Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Lolita (1962)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On the beck Doll Cast, the questions asked if movies
- 0:03Speaker 1: have women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends
- 0:07Speaker 1: and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef
- 0:11Speaker 1: invest start changing it with the Bedel Cast. Hi, everybody,
- 0:16Speaker 1: welcome to the Beck del Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus,
- 0:20Speaker 1: my name is Caitlin Darante, and today we are unlocking
- 0:25Speaker 1: an episode from our patreon a k A Matreon feed.
- 0:30Speaker 1: Ever heard of it? And if you haven't, it's time
- 0:35Speaker 1: to get wise or not. We won't know. Uh. And
- 0:39Speaker 1: and maybe you're like, oh cool, they unlocked one now
- 0:41Speaker 1: I don't need to pay for it again. We won't know,
- 0:44Speaker 1: but you know, don't do that. But don't do that. Also,
- 0:47Speaker 1: there's still like dozens and dozens and dozens of episodes
- 0:52Speaker 1: that will never unlock. There's like almost a hundred at
- 0:55Speaker 1: this point. This show has been on for six hundred
- 0:57Speaker 1: years at this point. It's true, we're unlocking the Lolita
- 1:02Speaker 1: episode from our patreon ak matreon today, which we will
- 1:06Speaker 1: get to in a second. But if you're interested in
- 1:10Speaker 1: more episodes that are just Caitlin and myself kind of
- 1:13Speaker 1: having a loose fun, this is not actually not a
- 1:16Speaker 1: good example of that. But but having normally though having
- 1:21Speaker 1: like a one on one discussion about a movie, you
- 1:24Speaker 1: can get two episodes on top of the regular feed
- 1:28Speaker 1: there every month for simply five bucks a month, that's all.
- 1:31Speaker 1: And there's like there's like seventy or eighty episodes in there.
- 1:35Speaker 1: If you've run out of main feed episodes, yeah, there's
- 1:38Speaker 1: a lot. We should probably the like we should, I
- 1:39Speaker 1: guess we should say what the Bechtel Cast is because
- 1:42Speaker 1: we are in the main feed. Yes, so if this
- 1:45Speaker 1: is your first episode tuning into Lolita, we should go
- 1:50Speaker 1: off and next we'll tell you what the show is. Yes,
- 1:55Speaker 1: So the Bechtel Cast is our podcast in which we
- 2:00Speaker 1: discuss films through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel
- 2:04Speaker 1: test merely as inspiration for a jumping off point to
- 2:09Speaker 1: initiate larger, more in depth conversations. And Jamie, what on
- 2:14Speaker 1: earth is the Bechtel test? Well, the Bechtel test is
- 2:18Speaker 1: a media metric invented by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes
- 2:22Speaker 1: called the Bechtel Wallace test, that requires that, for our purposes,
- 2:27Speaker 1: multiple interpretations of this damn thing. Uh, but for our
- 2:31Speaker 1: purposes requires that there be two characters with names of
- 2:35Speaker 1: a marginalized gender talking to each other about something other
- 2:40Speaker 1: than a man for simply two lines of dialogue. It
- 2:44Speaker 1: doesn't happen in movies quite a bit, not enough. And furthermore,
- 2:49Speaker 1: if it does happen, it doesn't even mean that the
- 2:52Speaker 1: movie is good to women. Sometimes it just happens by
- 2:55Speaker 1: mistake accident. But it's it's aren't jumping off point for
- 3:00Speaker 1: for a larger discussion, and uh, today we are talking
- 3:04Speaker 1: about Lolita because well, first of all, I guess we
- 3:08Speaker 1: should say this. This episode was recorded about three months ago,
- 3:12Speaker 1: was recorded like towards the beginning of August. I think, yes,
- 3:16Speaker 1: it was one of your birthday month picks on the Matrion.
- 3:20Speaker 1: And normally you would choose your favorite movies for your
- 3:23Speaker 1: birthday month and the Matreon, but that is not the
- 3:26Speaker 1: case here. The reason the reason we covered Lolita is
- 3:31Speaker 1: because throughout the summer and into the fall and now
- 3:36Speaker 1: it's winter and just time keuthes continuing and things just
- 3:39Speaker 1: don't get any better. But we've I've been working on
- 3:43Speaker 1: a show that comes out. If you're listening to this
- 3:46Speaker 1: on the day of release, starting November twenty three and
- 3:49Speaker 1: working on a podcast that tracks the history of the
- 3:54Speaker 1: story of Lolita. So I say this story because the
- 4:00Speaker 1: adaptations are just out of control, bad and just misrepresenting
- 4:08Speaker 1: what the story is really about. I feel what You
- 4:12Speaker 1: can listen to the show for for for nine hours
- 4:15Speaker 1: of expansion on that. But uh, basically, yeah, this is
- 4:19Speaker 1: the first attempt to adapt Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov to
- 4:25Speaker 1: a um to a larger medium, and there's just it's
- 4:32Speaker 1: so okay. First of all, plug Lolita podcast comes out
- 4:37Speaker 1: on November twenty three, and then it's released every Monday. Uh,
- 4:41Speaker 1: there's gonna be ten episodes. We're we're gonna be talking
- 4:45Speaker 1: with I keep saying it's so, I keep saying we
- 4:48Speaker 1: because I'm so used to like not being alone. Yeah,
- 4:51Speaker 1: I'm not involved in this. It is just me. It's
- 4:54Speaker 1: just it's I say we. And then I'm also just
- 4:57Speaker 1: like me and just all of uh my my friends
- 5:02Speaker 1: that live inside of my brain. But uh, yeah, no,
- 5:06Speaker 1: I'm I'm talking to a lot of people about just
- 5:09Speaker 1: kind of like tracking this story and analyzing the book.
- 5:13Speaker 1: And then I talked to several psychologists who have worked
- 5:18Speaker 1: with victims of child abuse, Um, I talk with people
- 5:22Speaker 1: who are involved in some of these adaptations. I talked
- 5:25Speaker 1: to people who really like the book, people who really
- 5:28Speaker 1: don't like the book. But as far as the movies go,
- 5:33Speaker 1: it's a pretty uncontroversial opinion to feel that they all
- 5:37Speaker 1: aggressively suck and push just really harmful messages that are
- 5:45Speaker 1: very of the time and also by of the time.
- 5:49Speaker 1: I mean still now this is like still, like you
- 5:52Speaker 1: know are our calls were Still has a gigantic issue
- 5:57Speaker 1: with sexualizing young girls specifically, but also just young people
- 6:02Speaker 1: in general. So that's what the show is about. It's
- 6:05Speaker 1: it's a little heavier than the Bechdel cast, but um,
- 6:10Speaker 1: if that's something you're interested in, I try to really
- 6:13Speaker 1: examine it from all perspectives and bring in a lot
- 6:17Speaker 1: of different voices to discuss it, and I hope you'll listen.
- 6:22Speaker 1: Uh So that yeah Monday is starting November twenty three.
- 6:26Speaker 1: And Oh the reason I was saying all of that
- 6:29Speaker 1: is first of all, because I should. Second of all,
- 6:34Speaker 1: because I think that a lot of my thoughts on
- 6:38Speaker 1: this movie have like not changed entirely. I still think
- 6:43Speaker 1: the movie absolutely sucks eggs, but but for like way
- 6:48Speaker 1: more specific reasons than I did four months ago. So yeah,
- 6:53Speaker 1: I I don't necessarily stand by to the word everything
- 6:57Speaker 1: I say in this episode, but uh, the movie is bad.
- 7:01Speaker 1: Well that's that's the beauty of just being alive and
- 7:07Speaker 1: being a person. Here you can learn more things and
- 7:11Speaker 1: your mind can change and oh you growth. You love
- 7:16Speaker 1: to see it. And that's what the Bechtel Cast is
- 7:18Speaker 1: all about. Growing, changing, acknowledging faults from the past, and
- 7:24Speaker 1: moving forward in a healthy and productive way. Who um,
- 7:32Speaker 1: so yes, I was just really listening back to the
- 7:34Speaker 1: episode and we you know, there's mentions to I Frankenstein.
- 7:38Speaker 1: Why because it's the other the other episode we did
- 7:42Speaker 1: on the Matren for your birthday month, so there will
- 7:46Speaker 1: be references to Jamie's birthday and I Frankenstein and whatnot.
- 7:50Speaker 1: So if you're just like, what, that's why my birthday
- 7:53Speaker 1: was in August. And I honestly think and this is
- 7:57Speaker 1: like not even I know that there's no way for
- 8:01Speaker 1: me to say this in a non biased way, but
- 8:03Speaker 1: the I Frankenstein episode alone is enough reason to sign
- 8:06Speaker 1: up for the Matreon, in my opinion, one of our best.
- 8:11Speaker 1: It's not Jamie. This is not opinion, this is fact.
- 8:16Speaker 1: Very viable. Um so yes, if you, if you, I
- 8:21Speaker 1: mean just what this is all to say, folks, that
- 8:25Speaker 1: you should get on get on the Matreon train, you know,
- 8:29Speaker 1: for I Frankenstein alone, among many other films that again
- 8:32Speaker 1: will remain locked. We're not gonna just keep unlocking episodes
- 8:36Speaker 1: all willy nilly. Some of them are in the vault.
- 8:39Speaker 1: This is a rare occurrence. Yeah, so yeah, enjoy our
- 8:44Speaker 1: Lolita episode to the extent that you're able. Lolita podcast
- 8:49Speaker 1: I recommend, and again I'm completely unbiased. It's just, you know,
- 8:54Speaker 1: just a recommendation, and I haven't been sweating about this
- 8:58Speaker 1: for half of the year. Well it's someone who is
- 9:00Speaker 1: again not involved in Little to podcast. I also recommend.
- 9:05Speaker 1: Hell yeah, without further ado, here is our unlocked Matreon
- 9:11Speaker 1: episode about Stanley Kubrick's Lolita. Hate that run of words.
- 9:18Speaker 1: Enjoy del cast high Matre. Jamie, it's your birthday. It's
- 9:27Speaker 1: Jamie's Chaos month on the Matreon, and boy do we
- 9:32Speaker 1: have a chaotic month for you this year. We just
- 9:37Speaker 1: made a last minute adjustment to my birthday month in
- 9:40Speaker 1: a way that I really think makes the whole feed vibrate.
- 9:46Speaker 1: It's it's so today obviously we're We're doing Lolita, a
- 9:50Speaker 1: very heavy, serious movie with a lot of heavy serious
- 9:53Speaker 1: things to discuss, and then at the end of the month,
- 9:57Speaker 1: as a palate cleanser, we're going to be doing I Frankenstein,
- 10:02Speaker 1: which is a movie that you don't even need to
- 10:04Speaker 1: watch because it's more fun for us to tell you
- 10:07Speaker 1: about it than to watch it. You should still watch
- 10:12Speaker 1: it because Bill and I he and I also feel like, genuinely,
- 10:17Speaker 1: if it came down to it, Aaron Eckhart would pay
- 10:20Speaker 1: you human dollars to not watch it, which is a
- 10:25Speaker 1: reason to watch it. It's a gritty Frankenstein movie. But
- 10:31Speaker 1: here's a twist. It's about do you remember I know,
- 10:34Speaker 1: I know this movie so well. I Frankenstein markets itself
- 10:39Speaker 1: as a movie about I callma Frankenstein, but it's actually
- 10:44Speaker 1: about the war of demons versus gargoyles. I vaguely remember that.
- 10:51Speaker 1: But all the gargoyles, the gargoyles are the heroes, which
- 10:56Speaker 1: I also like kept being like, wait, gargoyles are heroes.
- 11:00Speaker 1: They are in this movie, and if you've seen the
- 11:02Speaker 1: animated series Gargoyles, you know that they are. I saw that.
- 11:07Speaker 1: Everyone roasts me for not, I just didn't see it.
- 11:10Speaker 1: I was watching Powerpuff Girls. I don't know what I
- 11:12Speaker 1: was doing. But for me, I was like, wait, I
- 11:16Speaker 1: thought gargoyles were supposed to be mean to you, but
- 11:19Speaker 1: the been in this one. They're the heroes and they
- 11:21Speaker 1: are all royalty and they're dressed like they went to
- 11:24Speaker 1: ye party. So by party, I Frankenstein, I exactly, it's
- 11:30Speaker 1: all connected. Um. So we're gonna start with heavy episode
- 11:36Speaker 1: and we're gonna end with a light episode, and that's
- 11:38Speaker 1: going to be my birthday month because I contain multitudes.
- 11:43Speaker 1: But today we are talking about the nineteen sixty two
- 11:48Speaker 1: adaptation of Lolita by feminist icon Stanley Kubrick. We should
- 11:56Speaker 1: just at the very top here, since we're attempting to
- 11:59Speaker 1: be better at given content warnings for the content of episodes.
- 12:04Speaker 1: There's obviously a content warning here for statutory rape, child
- 12:11Speaker 1: sexual abuse. Yeah. There there's I mean, general predatory behavior
- 12:18Speaker 1: and also murder. Um so there there is just the
- 12:22Speaker 1: general brutalization of women and children is going to come
- 12:25Speaker 1: up in this episode. Um. And I guess if you
- 12:28Speaker 1: weren't familiar with the content of Lolita, that it's that's about.
