"Re-imagining Lolita"... Poorly (Roger Fishbite BITES, Adapting Lolita #2)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- In which I discuss Emily Prager’s 'Roger Fishbite', another re-imagining of Lolita from Lo’s perspective. Does it accomplish what it set out to do? Um... no.
Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription! nebula.tv/lolasebastian
Listen to The Only Warrior Cats Podcast on Nebula: nebula.tv/theonlywarriorcatsp...
CONTACT
❤️ BUSINESS INQUIRIES ONLY: lola.sebastian.business@gmail.com
❤️ LINKTREE: linktr.ee/MsLola
MY ESSAYS
❤️ UA-cam: / @lolasebastian
❤️ NEBULA: nebula.tv/lolasebastian
SUPPORT ME
❤️ PATREON: / lolasebastian
❤️ BUY ME A COFFEE?: ko-fi.com/lolasebastian
❤️ BUY ME A BOOK?: www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls...
SOCIAL MEDIA
❤️ INSTAGRAM: @lola_sebastian_
❤️ BLUESKY: @lolasebastian.bsky.social
❤️ TIKTOK: @lola.sebastian
MY MUSIC
❤️ BANDCAMP: lolasebastian.bandcamp.com
❤️ SOUNDCLOUD: / lolasebastian
00:00 Intro
05:02 This video is sponsored by CuriosityStream!
07:47 Summary
08:47 The Book
11:19 Clunky Writing (I'm Sorry)
16:58 Various Bigotries (And Why?)
26:27 Imitating Nabokov (And to What End?)
31:39 What Year is It? (Please Help)
38:23 Roger Fishbite is a Non-Character (And Why I Shouldn't Care)
42:36 Stop Recommending These Lolita Adaptations Without Reading Them First
46:24 Credits
WITH THANKS TO
Jamie Loftus (check out Lolita Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts!)
@hasanaturner (check out her channel here: / @hasanaturner )
Schyler Reighn (check out her channel here: / @nymphetfashion )
Music by Epidemic Sound!
TEXTS MENTIONED
PRIMARY
Prager, Emily. Roger Fishbite: A Novel. Random House, 1999.
SECONDARY
Barber Way, Mish. “My Kinderwhore Education”. 20 July 2015 via i-D of VICE.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 1955. Penguin Modern Classics, 2012.
Pera, Pia. Lo’s Diary. Translated by Ann Goldstein. Foxrock, 1995.
Vogel, Paula. How I Learned to Drive. Dramatist’s Play Service, 1999.
Wilson, Jennifer. "Was 'Lolita' About Race?: Vladimir Nabokov on Race in the United States." Los Angeles Review of Books, 31 October 2016.
OTHER VIDEOS TO WATCH:
Nylijah Myeesa, “The Revisionist History of the Nymphet Community (corrected by someone who was actually there)”: • The Revisionist Histor...
FD Signifier, “Why ‘Allies’ Need to Learn to Knock (Light Work #11: A Measured Response to Robert Tolppi)”: • Video :
Allison Pregler’s video on Tyra Banks’ Modelland: • I Spent a Year Reading...
Schyler Reighn’s video on the word “nymphet”: • ARE YOU A NYMPHET? The...
Belle Aubrey's "What Is Kinderwhore?" via UA-cam. Sep 1, 2019: • Video
There will never be a good adaptation of Lolita until we as a society can recognize that Dolores Haze is a tomboy
Challenge accepted I see that too and I am currently writing on an adaption on Lolita.
this, i feel like a lot of the perviness of people adapting lolita comes through when they portray dolores as super feminine and classically pretty when its established in the book that she's not. just shows how many adaptations try to justify humbert's attraction or make it seem understandable when the book makes it very clear that it's specifically dolores' youth that he's attracted to due to his own pathology.
So these writers are just going to casually act like Dolores didn’t… break down completely in tears after reading the newspaper and realizing Humbert is r*ping her like the man in the paper is doing. That she calls him a brute and literally says the line “that place where you r*ped me”, tries to run away from him, and needs to be forced or coerced into letting him SA her. Oh and he literally says that to her initially it’s “just a game” implying she didn’t understand or take it seriously or think he would r*pe her and that’s partially why she trusted him. She didn’t actually think they would become “lovers” she just wanted to play pretend.
ugh... these writers are so shallow minded.
Even the play pretend part may be an invetion by Humbert. This is the most unreliable narrator in the history of literature, the entire book might be fiction in every sense of the word.
@@DaviRenania it could be, but I thought the same thing as a kid, as it being "play pretend"
I don't think that Dolores didn't understand what was going on and believed Humbert's "just a game": she already had had sex at camp with a boy her age. Humbert moans and whines about this for a while too, and at the end of chapter 31, he literally writes "Sensitive gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover."
I feel like it's just that Humber always thought of himself as being far smarter than Dolores, and therefore treated her like a stupid child who could barely understand what was going on, when, in fact, Dolores was perfectly aware of what was happening to her and was just trying to survive and find a way out.
