which is a neglected, hidden, deprived of the right to speak of a little girl, her name is Dolores Haze.
More than half a century later, the Lolita tragedy is still repeating itself, and the controversy and misreading around Lolita are still continuing, and it is necessary for us to re-understand "Lolita", which makes us uneasy and unavoidable.
After Nabokov finished Lolita in 1953, the manuscript was rejected by several Publishers in the United States, including The New Yorker, with which he had signed a release agreement, and the publisher felt that he might get into a lawsuit or go to jail for the book.
It was not until 1955 that Lolita was published by a publishing house in Paris, and in 1958 it was published in the United States and quickly appeared on the bestseller list, gradually establishing itself as a classic.
The Chinese writer Su Tong commented: "Incest and seduction are obscene and dirty, and a brilliant novel about incest and seduction is noble and charming." ”
Nabokov presents a story of great controversy and room for interpretation in a complex, ornate way, between morality and aesthetics, desire and destruction, empathy and resentment, and he does not give the reader an easy and comfortable choice, precisely: "Ladies of the jury, gentlemen ... Look at this tangled thorn. ”
Any excellent literary work rejects a single dimension of reading, and Lolita weaves a web of mystery, the most righteous kind.
Naturally, some people interpret it as a love story, Vanity Fair once described it as "the only love story of this century", and the 1997 version of the film also portrayed Humbert as an affectionate intellectual.
But Humbert was most proud of his aesthetic, disdaining Dolo Lace's mediocrity and shallowness, and obsessed with imaginary Lolita, "my own creation."
Moreover, only the "age group of nine to fourteen" is the "little fairy", and each "little fairy" is destined to be as short-lived as a butterfly and then become Humbert's most hated species— an adult woman. He even fantasized that Lolita, whose magical charm had disappeared in a few years, could have a child, and eight or nine years later, she would be a "Lolita second".
Is this a kind of love? Or is it what the novel calls "a medical record" in the preface?
Lolita from Humbert's point of view is not the "perfect victim", she is a wayward and obedient object, once took the initiative to seduce Humbert, after the death of her mother, forced to live with Humbert, she used her body as capital in exchange for pocket money, rebelling against Humbert's control, the 1997 version of the film Lolita is more provocative.
In reality, such a perpetrator perspective and male orientation are not uncommon, but in an imperfect world, demanding the "perfect victim" is pure nonsense, ignoring a woman's normal sexual consciousness and inferior position in power relations, even Humbert realized: "She really has nowhere else to go." ”
Moreover, we must always be vigilant that the right to speak is still on humbert or Lolita's side, and the female writer Lin Yihan's creation of "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise" is considered to be the right to regain Lolita's right to speak.
A reporter once said that Humbert's character was touching, with a "spoiled artist quality", and Nabokov replied: "I prefer to say this: Humbert Humbert is a vain, cruel villain, but he makes himself look 'touching'." The term 'touching' applies only to the poor little girl I wrote in its true, tearful sense. ”
In Nabokov's pen, what is the mystery of the names of these characters? He had read them one by one.
Lolita – "For my little fairy, I need a poetic, fast-paced, small, cute word." One of the clearest and brightest letters is 'L'. Luo Yili Yita: The tip of the tongue is up, in three steps, from the upper jaw down to gently land on the teeth. Lo. beautiful. tower. ”
Humbert Humbert – "This low superposition of names is very filthy and provocative. It's a nasty name given to a nasty ghost. It's also a kingly name, and I do need a solemn resonance between Humbert the Berserker and Humbert the Humble. ”
Dolores Haze—"This is Lolita's original name, like a pleasant murmur, 'Dolores' has roses and tears in its meaning, and the tragic fate of my little girl must be considered in conjunction with her cuteness and clarity."
"Dorolace also gave her another, more plain, familiar, and more childish nickname, Dolly, which was also appropriate for the surname 'Haze', which in turn mixed Irish fog with German bunny (the surname 'Haze' means 'fog' in Irish and 'bunny' in German)."
Lolita's story has been adapted into a film twice, but both films have very different angles and styles.
In 1962, director Stanley Kubrick brought Lolita to the screen, and Nabokov wrote the script himself.
Lolita was born after Kubrick's unprecedented box-office success of the epic "Spartacus", and before one of his greatest films, Dr. Strangelove, it seemed to fall into the cracks and was not often talked about Kubrick's films.
Looking back at the black-and-white film, Kubrick made a drastic adaptation of Nabokov's text, and it's no wonder that Nabokov said that "the film only uses some incomplete sporadic fragments of my script."