- 12:35Speaker 1: So if you'd rather skip this one. We totally understand
- 12:38Speaker 1: if you'd like to hang around. There's so much to
- 12:41Speaker 1: talk about that I think is very revealing about our culture. UM,
- 12:48Speaker 1: so let's get started. I guess I'll contextualize this a
- 12:52Speaker 1: little bit by saying I chose this movie. I am
- 12:54Speaker 1: very curious as to what compelled you do want to
- 12:58Speaker 1: do this for your birthday? Of times, Well, I'm doing
- 13:02Speaker 1: it for I mean, I'm not doing it as a
- 13:03Speaker 1: gift to myself. This is very painful material to go through. Um,
- 13:08Speaker 1: but I'm doing it because I've been thinking about it
- 13:10Speaker 1: quite a bit lately. Because advertisement forthcoming, I am um
- 13:16Speaker 1: writing and producing an entire podcast that is about the
- 13:19Speaker 1: cultural impact of the book Lolita, because that's something that
- 13:24Speaker 1: I've always had a fixation on. I think it's very
- 13:26Speaker 1: telling and an interesting if disturbing obviously, but that it
- 13:32Speaker 1: was a book that I because I guess we should
- 13:35Speaker 1: just kind of talk about the property versus the movie,
- 13:37Speaker 1: because this is a movie that is not particularly remembered,
- 13:41Speaker 1: But that's going to be the jumping off point for
- 13:43Speaker 1: our discussion. In any case, Lolito was a book that
- 13:47Speaker 1: I came across when I was twelve because not good
- 13:54Speaker 1: because it had been recommended to me by Lemony Snicket
- 13:58Speaker 1: in a magazine and like, take a second with that. Uh.
- 14:05Speaker 1: So I came across this book really really early on
- 14:09Speaker 1: because I was obsessed with Lemony Sicket books. I thought
- 14:11Speaker 1: they were the best in the world. I still pretty
- 14:14Speaker 1: much do. Uh. The author I have some issues with,
- 14:19Speaker 1: but the But when I was twelve, I just wanted
- 14:21Speaker 1: to read what he was reading, and know what, you know,
- 14:24Speaker 1: I wanted to be like him. And so I read
- 14:27Speaker 1: in an interview in two thousand and five what his
- 14:33Speaker 1: favorite book was, and he said in a children's magazine,
- 14:36Speaker 1: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is my favorite book. And so
- 14:40Speaker 1: I went to the library and I got the book,
- 14:43Speaker 1: and I read the book, and I didn't understand the book,
- 14:45Speaker 1: and I took all the wrong messages away from the book.
- 14:49Speaker 1: And it's been a point of fascination for me ever since.
- 14:52Speaker 1: Because now obviously I am an adult and I have
- 14:58Speaker 1: read the book many times. I wouldn't say it is
- 15:01Speaker 1: my favorite book by any stretch, but I think it
- 15:04Speaker 1: is a very good book. And I reread it just
- 15:10Speaker 1: recently to like prepare for this podcast that I've been
- 15:12Speaker 1: working on, and what I find this interesting about Lolita
- 15:16Speaker 1: is that it seems like it's cultural legacy is just
- 15:20Speaker 1: taken completely out of context with what the story is about,
- 15:26Speaker 1: because you think, like I guess, when I was going
- 15:29Speaker 1: back to reread it, I was like, I wonder if
- 15:34Speaker 1: you know, just from because I hadn't read it since college.
- 15:36Speaker 1: I was like, is there any ambiguity about what the
- 15:40Speaker 1: nature of how Humberd Humberd is treating Lolita is? Is
- 15:44Speaker 1: there any way? Because I feel like our culture has
- 15:46Speaker 1: either framed it as a like doomed love story or
- 15:51Speaker 1: kind of just like a fashion aesthetic for young girls
- 15:55Speaker 1: that you see pop up in a lot of Japanese
- 15:59Speaker 1: fashion lines and also in Lana del Rey's music are
- 16:02Speaker 1: the two main places you will find it. But that's
- 16:05Speaker 1: like the Lolita brand now is it's clothing and it's
- 16:08Speaker 1: associated with this tragic love story, which is how I
- 16:11Speaker 1: think Humbritton Lolita are framed, and no small part because
- 16:15Speaker 1: of how this movie does it. But in any case,
- 16:17Speaker 1: I went back to read the book and I was like,
- 16:19Speaker 1: I wonder if the book is contributing to this problem?
- 16:23Speaker 1: And I would say pretty firmly that it is not.
- 16:25Speaker 1: The book could not be more. I mean, it is
- 16:29Speaker 1: horrifying what you're reading and it and it does. I mean,
- 16:34Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of arguments to be
- 16:35Speaker 1: had that I'm still working through my own feelings about it,
- 16:38Speaker 1: like well what is this adding like what you know,
- 16:42Speaker 1: and there's a lot to talk about. Well, we'll talk
- 16:44Speaker 1: about it. But um, I find it kind of not
- 16:50Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's it would be naive to
- 16:52Speaker 1: find it shocking. But given the fact that I've recently
- 16:55Speaker 1: read the book and it is very explicitly while the
- 16:59Speaker 1: narrator of his manipulative they you know, it's humbrid narrating
- 17:02Speaker 1: his own story, trying to get you to empathize with
- 17:05Speaker 1: him and trying to get you on his side because
- 17:07Speaker 1: it was, you know, in theory written in during his court,
- 17:12Speaker 1: uh like during his trial. That's what I'm saying. Um,
- 17:16Speaker 1: so it's him trying to manipulate a group of people
- 17:18Speaker 1: to get on his side. But he also is very
- 17:21Speaker 1: explicit about what is done. He refers to himself as
- 17:25Speaker 1: a predator and a number of other terms to that effect,
- 17:29Speaker 1: many many times constantly. The book, I feel like is
- 17:33Speaker 1: very clear at while it while it is a narrator
- 17:36Speaker 1: trying to manipulate you into being like, well, maybe it's okay,
- 17:40Speaker 1: but it's regardless, it's very clear. Yeah, there's no ambiguity.
- 17:45Speaker 1: I think in the movies and the other adaptations there is.
- 17:51Speaker 1: I don't even know if ambiguity is the word. It's
- 17:54Speaker 1: like just interpreted completely differently. And I feel like this movie,
- 18:00Speaker 1: this is the first major adaptation of Lolita, and it
- 18:03Speaker 1: just really gets us off to a horrible start and
- 18:07Speaker 1: it gets weirder and worse from there. So I'm very Yeah,
- 18:12Speaker 1: I've been attached to this book for a long time.
- 18:14Speaker 1: I think it is like an interesting case study, like
- 18:18Speaker 1: how American culture specifically takes a story that is very
- 18:22Speaker 1: explicit about being a story about the abuse of a
- 18:26Speaker 1: child and turning it into a sexy story that there
- 18:29Speaker 1: are fashion lessons to learn from. I find it fucking infuriating,
- 18:35Speaker 1: but it's also like, yeah, there's there's not a ton
- 18:39Speaker 1: of things where I feel like you can trace that
- 18:40Speaker 1: journey so directly. So that is why I chose it,
- 18:45Speaker 1: because I had been thinking about it NonStop. Got it?
- 18:49Speaker 1: What about you? So I believe if my memory serves
- 18:53Speaker 1: me correctly, I think I saw this movie before I
- 18:57Speaker 1: read the book. I saw the movie for the first time,
- 18:59Speaker 1: I think as a freshman in college. It was one
- 19:01Speaker 1: of those you know, like, I'm a film student, I
- 19:04Speaker 1: need to have seen right. Yeah, So I remember it
- 19:10Speaker 1: making me uncomfortable when I saw it, and uh not
- 19:15Speaker 1: ever feeling compelled to watch it again. Then a few
- 19:19Speaker 1: years later, still in college, I took an English class
- 19:23Speaker 1: my senior year, and it was like a banned books
- 19:27Speaker 1: class that taught literature that had been banned in different
- 19:31Speaker 1: capacities throughout history, and Lolita was one of the banned
- 19:36Speaker 1: books that we studied. So I read the book then, um,
- 19:40Speaker 1: And then I read the book a second time, or
- 19:43Speaker 1: at least I more skimmed it that time. During another
- 19:48Speaker 1: class I took in grad school. I would hate to
- 19:51Speaker 1: bring up that I haven't spreading from Boston University, but
- 19:56Speaker 1: we took a class specifically on adaptation. So Lolita got
- 20:01Speaker 1: taught in that class. That's exciting. And the kind of
- 20:05Speaker 1: discussion around Lolita being taught in this adaptation class was like, hey,
- 20:11Speaker 1: maybe some things shouldn't be adapted to film. Um. So
- 20:18Speaker 1: that was that many So that's kind of my history. Um.
- 20:23Speaker 1: I the whole. The property as a whole makes me
- 20:28Speaker 1: very unsettled and uncomfortable for obvious reasons. I don't remember
- 20:32Speaker 1: the book that well. I remember, like, I think the
- 20:35Speaker 1: discussion we had in like my English class around it
- 20:39Speaker 1: was everyone's like, oh, it's so well written. It's such
- 20:41Speaker 1: a well written book. And I remember being like, yeah,
- 20:44Speaker 1: but why are we reading a story from the point
- 20:48Speaker 1: of view of a predator, pedophile, child molester, Like what's
- 20:55Speaker 1: the value in that? And I that's like still where
- 20:58Speaker 1: I land on the entire higher property as a whole.
- 21:03Speaker 1: So that's where I'm coming from. Yeah, I mean, I
- 21:06Speaker 1: think that we're not going to reach a conclus I mean,
- 21:08Speaker 1: there's never going to be a conclusion reached on whether
- 21:12Speaker 1: this is the sort of thing that should be written
- 21:14Speaker 1: about at all. And everyone, I mean it is, like
- 21:16Speaker 1: I think it's everyone is going to feel a slightly
- 21:20Speaker 1: different way about it. And it depends on what your
- 21:23Speaker 1: own experiences are, it depends on what your views are
- 21:25Speaker 1: and and all this stuff. I truly don't know where
- 21:30Speaker 1: I fall. I do, like, I think that there is
- 21:33Speaker 1: in the same way that there are like Red Flag
- 21:38Speaker 1: movies for guys to be like, I mean, not necessarily
- 21:42Speaker 1: always guys, but like nine times out of ten, uh,
- 21:46Speaker 1: but but where people will be like, yeah, I know
- 21:49Speaker 1: that it's problematic, but look at it. There's good parts
- 21:52Speaker 1: of it. And I am always kind of like my
- 21:55Speaker 1: antenna goes up for that. I agree that it's a
- 21:58Speaker 1: beautifully written book. I don't. I mean, it's kind of
- 22:02Speaker 1: I guess that's like the whole discussion of every band
- 22:05Speaker 1: books class, right, like, is this uh taboo that we
- 22:09Speaker 1: know happens in real life that should be discussed and
- 22:12Speaker 1: if so, who gets to be the narrator? Um? I
- 22:16Speaker 1: think that every adaptation of Lolita, and I am now
- 22:22Speaker 1: intimately familiar with all of them. There's been well, all
- 22:25Speaker 1: but one. I'm still trying to get my hands on
- 22:27Speaker 1: the Russian opera, but I've studied four of them pretty closely.
- 22:31Speaker 1: I think that they're all failures to different degrees in
- 22:34Speaker 1: different ways. It's it's hard because it's like this to
- 22:39Speaker 1: this topic of an abusive relationship, especially towards a child,
- 22:44Speaker 1: it's never like it's never going to be a comfortable
- 22:50Speaker 1: palatable subject for for everyone. And that's just I mean,
- 22:54Speaker 1: because it shouldn't be. It's a fucking horrific thing to happen. Um.
- 22:59Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of opinions on it, obviously, I've
- 23:02Speaker 1: also seen uh survivors of this type of abuse who
- 23:07Speaker 1: have felt very seen and have found the work to
- 23:11Speaker 1: be sort of healing by and I can direct you
- 23:15Speaker 1: just some blogs that I've found. I've done a deep
- 23:18Speaker 1: dive into the Lolita blog a sphere, but there there
- 23:22Speaker 1: are some people who feel, as you do, Caitlin, that
- 23:24Speaker 1: it's like there's absolutely no value in giving the abuser
- 23:28Speaker 1: a voice, and I agree with that, But then I
- 23:31Speaker 1: also have read the perspectives of survivors of this abuse
- 23:35Speaker 1: who feel seen through the character of Lolita and appreciate
- 23:40Speaker 1: who she is, appreciate feeling like this is a topic
- 23:45Speaker 1: that's even being discussed at all, and so well, I
- 23:49Speaker 1: don't feel that it is the best approach. I think
- 23:53Speaker 1: it is a bit of a not a bit like
- 23:55Speaker 1: it's whatever the nineteen fifties version of edge lord is
- 24:00Speaker 1: that Nabokov is doing. I mean, it's a very edge
- 24:02Speaker 1: lordy thing to try to do, and fortunately he's a
- 24:06Speaker 1: great writer. Otherwise there we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
- 24:09Speaker 1: No one would have adapted it. But that said, I
- 24:13Speaker 1: I don't. I agree that certainly the predator's point of
- 24:16Speaker 1: view is not the priority, but I don't think it's
- 24:20Speaker 1: a valueless work because so many people, and especially a
- 24:23Speaker 1: lot of young women, have found value in it that
- 24:27Speaker 1: relates to their own experiences of abuse. I think that
- 24:30Speaker 1: abuse should be something that is discussed in art um
- 24:34Speaker 1: But this is a very imperfect and fucking complicated as
- 24:39Speaker 1: hell way to do it that there was clearly no
- 24:42Speaker 1: way to do in nineteen sixty two. But there's I
- 24:46Speaker 1: don't think that we've done it successfully yet. I think
- 24:50Speaker 1: that it's I feel like if this movie was ever
- 24:53Speaker 1: going to be if this book was ever going to
- 24:54Speaker 1: be adapted into film, it would have to be animated.
