Crystal Holly

Eng-230
Professor Smith
May 9, 2016

Cultural Criticism: What has pop culture done to poor Lolita?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker
for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital,
relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers
who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically
harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of
sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down on them. We
are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild
dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the
presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance
to touch a nymphet (Nabokov 62).

Lolita was a novel I stumbled across by chance, on Tumblr. A singer by

the name of Lana Del Rey had a song, Off to the Races linked to the site

loosely based off of Vladimir Nabokovs infamous book. The song was

smooth, sexy, and playful with lyrics that told the tale of a girl in love with an

older man. Catchy lyrics like My old man is a bad man but/I cant deny the

way he holds my hand and Im your little scarlet, scarlet, singin in the

garden/Kiss me on my open mouth on top of rhythmic beats made the story

seem glamorous and vibrant. However, what Lana Del Rey and so many

others left out was the dark undertone thats intricately weaved into the

pages of the novel.

 Lolita is not a story of sweet, misunderstood romance or

unconventional love. It is the story of the abused and the aggressor. Many

fall under the false impression that Lolita is a classic love story but would a

classic love story include a mid-30s man pleading to a group of jurors why

being in love with a 12 year old is acceptable, as the excerpt from the novel

does above? Lolita is made out to be a young girl who quite simply is in love

with an older man. She is seen as feminine, flirty, mature not the victim

that she actually is. Their love is supposed to be dark but beautiful,

something we don't have to understand; but is that right? I think not. In my

essay I will break down how pop culture often romanticizes rape culture and

explain how it is possible to mistake abuse for common romance in Lolita.

The Misconception
TV/Film adaptions

Lolita. A trend our culture has greatly embraced is turning classic novels, or

even novels with a cult following, into film adaptions. This can be seen in

franchises like The Twilight Saga, the Hunger Games trilogy, and more

famously, the Harry Potter series. When a novel is brought to film, often

times its original plot will get altered to fit into one of two categories:

comedy or romance. Pop culture as a whole tends to romanticize or

sugarcoat things instead of sticking to its original content. This can explain

why, even when a novels content holds weight and substance (such as

Lolita), we strip away at it for film so it can be more appealing to the masses.
This rings true to the film adaption of Lolita, which made its debut in 1962. In

an essay entitled, Letting Lolita Laugh written by Victoria Duckett, Duckett

goes on to recount her initial reaction to the film. In the essay she goes on to

say,

I nevertheless believe that there is a conscious and clever humor in

the way that Lolita does not mimic Nabokov but instead departs
significantly from both the novels description of events and Nabokovs
own screenplay. Indeed, it is my belief that the film introduces original
material at its very outset in order to indicate Lolitas new visual
perimeters: we are not mining a page for an authors clever puns but
are instead invited to see the funny face of film (Duckett 529).

Ducketts response shows that, dating back to even the 60s, pop culture has

always had an obsession with the idea of washing away the ugly truth and

turning it into something lighter and easier to digest. In the novel, Lolita is

described as a girl with pale-gray vacant eyes who is of tender dreamy

childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity, stemming from the snub-nosed

cuteness of ads and magazine pictures (Nabokov 29). In the film adaption,

however the innocent, child-like Lolita is replaced with a lighter, more mature

version. As Duckett reminds us, the Lolita in the film is shown listening to a

transistor radio, wearing dark love-heart shaped sunglasses, wearing a bikini,

sprawling in the garden with all the nonchalance of a young teen (Duckett

535). The parallels between the film version of Lolita and the novel version is

almost nonexistent. In the novel it is very obvious that Lolita is young and

impressionable, unwilling to make mature decisions such as being in a

monogamist relationship with an older man. However in creating this new

character for film that appears fun and flirty like the one Lana Del Rey crones

about in her song, it is to clean up the mess and turn this tragic novel into a

romantic story that pulls at the heartstrings. This is one way in which pop

culture romanticizes rape culture. It makes everything appear much more

consensual and morally right when the reality of it is much darker than wed

like to think.

