{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "the \u201clolita\u201d covers", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/668453977179979776/", "html": "

gowns:

here\u2019s a question: if vladimir nabokov\u2019s\u00a0\u201clolita\u201d is truly the psychological portrait of a messed up dude and not the girl \u2013 let alone a sexualized little girl, as all of the sexualization happens inside humbert humbert\u2019s head \u2013 then why do all the covers focus on a girl, and usually a sexy aspect of a girl, usually quite young, and none of them feature a portrait of humbert humbert?

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here are nabokov\u2019s original instructions for the book cover:

I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls. \u2026 Who would be capable of creating a romantic, delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for LOLITA (a dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic highway\u2014that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl.

and yet, the representations of the sexy little girl abound.

i became driven by curiousity. why did this happen? why is this happening?

i am not alone \u2013\u00a0there\u2019s a book about this, with several essays and artists\u2019 conceptions about the politics and problems of representation surrounding the covers of \u201clolita.\u201d\u00a0this new yorker article gives a summary of the book and its ideas, and interviews one of the editors:

Many of the covers guilty of misrepresenting Lolita as a teen seductress feature images from Hollywood movie adaptations of the book\u2014 Kubrick\u2019s 1962 version, starring Sue Lyon, and Adrian Lyne\u2019s 1997 one. Are those films primarily to blame for the sexualization of Lolita?

As is argued in several of the book\u2019s essays, the promotional image of Sue Lyon in the heart-shaped sunglasses, taken by photographer Bert Stern, is easily the most significant culprit in this regard, much more so than the Kubrick film itself (significantly, neither the sunglasses nor the lollipop ever appears in the film), or the later film by Adrian Lyne. Once this image became associated with \u201cLolita\u201d\u2014and it\u2019s important to remember that, in the film, Lolita is sixteen years old, not twelve\u2014it really didn\u2019t matter that it was a terribly inaccurate portrait. It became the image of Lolita, and it was ubiquitous. There are other factors that have contributed to the incorrect reading, from the book\u2019s initial publication in Olympia Press\u2019s Traveller\u2019s Series (essentially, a collection of dirty books), to Kubrick\u2019s startlingly unfaithful adaptation. At the heart of all of this seems to be the desire to make the sexual aspect of the novel more palatable.

here\u2019s a couple of kubrick inspired covers:

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which very well could have, after tremendous sales, have influenced the following covers:

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\u2026straying so far from the intention of nabokov that the phenomenon begins to look more like the symptom of something larger, something sicker.

after a lot of researching covers, it was here, in this sampling of concept covers for the book about the lolita covers, that i found an image that best represents the story to me:

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[art by linn olofsdotter \u2013 and again, this is not an official cover]

but why aren\u2019t all the covers like that? even the ones published by\u00a0\u201clegitimate\u201d publishing companies, with full academic credentials, with no intended connection to the film; surely they must have read nabokov\u2019s instructions for the cover. and yet, look at the top row of lolita covers: all legitimate publishing companies, not prone to smut. and yet.

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my conclusion is that the lolita complex existed before\u00a0\u201clolita\u201d (and of course it did) \u2013 a patriarchal society is essentially operating with the same delusions of humbert humbert. nabokov did not produce the sexy girl covers of lolita, and kubrick had only the smallest hand in it. it was what people desired, requested and bought. the image of the sexy girl sells; intrigues; gets the hands on the books.

as elizabeth janeway said in her review in the new york review of books: \u201cHumbert is every man who is driven by desire, wanting his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to consider her as a human being, or as anything but a dream-figment made flesh.\u201d

isn\u2019t that our media as a whole? our culture as a whole?

the whole lot of them/us \u2013 seeing the world through humbert-tinted glasses, seeing all others as Other and Object, as solipsistic dream-reality. as i scroll through the\u00a0\u201clolita\u201d covers i wonder: where\u2019s the humanity in our humanity?

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