- 24:57Speaker 1: I don't think that there is a safe, healthy way
- 25:01Speaker 1: to adapt this work that is live action. I just
- 25:06Speaker 1: they it's been attempted so many times. I also think
- 25:08Speaker 1: it's directly related to who is adapting the work. The
- 25:13Speaker 1: people who have been chosen to adapt this work are
- 25:15Speaker 1: just it blows my fucking mind of like, Stanley Kubrick
- 25:20Speaker 1: is your first Like seriously, the guy who's notorious for
- 25:24Speaker 1: like abusing his power as a director. I mean, he
- 25:28Speaker 1: wasn't at this time quite yet, this was his early
- 25:31Speaker 1: one of his earlier movies. But but the fact that
- 25:33Speaker 1: you would hand it off to a young man or
- 25:36Speaker 1: like a man similar like not that far off from
- 25:38Speaker 1: humbert Age. It's just you repeatedly see this work put
- 25:41Speaker 1: into someone who is going to inherently prioritize Humbrid's voice
- 25:46Speaker 1: above Lolita's The first time I have seen this work
- 25:51Speaker 1: put into a woman's hand was literally last year. Like
- 25:56Speaker 1: this movie was given to Stanley Kubrick first, we'll talk
- 25:59Speaker 1: about that today. It fails, is given to Adrian Line.
- 26:03Speaker 1: It super duper fails, horrendous. It was given to Edward
- 26:07Speaker 1: Albee at one point. It fails. It was given to uh,
- 26:12Speaker 1: let me get the names right, two of the most
- 26:15Speaker 1: famous composers of all time in the nineties seventies. They
- 26:20Speaker 1: wrote a musical about it. It was by John Barry
- 26:24Speaker 1: and Alan jay Lerner. So John Barry wrote all the
- 26:27Speaker 1: theme songs to James Bond, Alan jay Lerner Broadway legend
- 26:33Speaker 1: did Gigi Camelot at an American in Paris. But like
- 26:42Speaker 1: they were given Lolita, it's just all the wrong people
- 26:46Speaker 1: have been given this property to adapt and so I
- 26:50Speaker 1: feel like my personal opinion is that this this material
- 26:56Speaker 1: has never been even given a chance to prioritize the
- 27:01Speaker 1: character who should be prioritized, because every person who has
- 27:05Speaker 1: adapted this material is going to I'm certainly not implying
- 27:09Speaker 1: that they agree with Humberd. Obviously they don't, but that
- 27:12Speaker 1: is the perspective they're able to plug into because there
- 27:16Speaker 1: are men sis head, men in their thirties or older,
- 27:20Speaker 1: and so I I let's talk about it. Yeah so
- 27:28Speaker 1: so yeah, Well, like just a backpedal a little bit
- 27:32Speaker 1: about the people who have managed to find value in it,
- 27:36Speaker 1: particularly survivors who you know, read the work and identified
- 27:41Speaker 1: with Lolita. Like that's great for them to be able
- 27:44Speaker 1: to find comfort in that or find someone to identify
- 27:48Speaker 1: with the character to identify with. But imagine like how
- 27:52Speaker 1: more effective that would be if it was a And
- 27:56Speaker 1: it's like it's not helpful to be like, well, what
- 27:58Speaker 1: if the book was this instead, But like if there
- 28:01Speaker 1: was a book out there that was written from the
- 28:04Speaker 1: perspective of the survivor and was just as well written
- 28:08Speaker 1: and was just as iconic in literature and just as
- 28:12Speaker 1: influential as a literary work, Like I think we do
- 28:16Speaker 1: have more books like that now and I agree that.
- 28:20Speaker 1: I mean, there has been fiction about survivors of assault
- 28:24Speaker 1: and of prolonged abuse that have taken you know, their place,
- 28:28Speaker 1: and I think that, Lolita, I mean, it is not
- 28:32Speaker 1: the perfect discussion of abuse. It just isn't. It's not
- 28:35Speaker 1: the only discussion of abuse that's out there, fortunately, um,
- 28:41Speaker 1: for me and for everybody. But yeah, I think I
- 28:45Speaker 1: do think that there's a lot of pressure put on
- 28:48Speaker 1: this singular work that was published seventy years ago to
- 28:53Speaker 1: be the discussion of this topic, um, because I think
- 28:57Speaker 1: it's the most and I don't mean this as a
- 28:59Speaker 1: compliment it but the most iconic one in American culture.
- 29:03Speaker 1: But I kind of fault that more to American culture
- 29:07Speaker 1: than to the book itself. You know, Nabokov didn't go
- 29:10Speaker 1: into this project thinking this is going to be the
- 29:13Speaker 1: only discussion we have of this topic for half a century,
- 29:17Speaker 1: but in a lot of ways it was. And so
- 29:21Speaker 1: it's like, I don't think you can really fault the
- 29:23Speaker 1: author of the work to anticipate how their work is
- 29:26Speaker 1: going to be taken out of context over and over
- 29:28Speaker 1: and over. I think that that is like a cultural problem. Well,
- 29:32Speaker 1: I do think that I don't think all of his
- 29:34Speaker 1: writing is you know, it's certainly not perfect and not responsible.
- 29:38Speaker 1: And if I were writing this story, I would fully
- 29:41Speaker 1: center Lolita. And I know that survivors of assault have
- 29:46Speaker 1: interpreted this book in a number of different ways, and
- 29:49Speaker 1: no interpretation of this work is invalid. It's just yeah,
- 29:54Speaker 1: it's a tricky fucking thing, and it's you know, it's
- 29:57Speaker 1: almost seventy years old now, and people are still trying
- 30:01Speaker 1: to find what I mean, I don't know. I don't
- 30:05Speaker 1: know if this could be successfully adopted. What we were
- 30:07Speaker 1: talking about today was not successfully adopted, and I think that, oh,
- 30:14Speaker 1: it's so frustrating. I think it's interesting. So to pivot
- 30:17Speaker 1: a little bit to the nine two movie adaptation of this,
- 30:22Speaker 1: I feel like the general consensus on this that was
- 30:26Speaker 1: made but that was like, well, it's not good, but
- 30:29Speaker 1: it's just because production codes. I feel like this movie
- 30:34Speaker 1: is definitely not good. It is so long, it is
- 30:37Speaker 1: really boring, so tedious. It's just because of the production code.
- 30:42Speaker 1: Nothing happens. But that is not why the movie is bad.
- 30:46Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of reasons the production
- 30:48Speaker 1: code included, but I feel like it's letting Kuber get
- 30:52Speaker 1: off a little easy to say that it's just because
- 30:55Speaker 1: of the production code. I think that it's it also
- 30:59Speaker 1: it's bad for other reasons. Yes, And for any listeners
- 31:03Speaker 1: who aren't familiar with what the production code is UM
- 31:06Speaker 1: google it for more information. But it's basically a set
- 31:09Speaker 1: of censorship rules that applied to Hollywood studio films. It
- 31:14Speaker 1: was enforced from the mid nineteen thirties to the late sixties,
- 31:18Speaker 1: and it basically said that movies couldn't have graphic violence,
- 31:23Speaker 1: you know, sex or nudity or overt sexuality, no swearing,
- 31:28Speaker 1: things like that. The list goes on and on, but
- 31:31Speaker 1: it's worth checking out just to see like what the
- 31:33Speaker 1: limitations were, like what UM filmmakers could and couldn't do,
- 31:37Speaker 1: and what they did sort of to get around production
- 31:39Speaker 1: code stipulations. There's like we saw in certain genres like
- 31:43Speaker 1: screwball comedies that would be like all these like double
- 31:46Speaker 1: entendre innuendo type of dialogue and stuff like that. But
- 31:51Speaker 1: it's interesting. But yeah, like informs a whole generation of
- 31:54Speaker 1: movies basically, and then this movie kind of comes out
- 31:57Speaker 1: at the towards the tail land that this movie had
- 32:00Speaker 1: been made even a couple of years later, I don't.
- 32:02Speaker 1: I mean, it might have been quite different. I don't
- 32:04Speaker 1: really care to know, um what Stanley Kuper would have
- 32:08Speaker 1: done with this story at literally any point in time.
- 32:12Speaker 1: I think that truly just like among the worst working
- 32:16Speaker 1: directors you could choose for this, it's kind of astounding. Um.
- 32:21Speaker 1: But that was kind of that really informed how this
- 32:24Speaker 1: movie was marketed, which the tagline for this movie was
- 32:28Speaker 1: how did they ever make a movie of Lolita? And
- 32:31Speaker 1: the short answer, and a lot of people have said this,
- 32:33Speaker 1: but the short answer is that they didn't, uh, and
- 32:36Speaker 1: that's how they did. By not doing it, given the
- 32:39Speaker 1: production codes, it would have been virtually impossible to even
- 32:43Speaker 1: sort of tell the story, which this I mean, I
- 32:47Speaker 1: guess you could. I mean, there's scenes in this movie
- 32:50Speaker 1: that really lean on suggestion and then it's just like
- 32:54Speaker 1: Peter Sellers for forty five fucking minutes and you're just
- 32:58Speaker 1: like in very disguises like counts Off, I'm just like,
- 33:04Speaker 1: this is exhausting, no wonder lemony snack it liked it
- 33:08Speaker 1: so much. He's like, I'm gonna base count all off
- 33:11Speaker 1: on quilty. But it's interesting. I mean, I think that
- 33:15Speaker 1: he did do that in a number of ways. But
- 33:17Speaker 1: then I guess that's a separate episode. But technically, technically,
- 33:22Speaker 1: Vladimir and Abakoff wrote the screenplay to this movie. Once
- 33:27Speaker 1: again we encounter something here that is technically true but
- 33:31Speaker 1: isn't actually true, because I have read the screenplay that
- 33:34Speaker 1: Vladimir Nabokov wrote, and Vladimir and Abukov wrote a fairly
- 33:40Speaker 1: faithful while obviously working around quite a bit, but a
- 33:44Speaker 1: fairly faithful adaptation of his book that I feel frames
- 33:49Speaker 1: the story appropriately or more appropriately. And there's been a
- 33:55Speaker 1: number of interviews done with him and done with basically
- 33:58Speaker 1: everyone involved in this movie. Be that like, almost none
- 34:03Speaker 1: of his script is used in this movie, so even
- 34:05Speaker 1: though his name is on it, he thought very little
- 34:07Speaker 1: of it. And I also, I'm like, I'm not here
- 34:10Speaker 1: to stand for Vladimir Nabukov hardcore. He's got some weird
- 34:14Speaker 1: ship going on in his life. And I don't mean criminally,
- 34:18Speaker 1: I don't, I don't mean anything approaching like stuff like that,
- 34:21Speaker 1: but he's just I mean, look of Vladimir Nabukov's family.
- 34:24Speaker 1: They were famously executing other authors, so have a lot
- 34:28Speaker 1: of ship going on with that. It's a whole thing
- 34:31Speaker 1: like there so Nabukov has got his own thing going on, right,
- 34:35Speaker 1: He's just kind of a bizarre cultural figure. But he
- 34:39Speaker 1: didn't like this movie. The draft he wrote of this
- 34:42Speaker 1: movie at least resembles his book, and for me, for
- 34:47Speaker 1: the movies specifically, framing is everything, and this movie and
- 34:54Speaker 1: the movie are framed not at all, like basically not
- 34:59Speaker 1: at all. So yeah, Stanley Kubrick hacked into this script.
- 35:05Speaker 1: I'm sure he was also trying to get his movie
- 35:07Speaker 1: to pass the production code so that I could still
- 35:09Speaker 1: be made. But like, fuck Stanley Kubrick, Matt Like fuck him.
- 35:15Speaker 1: When has he ever successfully written a female character or treated,
- 35:19Speaker 1: you know, an actress with dignity? Fucking never is when?
- 35:22Speaker 1: So uh fux Stanley Kubrick particularly, And I guess let's
- 35:29Speaker 1: talk about what happens in the movie. Well, first let's
- 35:32Speaker 1: take a quick break and then we'll come right back.
- 35:41Speaker 1: All right, So here's the recap. We open on Humbert. Humbert.
- 35:46Speaker 1: He shows up to a rundown mansion belonging to this guy,
- 35:51Speaker 1: Claire Quilty, who is played by Peter Sellers. They have
- 35:56Speaker 1: some kind of history, but it's not clear at this
- 35:59Speaker 1: point what Humbert mentions a girl named Lolita, and then
- 36:04Speaker 1: he eventually shoots and kills Quilty. Then we cut to
- 36:09Speaker 1: four years earlier. Humbert is a recent European transplant to
- 36:13Speaker 1: the US. He arrives at a house in New Hampshire
- 36:17Speaker 1: where he will be spending the summer before he heads
- 36:19Speaker 1: off to Beardsley College in I think it's Ohio to
- 36:23Speaker 1: um teach French literature. Now, the owner of this house,
- 36:28Speaker 1: Charlotte Hayes, shows him around and played by Shelley Winters,
- 36:34Speaker 1: my birthday twin oh and wow, today's your birthday, so
- 36:40Speaker 1: that's amazing. So he's kind of on the fence about
- 36:45Speaker 1: whether or not he wants to live here. But then
- 36:47Speaker 1: she shows him out to the garden and out there
- 36:51Speaker 1: is Charlotte's teenage daughter, Lolita. She is sunbathing in a bikini,
- 36:57Speaker 1: and Lolita simply being really helps Humbert decide to move in.