@@myrtaleellery I remember the “Sensitive gentlemen of the jury, I was not even her first lover” truly made me wanna commit a violent crime
Omg can we have a version of Lolita from Lo's perspective where it shows she is just a NORMAL KID!? I feel like these adaptations are determined to make her 'not like other girls' her age and more like what Humbert sees her as than she should be.
I couldn’t agree more!! I was SO upset when I read ‘Lo’s Diary’-they made her out to be some kind of psychotic mastermind! I’ll never understand it. People always see Dolores (Lolita) as some kind of manipulative seductress, when in reality she’s just a typical girl from the 1940’s. Because of this, I was inspired to write a story that truly shows that aspect of thing. Anyways, sorry if this is long, but your comment resonated with me.
@@sophiah.9119 You know there is a revisionist version of Daphne Du Murier's Rebecca (one of my favourite books) where Rebecca is made more sympathetic by past trauma, and yet so many adaptations of Lolita want to make Dolores some sort of evil master manipulator seductress just as Humbert saw her, imo Lo is much more deserving of that kind of Elphaba from Wicked treatment than Rebecca is.
@@sophiah.9119 Also unpopular opinion so often they wanna make it Humbert is not actually good looking, but imo i disagree with that because we forget creeps can be hot too, and irl they use looks and charisma to get away with shit.
@@alexisgrey3633 I couldn’t agree more. Like, the whole point is that he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing!!
@@sophiah.9119 Yeah people wanna pretend all pedophiles are gross ugly old men, when many can be attractive and charismatic and charming.
Imo I feel like that's why people are sympathetic to Humbert but despise Quilty especially in the Adrian Lyons film where Humbert is Jeremy Irons and Quilty is much less attractive.
I’m a Mexican immigrant. An aspect IMO often under appreciated of Lolita is it’s perspective on America as both an outsider and a connoisseur. Nabokov definitely knew America with as much intimacy as any native, but Humbert frequently mentions how people treat him as a foreigner, and how the US compares to the extremely vague and idealized idea of his homeland.
Right off the bat, when Charlotte mentions her ignorant and fetishistic fascination with Mexico, and Humbert’s disgust at her “tackiness” that, to me, makes me feel like these characters exist in exactly the same tension I live in every day.
To me this book is as much about the pain of being an immigrant as it is about the pain of being the victim of a predator of children.
Trigger warning: child sexual abuse by adult family member
I was abused by my stepfather and read Lolita at 14 trying to make sense of what was happening. I was precocious, straight-A, responsible for my age. The traumas also made me serious, lost playfulness years earlier. I had to be "mature" to handle him, his temper even before the sexual abuse.
I was manipulative to survive, but I was never a mastermind. I was always a child. Through my teens I was intentionally moody, lashed out, to aggravate him. To get distance from him, to try to make him become frustrated and let me be. He had been telling me I was a woman from age 10 so if I seemed like a "moody teenager/little bitch" maybe he would realize I wasn't worth the trouble. I thought. I always smoothed things over before he was too angry, for fear of too much retaliation. But that didn't work. He didn't stop.
He wanted me to play a part in his fantasy. He forced me to behave a certain way. I was forced to smile, to pretend I was in love with him. When I didn't wear the face he screamed at me.
I manipulated him within the parameters of his fantasy to delay the worst invasion of my body. He pretended the abuse was a relationship and said we would have PIV sex when I was "ready" so I kept saying I wasn't ready yet. I said whatever was safe, even if I lied. I needed time so I could be best equipped until I could leave and start my own life. As years passed he became more and more frustrated. He did scary things. He said he was done with me several times only to "relapse." Eventually the older I became the more assertive I was. I stopped submitting act by act. His violence escalated to try to control me.
He had all the power always. He was the adult. The stepfather. Bigger, stronger. He had dominated my mother, she was a bystander. Anything I did would also affect my family. He manipulated me into believing we needed him. He did his best to try to change who I was, control what I thought and felt, control my whole life. He was always manipulating me. Dominating me. And he wanted to pretend I had the power over him, calling me goddess, saying I will do whatever you want, give you whatever you want, but every time I told him to stop he didn't. Many times since the beginning when I was no older than 8 I expressed no and stop and I don't want to. He never respected that. He ignored me, threatened me, yelled at me, all kinds of force. Kept doing it.
All I had was manipulation. I had to be smart. I had to talk my way out of being impregnated. That was my goal - not getting pregnant by him. That does not make me a mastermind. I was very much a child.
My strategy worked, but a lot of it was luck. I just used what he gave me. He allowed that strategy to exist. At any time he could have PIV raped me. Any time. He almost did several times.
I hid my true self and I got done what I needed to give myself the best start and made an escape plan. I could not have gotten some of those things if he had ever thought I would actually leave. If I had not played his part, not manipulated him. He would have sabotaged me, controlled me even more. Took a long time because I was also very isolated (his intention, homeschooled from 12 on in a rural area, no extended family for thousands of miles) and depressed and self-hating. But finally I fled his house. I was 21. Legally I was an adult at 18 but I had been dominated by that man since age 3 and sexually abused since at least 8. Nothing magical happened on my 18th birthday to suddenly liberate me.
