All horses videos are available early adree and uncensored on patreon patrons also get access to exclusive videos merch giveaways and more check it out at patreon.com hores PT horses is an independent creative project that relies on the support of viewers like you thank you Vladimir nabokov’s book Lolita is a
Story of abuse misinformation and unfathomable cruelty but so often the work has been interpreted manipulated and maligned in a way to distance it remarkably from the original Source material whether you have read Lolita or not examining the book and its long-standing cultural impact is a tremendous exercise it is a case study
In how we manipulate media how media can manipulate us and beneath all of that we can find the true horror of nabokov’s novel Lolita tells the story of a man who manipulates kidnaps and repeatedly rapes a 12-year-old girl after becoming her stepfather the book is presented as a
Memoir written in the first person perspective by a man under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert the man recalls that as a child he fell in love with a girl named Annabelle before this romance developed into anything meaningful Annabelle died of typhus Humbert claims that this was the Genesis of his AR otic
And romantic obsession with young girls at the age of 37 Humbert meets a recently widowed woman named Charlotte she is looking for someone to Lodge in her home and Humbert without a place to stay agrees to tour the residence during the visit he meets Charlotte’s 12-year-old daughter Dolores he
Describes Dolores as a quote perfect Nim fet and moves in with Charlotte only as a means to have sex with her daughter Charlotte dies and Humbert proceeds to kid Dolores who he has nicknamed Lolita Humbert drives with Dolores across the United States regularly molesting her throughout the story eventually Dolores
Leaves Humbert to be with another older man named Claire quilty Dolores refuses to be in a pornographic film CLA is producing and eventually leaves him as well later in the story Humbert kills CLA and is arrested for murder Dolores marries another man before eventually dying in childbirth this is is a very
Basic but accurate synopsis of Lolita however to truly understand the book and understand how the world basically failed Lolita we must analyze the work more comprehensively the first step in understanding Lolita is understanding Humbert specifically we must realize that Humbert is an unreliable narrator but perhaps not in the traditional sense
The typical unreliable narrator say says things that aren’t true or recounts events that didn’t happen everything Humbert says in Lolita did happen but we are only seeing his interpretation of those events as an aggressive violent pedophile Humbert is inclined to find sexual advances or sexual tension from
Dolly where there is none the entire story is told through the lens of Humbert and his sexual proclivities so Humbert himself may not even realize that he is an unreliable narrator but that is is immaterial the fact is this Humbert does not provide an objective account of the events in Lolita we know
This partially through humbert’s framing of the tale he confesses to at time of writing having been shipped from insane asylum to insane asylum during and after the story throughout the tale Humbert makes multiple visits to sanatoriums which produce no positive results for his mental health in one passage he
Admits that after a hospitalization he had quote another bout Within sanity additionally he regularly tricks psychiatrists into making faulty assessments of his sexuality so we can say with certainty that Humbert is psychologically unstable this already calls into question his account of events even more egregiously Lolita
Shows us that Humbert is also a habitual perhaps even pathological liar in one instance he tells another character that he has begun a love affair with Dolly’s mother Charlotte but he also tells the reader that he only moved in with Charlotte to get closer to Dolly which is in itself an
Act of dishonesty Humbert later applies Dolores to a private school claiming to be her father throughout Lolita humbert’s dishonesty is regularly on full display furthermore humbert’s Memoir is written as humbert’s defense for a jury this is the context in which the book exists within its Universe at
The time of writing Humbert is on trial for murder if anyone had reason to lie it would be such a person humbert’s memory is also shown to be remarkably inconsistent in one instance he claims to have a quote incomplete and unorthodox memory but throughout the book Humbert recalls certain scenes with near photographic
Completeness others meanwhile are vague blurred and halfhazard narrated we could say this is just the nature of recollection everyone has an unreliable memory this criticism though only furthers humbert’s position as unreliable because his memory is our sole source of knowledge we must recognize that what we are reading is