- 37:02Speaker 1: Mrs Hayes. Charlotte becomes interested in Humbert pretty much right away,
- 37:09Speaker 1: but Humbert becomes interested in Lolita. There's a scene where
- 37:14Speaker 1: they all go to a community dance. I suppose this
- 37:19Speaker 1: is all like the scenes are so weird because there's
- 37:23Speaker 1: a lot of I mean, one thing that was done
- 37:27Speaker 1: for this movie to allow it to be made was
- 37:30Speaker 1: to age Lolita up because in the book she is twelve.
- 37:33Speaker 1: Am I read about that she is twelve? Yeah, and
- 37:36Speaker 1: in the movie she's fourteen or fifteen. Yeah, not entirely sure.
- 37:40Speaker 1: The actor who plays Lolita in this movie lyon, oh,
- 37:46Speaker 1: fourteen at the time shooting. Okay, yeah, she's sixteen when
- 37:50Speaker 1: it comes out. Got okay, yeah. Yeah. So they aged
- 37:53Speaker 1: her up slightly, and they added in like a boyfriend character,
- 37:58Speaker 1: I would guess to make her seem less innocent. I
- 38:02Speaker 1: don't know really what to think, but this whole boyfriend
- 38:04Speaker 1: think this is just like invented for the movie. Okay, Kenny, Kenny,
- 38:09Speaker 1: fake fake news, fake news, Kenny. And then here at
- 38:14Speaker 1: this dance, we learn that Charlotte has a habit of
- 38:18Speaker 1: going after men who are not interested in her because
- 38:21Speaker 1: she approaches Quilty who is there, and he doesn't really
- 38:25Speaker 1: seem to remember who she is, even though it's implied
- 38:28Speaker 1: that they have had sex before. This is also totally
- 38:32Speaker 1: made up for the move invented. Yeah, okay, good to
- 38:35Speaker 1: know he doesn't remember Charlotte, but he does remember Charlotte's daughter, Lolita.
- 38:41Speaker 1: So that comes into play later. Now Charlotte kind of
- 38:45Speaker 1: goes back to throwing herself at Humbert, who again only
- 38:49Speaker 1: has eyes for a child, and they go back to
- 38:54Speaker 1: the house. After this dance, Lolita returns and this makes
- 38:59Speaker 1: Humbert very happy. But Charlotte is starting to get the
- 39:03Speaker 1: sense that Humbert is interested in Lolita. So Charlotte kind
- 39:07Speaker 1: of lashes out and she says, go to bed, you
- 39:09Speaker 1: little pest, and then she kind of has a little outburst.
- 39:13Speaker 1: She sure does. Um. Then Humbert starts writing in a diary,
- 39:19Speaker 1: or maybe he has been already, but he basically started.
- 39:21Speaker 1: He's like writing in his diary about his affection for Lolita,
- 39:25Speaker 1: who he starts to call his nymphete and barf um.
- 39:31Speaker 1: But Charlotte reveals that she is sending Lolita away for
- 39:36Speaker 1: the summer to camp because she wants to keep sas
- 39:39Speaker 1: a free up her schedule to be hitting on Humbert
- 39:44Speaker 1: all summer, right, we are to believe, and Humbert is
- 39:48Speaker 1: very disappointed by this. There's a scene where Lolita comes
- 39:52Speaker 1: in the house and wishes him a farewell and says,
- 39:55Speaker 1: you know, don't forget me. Then Humbert gets a letter
- 39:59Speaker 1: from Charlotte professing her love for him, saying, one of
- 40:03Speaker 1: my favorite lines in fiction. I saw that you had
- 40:07Speaker 1: changed your Twitter bio to this. It is such a
- 40:10Speaker 1: fun line. I mean, in a very depressing work, it
- 40:13Speaker 1: is a fun line. I'm a passionate and lonely woman
- 40:16Speaker 1: and you are the love of my life. I'm like, okay, drama,
- 40:19Speaker 1: Like I Charlotte's letter is so over dramatic, and I
- 40:25Speaker 1: love it. Yeah. She's basically like, get out of my
- 40:28Speaker 1: house because I love you unless you also love me,
- 40:33Speaker 1: and then you have to stay and be my lover forever.
- 40:37Speaker 1: You're like a Charlotte like I just I I mean,
- 40:41Speaker 1: we'll talk about but like that letter is always fun
- 40:45Speaker 1: for me. I hate that he laughs at her. I'm like,
- 40:48Speaker 1: this is the this is the best writing in the
- 40:49Speaker 1: movie is Charlotte's letter. But I love Charlotte's letter. Yeah. So,
- 40:55Speaker 1: so he reads this letter and then he marries her,
- 40:59Speaker 1: and the implicate Asian here is that he marries her
- 41:02Speaker 1: so that he will have the opportunity to see Lolita again.
- 41:06Speaker 1: But then Charlotte says that she has decided to send
- 41:09Speaker 1: Lolita from camp straight to boarding school and then straight
- 41:14Speaker 1: to college from there, meaning that Humbert probably won't really
- 41:18Speaker 1: ever see her again, so he freaks out. He starts
- 41:22Speaker 1: to premeditate him murdering Charlotte loudly and all the time
- 41:28Speaker 1: like there I know. And it's so it like adds
- 41:31Speaker 1: to it that it's James Mason, just like the most
- 41:34Speaker 1: British person ever, being like maybe I should kill her,
- 41:37Speaker 1: Like you're just like shut up, man, like what are
- 41:40Speaker 1: you doing? This is also this is really deviated from
- 41:45Speaker 1: what happens in the book as well. But anyways, got it, Yeah,
- 41:49Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember it well enough. But Humbert
- 41:51Speaker 1: decides against killing his wife Um, and we're supposed to
- 41:55Speaker 1: be like, wow, awesome, like hero cool. But Charlotte has
- 42:02Speaker 1: just discovered Humbert's diary, in which he has insulted her
- 42:06Speaker 1: and expressed his love for Lolita, so she is distraught,
- 42:11Speaker 1: runs out into the street, and is killed when she's
- 42:15Speaker 1: hit by a car. Humbert is mostly unfazed by this.
- 42:20Speaker 1: He then leaves to go pick Lolita up from camp Um,
- 42:24Speaker 1: telling her that her mother is sick and in the
- 42:27Speaker 1: hospital and they just kind of have to bide their
- 42:29Speaker 1: time before until she's well. So they're just going to
- 42:32Speaker 1: travel around a little bit until then. So they check
- 42:35Speaker 1: into a hotel and there's only one room left with
- 42:38Speaker 1: one bed. Quilty also happens to be there. There's a
- 42:43Speaker 1: scene where he is acting, he's like very high strung.
- 42:46Speaker 1: He and Humbert talk for a little bit about Lolita,
- 42:50Speaker 1: and then Humbert returns to the room where he tries
- 42:53Speaker 1: to get into the bed with Lolita, but then ends
- 42:56Speaker 1: up sleeping on the cot that has been brought in
- 43:00Speaker 1: right but the next morning it is implied that they
- 43:04Speaker 1: do something sexual together off screen a k a. A
- 43:08Speaker 1: statutory rape happens. Then they set off again in the car,
- 43:14Speaker 1: Humbert finally tells Lolita that her mother is dead, so
- 43:18Speaker 1: Lolita is very upset, but eventually Humbert and Lolita kind
- 43:24Speaker 1: of settle into a life together. And again by that,
- 43:28Speaker 1: I mean he's a predator and he regularly again and again.
- 43:33Speaker 1: This is like so wildly deviated from the book where
- 43:38Speaker 1: they're they're still traveling together, but she is constantly trying
- 43:42Speaker 1: to escape, and she is constantly trying to get away
- 43:45Speaker 1: and devise different ways to get away from her abuser
- 43:51Speaker 1: who's continually manipulating her. In the movie. It is kind
- 43:54Speaker 1: of portrayed as a mostly fun road trip when yeah,
- 43:59Speaker 1: I have a lot to say about the tone of
- 44:01Speaker 1: this movie, which is horrible. Um Okay. So now they're
- 44:07Speaker 1: living in Ohio and he starts his job as a
- 44:10Speaker 1: professor of Beardsley College. Lolita's seems to be getting bored
- 44:14Speaker 1: with their relationship. He doesn't like that she hangs out
- 44:17Speaker 1: with other boys at school. She wants to do the
- 44:20Speaker 1: school play, but he won't let her, so then Quilty
- 44:23Speaker 1: comes in. He has written this play. He shows up
- 44:27Speaker 1: pretending to be the school psychologist and convinces Humbert to
- 44:31Speaker 1: let Lolita be in the play. But Humbert finds out
- 44:34Speaker 1: that Lolita has been lying to him about where she's
- 44:37Speaker 1: been and who she's been hanging out with. They getting
- 44:40Speaker 1: a big fight, but eventually she's like, okay, Humbert, let's
- 44:43Speaker 1: go away again, so they set off. There's a car
- 44:47Speaker 1: that's been following them for a while, and then Lolita
- 44:52Speaker 1: gets sick and has to be hospitalized. But when Humbert
- 44:55Speaker 1: picks her up from the hospital, the staff says that
- 44:58Speaker 1: another man has already picked her up, so he freaks out.
- 45:01Speaker 1: He doesn't know where she is he loses contact with
- 45:05Speaker 1: her for I believe a few years, and then Humbert
- 45:10Speaker 1: after some time receives a letter from Lolita asking for money,
- 45:14Speaker 1: so he goes to see her. She is married to
- 45:17Speaker 1: a young man, she is regnant with his baby, and
- 45:21Speaker 1: she reveals that she had been having a relationship with
- 45:25Speaker 1: Quilty during this time that she was in the school play.
- 45:29Speaker 1: And then I think also before because basically Quilty follows
- 45:34Speaker 1: her around wherever she goes, it seems, and it was
- 45:38Speaker 1: him who had picked her up from the hospital. Lolita
- 45:42Speaker 1: says that she was always in love with him, but
- 45:44Speaker 1: she did care about Humbert. Humbert gets her to try
- 45:47Speaker 1: to run away with him, but she refuses, so then
- 45:50Speaker 1: he goes to Quiality's mansion, which is the scene we
- 45:53Speaker 1: see in the beginning, and then he murders him and
- 45:55Speaker 1: then we find out that he dies of coronary thrombosis
- 46:00Speaker 1: before the trial prison. Yeah, so that is the end
- 46:03Speaker 1: of the ninety two movie. Again, I mean we will
- 46:07Speaker 1: continue to repeat this. This is unequivocally a story of
- 46:12Speaker 1: a child being repeatedly abused by a guardian. Like there
- 46:17Speaker 1: is no if sandswer buds about it and this movie. However,
- 46:23Speaker 1: I don't know what this movie thinks is going on,
- 46:26Speaker 1: because it seems like it is mishandling everything at every turn.
- 46:33Speaker 1: And where I like to start is it's sort of
- 46:36Speaker 1: like for SNA like not fortunate, but like alluding to
- 46:39Speaker 1: this a little earlier of the way that this story
- 46:43Speaker 1: is framed. If you're going to attempt to tell it,
- 46:46Speaker 1: which I agree you don't have to, it exists as
- 46:51Speaker 1: a historical moment of this topic attempting to be discussed
- 46:55Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, that is very worthy of criticism,
- 46:58Speaker 1: and that's in one place if you're trying to adapt
- 47:01Speaker 1: this responsibly. I feel that the framing of the story
- 47:07Speaker 1: is very important because for you know, the book, and
- 47:11Speaker 1: I feel like I'm like the book, but it is
- 47:14Speaker 1: important for this friend. The way that the book frames Humbert.
- 47:18Speaker 1: Humbert is that he is narrating his own story. He
- 47:22Speaker 1: is doing so from prison, trying to convince a jury
- 47:28Speaker 1: to let him get off from these crimes that he's
- 47:32Speaker 1: committed a murder. But also he is admitting that he
- 47:36Speaker 1: um is a rapist of an m minor, So this
- 47:41Speaker 1: is something he's acknowledging over and over. So he is
- 47:43Speaker 1: perhaps not is he perhaps an unreliable narrator, but not
- 47:49Speaker 1: just that Kate there is. The book starts with a
- 47:54Speaker 1: um an introduction by a different fictional character who basically
- 47:59Speaker 1: tells you not to trust a word you're about to hear.
- 48:03Speaker 1: And so, just based on my own research and experience
- 48:06Speaker 1: with the like, the book is intended to be an
- 48:09Speaker 1: experiment of You're told very explicitly at the beginning of
- 48:13Speaker 1: the story, do not fall for this person ship. They're lying,
- 48:16Speaker 1: and then the book becomes well will you fall for it? Anyways? Basically, um,
- 48:22Speaker 1: this is completely absent from every movie adaptation, and it
- 48:27Speaker 1: is so important into like if you're going to adapt it,
- 48:31Speaker 1: this has to be included, Like, it absolutely needs to
- 48:34Speaker 1: be included. There's another thing that Humbert again, it's like
- 48:38Speaker 1: he's a fucking liar, so you don't know really. I
- 48:41Speaker 1: also think it's weird that it's like commonly accepted that
- 48:44Speaker 1: Charlotte just happened to walk into traffic. I always I'm like,
- 48:47Speaker 1: I think he's lying about that, but whatever, Yeah, he
- 48:50Speaker 1: probably pushed her, he probably killed her, like why but
- 48:54Speaker 1: even like literary scholars are like, wow, he really looked
- 48:57Speaker 1: out there I'm like, I'm I've like he killed he
- 49:01Speaker 1: was just premeditating her murder. I don't know if that
- 49:04Speaker 1: is in the book. Well that hasn't happened. But but like,
- 49:07Speaker 1: like on her way to report him for being a
- 49:11Speaker 1: criminal of the highest degree, she happened to get hit
- 49:14Speaker 1: by a car. I mean, give me a fucking break.
