Lolita (1962)

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