Inherently unreliable here we may be tempted to chalk much of this up to nabokov’s writing it was Nabokov who wrote humbert’s words Humbert is a fictional person and his words are not really his own but we should acknowledge that Nabokov is a masterful author and his construction of the chaotic Humbert
Is very intentional Nabokov felt so comped compelled to make this clear that he actually penned a short essay called on a book entitled Lolita in this essay he states that he does not share humbert’s morals or views Humbert is not Nabokov he is a carefully constructed character designed to manipulate the
Reader and obfuscate truth as we will soon see so with all of that in mind and at the risk of further complicating things we should realize that Lolita presents us with basically two humberts the narrator Humbert and the actor Humbert the things which Humbert says very often
Do not match up with the things he has done in a reader’s guide to nabokov’s Lolita Julian W Connelly goes into great detail about just this topic the narrator Humbert recounts the events of his Memoir he describes himself and the role he played in the so-called relationship but of course hbert only
Offers his own perspective which is faulty at best and horrifically warped at worst and probably at most accurate first we will examine the narrator Humbert so that we may then remove his mask and meet the monster who truly is Humbert Humbert in the opening pages of Lolita Humbert attempts to decorate and
Justify his attraction to pre-teen girls he calls himself a nymolle a word which avoids the blatant cruelty and disgust that would be associated with the term pedophile here we will take a pause to investigate an earlier piece of Russian literature Crime and Punishment by Fodor dostoevski in this book the main
Character believes he is somehow elevated above the rules of man that there are remarkable individuals to whom convention does not apply this character commits a murder based on this idea nabokov’s Humbert follows much in this same template as he describes his ostensible discovery of the NY fet
Humbert attempts to convince us that he is somehow elevated above regular Man by virtue of his pedophilia to identify a quote nyet of the sort he likes Humbert says that a person must be an artist and a Madman Humbert goes on to describe in Flowery detail what qualifies a young
Girl as a nyph fet fashioning himself as something between a connoisseur and an artist he tries to align himself with creative greats like the author Dante noting that Dante fell in love with a 9year old girl named beatric here Humbert fails to mention that Dante himself was nine when he met beatric
Humbert claims that NY fets are another sex altogether somehow neither male nor female he takes a very scientific tone as he describes the nyet concluding that he and only a few other select individuals are capable of recognizing the species essentially he is Herzing his own pedophilia he further aligns his
Infatuation with dubious historical context he says it is a natural desire that it is only societal constructs which prohibit a man from falling in love with a teenage girl he points to the customs of ancient Rome and Egypt and says that modern society alone doesn’t allow him to quote Court a girl
Of 12 of course Humbert does not Court Dolly he kidnaps her and molests her the narrator also attempts to provide a psychological justification for his fetish he says that his childhood romance was interrupted by Annabelle’s death and that Dolly could now fill that void he frames Dolly as somehow special
Implying that she alone has some distinct place in his heart but we also know that up until he met Dolly Humbert saded his Twisted sexual desires by watching Nim fets in public parks in fact time and time again Humbert waxes erotic about teenage girls so it seems that other than actually fulfilling his
Fantasy there is very little that is special about Dolly to Humbert in one of his more remarkably flimsy arguments Humbert also claims that his desires are a matter of the heart rather than a criminal pursuit of course we could all agree that intent in this case is simply irrelevant one morning Humbert engages
With dolly in three rounds of quote strenuous intercourse a phrase which seems to scream rape quite loudly on the back of this admission Humber the narrator shows himself quite clearly he claims to have felt remorse and says he felt as if he was sitting next to the
Ghost of someone he just killed poetic certainly but then follows a few hundred pages of Humbert kidnapping and molesting Dolly whatever grief he claimed to feel it was apparently quite shallow Humbert concludes bizarrely that he is a good man and that he quote had the utmost respect for ordinary children