But finally I reclaimed my body and started my own life and was able to be myself. I had to get 2 years of restraining orders against him to banish him from my life. I did not pursue criminal charges for all he had done because he threatened to kill me if I ever did that. I was not strong enough for that.
Child victim masterminds do not exist. Even when they have reading levels 3 grades ahead like me.
We do the best we can to survive, as child vs monsters, often completely alone for years.
wow what a monster that's a really terrible way to start out life. I hope you are doing better now and you're right smart kids are just kids not masterminds or miniature adults.
@@kieleleron85768 it's a lifetime recovery. No cure. But I have the family I made, I've been in love and in a healthy relationship for 10 years, I keep challenging myself and improving. Sometimes I am even happy. I am who I want to be, not who he tried to make me.
I am so angry that he did that to you and that no adults were available to intervene!
@@thennesearight7141 I am really glad to hear that. A healthy relationship can go a long way towards helping to establish and maintain boundaries that clearly you didn't have the luxury of having as a child. "I am who I want to be" is a beautiful statement to be able to make.
First of all, I'm so sorry you had to go through that and happy that you were able to get out of the situation. "Child victim masterminds do not exist" - excellently put.
Kids can be terrible in lots of ways - e.g. I gave my parents hell, unfortunately. I had undiagnosed ADHD, but that was no excuse for hitting or screaming at them when I was old enough to know better.
But framing a child as manipulating an adult into a sexual relationship seems wrong all around: super unlikely to happen and pretty much justifying predatory behaviour.
The point you make about Lolita being important not only to white females is interesting. I taught in an all-girl high school here in South America and I mentioned Lolita a lot (in part to shy away the misconception of being a pornographic book).
From what I discussed with my class, the explotative nature of Humbert, which he tries to pass as "romantic" resonated a lot among the girls. Many didn't see anything bad about attracting older men, they saw that as a badge of honor somehow, because they saw themselves as "hot enough" to compete with older women.
The fact that the book forces you to see things from another perspective, kind of opened their eyes how the real power dynamics worked in this case. I am not saying I pushed them to feel like victims but I tried to make them more aware of what would happen in a relationship like this and how men prey in their need to feel validation in this stage.
I also think that Lolita resonates a lot in Latina teens because there's already this idea of the "hot latina" that sometimes disgustingly extents to girls as soon they hit puberty. I feel there is a fetishization and exotism that allows "dirty old men" to "forget" that, while a girl looks like a woman, she should not do whatever a woman does.
There's a book called Reading Lolita in Tehran which is a memoir from a female Iranian university teacher who taught Lolita to some student which sparked a lot of discussion about feminism and abuse
The "hot latina" thing might apply to most non-white people, honestly. Anecdotally, most non-white kids hit puberty way before their white counterparts. Other Bengali kids all tell me that they were done with puberty before or right after starting high school, same as for me, and yet a lot of my white classmates started getting their periods or having their voices drop after freshman year. I barely made the cut off to not be diagnosed with precocious puberty (I wish I had because I'm trans and puberty blockers would have made life easier) and waking up one day with adult male attention while my age was still in the single digits was terrifying. It's so unfair that non-white kids are forced to grow up faster by both social pressure and biological factors and I wish we could just choose when we were ready to grow up.
My parents are mexican, I grew up in south Texas and then lived in Mexico City for 10 years. I’ve been surrounded by Mexicans as well as the Hispanic community in Texas my whole life. Do you know how many times I’ve heard a Latin person say ‘ay caramba’ unironically? ZERO.
I thought that was what white people said when being saucy or goofy. 😂 I didn't know Latinos were expected to be saying it!
@@availanila In north Spain we use It Ironically haha
I normally hear Ay chingado.
Hello everyone!
All of my videos covering Lolita and adjacent topics will include an indefinite fundraiser for RAINN. All ad revenue from these videos goes to RAINN, and feel free to donate while you watch! Thanks for your generosity ❤️
P.S. sorry about the audio glitches around 15:00! My computer is busted and I'm getting a new one ASAP.
P.P.S. subtitles are now live!
THEY RETURN!!! Also “Sometimes we feel like we’re the only people who understand our favorite media.” I mean, as someone whose favorite film is Fight Club and who goes to a film school…IT DOES FEEL LIKE IT!
There’s probably a sweet spot of when something comes out and the age we are when we watch/read it that makes it stock more than anything else. I was really into the Matrix up until the recent betrayal of the franchise. I took it personally.
Just asking, are Lolas preferred pronouns they/them? Or are you just using gender neutral language for the fun of it?
Well now I'm genuinely curious. How do you interpret Fight Club?
