MovieChat Forums > Lolita (1962) Discussion > Kubrick trivializing pedophilia.

Kubrick trivializing pedophilia.

posted 5 years ago by Heisenberg (6266)
24 replies | jump to latest

This post is about the movie (obviously) not the book.

I always found this movie to be entertaining, expecially the first part with the pathetic mom still alive, not giving too much importance to the way the issue of pedophila is belittled. It's a funny movie and I had fun watching it.
Then I found out that my gf has been molested as a child, so it all become not so funny anymore (I know, I'm one of those assholes that take notice of heavy issues only when they hit them directly). Anyway, I noticed how Kubrick tries to humorize the subject but never takes a minute to actually condemn it.

Kubrick was an intellectual and a moralist (just watch eyes wide shut to see what I mean), but in this case I never quite noticed a real sense of critique of the subject, it's almost as if he roots for Humbert, a pedophile, who's not as monstous as the "bad" pedophile, and he thinks we should do the same (root, not molest).
Lolita is almost the guilty party here instead of the victim, her actions are dictated by her self judgment (she is a minor, so imagine how well founded that could be, but it's all played like "she does this because she wants it so... she's getting what she wants, right?") and her demise is never described as a tragedy, but almost as a comeuppance.

Now, I wonder if the 60s were maybe different times, so...sex between an old man and a 15 yo? Whatever, if there's grass on the pitch, let's play!
Or maybe she wasn't that young as in the book, so Kubrick felt he could mix it up a bit without taking a stronger stance against the issues?
Or maybe, and this is my take, Kubrick just ignored the whole point, was interested only in the trivial aspects of it and acted like an immature asshole that makes jokes about stuff whose depth and seriousness he doesn't quite grasp.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

And he treats nuclear annihilation of the human species as a joke in "Dr. Strangelove."
I think the point is to make the audience uncomfortable due to their own amused reactions, and then stop to think twice about the subject matter.

[–] diezman (1796) 4 years ago

I have to agree with TheOtherFella. This film was made to make you feel uncomfortable and to "think twice" of your initial reaction.

Actually, all of Kubrick's films make me feel uncomfortable!

[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 4 years ago

Exactly.

The crux of what makes Nabokov's novel so compelling is that the whole thing is uncomfortable as possible, largely for presenting the events from the perspective of the abuser, who bears his humanity and vulnerability in such a way that he's very sympathetic at the same time that his actions are disturbing and reprehensible. It's the intensity of that conflict that makes it one of the most heart and gut wrenching tragedies written imo.

[–] beancrisp (1415) 4 years ago

FACT: There is no pedophilia in the movie as Lolita has already went through puberty. Prove me wrong.

[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 4 years ago

Right, Humbert is an ephebophile.

[–] Wuchak (8068) 4 years ago

Ephebophilia is ironically pronounced eh-FEEB-ah-feel-ya

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

People tend to use the word pedo for any underage hanky panky. (It's still messed up, for sure.)

Incidentally, in the book she's a little younger, twelve, so he is a pedo there.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 3 years ago

Not that important anyway.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

My take was that the abusers were the target of the movie. It was mocking them.

They could have done more to show the trauma of what Humbert Humbert did to the girl, but it would have been a different movie then.

[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 4 years ago

This line from the novel encapsulates the perspective of the whole thing for me:

"Look at this tangle of thorns."

That's it. The whole situation is a tragic, hopeless mess, the morality and emotions are complicated and all there is in the end is fragmentation, without giving you any clear moral didacticism. It's yours to wrestle with.

As for the film's spin on the source material, Kubrick's film seems to lean more into the the comic aspect of the tragicomedy, and the Jeremy Irons interpretation shows more of the tragic aspect and trauma.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Agreed.

I haven't seen the Irons version, but it sounds like its more faithful to the book.