- 49:16Speaker 1: But in any case, this framing is so important and
- 49:20Speaker 1: humber this is included in the movie, but also in
- 49:23Speaker 1: the worst stupidest way possible. He also mentioned at the
- 49:27Speaker 1: beginning of the book that he had loved and lost
- 49:32Speaker 1: a young woman who was about Lolita's age when he
- 49:36Speaker 1: was that age and I and he uses that as
- 49:38Speaker 1: a manipulative narrator to get you to say, well, this
- 49:42Speaker 1: is why I did this horrible crime is because something
- 49:45Speaker 1: bad happened to me when I was that age, which
- 49:47Speaker 1: is a very manipulative tactic that is used by a
- 49:49Speaker 1: lot of abusers. Again, this is completely omitted from this.
- 49:54Speaker 1: I feel like this movie. I mean tell me if
- 49:57Speaker 1: you I feel like this movie pretty much just events
- 50:00Speaker 1: Humbert's narrative as fact as this is what happened period, Like,
- 50:05Speaker 1: there is no the movie does not question him at all.
- 50:09Speaker 1: At all. It's ridiculous. There's no implication that he might
- 50:13Speaker 1: be an unreliable narrator. They're like, these are the events
- 50:17Speaker 1: of the story. This is exactly how they played out. Explicitly,
- 50:22Speaker 1: he does voiceover like I guess he is the narrator,
- 50:26Speaker 1: but there's no I mean, like for your average viewer,
- 50:30Speaker 1: an unreliable narrator is like a concept that you need
- 50:34Speaker 1: to make pretty fucking clear. Like you can't just be like,
- 50:38Speaker 1: here's James Mason, a very established movie star who you
- 50:41Speaker 1: probably like, don't believe him, Like that is a difficult
- 50:46Speaker 1: that's a difficult concept. You have to make that super
- 50:48Speaker 1: duper clear. And I wonder, I mean, I've really tried
- 50:52Speaker 1: to follow the thread of like, well, who thwarted this
- 50:55Speaker 1: from happening? Because nabokov screenplay includes everything I just talked about.
- 51:00Speaker 1: It includes the character at the beginning that is like,
- 51:02Speaker 1: don't believe anything you're about to hear. It includes, if
- 51:06Speaker 1: you're going to try to adapt it, the necessary things
- 51:09Speaker 1: I think. But I'm like, well, who does Kuber say
- 51:13Speaker 1: don't bother? Does the production code say, like who is
- 51:16Speaker 1: the person that says no, it bothers me? It's and
- 51:22Speaker 1: it just dooms the movie too. I mean, any live
- 51:25Speaker 1: action interpretation of this that is translated faithfully I think
- 51:29Speaker 1: is not even worth trying and is just is irresponsible.
- 51:35Speaker 1: But this one in particular, I mean it's like you're
- 51:37Speaker 1: not even fucking trying. I know, I know the code,
- 51:41Speaker 1: and like, don't go in the comments about the code.
- 51:44Speaker 1: We know about the code. But in that case, what
- 51:49Speaker 1: cat fighting outside? There's no a bunch of cats that
- 51:54Speaker 1: fight in the alley next to my house. I live
- 51:57Speaker 1: in a cartoon. Uh so, I'm right. So what happens
- 52:04Speaker 1: in this adaptation in the sixty two one is the story.
- 52:09Speaker 1: Because there's no mention of like, don't believe anything this
- 52:14Speaker 1: man says, don't fall for his manipulation tactics, etcetera. The
- 52:19Speaker 1: movie gets framed as being like almost like a rom com,
- 52:23Speaker 1: like there are there's a lot of visual jokes about
- 52:27Speaker 1: like his attraction to Lolita. The inclusion of Peter Seller's
- 52:31Speaker 1: at all, like a famous comic actor of this era
- 52:35Speaker 1: takes up way too much screen time in this movie.
- 52:38Speaker 1: But like that aside, that's a that's a very specific
- 52:43Speaker 1: decision you're making by putting a famous comic actor like
- 52:46Speaker 1: second build in this movie. What are you saying, Like, Yeah, so,
- 52:51Speaker 1: like the tone that this movie takes I absolutely think
- 52:55Speaker 1: is horrendous because it frames a lot of what happens
- 52:58Speaker 1: as comedy and as jokes, like in cite some examples
- 53:01Speaker 1: at some point. But and while the movie ends tragically
- 53:05Speaker 1: for Humbert, like he kind of gets his come up
- 53:10Speaker 1: and I guess to like the not degree that he
- 53:14Speaker 1: should have, but like he does. That is how they
- 53:17Speaker 1: end his story in Nabakrov's book, but it omits. I mean,
- 53:22Speaker 1: the the one thing that this movie does that I
- 53:25Speaker 1: think is at least interesting and not just like Blanket
- 53:29Speaker 1: I hate it is that it gives Lolita a happy
- 53:35Speaker 1: ish ending, which is not how any other adaptation nor
- 53:40Speaker 1: the source material ends in the book. Canonically, she dies
- 53:45Speaker 1: in childbirth and as I mean, uh, it's just a
- 53:50Speaker 1: track like she has a tragic life and and passes
- 53:54Speaker 1: away very young, which and I was reading it at
- 53:58Speaker 1: the time, like I really loved Lolita as a kid,
- 54:03Speaker 1: and I kind of like looked up to her in
- 54:05Speaker 1: a way that was unhealthy because I was misinterpreting what
- 54:09Speaker 1: was happening. But I cared a lot about the character
- 54:12Speaker 1: and like to know that she dies at the end
- 54:14Speaker 1: at least helped me understand a little bit that she
- 54:17Speaker 1: had been done this huge disservice in her life, that
- 54:20Speaker 1: her life had literally been, you know, taken from her.
- 54:25Speaker 1: This movie does not go this way. It kind of
- 54:28Speaker 1: ends kind of optimistically for her, which I would suspect
- 54:33Speaker 1: has something to do with the code of like, well,
- 54:36Speaker 1: don't kill our titular character who never did anything wrong.
- 54:41Speaker 1: It's the only choice this movie makes that is remotely interesting,
- 54:45Speaker 1: is not. It is allowing lowly as character to live on,
- 54:49Speaker 1: which you know, I don't know. I guess I don't
- 54:53Speaker 1: feel one way or another about it. It's interesting, it's different. Um.
- 54:56Speaker 1: There are two things I do remember from the book.
- 55:01Speaker 1: It's been a while. It's been fifteen years since I've
- 55:05Speaker 1: read the book, so I don't remember it very well.
- 55:11Speaker 1: Let me know if I'm remembering this correctly, jam May,
- 55:13Speaker 1: since you've read it more recently. Is there a component
- 55:17Speaker 1: of the book where Humbert as he's like writing in
- 55:20Speaker 1: his diary and describing his relationship with Lolita. I feel
- 55:25Speaker 1: like he's often saying that like she is coming onto
- 55:30Speaker 1: him by, like she's like he's always like she's a nymphete.
- 55:33Speaker 1: She's like a nymphomaniac. She's always trying to initiate like
- 55:39Speaker 1: sexual contact with me, Like he's kind of blaming it
- 55:42Speaker 1: on her. Is that something? And I remember a lot
- 55:44Speaker 1: of the tone of and that's a lot of what
- 55:47Speaker 1: his character does in the book. I think intentionally by
- 55:51Speaker 1: the author is that he oscillates between blaming his victims
- 55:56Speaker 1: and a deep hatred of himself. So it pends on
- 56:00Speaker 1: what part in the book you were in. At certain
- 56:02Speaker 1: parts he blames her whole sale in a way that
- 56:06Speaker 1: reading it as an adult, you know is not true.
- 56:10Speaker 1: Um and is him offloading all of his own baggage
- 56:14Speaker 1: onto a child and saying, I mean the thing that
- 56:18Speaker 1: people have said about victims since the beginning of time
- 56:22Speaker 1: of like they were asking for it is basically what
- 56:24Speaker 1: he's saying by inventing this vocabulary word at all. And
- 56:27Speaker 1: then in other sections of the book, which we really
- 56:29Speaker 1: don't see in any of these adaptations, he kind of switches.
- 56:33Speaker 1: When Lolita shows extreme like an example would be when
- 56:39Speaker 1: she finds out that her mother is actually dead and
- 56:43Speaker 1: not sick. She grieves her and is really upset and
- 56:48Speaker 1: cries for days and days and at this point in
- 56:51Speaker 1: the narrative, he starts to go to like step zero
- 56:55Speaker 1: point one of introspection and starts to feel a lot
- 56:59Speaker 1: of guilt and his like, oh my god, I'm doing
- 57:01Speaker 1: this horrible thing to this child. What am I doing?
- 57:04Speaker 1: I'm I'm a monster, I'm a horrible person. He calls
- 57:07Speaker 1: himself like a pentapod monster, like he called There's sections
- 57:12Speaker 1: where he seems completely aware of what he's doing but
- 57:16Speaker 1: continues to do it anyways, which makes him even work right,
- 57:19Speaker 1: And then there's other sections where he's just blaming his victims.
- 57:22Speaker 1: So it's different headspaces of just a wholesale abuser. This this,
- 57:29Speaker 1: it's not even so it doesn't cross James Mason's mind
- 57:32Speaker 1: that he's doing anything wrong. And I think that that
- 57:36Speaker 1: has a lot to do with setting the code aside,
- 57:40Speaker 1: the view of that Hollywood has of women and girls
- 57:45Speaker 1: at this time of I think that the you know,
- 57:48Speaker 1: the way that it's like you're saying, Caitlin, it's so
- 57:51Speaker 1: often framed as a joke that this man who's almost
- 57:55Speaker 1: forty and James Mason was over forty, uh is having
- 57:58Speaker 1: a relationship with a child, a person who cannot consent
- 58:01Speaker 1: to them and kind of joking around, like you know,
- 58:05Speaker 1: which was a real culture and that was a real
- 58:07Speaker 1: thing that happened in in mid century America, and there's
- 58:13Speaker 1: countless examples of it, and certainly, I mean, we don't
- 58:16Speaker 1: have time to recap the history of how Hollywood has
- 58:20Speaker 1: treated child stars and how and the legacy that continues
- 58:25Speaker 1: to this day of abuse that happens to young people.
- 58:29Speaker 1: But it is I feel like it's treated as a
- 58:30Speaker 1: joke because in this time you could just treat it
- 58:33Speaker 1: as a joke, like it you didn't even need to
- 58:36Speaker 1: explain where you were coming from. It was just culturally
- 58:38Speaker 1: accepted as a joke. The movie frames again his attraction
- 58:45Speaker 1: to her as like, isn't it so fun and cute
- 58:50Speaker 1: that he's attracted to an underage girl? Like and she
- 58:54Speaker 1: and she's also interested in him and all this stuff
- 58:58Speaker 1: of it's so it's and it does lead I think,
- 59:03Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like, yeah, I mean, this is
- 59:06Speaker 1: not a hot take. I wish to god I had
- 59:10Speaker 1: not found out about this property when I was twelve
- 59:14Speaker 1: years old, when I was like Lolita's age, because you know,
- 59:19Speaker 1: it's it's for most twelve year olds at that time,
- 59:21Speaker 1: and for most young people, it's not You're just not
- 59:24Speaker 1: going to have the frame of reference to understand what
- 59:28Speaker 1: you're reading. I don't think it should be a book
- 59:30Speaker 1: that's banned outright, Like, if you don't want to read it,
- 59:33Speaker 1: definitely don't. And I absolutely understand why you wouldn't want to.
- 59:36Speaker 1: But when it's presented to like who is this movie for?
- 59:41Speaker 1: Is my question like, who the fuck is is even for?
- 59:46Speaker 1: This also extends to I mean, Lolita is I think,
- 59:50Speaker 1: to an extent, demonized and made to say, well, this
- 59:54Speaker 1: was a very like sexual fourteen or fifteen year old.