Kubrick adopts a flashback approach, opening with Humbert shooting the playwright Quilty, and he turns Humbert's subjective perspective into an objective perspective, deleting Humbert's childhood history with the "little fairy", deleting many poetic scenes in the novel, adding Quilty's role, making him and Humbert seem to be opposites, but they are actually two sides, interpreting the selfishness and cruelty under the clever words of the literati.
Kubrick stripped away the affectionate bubble created by the rhetoric in a cold, decisive style, and Humbert's coldness to Mrs. Hazel and his impatience with Lolita revealed his true heart.
Rather than showing the unrequited love between middle-aged men and girls, Kubrick is more interested in showing personal madness and the destruction of desire, just like the madness caused by war, money, etc. he once showed.
The 1997 version, directed by Adrian Lane, slipped into a vague, damp lyrical style, shrouded in a hazy, lightly veiled, nostalgic tone that we see not of Nabokov,a newcomer to shiny, vulgar pop America.
Set off by the sad piano and strings, Humbert became a handsome, poor man who suffered from loss and loss in romantic romances, and his dark side was erased. This is a popular love disillusionment, more acceptable to the public, but also more superficial.
Compared to the original, Ryan captures the main plot of the novel, while Kubrick captures the core of irony and black humor, with a gothic sense of weirdness.
Both versions of the film have adaptations of the novel, but both retain the key plot of Humbert's righteous gesture of Lolita's adoptive father who kills Quirty, a playwright who seduced and taken her, and then goes to jail and dies.
In fact, Humbert and Quilty did the same thing to Lolita, and from a psychoanalytic point of view, Quilty, the shadow-like figure, is the object of Humbert's guilt transfer, his split personality. Kubrick strengthened this mirror relationship, and Humbert killed Quilty, that is, killed himself.
This is not the only "death of Humbert" in Nabokov's writing, in his short story "The Magician", the hero marries her mother in order to get close to the infatuated little girl, and after the death of his mother he tries to take advantage of the girl's sleep, the girl who wakes up screams loudly, he rushes out of the room in fear, and is killed by a fast-moving truck on the street.
In Nabokov's last unfinished novel, The Prototype of Laura, there is also a Humbert-like character, Hubert, who died of a heart attack in an elevator. Although Nabokov says he "does not write didactic novels," morality emerges automatically when stories arise. The death of Humbert is an ethical position.
In chapter 33 of the novel, Humbert has a monologue: "Am I not sure that I did to Dolly (i.e., Lolita) what the fifty-year-old mechanic Frank Lassalle did to 11-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?" ”
Nabokov has collected newspaper clippings from the kidnapping of Sally Horner, and true stories and novels have a lot in common, they take place in almost the same year, two girls of similar age, both have only single mothers, and road trips in the name of "father and daughter".
If the Lolita complex is contagious, Sally is like the "patient zero", but without the overwhelming beauty of Nabokov's powerful language ability, the real victim encounter is a naked and complete tragedy.
Sally Horner in reality
In March 1948, Sally Horner, a New Jersey girl under the age of 11, was stealing a five-cent notebook at a mall when she was caught and threatened by Frank LaSalle, a self-proclaimed FBI agent, who was in fact a mechanic who had been arrested for rape, bigamy, etc., and had a history of child molestation.
Three months later, he kidnapped Sally, took her on numerous trips and sexually assaulted her several times. Sally was rescued 21 months later, but some people accused her of not stealing in the first place, she would not have been so vulnerable and easily caught in the net. Sally was later killed in a car accident at the age of 15. Frank was sentenced to 30-35 years in prison and died in prison in 1966 due to illness.
Sally Horner is reunited with her mother
Nabokov once stressed in interviews that Humbert liked "little girls", that humbert was 12 years old when he met Lolita, and that Lolita was 14 years old and was humbert's "old mistress".
But bringing this pedophile story to the screen as it really is a huge ethical challenge, and both films adjust Lolita's age in an effort to make the story look more "normal."
Sue Leon was 14 when she starred in the 1962 version of Lolita, and the New York Times commented that she looked 17 years old on screen.
Even though the hayth code of review was abolished in 1966, Dominique Swain was 15 years old when she filmed the new version of Lolita in 1995, wearing braces to look more childish, but wearing a crop top and miniskirt almost the entire time.
Compared to the lolita figure in the novel, the lolita in the movie is greatly sexified. Humbert's obsession is not "precocious" and "sexy" in the popular sense, nor does it have anything to do with beautiful appearance, and it is precisely the undeveloped figure that can stir him up, as well as the childishness of gait and looks.
In the novel, Lolita "wears a checkered shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of canvas rubber-soled sneakers" when she dries her clothes, while in Ryan's film, she wears a knee-length flower skirt, barefoot, and after drying her clothes, she crosses Humbert's legs flat on the grass and steps on his pants.