[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 4 years ago

I think it slightly is, but both capture certain things better than the other. It's worth it to see both of them. I definitely found the Irons one way more emotionally powerful. I legit blubbered at the ending, and I'm, like, a big, boulderous drill sarge with turtle shells on both sides! I'm honestly getting a little choked up just thinking about it right now. The novel has a very flowery, dew-eyed poetic romanticism about it and Irons gets some of that, whereas Kubrick got almost none. At the same time there is an uncomfortable humor at times and Kurbrick dialed that up all the way. Irons puts you more inside the perspective of HH, which is to it's advantage, while Kubrick is more pulled back.

But of course, neither one nor both in combination add up to the absolute masterpiece that Nabokov wrote.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 4 years ago

I didn't see any targeting of Humbert whatsoever. He's clearly a tragic figure, but one that is never condemned one iota by Kubrick. If anything, Kubrick finds the situation funny but empathyzes with him: Humbert is just diddling with the little girl, nothing serious afterall.
Like I said in my OP, if anything, Lolita is the one that is commented upon with her ignorance and manipulation and lies. Humbert is just there, almost following her lead as a nymphette that knows too well what's the game, he's just a poor old horny chap that happens to be there.

The reality that is never shown here, is that Humbert plots the whole thing from the start, he's the one pressuring Lolita, enjoying toying with her, exploting the mom, abusing her once her mother is dead and setting up an impossible relationship once they are on the run.
He is the ADULT and Lolita is a MINOR and that is RAPE.
Kubrick instead always takes his side, and I don't see any moment where his evil nature is actually exposed, all with the mother being so pathetic and laughable, Lolita being so bratty etc.
The movie puts us on HIS side at all times. In a Clockwork Orage we are always on Alex's side, but the actions are so exagerated and hyperbolic that there is a clear distance between what's happening on the screen and the real world. After all, it's a future world, and it's a violent one at that so our adventure with Alex is contextualized.
In Lolita, Humbert is a regular guy, an intellectual actually, who clearly doesn't know any better than that. Shouldn't the movie itself show some understanding for the gravity of the subject matter and give it its due respect? At least for one moment.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

It's interesting how two people can get something completely different from a piece of art.

You have this weird habit of writing "we" as if you are speaking for all viewers. Kind of odd. I didn't feel like Kubrick was on Alex's side, or wanted the viewers to be either. Alex is a charming fellow, but many violent psychopaths can be. That just made him all the more monstrous in my mind. I had a similar reaction to Humbert, though Lolita has a lighter tone.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 4 years ago

I agree that art is quite subjective, but I'm not trying to describe my own take on it, rather what's portrayed by the artist.
That also explains why I strangely write "us" as us viewers. Because the movie is not aimed just at me I'm quite sure it would sound weird writing "the movie puts me on Alex side all the time" .
Speaking of which, again we don't agree: Alex, monstrous and all, is the hero of the story and at all times we are with him, on his side, in his POV.
That's the whole point of the movie, of what Kubrick was doing with it, and its shock value: we are sided with a rapist and sadist, and we don't like being in that position.
But while in Orange we are clearly sided with a monster, like you said it, and Kubrick stance is manifest (even if he is the hero of the story, we all know he is a horrible little monster), in Lolita I don't see a moment where Humbert is exposed for the huge piece of shit monster that he truly is.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

You're take is your take. It's not my take. It's not a lot of viewers' take. Your opinion on what Kubrick was trying to achieve with a character like Alex is just that, your opinion. It does not sound weird at all to write about your reactions to the film in the first person. You could write about what you think Kubrick intended for "we" the audience to take from the movie, but that's not necessarily how the audience is going to react.

And that Kubrick seems to want us to empathize with Alex and see things from his point of view doesn't imply that Kubrick intended for us to side with him and view him as the "hero" of the film. He may have just been trying to get some insight into such a character.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 4 years ago

Anything is possible at all times. Even that Kubrick hated Alex and sided with the other droogs. I'm just interpreting what's on screen and what seems more likely: that we are placed on Alex's side, and that Kubrick felt deep sympathy for such a monstrous jolly scoundrel and figured it would be more interesting to try and see the world through his eyes than just judge him for what he is.