Family Guy. Family Guy is a show known for its satirical storylines and

criticism against all things popular culture. In their seventh season the show

did an episode titled Family Gay, where there is a James Bond allusion. In

the scene, James Bond is standing with a blonde woman and their dialogue

goes as follows:

James: [pulling blonde into arms] Now, time for some unfinished
business.
Blonde: No James.
James: Yes.
Blonde: No James.
James: Yes, you are going to have sex with me.
Blonde: No James, I dont want to [pull away].
James: Yes you do,
Blonde: No I dont.
James: Yes you do.
Blonde: No I dont.
James: Yes you do.
Blonde: [pause] Okay yes.
James: [To camera] see that? 50 NOs and a YES means yes.
(MrBunsen1).
In incorporating this dialogue into the script, the writers of Family Guy are

mocking pop culture and criticizing it for promoting rape. As Judith Yaross Lee

said in her essay Assaults of Laughter, Comic arts matter as cultural

products, and of all genres of comic art satire may matter most. Humor

always reflects the individuals and societies of its time and place but satire

offers a lens through which the warped images of contentious civil issues

come clearly into view (Lee vii). The idea of using satire in the show is an

effective tool because despite the writers resentment towards popular

culture and its values, it is undeniable how much Family Guy is a part of pop

culture. The show has a huge following and has been able to get important

messages across simply by selling its viewers values (or lack thereof) right

back to them. That is why episodes like Family Gay are important because

it shows where our values stand as a society and shows how programs like

the 007 franchise romanticize rape culture and so carelessly endorse it as if

rape or any kind of sexual assault isnt a huge social issue. Latching onto

Lees idea, the satire in Family Guy gets the viewer thinking about these

issues instead of trivializing them as so many other popular films and TV

shows do.

Music
Music has a huge influence on pop culture so what an artist spits out is what

listeners will happily consume and adapt to their own ideologies. Like TV
shows and film adaptations music, once apart of popular culture, often

romanticizes rape culture. This can be seen in an array of songs. Below I will

talk about one in particular that made headlines in 2013.

Blurred Lines. Robin Thicke is an award winning musician who came out

with the song, Blurred Lines in 2013. The song was catchy, fun, and sexy

much like Lana Del Reys hit. However, like Off to the Races, the lyrics to

Blurred Lines were more playful than it shouldve been. In the song

Thickes voice over groovy beats sing I hate these blurred lines/I know you

want it/I know you want it/I know you want it/But youre a good girl/The way

you grab me/Must wanna get nasty. Perhaps the lack of essays written on

songs that promote rape culture by scholars and theorists says something

about how blind we are to pop cultures habit to romanticize abuse. Despite

this (perhaps deliberate) oblivion amongst scholars, there are many people

on social media platforms that cant help but discuss these issues. On

Tumblr, blogger Padaviya shared her opinion on Blurred Lines and the

effects it could have. In the post she wrote, There is a difference between I

want to have sex with her and I know she wants to have sex with me

though she hasnt consented to it. One perpetuates a harmful and already

too widely believed social idea and the other does not. Blurred Lines is not

harmless because it contributes to harmful ideas that lead to people getting

rapped, slut shammed, and victim blamed (Padaviya, quoted by

claudiaboleyn). In spite of the lyrics and potential negative effects that

Padviya pointed out, the song still went on to be called Song of the
Summer by Billboard and received much more praise. The music video for

the song further aggravates things by having the women in the video dance

around with huge smiles on their faces as the men sing the suggestive lyrics

to them. In the deliberate roles the women play in the video and the crude

lyrics, it goes to further show how pop culture romanticizes abuse. It isnt

rape if shes smiling and giddy. Who needs consent when her body language

is basically screaming yes? That is one of the many messages pop culture

sends out about sexual abuse.

Lolita, a love story?