- 59:58Speaker 1: So I think at the movie frames that of like, well,
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: can you really blame him? And it's like, yeah, you can,
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: and you should and you should but this but but
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: I think that this movie has such a nothing view
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: of of Lolita. She's she's barely written at all. And
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: I'm sure that that again I mean code code code, right,
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: but I mean she's robbed of any element that made
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: her a character, because I mean a lot of what
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: you encounter with her in the book and to some
- 1:00:34Speaker 1: extent in other adaptations is it making it very clear
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: that she's a kid and she has the interest that
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: a kid does and she's like a really she's like
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: a twelve year old with a big personality, who likes
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: who's like very rebellious and has a complicated relationship with
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: her mom and all this stuff. Like, you know, people
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: didn't identify with this character. I didn't identify with her
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: when I was twelve for no reason. She had a
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: personality that you can recognize. But this is that this
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: is just the kind of another thing that's taken from
- 1:01:05Speaker 1: her in this movie. We know really nothing about her
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: right and the movie has no interest in getting to
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: know her, which is just going to make it that
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: much harder for a viewer to empathize with what she's
- 1:01:17Speaker 1: going through. Let's take another break and then we'll be
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: right back for a more discussion. Going back to the
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: kind of use of visual comedy to set the tone
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: of this movie. Like there's a scene where after Humbert
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: has moved in, they all go to a drive in
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: movie theater and there's like a scary moment in the
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: horror movie that they're watching, and both Charlotte and Lolita
- 1:01:46Speaker 1: each put a hand on one of Humbert's knees, and
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: he takes off Charlotte's hand because he's not interested in her,
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: and he like puts his hand on Lolita's hand, and
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: then like Charlotte realizes what's happening, and he realizes that
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: she realizes, so then everyone kind of like retreats into
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: themselves and like pulls their hand away, and it's like
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: this this like kind of oh, and then the whole
- 1:02:14Speaker 1: cot seeing there's like a three minute slapstick comedy scene
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: about like, oh shucks for him that he doesn't get
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: to sleep in a bed and he has to set
- 1:02:22Speaker 1: up a cot. It's made to want like it's the
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: fact that this is a predatory, statutory rapist. It's a joke.
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: It's a long and it's a long joke, and no
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: matter like how fucking like brainless you were in nineteen
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: sixty two, no one could laugh at this joke. It
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: is not It's just horrible in every single one like
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: it also another thing that frustrates me in these adaptations,
- 1:02:49Speaker 1: and this one is no different. And no disrespect to
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: Shelly Winters. She is not given really the tools to
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: succeed here, Nor was Melanie Griffith, who gives my favorite
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: at Charlotte performance in the un though she was really good,
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: having been given nothing right, But again, Charlotte is just
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: because these movies take Humbert's word as law. Charlotte is
- 1:03:16Speaker 1: portrayed as this as this very shrill, clueless, like not
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: particularly intelligent, hyper sexualized monster, like pathetic, desperate, hysterical, jealous,
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: like every negative trick her own child. And and again
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: this has taken his law. I and again it's like
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: you can't know. Also, these people don't exist. I know that,
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: but there's just again, even in literary analysis, this interpretation
- 1:03:51Speaker 1: of Charlotte is taken very wholesale of like, yeah, this
- 1:03:54Speaker 1: annoying woman who you know presents herself as an obstacle
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: in the first active of this story, but she obstacle.
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: But again, it's like, if you think about the fact
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: that you're told at the beginning, this person is going
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: to misrepresent everything to make himself look better. Would he
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: not benefit by making her look like a horrible, incompetent mother.
- 1:04:16Speaker 1: Would he not benefit from portraying her this way? Like,
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: I'm not claiming that this character would have been a
- 1:04:23Speaker 1: perfect person. It sounds like from the jump she and
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: her daughter have a very contentious relationship. Lots of twelve
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: year olds do with their mothers. They also, like she
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: in in the book, this is I don't remember if
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: this referenced in this movie. I've seen so many versions
- 1:04:39Speaker 1: of this, so I apologize if I'm getting this wrong.
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: But um, she you know, has lost a husband that's referenced. Um,
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: she has not. She's very cruel about it in this movie.
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: They really they're like, well, he didn't have sex with me, good,
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: so I hate him, And you're like, that's not really
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: anything that in the movie. In this movie she was
- 1:05:01Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with him. Yeah, in the one she
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: says he didn't fuck me right, and so I don't
- 1:05:09Speaker 1: care that he died, and you're like, that's not something
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: people say either way. She She's like in Mourning, there's
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: also a long tangent she goes on in the book
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: of like she had lost a baby when he was
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: very young, and Lolita had a brother, and that he
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: passed away very young, and that she had never quite
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: fully grieved that, and that that informed her relationship with
- 1:05:32Speaker 1: her daughter, was mourning this other child, and that was
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: one of the things that made their relationship very complicated,
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: which is really interesting and not something that is often
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: discussed of, Like this deep depression that she would have
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: been in and how does that affect the child who
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: lives on and like this is a real world problem.
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: It's I'm not saying that this is the best exploration
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: of it, but it's just kind of like all of
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: that is pushed aside, even though I think it's in
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: staying in the book that you're giving that information to
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: make of what you will. And then he's like, she's
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: annoying and you're supposed to take that as law, Like
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: that's whatever, that's a part of what the book's trying
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: to do. But the movie is just they're like, Nope,
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: she's annoying, we hate her, we don't care when she dies.
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: It's better that that he gets Lolita away from her,
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: Like that's what the movie wants. And it's like even
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: I get that, like even the viewers of the movie
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: are not going to think that because they know that
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: he is a bad person. But I feel like the way, yeah,
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: the way he builds up her character is to make
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: you not feel too bad when she mysteriously dies the
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: second she's about to report him, he kills her. I'm
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: just like, how all these fucking literary geniuses are like, no,
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: she walked into traffic she was confused and I was
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: like he killed her whatever. In this movie, also, she
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: she's given like a gun, like she's given that whole thing,
- 1:06:58Speaker 1: like that was a whole weird that doesn't happen. She
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: she's like, the gun isn't loaded, and he's like I
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: did that and he looks done and it is loaded.
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: So like every right, every way she's characterized just makes
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: her seem so awful, Like the movie frames that whole
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: situation as like the movie wants you to root against
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: Humbert being with an adult woman Charlotte because of the
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: negative way that she's characterized, and the movie wants you
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: to root for Humbert pursuing a child. The movie frames
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: it horrifically. And yeah, again, it all goes back to
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: the fact that it doesn't question Humbert's interpretation of events
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: at all, and there's no context as to why he's
- 1:07:45Speaker 1: presenting this information this way and what he wants you
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: to take away. And again, yeah, and every adaptation Charlotte
- 1:07:52Speaker 1: has done a huge disservice. I feel like people don't
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: really talk about that because I mean, obviously, because Lolita
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: has done the biggest disserves of all where she is
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: you know, And I think most cases erased from her
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: own story and her at any reference in the original
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: work to her emotions and her grief and her confusion
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: and her figuring out what is happening to her and
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: repeated attempts to get herself out are essentially erased or
- 1:08:26Speaker 1: severely condensed to make her just less important to the story,
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: right to just invalidate her feelings and her experience. It
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: makes me so sad for her. I really really love
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: her as a character and feel like there's a real
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: opportunity here to examine a victims story. Do I think
- 1:08:50Speaker 1: that a you know, an older man is the person
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: to do this? Of course I don't, But I've been
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: being that she is this, you know, iconic character in
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: American literature. She's just never been given an opportunity to
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: show even what's on the page, much less explore deeper,
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: which is what a lot of good film adaptations of
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: books are supposed to do, is take the important character
- 1:09:16Speaker 1: and then give you a deeper look at who they
- 1:09:18Speaker 1: are and what their struggle is and what their grief
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: is and and and all of this through the performances.
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: And it's just not allowed to happen here. She brings
- 1:09:29Speaker 1: me to the thing that I hate the most about
- 1:09:32Speaker 1: this movie is a problem that follows through every adaptation
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: of this is supersizing clear qualities role in the narrative.
- 1:09:43Speaker 1: This is a creative choice that has made literally every time,
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: and I hate it. He is present in the book.
- 1:09:51Speaker 1: He's not wearing Count Olaf disguises in the book, but there,
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: but it is implied that he and um Dolores had
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: no each other like when she was very young, and
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: that he had already been grooming her. And it's kind
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: of left ambiguous in the book as to what actually happens,
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: which I just kind of can't speak to it. But
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: he was certainly grooming her in in the book from
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: a very young age and does follow them as he
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: does in this and is killed at the end. But
- 1:10:24Speaker 1: this movie just, I mean, I think because this movie
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: doesn't know what to do with its title character and
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: has no interest in exploring the fact that it's protagonist
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: is a fucking criminal of the highest degree. They just
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: supersize another male character and try to deepen the history
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: and the relationship with Humbert and quality, and I just
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: couldn't think of a real like a relationship between two
- 1:10:55Speaker 1: characters and this story that I care about less. I
- 1:10:58Speaker 1: don't care about two predators and how their enemies like
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: who gives a funk? Like it? Just I hate it.
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: It's such a lazy choice. It's such a like, of course,
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: you hand off this extremely difficult, problematic story to a
- 1:11:19Speaker 1: male director and they just kind of are like, I
- 1:11:21Speaker 1: don't know, let's let's get the other male character in it.
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: More so I understand what we're talking about. Like, I
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: hate it. This happens in the movie, happens in the musical,
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: happens in the hoodward I'll be play, which is um,
- 1:11:40Speaker 1: it happens every single time. And I think that that
- 1:11:44Speaker 1: choice especially has a lot to do with not the code.
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: This is the choice where I'm like, this is not
- 1:11:52Speaker 1: the code. This is the filmmaker making a choice on
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: how to handle the code. It's like, oh, I know
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: what I'll do. I will make a like male predator
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: character way bigger, even though the lead character of this
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: is a male predator. Why do that? I just I
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: hate this choice so much. I think it's so lazy
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: and bad. I hate it, especially making it what yeah, yeah,
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: he's like he's being Peter Seller's He's like, in every
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: scene he's in, he's doing some kind of character, right,
- 1:12:30Speaker 1: He's like in disguise, he's pretending to be other people,
- 1:12:34Speaker 1: inspector cluz oing it through this horrifying, dense narrative, and
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: it's just like, that is not, No, that is not
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: He's do you know what movie you're in? Who do
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: you think you are? Bill Nighy and I Frankenstein. You
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: just didn't read the script and you showed up and
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: you're like, I'm doing what? Like it Just he's like
- 1:12:57Speaker 1: Dana Carvey and Master of Disguise. He's like, I can be.
- 1:13:01Speaker 1: You need to just remove yourself. You just need to
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: like go and read a book for one. Like just
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: it's so infuriating that this character is and it's always
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: done in slightly different ways. Frank Lngella plays him in
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: and he plays the character very differently. Regardless, it's still
- 1:13:24Speaker 1: a huge part and it is not written as a
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: huge part. I think it is just a choice that
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: lazy male creatives have made to handle the parts of
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: the story that they are ill equipped to handle. And
- 1:13:37Speaker 1: I feel like it is very clear, you know, if
- 1:13:41Speaker 1: you have agreed to adapt this work and you do
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: not have experience as a survivor of abuse as a
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: young person yourself. The first thing you do is research
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: that and speak to people and know what you're fucking
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: talking about and adapting. So like it's just like logic,
- 1:14:02Speaker 1: like one, yeah, like do you know what you're talking
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: about in your work? Like, I just it makes me
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: so mad that these mediocre fucking I don't care about
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: Stanley Lee Krubrick so whatever dragged me. I don't give
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: a ship. He's terrible to women, and I just I whatever.
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: I know he's made good movies. I don't really care.
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: I just think it's so irresponsible and so lazy. And
- 1:14:31Speaker 1: just the fact that people have even attempted to say, like, oh,
- 1:14:35Speaker 1: this is this movie is only bad because of reasons
- 1:14:38Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with the filmmaker, who also
- 1:14:42Speaker 1: wrote most of the movie. It's like you can't. I mean,
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: I agree that the code is a big part of
- 1:14:49Speaker 1: why this movie is never going to work, but it
- 1:14:51Speaker 1: has a lot to do with Stanley Kubrick, a whole lot.
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: It's just so yeah, because like because when he does
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: decide to have lowly to on screen, this is okay.
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: So this is something I'm kind of like figuring out
- 1:15:07Speaker 1: in real time, so bear with me here. But like
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: even the way that she is introduced on screen visually,
- 1:15:15Speaker 1: like the first time we meet her character in the movie,
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: she's lying on the lawn. She is in this kind
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: of seductive pose, or what the movie would have you
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: think is that she like is wearing these sunglasses. She
- 1:15:29Speaker 1: like tilts them down in a very kind of like
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: film fatality way. I feel like she's like licking a lollipop.
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: She's like, well, the thing is, she is not actually
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: doing that in the movie, right, This is fascinating, and
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: I think it's like, Okay, I know I'm prepared to
- 1:15:46Speaker 1: do this podcast, and so I'm like really in it.
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: But she doesn't actually do that in the movie. You
- 1:15:53Speaker 1: remember it that way because that is what is on
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: the poster, and that is what happens in every like
- 1:16:00Speaker 1: it's she is presented very sexualized and male gaze in
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: her introductory scene. But this whole image that is the
- 1:16:08Speaker 1: I think the most prevalent image that people have taken
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: away from any version of this story is the young
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: girl wearing heart shaped sunglasses and licking a lollipop. That
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: exact image does not appear in the movie. At all.
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: It doesn't appear anywhere. It is something that exists nowhere,
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: Like it is fucking fascinating to me that it that
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: that I mean, that's just marketing. That is literally just
- 1:16:36Speaker 1: marketing designed to titilate a male viewer into thinking, you know,
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: and she's making eye contact with the camera and that image.
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: It's strictly marketing. It has nothing to do with anything.
- 1:16:48Speaker 1: But it's the thing that everyone took away from it,
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: including me. Apparently. The way she's introduced in the movie
- 1:16:53Speaker 1: is similar. Where she is lying on the lawn, she's
- 1:16:56Speaker 1: wearing a bikini. There's a lot of people who have
- 1:16:58Speaker 1: including the actress Sue Lyon, who I want to talk
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: about a little bit as well, Um who she She implied,
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: and many people involved with this production implied that she
- 1:17:08Speaker 1: was chosen because she was more developed than many girls
- 1:17:12Speaker 1: her age, and she's presented that way. She's presented in
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: a bikini. Um, she's you know, hanging out on the lawn,
- 1:17:19Speaker 1: she's sunbathing. She looks at him very seductively and kind
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: of starts teasing him right away. This is a hyper
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: sexualized version of how it's presented in the book. The movie.