@@adeleviuhko7186 film bros tend to just see it as this awesome book about men fighting and destroying capitalism yet it can be interpreted in many different ways
for example, as a big fan of the book, i see it as basically just about terrorism and how fucking gay the idea of men fighting each other is (it's very very gay)
@@adeleviuhko7186 A deconstruction of toxic masculinity, gender roles (both patriarchal and commercial), consumer culture, capitalism, sexuality and fascism, all presented through how men end up diagnosing capitalism’s emasculation, but not how it strips everyone on their livelihoods, and as such end up falling into fascistic tendencies and violence until they become fully radicalized.
I grew up in the '90s, and trust me, if someone was wearing saddle shoes around by choice, I think 19 out of 20 people would be asking, "why are you wearing bowling shoes?"
On the "Lolita as super genius" point, would it be better to have this be Lo's own unreliable narrator trait in a story?
Like, she sees herself as this mastermind manipulator, but then in the factual moments we show she's not as clever as she wants to believe. Maybe show one of her plans absolutely backfire, or an attempt to hurt someone and they don't even notice.
Would also be a very teenager trait to think they have the whole world figured out.
Somehow I feel like so many of these people who real _Lolita_ , and in particular those who try to imitate Nabokov, don't actually realize that Humbert was an unreliable narrator, and just take everything as perfectly accurate description of the characters.
I don’t think a “from Lolita” perspective story is needed. I think it’s important to let victims tell their stories in whatever way they wish to, but that doesn’t seem to be what is happening with these stories.
i agree, it feels like people are making it an either/or thing when it isn't. Lolita existing from the predator's perspective doesn't diminish books that are from the victim's perspective. both can exist and be good literature, you know?
It seems like people who understand the point that "victims should be able to tell their own stories" are already more likely to write original work and characters inspired by "Lolita" rather than ones which claim to enhancing another author's story of an existing traumatized character. People who get it go on to forge their own path, and people who don't.... write things like this.
I think if they wanted Lucky to make lots of pop culture references they should have stuck to things in pop culture that stuck with the general public. Music groups that have lasted through time, incredibly influential movies or television. Mentioning The Beatles or I Love Lucy would have been met with more recognition and helped push (in a somewhat stereotypical way I'll admit) the narrative that she was this very intelligent private boarding school girl. She likes things that are popular, but classic
This, this, 1000 times this.
I don't know when the book was written, but I'm sure the book was set during the mid to late 1990s. There are bands and genres from that time that have stood the test of time.
I posted a playlist of tunes for coquettes and nymphets in this comment section that is basically songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Black Box Recorder (that just so happen to date from the mid to late 1990s) then you have the likes of Suede, the Manic Street Preachers and Placebo and that's just the stuff that would have had young'uns searching on UA-cam and Spotify and going "This is good" before we get to bands people have heard of!
Seems to me they went with the "Well what would silly little girls in the 1990s have listened to?"
@@GeoNeilUK well, it was published in 1999, not retrospectively set in the 90s. It would take some foresight to see what would stand the test of time.
@@peterwallis4288 True, but the bands I listed were well regarded back then.
One thing that really makes me mad about the “I’m too pale” and “I’m too thin” is that they could have been used to emphasis the fact she is still a kid physically but instead it seems like it was used in an OC “Wow, my conventionally beautiful traits are so ugly”.
A lot of 11-13 year olds are thin and spindly and haven’t started to develop curves (at least not as much as they think they should), they want to look like older teens but still look like kids and that can cause a lot of insecurity at that age. Being pale too can be associated with children (as many people, even white people, get darker as they age), but the right words need to surround it to get that impression.
Have people compliment her paleness by comparing her skin to that of a baby’s rather than Snow White, have her lumpily stuff her bra, have mother try to force her to wear a sun hat, have her try to follow some of the dumb tricks middle schoolers are told will make them develop curves, have her pick at a sunburn and examine the flakes in class. Make her a kid basically.
There's so much room to write books in the style of kids, honestly. Precocious tweens don't write like adults, they write (and sometimes speak) like they THINK adults do. I don't know that I've ever seen it done well, it's very hard to describe, but basically it should be painfully obvious what media the character is engaging with. A large, old-fashioned vocabulary is entirely fair if your kid is reading pride and prejudice, but it shouldn't read like Jane Austen! Actually, any first person story about children/teenagers should keep this in mind, that young people mirror the styles around them, just like everyone else, but to a greater extent because their writing and speaking styles are already in constant flux.
I recently reread my attempt at writing a science fiction novel when I was in high school and I can confirm
I also kinda ended up accidentally creating Blade Runner again
yep. middle school me would google synonyms to words so i could sound really smart and adult-like. a lot of the writing i looked up to were fanfics with flowery language and rick riordan's chill way of writing. you can imagine theres a bit of a mess of writing identities 😅
I almost destroyed my writing style as a teen trying to mirror fanfiction authors I liked 😂 I also had a thesaurus strapped to my arm and thought I understood the tact of subjects I then proudly (accidentally) butchered.