Kubrick's film is a erotic nail polish scene, and the poster image created by star photographer Bert Stern is widely circulated, and lolita is deeply labeled with sexiness, and Leon is wearing a bikini, wearing heart-shaped sunglasses, and half lying down sucking on a red lollipop, which does not appear in the book or in the movie.
Lolita in both films is largely symbolic, and as in the novels, she is not given a voice, with Lane's films focusing on humbold Humbert's tragic image, and Kubrick's obsession with Humbert's black game with Quilty.
As for Lolita herself, perhaps the audience, like Humbert, "has no idea what my baby thinks", and Humbert's lolita is mostly speaking childish, banal clichés.
But toward the end of the novel, Nabokov offers a hint about the little girl's inner life, saying, "You know, the scariest part of death is that you are completely dependent on yourself." ”
Perhaps, the real little girl Dorolace Haze had a garden, a dawn, the gate of a palace in her heart, but we never entered.
The two actresses who have played Lolita have also been affected by the role of Lolita to varying degrees.
Sue Leon died in Los Angeles last December at the age of 73, and her artistic life seems to have been frozen in 1962, and her image in the poster of "Lolita" is still deeply rooted in people's hearts and has been borrowed from many editions of "Lolita" books.
In fact, in the film, Leon's image is not frivolous, but has become part of the film's style, a bit of the temperament of the scorpion girl in the film noir.
Leon came from the bottom of society, his father died early, and his mother pulled on five children on the meager income of a nurse in a hospital. At a very young age, she began working as a model while going to school to help her mother make ends meet.
At the age of 14, she emerged from more than 800 actresses to become the heroine of Kubrick's Lolita, which was a box office hit after the film was released, and Leon became famous in one fell swoop, and many media outlets rushed to interview her and make her pose the same as on the poster.
Later, she played a sexy girl in "Wushan Stormy Night" (1964), but her career did not have a major breakthrough, and she officially quit the show business in 1980.
Leon's emotional life was also not smooth, she had a total of five marriages, at the age of 17 married to the eight-year-old herself, the newly divorced Hampton Vancher (one of the screenwriters of "Blade Runner"), but the marriage lasted less than two years, leon said in divorce court that he was lonely and miserable.
Leon later married a black photographer, but "black-and-white marriage" was not accepted by Hollywood at the time, and the two moved to Spain after marriage, facing controversy and pressure and separating after more than a year.
Leon's next marriage sparked a huge controversy, she married Gary Adamson (nicknamed "Cotton"), a convict who was serving a sentence in prison for second-degree murder and robbery, and a year later Adamson escaped from prison and robbed again, and Leon divorced him.
Leon later blamed the failure of his emotional life on Lolita: "My personal destruction can be traced back to Lolita, playing a pedophile uncle's fantasy schoolgirl at the age of 14, becoming a sexual symbol at the age of 15, and it will be difficult to live a normal emotional life in the future." ”
Dominique Swain played Lolita in the 1997 film, which was intended to be popular with Natalie Portman for "Killer Leon", but was rejected. Born in 1980, Swain began auditioning for commercials and films at the age of nine, but did not really act before starring in Lolita.
Lacey Warner, a scholar who studies the Lolita complex, once commented on the video of Swain auditioning for Lolita:
"What I saw was not a film based on a great American literary work being auditioned, but a young girl trying to get the attention of an older man who believed what the two older men (director Adrian Lane and lead actor Jeremy Irons) told her: She was special and would make a name for herself if she did what they asked."
In another clip of the film, Sven appears manic and distracted, jumping around and convulsing on the couch, as anxious as Lolita, who is missing her mother in the film.
Lolita, Humbert and Mrs. Haze in the 1997 film
After the release of "Lolita", Sven did not get the fame she expected or was promised, she became a B-grade actress, and to this day, Sven still ties her hair into two braids on her head from time to time, just like in "Lolita", she seems to be caught in the "Lolita" vortex, not wanting or unable to "grow up".
In fact, not only the two who played Lolita, but also in Hollywood, other teenage stars are often over-consumed and troubled. Natalie Portman once said in a speech that when she was 13 years old, she excitedly opened her first fan letter and read about a rape fantasy written to her by a man.
Mara Wilson, who has starred in films such as "Daddy Daddy" and "Matilda", has also talked about her image being used in child pornography, and she has also received various messages from adult men online.
Director Lane was unhappy with the criticism he brought about by the filming of "Lolita": "If I shoot a story of a 13-year-old girl being eaten by cannibals, it's no problem." ”
Scholar Lacey Warner believes that Lolita has always been eaten by "cannibals".