With their purity and vulnerability and under no circumstance would he have interfered with the innocence of a child if there was the least risk of a row so here Humbert proclaims he would never hurt a child with the qualifier of if he would get caught it is then the
Punishment rather than the ACT which Humbert finds disagreeable Humbert later makes the statement that he only wanted to give Dolly a good time on the back of this claim we can examine the actor Humbert not the man who recounted events but the man who actually performed them the
Truth is quite clear Dolly did not have a good time no human of reasonable intellect could honestly claim such a thing Humbert is a violent sexual abuser in one incident Humbert brings himself to orgasm while sitting next to Dolly on the couch the narrator Humbert claimed
She felt nothing at all but the events he describe indicate otherwise the girl shrieks her cheekbones flush and she squirms helplessly while Humbert touches her Humbert later describes this incident as no harm done we need not describe in detail every kiss and sexual interaction between the pair but suffice
To say sexual gratification alone is humbert’s driving motivation to this point actor Humbert makes it clear that he has no interest in Dolly as a human being Lolita was not Dolly’s name not in the slightest no one in dolores’s life ever called her Lolita by anointing her as Lolita Humbert actively shes her
Identity away he calls her his own Creation with quote no life of her own she is an object for his sexual desires and nothing more other than a single sentence that describes her crying every night the narcissistic Humbert offers absolutely no insight into Dolly’s opinions thoughts or personhood later in
The book when he finally grapples with his ignorance of Dolly as a person he says her mind was quote forbidden to him so he is not really confessing that he took little interest in the nonsexual dolly but rather declaring that Dolly herself is somehow to blame for forbidding him from doing so Humbert
Actually expresses regular disdain for Dolly he calls her a brat and describes her regular quote fits of disorganized boredom and vehement griping Humbert says she is droopy and Dopey eyed he further describes her as a disgustingly conventional little girl throughout the book Humbert claims to be in love with
Dolly but clearly this is false furthermore Humbert is a manipulator it is his careful manipulations which Propel the story forward and which Drive Dolly into his arms Dolly Humbert says is quite infatuated with Glamour and exotic ideas of celebrities and movie stars Humbert is from Europe and in some way he says
That he may possess a version of this exotic appeal to Dolly in fact Dolly has a crush on a famous playwright who Humbert himself is said to resemble or at least who Humbert claims to resemble Humbert uses this knowledge to encourage dol’s interest and escalate their early relationship with ongoing flirtation
When Dolly’s mother dies Humbert intentionally withholds this news from the girl his plan is rather to deploy the information when he may gain some sexual gratification out of her reaction throughout the story Humbert also employs several methods to keep his quote pubescent concubine in submission he tells her that without him Dolly the
Orphan would be locked up in some government institution as he kidnaps her and drives Dolly around the country Humbert refuses to let her speak with anyone other than himself Humbert also pays dolly for obliging his sexual advances he offers her 3 cents a day for fulfilling quote basic obligations when
She begins to demand more Humbert calls the request a definite drop in morals in one instance he hands her the coins only to pry her hands open and take them back Beyond Dolly Humbert also attempts to manipulate the reader as we read Lolita we find ourselves disgustingly Charmed
By humbert’s Pros now bokov hurled all of his talent at humbert’s explanations for his pedophilia we certainly and hopefully do not agree with anything he says but the package in which he delivers it is dangerously Artful and charismatic the book again is framed as an argument to a jury as if Humbert will
Eventually present this as his case so as we read Lolita there are three audiences in the room Humbert himself the jury and the reader Humbert tries to Ally himself with the reader when he speaks to the jurors he is cold and condescending when he addresses the
Reader he is jovial and comedic so his Memoir is littered with snide remarks about frigid gentle woman of the jury or fous mocking appeals to a group of jurors these remarks are meant as a sort of wink wink to the reader establishing a jovial Rapport that he hopes will
Gloss over his depravity he repeatedly addresses the reading audience as learned reader as if to flatter and Foster this positive Rapport Humbert also claims the reader is patient and meek in comparison to Dolly this serves to simultaneously flatter the reader and denigrate dol’s character pulling the audience to humbert’s side