Writing from a child’s perspective is So Difficult, famously, and I don’t think I’m very good at it yet- I’ve been workshopping a story with a child mc for 4 years and I still have to keep going through to make sure she’s reading as a real kid.
My tip from that is that everything that has ever happened to a kid, especially teenagers, is the biggest most intense thing that’s ever happened to them in their minds as it happens. The stakes of adolescence are buck wild from the perspective of a kid, almost nothing is metered correctly- a fight with friends or a breakup is put on the same shelf or higher as actual fucked up shit. Where and how kids deal with trauma is based largely on how they were raised and who’s around them still. They don’t do a lot of shit low to the ground. Reading your old work, listening to stories from parents with their kids’ logic loops, even reading bad fiction written by actual children is a decent way to understand the thought process.
Bad fanfic is also psychologically fascinating lmao
Jenny Nicholson reads a girl’s fic, Trapped in a island with Josh Hutcherson, which has existentialism of the self that’s like a six second speed run of that scene where a dude plays beach chess with death. What even are children. I wish people put more care into writing these strange chaotic tiny people
Humiliating throwback to the many points in my childhood and teens when I would delve into PG Wodehouse and be absolutely insufferable for 2-3 months
I think a lot of people really cannot capture what it sounds like to be a bright young child. So often they get written more like an adult film bro who makes fun of you for liking “popular garbage” but then recommends a Tarantino film in the next breath than anything resembling a smart child. That is never fun, but it pairs really horribly with trying to write a book from the perspective of Lolita. It just throws the tone off in a completely unsettling way. Loved the video!
When I was rewatching older episodes of The Simpsons, Lisa's characterization really stuck out to me because, while she was intelligent, she was also very much a child. She liked literature, science, politics and activism but also had no shame in liking ponies, dolls, and teen heartthrob boys. I think that's why she resonates with a lot of girls and women in a way that "child genius" characters rarely do.
I feel like Terry Pratchett did this very well with a nine year old in the Wee Free Men but I can't explain why
@@kjarakravik4837 you’re very right, that was one of my favorite books when I was younger and it still is to this day. I think it’s because he writes her as smart and bright while still being young and innocent. She has this sort of unburdened confidence a lot of little kids have. She doesn’t deeply consider the moral implications of using her brother as bait to lure out a monster, or the impracticality and likeliness of failure of just hitting said monster with a frying pan. She just does it. Tiffany is very smart, but smart in the way a nine year old is, and he writes he as smart in the way a nine year old with turning her into a small condescending adult. I think Pratchett was just genuinely an amazing writer who also took time to observe why and how smart kids are smart, and emulate that.
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes is a good example of a precocious child done well. He has these super deep philosophical discussions about morality and society and god but he also thinks bats are bugs.
Actually Calvin is closer to book Dolores than any of the portrayals of her in adaptations. They're both lonely, misunderstood kids who can be a bit bratty sometimes but are good at heart. They also both share an interest in comics and running around outside in the dirt.
"She focuses on her intellectualism to escape her body" That really popped out to me in the video and thank you for putting into words something that I have struggled to put together coherently. Always look forward to your videos 💗
What a timing! I just began rereading Lolita and I did notice these little things I don't see anyone really talking about. In the beginning Dolores has a whole bunch of problems with attention and I my interpretation is that she has ADHD. A little tangent but whenever people talk about victims of grooming they NEVER talk about neurodiversity. Anyway. Then there is this small moment that reminds me of when I was a kid and that was when Humbert mentions that she used to bring her pictures to show to him. I remember when one of my parent's friend would come over I would bring them all my art and just my stuff to show off. Probably because grownups are always nice to kids of people they know. Probably because they don't want the parents to get mad at them.
Interesting - I have ADHD too and I'd never considered that angle. I did think that Humbert ignored or dismissed Lolita's more childish actions in favour of his fantasy interpretation of her. But I haven't read the book in a long time.
@@kirstenshute2729 I don't actually have ADHD. I am autistic. But when they were diagnosing me they said that there is often a lot of overlap so I should take a look at ADHD too. It turned out that it didn't fit me but I learned a lot about it and took an interest in it too.
So if anyone here is looking for a book that gets this right I’d absolutely recommend My Dark Vanessa. It’s not a direct adaptation of Lolita but it is heavily inspired by it and the book is incredibly important to the plot (the title is a reference to a different Nabokov work). It’s written from the point of view of the victim and does an excellent job of exploring the psychology and long term impact of this sort of abuse. As someone with my own history in this matter I can honestly say it’s excellently done.
I second this!! Would love to see Lola make a video on it someday.
YES OH MY GOD. That book changed my life
Definitely going to check that out, writing for a child mc and have my own trauma crap (in my words)
I loved when you praised Nabokov and said, "I feel like my brain grows new wrinkles when I read him".
He was a master, and trying to riff off his work, regardless of intention, is arrogant and always falls short.