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: You get a different hyper sexualized version in the book.
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: What it is is it's a young girl laying out
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: on the lawn reading a magazine, and everything else is
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: like it's a very ordinary image, but the way it's
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: written by a narrator that you have been told not
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: to trust is hyper sexualized, and every movie kind of
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: adapts it the same. It's the same problem is like
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: the framing and the male gaze that comes with this
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: is coming from the unreliable male gaze that it's presented
- 1:18:10Speaker 1: as in the book, and just it's just these like
- 1:18:14Speaker 1: I don't know, like Stanley Cooper has never read a book.
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: He doesn't under he clearly hasn't been at grad school, Kalin.
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: I mean, he also made a movie that I mean,
- 1:18:24Speaker 1: with The Shining that Stephen King hated. He's bad at adaptations,
- 1:18:27Speaker 1: as it turns out, he's bad, Like he's I just
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: don't like I know that he's making us up. I
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: just don't care. I just don't care. I don't have time. Sorry,
- 1:18:36Speaker 1: only so like what my point is that I'm still
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: trying to figure out. But like, like the movie does
- 1:18:43Speaker 1: frame a lot of what she does as being seductive,
- 1:18:48Speaker 1: which I think kind of goes to what happens in
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: the book where he's like, oh, this, this nim fit
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: is tantalizing me, and like we see we see that
- 1:18:58Speaker 1: in the movie where like she's right beside him, like
- 1:19:01Speaker 1: doing a hula hoop, which is just a normal activity
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: that a child would do. But because he's a predator,
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: he is liked is right in that shot, like he's
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: staring at her. Do you see her staring You see
- 1:19:15Speaker 1: him staring at her? But what we need But because
- 1:19:19Speaker 1: because this movie doesn't make it clear at all that
- 1:19:22Speaker 1: he is an unreliable narrator, the movie just makes it
- 1:19:26Speaker 1: seem like she is deliberately tantalizing him. I think what's
- 1:19:33Speaker 1: in the same way Humbert does by not framing it
- 1:19:36Speaker 1: as like it's blaming her. Yeah, I think for that
- 1:19:41Speaker 1: to be approached differently. You okay, remember the scene in
- 1:19:48Speaker 1: Fast Times at Regimont High where Phoebe Kates's character is
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: getting out of a swimming pool and then you get
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: Judge Reinhold's point of view, like fantasy version of it
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: looks like, yeah, he's seeing her in slow motion and
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: she's being really sexy and seductive and she takes her
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: top off and it's like male gaze for days. And
- 1:20:12Speaker 1: then it cuts to what actually is happening, where she
- 1:20:14Speaker 1: like jumps out of the pool because she's like choking
- 1:20:17Speaker 1: on water and it's like she's got hair all over
- 1:20:20Speaker 1: in her face, and it's just like, yes, I totally agree.
- 1:20:25Speaker 1: Like it is a very simple I mean, maybe goofy
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: for this thing, but like it makes it clear that
- 1:20:32Speaker 1: what he's seeing and what is happening are two very different,
- 1:20:35Speaker 1: very different things. That's what needs to be established here.
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: And it never is. It never is in any of
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: these adaptations. It never is. I Caitlin, need to send
- 1:20:47Speaker 1: you a song that from this musical. I like some
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: people will say that the musical is the best this
- 1:20:56Speaker 1: has ever been adapted, which is just a look into
- 1:20:59Speaker 1: how horrible the adaptations are there. This is just so
- 1:21:05Speaker 1: over the top that I had to laugh. But it's
- 1:21:08Speaker 1: very fun. This lyric in the song goes like this,
- 1:21:12Speaker 1: it's a lyric about Humbert. The town's talking about Humbert.
- 1:21:16Speaker 1: Something's not right with this guy. That's literally what the
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: tone of the song is. And then towns person number
- 1:21:22Speaker 1: five says, who is this viper that loves them post diaper?
- 1:21:26Speaker 1: That's the line in the song that he sings, he
- 1:21:29Speaker 1: says who loves him that? And it is this kind
- 1:21:33Speaker 1: of uncritical, like bullshit, like trying to acknowledge what is
- 1:21:38Speaker 1: happening without with also while being completely ill equipped to
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: do so. Yeah, I just that line really like I
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: had to like throw my computer into the ocean after
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: I heard that that. It's the most like if you
- 1:21:55Speaker 1: want the soundtrack is on YouTube. It's very bizarre. But
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: for this, I think, yeah, with the Hula group seen
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: as a perfect example of like the movie is blaming
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: her for what eventually happens. It is setting the viewer
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: up to say that she's quote unquote asking for it.
- 1:22:11Speaker 1: That thing that we have you know, heard and discussed
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: so many different times that is lived like that just
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: a false narrative that has leveraged against victims. And this
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: movie is just like yep, we agreed, which brings me too.
- 1:22:28Speaker 1: I think my last major thing for for this is
- 1:22:32Speaker 1: talking a little bit about Sue Lion, who played Lolita
- 1:22:37Speaker 1: in this movie. She passed away last year and she's
- 1:22:40Speaker 1: a very interesting figure in movie history. I've done quite
- 1:22:46Speaker 1: a bit of research on her. There's not actually a
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: lot because and this is a kind of continuing trend
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: that young actresses who are cast as Lovelita historically don't
- 1:23:00Speaker 1: tend to work for very long. And I think that again,
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: it's everyone is different. I'm not trying to loop all
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: of these people into the same narrative, but there are
- 1:23:12Speaker 1: similarities that I think are worth mentioning, which include the
- 1:23:16Speaker 1: fact and I think it really speaks to Hollywood issues,
- 1:23:21Speaker 1: not even issues with the story, it's more societal issues
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: of Sue Lion is cast as an unknown for this
- 1:23:29Speaker 1: part when she's fourteen. She later describes what sounds like
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: She she frames it is like, isn't this funny in
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: the eighties? But what she described I thought it sounded
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: very fucked up. She she went to this audition with
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick, and she frames us by being like, and
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: you know, normally when you go to an audition and
- 1:23:48Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, turned this way, I turned this way. Ah,
- 1:23:50Speaker 1: here's the line, thanks for coming in, Sia whatever. But
- 1:23:54Speaker 1: she said this audition, he asked her very personal questions
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: right when she got there, and he said, do you
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: where do you go? What do you do? What time
- 1:24:02Speaker 1: do you come home? What does your mom think of you?
- 1:24:04Speaker 1: Where did you get that dress? What? What size is it? Like?
- 1:24:07Speaker 1: Asked her all these really personal questions in order to
- 1:24:11Speaker 1: get the role right. So already we're like, okay, if
- 1:24:14Speaker 1: you didn't remember why you hated Stanley Kubrick, there's a
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: fun reminder. But so she she's put into this movie,
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: she wins a Golden Globe for playing this part, and
- 1:24:25Speaker 1: then goes on to really not have much of a career,
- 1:24:29Speaker 1: and then she retires from acting pretty young. She has
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: a very tumultuous personal life that is not really relevant
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: to our discussion. But all that to say that I
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: do believe that there is a stigma that comes with
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: playing a role like Lolita, especially when it is written
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: as irresponsibly as it regularly is in these adaptations, where
- 1:24:53Speaker 1: I mean, it's like Peter Sellers certainly didn't have a
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: fucking problem getting work after being in this movie, James
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: Mason's they didn't have problems. Shelley Winters didn't have problems.
- 1:25:02Speaker 1: But it is these young actresses who are sexualized, over sexualized,
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: playing a character that is in its essence misrepresenting and
- 1:25:13Speaker 1: blaming them for what is happening to them. And then
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: you see that they don't even really get to reap
- 1:25:20Speaker 1: the benefits of having started this huge movie. They're kind
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: of discarded by Hollywood and by the culture at large.
- 1:25:27Speaker 1: Of yeah, I mean, there's most Sue Lion movies she
- 1:25:31Speaker 1: was in after this, you wouldn't really know, and a
- 1:25:34Speaker 1: lot of the there's a similar line that can be
- 1:25:38Speaker 1: drawn for the actress who played Lolita in it is
- 1:25:42Speaker 1: like a common trend for this character and just extends
- 1:25:47Speaker 1: my frustration and my problems with this of like I think,
- 1:25:52Speaker 1: I mean, with what she's given. I think Sue Lyon
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: does an excellent job, and I feel the same of
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: dominiques plain and the fact that they would have to
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: in some ways it seems bear the brunt and the
- 1:26:05Speaker 1: consequences of the people around them mismanaging the story is
- 1:26:11Speaker 1: so frustrating to me. I mean it just truly, no
- 1:26:14Speaker 1: one else in these productions suffer except I mean, I
- 1:26:18Speaker 1: don't want to say that, but like, career wise, Stanley
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: Kubrick's is fucking fine. Adrian Line. I mean, at least
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: you can argue that Adrian Line didn't make a movie
- 1:26:27Speaker 1: for't even talking about, thank god. But by and large,
- 1:26:32Speaker 1: you know, reputation wise and typecasting wise, Jeremy Irons went
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: on to play a number of roles and he's fucking
- 1:26:42Speaker 1: the worst person ever. Like, I just I just find
- 1:26:46Speaker 1: that trend to also be frustrating because it just extends
- 1:26:52Speaker 1: this blame onto the person playing the character, and that's
- 1:26:58Speaker 1: just I hate that. I hate that so much. H
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: It's awful. It's also very telling of just where we've
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: been culturally, where you know, we just blame women for everything. Absolutely,
- 1:27:13Speaker 1: I it really frustrates me. I'm sorry for bringing this movie,
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: but I do. I mean, I'm very curious as to
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: what our listeners think if if you, um, we're listening
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: to the episode. It's such a complicated work. There's so
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: much too obviously talk about, but also just the ways
- 1:27:32Speaker 1: that I mean, I feel like of all the irresponsible adaptations,
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: the adaptations of this book in particular have been egregiously terrible,
- 1:27:42Speaker 1: to the point where I'm like, if this is how
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: it's going to be remembered culturally, do you even want
- 1:27:50Speaker 1: the book to have been written? If it's just going
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: to be given to people that you can't get to
- 1:27:54Speaker 1: step of researching it, Like, it's just so absurd to
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: me because victims, I mean, I think victims deserve better
- 1:28:03Speaker 1: than Lolita in general, for sure, but victims deserve better
- 1:28:08Speaker 1: in these adaptations as well. Like there's yeah, yeah, so
- 1:28:14Speaker 1: this movie is upsetting and frustrating, and historically, I guess
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: I would say it's relevant and it marks a very
- 1:28:23Speaker 1: specific point in time. But I also I'm just like,
- 1:28:26Speaker 1: if you're still out here being like it was just
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: the code. Uh, it wasn't. It definitely wasn't. There's a
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: lot of other things at play here, none of them good. No.
- 1:28:37Speaker 1: The one other thing I remember pretty distinctly from the book,
- 1:28:41Speaker 1: and I only remember this because I remember bringing it
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: up in the class discussion we had during the class
- 1:28:48Speaker 1: I took in college, where in the book Humbert is
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: like obsessed with Lolita's i Q. He's always talking about
- 1:28:59Speaker 1: how she has a high i Q. So let's start,
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: of course, by saying, and Jamie, I don't have to
- 1:29:05Speaker 1: tell you this, but like, I'm in ment i Q.
- 1:29:08Speaker 1: I Q tests are like bullshit based on pseudoscience, and
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: you are in mensa. Yes, that's sorry, That's what I
- 1:29:15Speaker 1: meant to say. Yeah, no, it's it's it's racist, sexist,
- 1:29:19Speaker 1: you name it, pseudoscience. That yeah, he does. I mean,
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: I think he intentionally in many points like tries to
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: I think I think what he's trying to do there
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: is just try to make it sound like she is.
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: He's like, well, she's smart, so that means that she's
- 1:29:34Speaker 1: older than her age, Like just exactly trying to play
- 1:29:37Speaker 1: that angle. Yeah, because like i Q stands for intelligence quotient,
- 1:29:43Speaker 1: which is a number that you get when you divide
- 1:29:46Speaker 1: again and this is all like bullshit pseudoscience, but it's
- 1:29:49Speaker 1: when you divide your mental age, which is a number
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: that you get from an intelligence test, divide that by
- 1:29:57Speaker 1: your actual chronological age. So if someone scores a one
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: hundred and fifty on an i Q test, which is
- 1:30:05Speaker 1: considered to be a high i Q, and you take
- 1:30:07Speaker 1: that test when you're ten years old, it means that
- 1:30:10Speaker 1: your actual your chronological age is ten, but your mental
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: age is fifteen. So I feel like Humbred is so
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: obsessed with her i Q because he's like, well, she
- 1:30:19Speaker 1: might be twelve chronologically, but she's closer to It's literally,
- 1:30:25Speaker 1: I mean, it's like it's it's so yeah, he's he's
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: just a fucking bullshit liar. Where that's for like reading
- 1:30:34Speaker 1: levels and Matt nothing to do ability to consent, Like
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: it's just so bad faith and ridiculous, but I do
- 1:30:43Speaker 1: yeah that I uh, but I feel like that is
- 1:30:46Speaker 1: like like four predators who try to justify their behavior.