Now that we have examined how pop culture promotes rape culture, we can

now see how this can be applied to Lolita. To do this, we should start by

looking at the text itself. There are several things written in the book that can

be mistaken for sweet, sweet romance but speak the opposite. One of those

examples can be found right in the beginning of the novel when Nabokov

writes,

In a nervous and slender leaved mimosa grove at the back of their

villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. She trembled
and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe
of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us between the
silhouettes of long thin leaves Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not
too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a
dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half-pain, came over those
childish features She would try to relieve the pain of love by first
roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw
away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near
and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was
ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails
(Nabokov 7).
Sexual abuse is written all over this excerpt from the blatant molestation that

takes place when Humberts hand locate[s] what it sought to his

feed[ing] on Lolitas open mouth. This scene sets up a very detailed

description of the abuse Lolita has to undergo, so why is it that the novel is

often mislabeled as a romance novel? One explanation given by Elizabeth

Patnoe in her essay Lolita Misrepresented, Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing the

Troubles is that The text itself promotes misreadings of Lolita because

Humberts skillful rhetoric and Nabokovs narrative technique made it

difficult to locate both Humberts unreliability and Nabokovs moral position

(Patnoe 7). She goes on to add While the text offers evidence to indict

Humbert, it is so subtle that many reader overlook its critique of the

misogyny illustrated in and purveyed by the rest of the text (Patnoe 7).

Could it be that Humberts rhetoric forces its readers to see the story for

something that it is not? If we take a second look at the excerpt I included at

the very beginning of this essay, we can see how that might ring true. In the

excerpt Humbert is proclaiming that he is not an abuser, but a foolish man

helplessly in love with someone of a younger age. He goes on to say people

like him arent sex fiends but dedicated lovers who will spend years in jail

just to be with the girl of their desire. Although our own judgement should be

strong enough to say, no this man is a crazed rapist, Humbert tries to make

it so you feel nothing but pity and remorse for him. Heres this hero really,

who will go through widths end to be with poor Lolita, isnt that true love?

Isnt that how it is in the movies? Every girls fantasy; to be loved so

intensely and wildly a man will kill and risk his freedom to be with her? Its

the clich story. Humbert tries to blend himself in with the rest of the crowd

by saying Hey, Im doing what every man would, that doesnt make me a

rapist. It makes me a gentleman. Perhaps that is why we mistake abuse for

romance in this novel, because of Humberts rhetoric. Or perhaps, it is for

another reason. Maybe it is has to do with something else Patnoe pointed

out: readers who do not have such disturbing desires cannot imagine,

cannot bear the thought of them in themselves or others, and so they deny

or minimize such imaginings (Patnoe 14). This kind of plays into how we want

there to be a happy ending in movies, and why we sugarcoat things instead

of accepting its honest form. Its the reason why rape culture even exists,

because we try to trivialize and minimize the torture and abuse people get

put through daily so we wont have to think about it. To acknowledge rape in

Lolita is to make it real, and if its real that will bring great discomfort and

make us think of the unimaginable so of course its easier to write it off as a

romance novel instead of the gripping rape story that it so rightfully is.

Despite how easy it is to see Lolita amongst other things in pop culture

as typical romance, I hope in reading this essay it will convince whomever

may be reading this to be a little skeptical and never take anything for what

it seems. As Ive showed you with examples from film adaptions, TV shows,

and songs, not everything is black and white and some things can be

misleading. This is why, in our own day to day live you may have to dig

deeper and dissect things as Ive done in this essay to make sure you are
getting the full picture. Rape culture is very serious and what pop culture

throws out at us is what we consume so lets make sure were incorporating

the right things into our culture.

Bibliography
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Lolita (Full Text)." n.d.
<http://www.vahidnab.com/lolita.pdf>.
Duckett, Victoria Harriet. "Letting Lolita Laugh." Literature Film Quarterly
42.3 (2014): 528-540. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 8 May 2016.
MrBunsen1. "Family Guy - James Bond 50 No's, 1 Yes." YouTube. YouTube, 08
June 2015. Web. 08 May 2016.
Lee, Judith Yaross. "Assaults Of Laughter." Studies In American Humor 1.1
(2015): v-xiv. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 8 May 2016.
Claudiaboleyn. "What Rapists Say Echoes the Lyrics of Blurred Lines." Web
log post. Claudia Boleyn. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 May 2016.
<http://claudiaboleyn.tumblr.com/post/62743069563/what-rapists-say-
echoes-the-lyrics-of-blurred>.
Patnoe, Elizabeth. "Lolita Misrepresented, Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing The
Doubles." College Literature 22.2 (1995): 81-104. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 8 May 2016.