I'd just like to say that when I was 13 in the late 2010's I did in fact talk like that but I also thought I was better than everyone else and was very mentally ill
I wasn't a private school kid, just lonely and pretentious
so happy to see this in my notifications! I was a teenager in 1996 who read a lot of books and liked to think she was not like other girls and even I didn't wear saddle shoes and speak like a heroine in a nineteenth century novel. I wore ballet flats and quoted the simpsons and grateful dead lyrics incessantly like a normal person!
Brian Boyd teaches at my university--I freaked out a bit when you mentioned him. Very charismatic man to talk to.
!!!
If you ever get the chance please tell him that his work has made such a huge impact on me
I need to find the support group for black nymphet aesthetic girls immediately. 😭
Judging from these excerpts Emily Prager's writing is ATROCIOUS I'm sorry 💔 bless her heart.
If they wanted her to wear saddle shoes they should've established that she's really in to retro fashion
I suspect the reason people have this tendency to turn Dolores into a femme fatale is cause they are trying to reconcile the parts of the book where she tells Humbert that she's had sex already, and where she runs off with Claire Quilty. I think they believe that there must be something evil or calculating about her character in order for her to have done such things. Of course this is dependent on you accepting Humbert's description of these events at face value, and of course Nabokov is saying from beginning to end, we shouldn't. Humbert could be lying about both incidents to make himself look better, there's no evidence to say he isn't. Making Dolores a femme fatale, whether you call her "Lucky" or "Lo", is transposing the sophisticated character from Humbert onto her as you said.
Always refreshing to see some love for plays on UA-cam! How I Learned to Drive is so underappreciated even in the theatre community
New Lola video!
But yeah, when it comes to Lolita and it's adaptations, there is a built-in "yuck." How the yuck is handled and presented is what's going to make the difference, I think. It might be oversimplifying or even inaccurate to say that, in the original, the yuck was an intentional challenge for the reader, while a lot of the adaptations stomp right into the yuck, squishing it between their toes.
I WAS WAITING FOR THE REFERENCE IN THE CREDITS LMAOOOOO
Also that racism was SO CRINGE omg. It's more than a little concerning that Lolita is so prolific these days when as you say, it's a work that requires being able to understand more than just the surface-level words on the page, bc that ability seems to be ever more in short supply.
I remember seeing "How I Learned to Drive" back in college, a buddy of mine was on the sound board for it and just utterly caught off guard at the differences between what was meant to be read as a joke and what actually got laughs from the audience.
It was well written and well performed.
I used to listen to that end credit song on repeat endlessly when I was 14, and I had completely forgotten that it even existed.
Excellent discussion!!
It made me think of another novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, that (to me) succeeds where this one fails. It's not based on Lolita, but it's from a young teenager's POV and part of it deals with her abuse and manipulation by an adult man.
About style, the narrator in that one is super into similes (there are a lot, A LOT, of similes) but it feels like her voice and not a copy of someone else's. Roger Fishbite, from what you've quoted, comes off as jarring and inconsistent. Like it's not clear where Lucky's consciously imitating older styles and where she's narrating as she would normally talk ("it would be a lark", really?)
Also, props for pointing out Humbert's "nymphet theory" is just his justification for abusing kids. I'm sure you've said that before in your other Lolita videos, but...yeah. Yup. Agreed.
This was a really fun watch - I especially enjoyed the time-bound comparisons of the adaptation’s Lolita character as being out of step with the time setting. I’m excited to see the continuation of the adaptations series!
Yes the video was great as always, but BOJACK HORSEMAN VIDEO?? I simultaneously don't know if I'll ever be ready for that and also wait on bated breath (not to rush you though, just excited)
That would be amazing, I love the way that show explored relationships and internal growth. Bojack as a character was handled so well, using the viewer's bias toward the protagonists perspective to force the audience to look back on their own flaws. I remember watching and thinking, is this me? Is this what I could turn into?
I don't think it has been translated into english, but there is a french rewriting of Lolita, with Dolores Haze's (Hayes ?) perspective, by Christophe Tison (Journal de L.). I have only read extracts of it (yet - I do want to read it fully one day), but this novel was made by someone who has been abused as a child like Lo, has written about it before and who seem to channel part of his pain into this new novel. So it might be one Lolita rewritting that does speak with a genuine little girl's voice (though still prone to some outbursts of lyricism, which might be awkward coming from Lo) and which explores the suffering she endured. The reviews are mitigated, but it mostly comes from the fact that Tison is apparently not a Nabokov and his writing is not as breathtaking in itself. But I say it's worth a shot.
As someone who is currently writing a story with a supporting character heavily based on Dolores this video was very reassuring. If these people can misrepresent Dolores so badly and still get published then I'm definitely fine.
Lola, your video essays give me such joy to watch. You have this subdued, but honest delivery that really makes me feel like I'm listening to a close friend talk about something she's been intensely researching for the past month.
"This does set the tone for Roger Fishbite, which I found very hooky-"
Oh, that's good.