Lolita is an undeniably comedic book thanks to humbert’s Pros it was lauded for its humor upon first publication Humbert is self-deprecating he calls himself Humbert the terrible he says he is stupid monstrous or beastial clearly to assuage sympathy from the reader Humbert also pokes fun at American institutions and culture providing
Remarks which Forward Thinking readers would very likely have agreed with in one instance Humbert implores the reader to check the weather data so as to prove the veracity of an incident he is recounting presumably this assuredness is meant to convince the reader that Humbert is reliable his recollection
Lines up with documented reality of course one instance of this being true should not be extended to the rest of the pages what does the weather have to do with molesting an innocent child Humbert towards the end of the book claims to have changed that he is
Actually in love with Dolly and that he regrets the way he treated her given all that we have learned I find this tremendously difficult to believe some readers May disagree but to examine Humbert Humbert is to examine only half of Lolita so we must turn our attention to Dolly
Herself Humbert is primarily interested in Dolly as a physical specimen so the only solid information we have about her is just that her physical appearance Humbert discusses this at great length numerous times throughout the book frankly these writings become quite tiresome not as a reflection of nabokov’s Pros but instead as an
Indictment towards Humbert and his obsession when Dolly speaks her dialogue is more often summarized categorized and shoed aside rather than relay directly to the reader we are left with humbert’s judgments on her but according to Humbert our only source of information dolly is a normal 12-year-old girl she likes movies Comics magazines tennis
Roller skating and boys she is occasionally insolent towards her mother and Humbert claims she has a gift for humor Humbert cynically says she is the ideal consumer who would fall for every advertisement and billboard indeed humbert’s assessment of Dolly’s plainness is likely why he is drawn to
Her rather than seeing her as any individual with unique thoughts or feelings Humbert sees Dolly as an idea she is an adolescent girl and that’s it often people have accused Nabokov of misogyny with Lolita they say that dolly is a seductress who has given no other role Than Physical fulfillment for
Humbert but to say this is to side with Humbert every time Humbert describes doll’s actions he takes great pain to imbue them with some sensuality or coet fem fatal quality he molests her on the couch and Humbert says she gives him an orgasm Humbert drugs her and tries to
Rape her yet it is is somehow Dolly who seduces him she holds an apple and Humbert describes it as Eden red Dolores confesses to a past sexual experience at summer camp for this Humbert categorizes her as an experienced temptress when the book was originally published many critics were quick to side with Humbert
One critic Dorothy Parker wrote that dolly was a quote Dreadful little creature selfish hard vulgar and foul tempered another reader wondered in an article if he was meant to pity Dolly before concluding she is a spoiled sub teenager with a foul mouth a self- offered Target for Lees movie magazine editors and corrupt
Classmates in addition to humbert’s laborious pros this impression likely does come from events in the story Dolly seems to enjoy his early attention Dolly actively engages awkwardly and by coercion INF flirtations and sexual experiments with Humbert at first but when Humbert drugs rapes and kidnaps Dolly their relationship becomes
Tyrannical Humbert himself says she whimpered and protested when he raped her he also says Dolly cries herself to sleep each and every night they are together certainly this is not the behavior of a young seductress in one of humbert’s more honest moments he writes at the hotel we
Had separate rooms but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine and we made it up very gently you see she had had absolutely nowhere else to go for much of the book then Dolly is simply trapped we do learn more about Dolores
Later in the story her Escape comes only when she turns to another adult male the playwright named Claire quilty attracted by his celebrity Dolly runs away from Humbert with CLA in the story’s most tragic turn CLA also does not care about Dolly as a person after she refuses to
Star in his pornographic films CLA loses interest altogether Dolores sees Humbert again when she is 17 years old she has found a normal life married to an Everyman named dick Schiller and pregnant with his child in this meeting we learn quite a bit about Dolores Dolly holds no venom for quilty or even
