Lolita - References in Other Media

References in Other Media

Literary memoir

• Reading Lolita in Tehran is a memoir about teaching government-banned Western literary classics to women in the world of an Islamic Iran, which author Azar Nafisi describes as dominated in the 1980s by fundamentalist "morality squads". Stories about the lives of her book club members are interspersed with critical commentary on Lolita and 3 other Western novels. Lolita in particular is dubbed the ultimate "forbidden" novel, and becomes a metaphor for life in Iran. Although Nafasi states that the metaphor is not allegorical (p. 35), she does want to draw parallels between "victim and jailer" (p. 37). She implies that, like the principal character in 'Lolita', the regime in Iran imposes their "dream upon our reality, turning us into his figments of imagination." In both cases, the protagonist commits the "crime of solipsizing another person`s life."
  February 2011 saw the premiere of a concert performance of an opera based on Reading Lolita in Tehran at the University of Maryland School of Music with music by doctoral student Elisabeth Mehl Greene and a libretto co-written by Iranian-American poet Mitra Motlagh. Azar Nafasi was closely involved in the development of the project, and participated in an audience Q&A session after the premiere.

Film

• In "The Missing Page", one of the most popular episodes (from 1960) of the British sitcom Hancock's Half Hour, Tony Hancock has read virtually every book in the library except Lolita, which is always out on loan. He repeatedly asks if it has been returned. When it is eventually returned, there is a commotion amongst the library users who all want the book. This specific incident in the episode is discussed in a 2003 article on the decline of the use of public libraries in Britain by G. K. Peatling.

• In the Woody Allen film Manhattan (1979), when Mary (Diane Keaton) discovers Isaac Davis (Allen) is dating a 17-year-old (Mariel Hemingway), she says, "Somewhere Nabokov is smiling". Alan A. Stone speculates that Lolita had inspired Manhattan. Graham Vickers describes the female lead in Allen's movie as "a Lolita that is allowed to express her own point of view" and emerges from the relationship "graceful, generous, and optimistic".

• In the 1999 film American Beauty, the name of protagonist Lester Burnham—a middle-aged man with a crush on his daughter's best friend—is an anagram of "Humbert learns". The girl's surname is Hays, which recalls Haze. Tracy Lemaster sees many parallels between the two stories including their references to rose petals and sports, arguing that Beauty's cheerleading scene is directly derived from the tennis scene in Lolita.

• In the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, Bill Murray's character comes across a young, overtly sexualised, girl named Lolita. Although Murray's character says it's an "interesting choice of name", Roger Ebert notes that "Neither daughter nor mother seems to know that the name Lolita has literary associations."

Television

• A January 2012 episode of the television series Pretty Little Liars revealed that the character of Alison (who has read Lolita) has an alter-ego named Vivian Darkbloom (slightly older and with different hair), named after a character in Lolita (and also Nabokov's Ada). TV Fanatic reviewer suggests this casts an eerie light on several of the pairings of older men and younger women in the series, in particular Ali's relationship with Ian. Huffington Post has described the show as generally having a strong Lolita theme, noting that the novel became a plot point in one major episode.

• A 2008 episode of the HBO drama In Treatment makes numerous references to the novel. In the episode, Laura, a patient in psychotherapy, reveals to her therapist, Paul Weston, that she had a sexual relationship with her father's friend when she was 14. She compares their first encounter to the scene in the novel where Lolita first initiates sex with Humbert. She is at first adamant that she seduced him, but in a later episode would admit that she had not actually wanted to have sex with him, wanting instead for him to "get me out of that house".

Popular music about the novel

• In The Police song "Don't Stand So Close to Me" about a schoolgirl's crush on her teacher in the final verse, the teacher "starts to shake and cough/just like that old man in that book by Nabokov", a direct reference to the male lead protagonist in Lolita.

• In the title song of her mainstream debut album, One of the Boys, Katy Perry says that she "studied Lolita religiously", and the cover-shot of the album references Lolita's appearance in the earlier Stanley Kubrick film. Perry has admitted on multiple occasions to a fascination and identification with the Lolita character and concept. However, the song's lyrics connote a cautionary attitude towards boys as a consequence of reading the novel.

• Marilyn Manson's song "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)" was indirectly inspired by both the novel and the heart-shaped glasses worn by Lolita in the poster for Stanley Kubrick's film. In a BBC Radio One interview, Manson said he had been reading the novel as a consequence of now having a much younger girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood. She consequently showed up to meet him one day wearing heart-shaped glasses (which she also wears in the music video of the song).

• With more direct reference to Nabokov's story, Mexican singer Belinda's 2010 song "Lolita" says that although Nabokov wrote of the heart-shaped glasses it was actually Lolita who invented them. (The glasses appeared originally in the poster art of Kubrick's film of Lolita but the same painting has been on some paperback covers of the book). Belinda's song appears on her the Carpe Diem album, and has been a theme song of two Mexican television series, the telenovela Camaleones and the soap opera Niñas Mal (bad girls).

• Rolling Stone has noted that Lana Del Rey's 2012 album Born to Die has "loads of Lolita references", and it has a bonus track entitled "Lolita". She has herself described the album's persona to a reviewer from The New Yorker as a combination of a "gangster Nancy Sinatra" and "Lolita lost in the hood." Their reviewer notes that "Her invocations of Sinatra and Lolita are entirely appropriate to the sumptuous backing tracks" and that the album's song repeatedly quotes from the novel's opening sentence: "light of my life, fire of my loins."

Popular music about the term "Lolita"

Although Nabokov's focus is mainly on Humbert's infatuation with Lolita, the name has become synonymous with seductive or sexually precocious or sexually responsive young girls. Multiple popular songs employ the name "Lolita" for a girl either infatuated with an older man, or being pursued by an older man.

• Celine Dion's Lolita (trop jeune pour aimer) (meaning "Lolita (Too Young to Love)") was recorded in 1987 about a young girl who wishes she could be in love with an older man.
• Suzanne Vega's "Lolita" from her album Nine Objects of Desire warns a girl named Lolita "almost grown" to get back home rather than to try beg for affection she is not getting at home.
• The video of Alizée's 2000 song "Moi... Lolita" shows a free-spirited young girl in nightclubs being followed by an older man.
• A song written from the point of view of an underage rape victim is Emilie Autumn's "Gothic Lolita".