Yeah, interestingly enough, I actually read a bit of this one BECAUSE of your other video on the other "from Lola's point of view" book you covered. I say a bit because, well, I can't say I finished it. Your issues with it certainly mirror my own, plus I am sure some of it was also on me for not being in the right headspace for it at the time, as I had been going through quite a bit.
I was an intellectually precocious girl about Lucky's age in 1996 and no, we didn't sound like that. I was writing novels at that age, and I didn't write like that. Nobody in my school wore saddle shoes unless they dressed up as a poodle-skirt girl for Halloween. (One girl was bullied for wearing cowboy boots, if that helps.) Every description of the cultural and emotional life of preteen/teen girls in the mid-90s in this book sounds like it was written by Martians who are LARPing based on a single issue of Tiger Beat.
What a bizarre-sounding book. I wonder if the author had a single conversation with an actual child during the writing process.
Happy to have ya back, Lola!
Omg I was just thinking I needed a video essay. So excited.
You are awesome and I am always so delighted to see you put another video up
Your videos are so good I can't wait to watch this one several times.
Ahhh new upload! Can't wait to watch this after work
Thank you for the video! I appreciate your work sooo much😊
Excuse me LUCKY, why is Disney going to hell for Hunchback of Notre Dame? (and why does that stick out to me?)
Also, if it were the 90s... would she not be wearing like, platform Mary Janes or Doc Martins?
Or sneakers that lit up, or sparkly platform sandals (maybe that was more a 1999-2002 thing, but I definitely remember those, in Montreal anyway).
@@kirstenshute2729 I wore light up sneakers too but I was 9…
@@jellogirl2010 Makes sense! I was 11-14 the years I mentioned... anything in shoe-ware that was light-up, sparkly, or glittery, I still liked :)
awesome to see you post again!
So excited for this!
i love listening to you talk about media, you have such an engaging presentation style that makes (relatively) long videos go by quicky :D
I didn't expect a Modelland reference. Great video, definitely gotta do a rewatch real soon!
Yay, it’s weird I was watching your content last night lmao. Your videos are just so good, it’s one of my favorites.
This videos popped up on my recommended so often and then you mentioned one my favorite playwrights!! Paula Vogel is amazing and you got another subscriber
So much happened in my life since your last video. It feels surreal
YOU'RE BACK OMG I LOVE YOU
Your videos bring me so much joy! I love when you talk about Lolita especially since its one of my top favorite books (and I also have massive grievances with the adaptations the 1997 Lolita is the bane of my existence). We need more media analysis like yours on UA-cam!
SHE’S BACK! THANK GOD! And with an Adapting Lolita video as well? Omg what a comeback 💜💜💜
I’m absolutely dying with homework- will watch this later when I can breathe! Welcome back!
YES. IM SO HAPPY TO HEAR SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE AND LOLITA TOGETHER. I did a production of how i learned to drive in college and it truly is one of those pieces of art that never leaves you just like Lolita
Happy Day! Thank you for the hard work and amazing videos!
You are an amazing person, never forget that.
JUMPED ON THIS NOTIF i love all your analysis so so much thank u for this!!!
Lola you're a genius djgrjdeh
I feel like half the video is very funny and the other half is deeply insightful, and even the parts of it that aren't make me slip deep in thought about these interesting topiics
I’ve only got a few minutes left on my lunch break but I’m so excited for this. 💔❤️
Always so happy to see your videos in my sub box!! Hope you're doing well
the end credits song startled me and I started crying 😭 A+
yes, you’re back!!
Always great to get your takes, and good luck with your grad school apps! Looking forward to reading your work in the future. Just noticed that there are several instances of a mic pop sound that happen throughout the video which are pretty high above the levels of the rest of the video, e.g. at 40:54.
Our queen has returned 💞
You have no idea how I screamed with joy when I got this notification
Also congrats on the nebula/curiosity stream sponsor! Will you be joining Storygraph some time?
Excellent outro song 👌🏼 also great video ❤️
I love your videos, thank you so much
spent the last month or so rewatching your work, waiting and hoping for you to spring up with somethings. so happy to learn from you again👍🏾💘
I know that this is something we will never see happen since it goes against everything about Humbert Humbert’s character, but I would kill to know what happened to Dolores during those years she was away from Humbert Humbert.
I’m sure that Humbert Humbert might have even imagined this entire part of the timeline himself in the novel or merely blacked it out of his memory completely because this would have meant he would witness Dolores actually growing up, if not mentally then physically (and goddamn Humbert cannot comprehend anything without self mythologizing it hence “nymphet,” irl girls made fairytale, never witnessing his first love grow to this age, etc.)
Yet still, I can’t help myself from coming back to those lost years and how re-interpretations seem to never try to look for them despite how important they must have been to Dolores.
You're back
New lola video? Hell yeah
Yay! Lola!!