Humbert rather she has lived for so long under the abuse of these men that anger has long since abated her suffering has become her life it is a new modality of existence Humbert implores her to leave with him but she now has the strength to deny his blatant
Coercion this is a Triumph but overall there is little to suggest she has come out stronger for humbert’s abuse her wounds will very likely linger for eternity they have become indelible marks her former dreams of Hollywood stardom have been extinguished in favor of new aspirations she just wants to be
Normal perhaps in some ways she even is normal pregant wed to a workingclass man and optimistic about her quiet life we could say Dolly has achieved victory over her abuser but her quiet life doesn’t really reach its conclusion Dolores dies in childbirth that Christmas and so we are left with our
Understanding of Dolores this is one of the most tragic parts of Lolita dolly is somehow rendered absent from the book even the title reflects not Dolly’s personage but humbert’s view of of her she is Lolita right on the cover throughout the story we have to Crane and interpret to even get a vague
Picture of Dolores and even when we do this the resulting picture is not actually of Dolly more accurately we have only a picture of Humbert himself clearly Lolita is a work of tragedy it is heartbreaking and intense but for a long time and indeed today in some forms Lolita is a word associated
With sex appeal and forbidden lust given the content of the book itself we must wonder how did that happen five American Publishers turned down the bokov when Lolita was finished but the book was eventually published through a French company called Olympia press while the Americans had turned
Down the work on the basis of its controversial nature Olympia press specialized in these types of books in fact a large number of books published through Olympia were outright pornography and so in September 1955 Lolita hit shelves critic Graham green named it one of the best books of the
Year in an article for the london-based Sunday Times on the back of this the book received an influx of attention not all good one critic called it sheer unrestrained pornography and publicly scolded Graham green and the Sunday Times for spreading pornographic materials shortly after Lolita was banned by the French and British
Governments before even being published in the United States when the book finally made its us debut it received a largely positive response and not long after fed director Stanley kubri acquired the film rights to Lolita kubri offered Nabokov a deal to write the screenplay Nabokov initially rejected the proposition but eventually was
Convinced to oblig in 1960 Nabokov and kubri met to discuss the screenplay the meeting was productive each seemed open to each other’s suggestions when Nabokov finished the screenplay it was 400 pages long and kubri estimated the resulting movie would have a 7-hour run time Nabokov edited the screenplay and kubri
Was happy enough with the result when Nabokov saw the resulting film he was shocked kubri had departed wildly from the screenplay Nabokov provided Nabokov would later describe watching the film it was a scenic drive as perceived by the horizontal pass passenger of an ambulance indeed Kubrick’s Lolita was a
Horrific Distortion of nabokov’s work censorship laws at the time meant that kubri wasn’t allowed to explore the sexual relationship between Humbert and Dolores without this of course there is no Lolita it is true that KUB himself was not to blame for these laws but a person has to wonder possessing the
Knowledge of these laws why even Endeavor to make Lolita into a film certainly any reasonable individual would recognize that there was no way to meaningfully adapt nabokov’s work under those laws still kubri had pressed onward kuri’s Lolita has very little of nabokov’s story in the film Dolores is
Aged up to 16 years old which was deemed to be more acceptable than 12 the film has no references to humbert’s pedophilia rather the movie is basically a Charming romantic comedy there is a bizarre slapstick energy to the entire film perhaps Kubrick’s Lolita is a good movie but it is an intensely bad
Adaptation given the content of its source material Kubrick’s light-hearted movie feels somehow Insidious and even grotesque still Lolita was a major Motion Picture complete with a major marketing budget one of the most famous parts of its marketing campaign was this poster interestingly the lollipop and heart-shaped glasses never appear in the
Movie but when kubri Lolita saw huge commercial and critical success this image of its Dolly became synonymous with the story of Lolita the film in popular culture eclipsed the book quick to leverage this success book publishers licensed the image for new Prince of Lolita Nabokov had always been quite
Controlling about the covers of his book he had specified I want pure colors melting clouds accurately drawn details a Sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in Furs and ruts after rain and no girls there is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to any kind of representation of a little