- 1:30:51Speaker 1: They'll they'll site like, oh yeah, well she was maybe
- 1:30:55Speaker 1: technically under age, but she was so mature. Yeah. I
- 1:30:59Speaker 1: think I feel like that's very common tactic. Yeah, yeah,
- 1:31:04Speaker 1: I mean humber humbert are certainly and embodies a lot
- 1:31:08Speaker 1: of common tactics of manipulative abuser. I mean, yeah, hell,
- 1:31:14Speaker 1: and that's something that could have been in the movie,
- 1:31:17Speaker 1: where like if we see him trying to justify his
- 1:31:21Speaker 1: behavior through you know, the mental gymnastics he's doing, and
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: then we see other characters be like, well wait a minute,
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: what So that's another I think opportunity again, if you're
- 1:31:37Speaker 1: going to adapt this, that's an opportunity you have as
- 1:31:40Speaker 1: a filmmaker to present these things that he is saying
- 1:31:43Speaker 1: in this very fancy, flowery language in the book and
- 1:31:47Speaker 1: then just having to have that character say it as
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: dialogue when it will sound predatory and ridiculous and will
- 1:31:54Speaker 1: scare people because it's like he doesn't have the luxury
- 1:31:57Speaker 1: of talking his way around the topic as he is
- 1:32:00Speaker 1: in the book. That's an I mean, that's something that
- 1:32:03Speaker 1: you could have explored of, like how does this person
- 1:32:08Speaker 1: try to justify himself in real time? And of course
- 1:32:12Speaker 1: it's going to catch up with him. And also a
- 1:32:16Speaker 1: lot of what the book deals with that I don't
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: think that the movies are successful in is society's failure
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: of Lolita. Not only are we seeing this predator succeed
- 1:32:26Speaker 1: in taking her away again and again and again, we
- 1:32:29Speaker 1: see her communities has failed her, her school system has
- 1:32:33Speaker 1: failed her, her government has failed her, law enforcement has
- 1:32:35Speaker 1: failed her. She's been failed at every level, and that
- 1:32:41Speaker 1: you know, partially due to this kind of extreme passiveness
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: that existed in the nineteen fifties in the US. And
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: like that was a very deliberate commentary that again, it's
- 1:32:54Speaker 1: just like this movie has no interest or ability, I
- 1:32:57Speaker 1: don't know which, but like it has no and it
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: just is like Peter Sellers is funny. You're just like,
- 1:33:05Speaker 1: how is this where we are like, yeah, well, wouldn't
- 1:33:09Speaker 1: it be funny if the hotel is all booked up
- 1:33:13Speaker 1: and they can only have one room because there's a
- 1:33:16Speaker 1: police convention there, and oh, the irony of a pedophile
- 1:33:21Speaker 1: who's you know, breaking the law has to be around
- 1:33:24Speaker 1: a bunch of cops. T he he what a funny obstacle.
- 1:33:28Speaker 1: It's infuriating. It's so like, yeah, creating a comic situation
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: out of it, all of it. It's just it's it's
- 1:33:36Speaker 1: a it's a waste of everybody's time, and it's worse
- 1:33:40Speaker 1: than a ways of time. It's actively detrimental to telling
- 1:33:44Speaker 1: a story that could be of use to anybody, to anybody,
- 1:33:49Speaker 1: And I feel like that's I mean, that's why nobody
- 1:33:51Speaker 1: talks about this movie is because the book is very controversial,
- 1:33:55Speaker 1: but some people have found value in it, which is
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: why it's such a debate. This movie. No one ever
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: found value and so no one is like, well what
- 1:34:02Speaker 1: about Peter Sellers? Like, no one is like, it's a
- 1:34:06Speaker 1: it's a useless it's a useless movie, and I and
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: I hate that Sue Lion and Shelly Winters had to
- 1:34:15Speaker 1: deal with any part of it. Um, thank you for
- 1:34:20Speaker 1: being willing to discuss this, this movie with me. I
- 1:34:24Speaker 1: don't worry now I have I'll be using this as collateral.
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: Know what's the word something to yeah to? Because you
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: know there's some some movies that I know you don't
- 1:34:41Speaker 1: want to do that. I'm like, where this is about? Yeah, fine,
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: I did Indiana Jones let that that's true there, But
- 1:34:51Speaker 1: in any case, yes, I agree, and I yeah, I
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: just my thoughts have been very consumed with this property
- 1:34:58Speaker 1: recently and so wanted to bring it on the Bechtel
- 1:35:01Speaker 1: Cast and talk about it with you. Yeah, it's just
- 1:35:08Speaker 1: wow wow wow um. Yeah, So feel free to leave
- 1:35:11Speaker 1: your thoughts in the comments. Were very as always, very
- 1:35:15Speaker 1: interested in what you have to say. I did not
- 1:35:18Speaker 1: honestly pay attention to if this movie passed. If this
- 1:35:22Speaker 1: movie passes the Bechdel tests, I don't give any manner
- 1:35:26Speaker 1: of funk about that. If it does, I don't really care.
- 1:35:30Speaker 1: I think it probably does Melita and her mom, but
- 1:35:34Speaker 1: at I just yeah, I don't really care. It doesn't.
- 1:35:40Speaker 1: I don't think it matters for this movie. It doesn't
- 1:35:43Speaker 1: super matter. No, it's not really relevant to this discussion.
- 1:35:46Speaker 1: And I honestly don't know how to give this movie
- 1:35:49Speaker 1: nipples either. I guess I would say zero. I'm going
- 1:35:52Speaker 1: to give it negative one million nipples. Yeah, I guess
- 1:35:55Speaker 1: I'll just say negative. I guess I'll say I barely
- 1:35:58Speaker 1: know that this even apply. I said this discussion, it
- 1:36:02Speaker 1: is like the portrayal in this movie. There, there wasn't
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: even an attempt. It took a flawed attempt at portraying
- 1:36:10Speaker 1: female characters and erased not just Nabokov's problems, but the
- 1:36:16Speaker 1: entire character. Just turned the pencil over and y or
- 1:36:19Speaker 1: e Uri like just it. Everyone deserves so much better
- 1:36:25Speaker 1: than what this movie had to offer. And buck Stanley Kubrick.
- 1:36:32Speaker 1: And that's why I suck the other adaptation, the other
- 1:36:36Speaker 1: film one. That one is just the other adaptation. It's
- 1:36:40Speaker 1: Adrian line. He shouldn't have worked for a long time
- 1:36:44Speaker 1: after that. I tell you what the Adrian linement in particular.
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: I just I watched it today and I feel terrible.
- 1:36:52Speaker 1: You know what I need to do as a palate
- 1:36:54Speaker 1: cleanser for having consumed all this little all these Lolita
- 1:36:57Speaker 1: movies was watch hard Candy. Hard Candy is everything these
- 1:37:02Speaker 1: movies are not. It is a revenge that was. That
- 1:37:06Speaker 1: was a fun episode to record. Yes, yes, I and
- 1:37:10Speaker 1: I feel like in a way you can view that
- 1:37:12Speaker 1: movie as kind of a response to movies like Lolita. Yeah,
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: I think someone like saw Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and they're like, well, um,
- 1:37:21Speaker 1: I could adopt that better than this, and then they
- 1:37:23Speaker 1: made hard candy. I just it still is so infuriating
- 1:37:28Speaker 1: to me that the image that people take away from
- 1:37:30Speaker 1: this movie doesn't even appear in the movie that says
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: everything you need to know about this movie. It is
- 1:37:35Speaker 1: just it tricked me to like I like I had
- 1:37:38Speaker 1: mapped the poster onto that scene. I guess like almost
- 1:37:43Speaker 1: everybody feels this way, like I thought this until I've
- 1:37:47Speaker 1: built my life around it for no reason like that.
- 1:37:51Speaker 1: It's so I mean manipulative, like it's it's very effective
- 1:37:56Speaker 1: marketing that is doing bad things like yeah, it is, Uh,
- 1:38:03Speaker 1: I don't know. It is a very interesting case study.
- 1:38:06Speaker 1: It's very fucked up and uh you know, yeah, we're
- 1:38:11Speaker 1: done talking about it. And now we're done talking. Check
- 1:38:14Speaker 1: out the podcast. Oh wow, we'll be back soon with that.
- 1:38:22Speaker 1: Thank you for listening again. We uh look forward to
- 1:38:25Speaker 1: your perspectives or we'll see it I Frankenstein. Yes, well
- 1:38:34Speaker 1: that was our unlocked Lolita episode and once again Jamie
- 1:38:40Speaker 1: tell people where and when and how they can listen
- 1:38:44Speaker 1: to Lolita Podcast. Lolita Podcast comes out on November twenty three,
- 1:38:50Speaker 1: and then new episodes are released every Monday right here
- 1:38:54Speaker 1: on on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast,
- 1:38:58Speaker 1: and that's the official like edge uh but yeah, I
- 1:39:03Speaker 1: uh that So as far as like, there is one
- 1:39:07Speaker 1: entire episode dedicated to like deep background on this movie
- 1:39:13Speaker 1: in particular, but at a ten episode series, so we're
- 1:39:15Speaker 1: taking a look at the book, We're taking a look
- 1:39:18Speaker 1: at the author, We're taking a look at the other adaptations.
- 1:39:21Speaker 1: There is also entire episodes dedicated to talking to professionals
- 1:39:26Speaker 1: and child psychiatry and just like other and and the
- 1:39:28Speaker 1: ways that people have reclaimed this text over the years,
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: and um, it's an interesting ride. I hope that people
- 1:39:36Speaker 1: will listen. But yeah, it's just uh, it's just a
- 1:39:39Speaker 1: podcast that will come out on Mondays soon. Excellent. Well,
- 1:39:44Speaker 1: speaking of plugs, because this was an unlocked Matreon episode,
- 1:39:51Speaker 1: we said at the beginning of the episode, we'll repeat ourselves.
- 1:39:54Speaker 1: Check out our Matreon and you can do that by
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: going to patreon dot com slash pectel Cast. It gets
- 1:40:00Speaker 1: you access to two brand new bonus episodes every single month,
- 1:40:05Speaker 1: plus access to the entire back catalog of bonus episodes,
- 1:40:09Speaker 1: and like we mentioned, there are upwards of eighty by
- 1:40:13Speaker 1: now and if you're listening when this comes out in November,
- 1:40:17Speaker 1: we just we're in the middle of Mary Kate Nashley
- 1:40:20Speaker 1: month on an important moments in world history. You thought
- 1:40:27Speaker 1: this episode was a critical discussion, wait till you get
- 1:40:30Speaker 1: to two different Mary Kate Nashley movies. H too too
- 1:40:36Speaker 1: much discourse for one episode. So but there there's a
- 1:40:39Speaker 1: lot of fun stuff. We always cover um garbage holiday
- 1:40:42Speaker 1: movies in December, and it's just it's a fun ride.
- 1:40:46Speaker 1: So uh meet us over and the matron from More
- 1:40:49Speaker 1: Yes indeed and um yeah all the other stuff. Follow
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: us on social media at Bechtelcast on Twitter and Instagram.
- 1:40:57Speaker 1: Check out our merch on uh public dot com slash
- 1:41:01Speaker 1: the Bechtel Cast. The perfect time for Baby Grinch March
- 1:41:05Speaker 1: or as I like car now, Green Baby Boy, Green
- 1:41:08Speaker 1: Baby Boy, you need to do a whole after Lolita
- 1:41:13Speaker 1: is over. You need to do a separate podcast about
- 1:41:15Speaker 1: your journey with Green Baby Boy. I honestly will need
- 1:41:19Speaker 1: the relief after after wean Lovelita for six months to
- 1:41:22Speaker 1: be like, Okay, this this podcast is just about Baby Grinch.
- 1:41:26Speaker 1: Let's just cut to the chase, um and well, if
- 1:41:30Speaker 1: you'll allow me to plug something of mine. I have
- 1:41:34Speaker 1: a still pretty new Instagram live show that I do
- 1:41:38Speaker 1: every Thursday on my Instagram, which you can find that
- 1:41:42Speaker 1: at Caitlin Darante. It's called Movie Talk with Caitlin and
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: it's just me and a guest chatting about movies. It's
- 1:41:51Speaker 1: not the Bechtel Cast because I do no preparation. There's
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: no specific movie that gets discussed. It's just a loose
- 1:41:58Speaker 1: convo to you were my first guest, what a what
- 1:42:04Speaker 1: a blast? And many and and I think so far
- 1:42:07Speaker 1: all friends of the cast have been on this so far,
- 1:42:10Speaker 1: because it turns out the only people I know our
- 1:42:13Speaker 1: former guests on our show. Well well, well, the way
- 1:42:17Speaker 1: I was thinking of it is like we truly just
- 1:42:19Speaker 1: bring our friends on our show, because that's true. Yeah,
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: but yeah, I think I'll keep it pretty close to
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: to to Bectel Cast friends on on Movie Talk. So
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: check that out again every Thursday at six pm Pacific,
- 1:42:36Speaker 1: nine pm Eastern. And that's again on my Instagram at
- 1:42:41Speaker 1: Caitlin Darante. And I think that doesn't right, I think,
- 1:42:46Speaker 1: so yeah, I have a have a great week, everybody,
- 1:42:50Speaker 1: and uh, we'll see you next week with another episode.
- 1:42:56Speaker 1: I don't know what I was gonna say with another episode, goodbye,
- 1:43:00Speaker 1: it's true. Bye bye,