Okay I get that it’s really hard, but especially holding it up against _How I Learned To Drive_ (which I had never heard of until today) which does this hauntingly, _Robert Fishbite_ doesn’t have the voice of a child. Like yes it’s incredibly difficult to capture and like reconnect with an adult mindset
The narrator doesn’t sound REMOTELY like a child that’s like :/
Edit: also thank you for the channel recommendations!
Immediately that entire scene with the Chinese woman
- what the _FUCK_
_”Hand on hip!” He would mutter in his funny accent, and then muttered “mama Mia!” To himself behind the camera_
Is prager short for PragerU
She is too good at writing racism and homophobia... a little too good. The fuck
I gotta remember that “what an odd thing to say” clip 😂
Lele pons’ self insert fanfic reads like: 25:27
“Here shall John always stumble, there shall Jane’s heart always break”
Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s 💀
my soul left my body a second at "i don't think i could model, i'm too thin"
Do you plan to cover Molly by Nancy J. Jones? It was a book inspired by Lolita that I came across in a library once, but I forgot to go back and check it out to see what it was like.
Return of the king 👑
For SNL nerds out there Emily Prager is most remembered for not being on the show. She was credited as a cast member in a single episode but didn’t actually appear. It was weird to actually see her in that Letterman clip.
I think UA-cam misinterpreted my interest in Lolita fashion but hey! Nice video, glad to have come across it
saddle shoes made a brief comeback in the 90s. I had them :)
Annndddd I've finally joined Nebula
Oh heck yeah! Haven't got anything worthwhile to say but hope the algorithm is good to this video
BABE WAKE UP NEW LOLA SEBASTIAN UPLOAD
You're so goddamn funny & such a great critic.
Allison Pregler cameo, continuing the trend of good taste in YT creators.
wake up babe new lola review just dropped
_Drive_ is electric, I have such a love hate relationship with it. Your breakdown is on point🙌🏻My main disagreement with this video is the shoes. I 10,000% wore saddle shoes all through the 90s😂😂
what are your thoughts on my dark vanessa? it's another work i think is inspired by lolita from the perspective of the victim, and i really loved it. would be very interested to know how you feel about it.
There are a couple audio glitches towards the end there, I thought my earphones were dying lol. Anyway-- I love this
babe wake up new Lola Sebastian critical analysis dropped
Hey, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Tampa by Alissa Nutting. It’s a gender bent reimagining of Lolita so like female predator and young boy, and it’s a *mess*
Came here to see if people would mention that book. I read it a couple of weeks ago and, while the explicit descriptions of the sex acts were... an interesting artistic choice, I quite liked the book on the whole.
I appreciated that it didn't hold back, showing us each and every awful thing the narrator does right alongside her rationalisations and dishonest framing. The rather straight-forward style, as well as the fact that there isn't actually that much ambiguity (like there is in Lolita) makes for a more accessible and effective exploration of a predatory mindset.
It's also an interesting update on the commentary. Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, middle-class, white artist and uses the artist identity particularly to gain favour with the reader. People have started to get wise to that - though we're far from all the way there. Tampa's predatory protagonist being a conventional and conventionally attractive woman is likewise used as a shield and a source of sympathy, both in the text and between the text and the reader, and that reflects how, as a society, we don't take female predators seriously.
I was 14 when I watched Lolita and I loved it!. I bought the DVD but I lent it to someone and now it is lost although I dont have a dnd player anymore. Lolita 1997 is the best version btw
I'm greatly enjoying this so far, but I admit I'm almost having to stop watching because there's this... Crackling? That occasionally comes up on my right earbud, and it's very uncomfortable. I thought my earbuds might be dying and tried another set, rewound the video to make sure, and it seems to be on the video itself. The first part I caught it on was at around 14:02 (at the words "she's incredibly jaded"), and then at a lower volume at about 17:19 (right before "that said").
Yes, this happens to me as well unfortunately. They're also much louder than the rest of the video, on my end
Hi! So sorry about that. My computer is busted and it caused some rendering/exporting issues. I’m getting a new one soon so this doesn’t happen again.
As a private school kid from the 90's, this dialogue confounds me. Then again, I'm also Black, so perhaps that was the point? Ms. Prager seems to be a bit on the exclusionary side...
Have you read My Dark Vanessa?!?
wow!
So I tried rewriting Lolita’s opening line from Dolores’s perspective. It’s probably not very good as it’s more or less the same just flipped and I tried to show how Dolores was actually feeling but here it is: “Lolita, darkness of my life, hated defilement. His sin, his soul. Lo-lee-ta. Poison hidden on his tongue spilling venom from his teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. I was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four foot ten in one sock. I was Lola in slacks. I was Dolly at school. I was Dolores on the dotted line. But in his chains I was always Lolita.” There you go, my attempt at the opening line from Dolores’s perspective! Yeah it wouldn’t work since it’s Humpert Humpert’s narration but flipped but I hope it at least somewhat conveys the true emotions on Dolores’s end.
Edit: Changed the poison line from "my" to "his" since it was make sense for her to say that about being called Lolita and I don't think she would willingly call herself that.