Girl but thanks to Powers Beyond naoko this image became Lolita’s cover this didn’t just become the image of the movie this was the image of the story Pros be damned Lolita now meant a teenage seductress for years Lolita was a assciated with perhaps even synonymous with highly sexualized teenage girls
Versions of the Oxford American Dictionary defined Lolita as a sexually precocious young girl that dictionary also described the book’s character as an attractive and sexually mature girl the police made their 1980 song don’t stand so close to me which references Nabokov alongside a story of romance between a school girl and her teacher
Tennis star Anna cornova was nicknamed the lobbing lolite this misinterpretation has infected adult entertainment as well the term Lyon is used in Japan to describe an attraction to young girls which had spawned movies comics and literature of course all of these represent a wild Distortion of nabokov’s work throughout the years Lolita has
Been misinterpreted time and time again in the interest of leaving no stone unturned we should examine some of these erroneous critiques Lolita was not written to Champion Humbert or his pedophilia Nabokov is not humed quite the opposite Nabokov seems to hold nothing but disdain for his narrator earlier we briefly discussed
Nabokov’s essay on a book entitled Lolita in this he states that he disagrees with Humbert on many things including but not limited to the narrator’s assessment of so-called Nim fets additionally if we examine nabokov’s existence as an AR artist we find a clear line of hatred between him
And Humbert the narrator claims his attraction to Dolly has some artistic aesthetic core he self-describes if you recall as an artist and a Madman with that in mind he manipulates and uses Dolly as some kind of instrument to his allegedly artistic ends he sees Dolly
Not as a person but a tool a device for Humbert his artistic Pursuit meant he could do whatever he pleased this mode of thinking had become prevalent among turn of the century creatives this idea that artists had free dominion over all in their aesthetic quests Nabokov harshly disagreed with this concept he
Believed that artists should have freedom to shape subjects for their own aesthetic ends but Nabokov did not believe artists had the right to harm their subjects for Nabokov artistic Pursuits did not override basic humanity and so Humbert is foundationally at odds with nabokov’s moral code Lolita is also
Not a love story even the most basic reading of the text informs us of this despite what some critics have said about the work throughout the years Humbert claims to be in love with Dolly sure but here we return to our unreliable narrator Humbert says a lot
Of things there’s very little in this book to indicate any amount of romantic love if a reader interprets Lolita as a love story I would personally be inclined to question that reader’s idea of Love itself Lolita is also not a salacious piece of pornography there is very little erotica in the book Nabokov
Has a firm understanding of pornographic Pros with this understanding he intentionally made Lolita quite UNP pornographic after an initial bit of erotica the book becomes clearly character-driven there’s almost no sex in it at all instead physical moments are spoken about in vague sweeping language Lolita is not about empowering
Pedophilia it is not about romance or even eroticism in its narrative content Lolita is about abuse it is about a narcissistic disgusting individual who manipulates and rapes an innocent young girl for many readers this may be the primary takeaway from Lolita and that’s perfectly reasonable but I think in
Lolita is construction we can arrive at other themes Lolita is about language it is about reality itself it is about the distinction between how events unfold and how they are communicated as we read the book we experience some of the most beautiful charming and mesmerizing Pros the English language has ever produced
We laugh at humbert’s jokes and we bask in his Mastery of his craft but when we take a step back we see that all of these pieces have been assembled to produce a GI giant disgusting lie in Lolita we collect the beautiful only to walk away with the
Horrific this is perhaps a lesson we should always keep in our back pocket Lolita is check your sources distilled into the finest most violent and most horrific pinpoint that could ever hope to be achieved whether it is the seduction of a 12-year-old girl or our Nightly News Report the lesson of Lolita
Remains true things we are told may not be the things that happen this is the very nature of manipulation and indeed Lolita is manipulation As Told by the manipulator himself
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