Same thing cannot be said about Humbert: he's never a scoundrel, he's certainly not the monster he truly is, instead he's quite the superior character in a world of idiots.

[–] StinkyPoopyPants (2675) 3 years ago

I would not call what happened between Humbert and Lolita "rape". It was wrong for sure but she was very much pursuing him and willfully having sex with him. And not only him but Quilty and other boys her age as well. Rape is the forceful act of taking someone sexually. He didn't have to force himself on her.

Also, if you have not watched Adrian Lyne's Lolita I recommend you do. It's much more faithful to the book and presents it much more seriously than Kubrick's version.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 3 years ago

That is rape under any law in the civilized world.
Her actions, morals, intentions are meaningless since she is a minor.
Any sexual attentions from an adult are illegal and what happens in the movie is definitely considered statutory rape by the American law.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

It's been YEARS since I've seen this movie, but from what I remember, the movie plays the whole thing as a joke to make the point that Humbert Humbert picked the wrong child to molest, so his evil intentions backfired in a big way to such an extent that he self-destructed.

In other words, Humbert starts out as an arrogant asshole who picks on Lolita because like every other pedophile, he idealizes his victims as being completely submissive and loyal lapdogs who won't give them any trouble. As it turned out, Lolita was the worst victim be could've chosen because guess what? Not all children are submissive. Some are extremely strong-willed, rebellious and bratty, which is what Lolita turned out to be.

Adrian Lyne brought that point home even more in his version, that Lolita is not the perfect molestation victim and in so doing, became his undoing.

Kubrick may have treated the entire thing as a joke for the opposite reasons that you're saying. The book is written in such a serious, pretentious manner that people to this day actually romanticize it, and I think that Kubrick took that approach to destroy whatever "mystique" it was garnering.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 3 years ago

Interesting take.
Great reply.
But knowing Kubrick, I doubt he already had the perspective to believe mainstream opinion could be influenced by a movie. It was just out of the 50s, there was no social discourse back then. It was very much piloted by the few moguls of the press, no room for other inputs. Kubrick became able to freely and honestly tell it like it is (or like he thought it was) only a decade later.
And it's early Kubrick, so he probably did not feel his aura of influence on the masses and on the arts like he did in his later years. He was still chasing success in Hollywood, I think he was more tuned in to making a great movie from a famous, infamous book, rather than give his own critique on the subject. Which is what I'm lamenting here, that he missed the gravity of the matter in many occasions here.
Rather than destroying the mystique of the book, which is a powerful idea, I think he is just snickering at the subject matter like a silly boy that does not fully understand the inherent tragedy, but finds the humor of the situations that such tragedy causes. I'm not sure he could have been able to understand it any better, considering the times and the mentality back then, notwithstanding him being a genius. But he certainly didn't hint at the deeper and certainly more substantial issues at play behind the farce.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Being that I have not seen the movie in a long time, I would definitely like to see it again to see if your impressions hold up. With that being said, there are a lot of inaccuracies in what you've posted:

For example, you say, "I doubt he already had the perspective to believe mainstream opinion could be influenced by a movie. It was just out of the 50s, there was no social discourse back then." This is 100% not true. The 1950s were PEAK "message picture", when directors were practically climbing over each other to crank out a "social justice" movies to sway public opinion. I can think of at least five that came out at this time off the top of my head: The Wild Ones, The Blackboard Jungle, Rebel without a Cause, On the Waterfront and The Man with the Golden Arm.

Not only that, movies designed to influence mainstream opinion goes back to the very beginning of film, starting with Birth of a Nation. That's especially true of movies during WW2. The US military recruited several studios, including Disney, to crank out "America good, enemy bad" propaganda films.

You say Lolita is "early Kubrick," yet he had already shot two classic movies--Spartacus and Paths of Glory. And each one had a message in it. Spartacus was anti-racism and Paths of Glory was pacifist.

You talk about Kubrick potentially not understanding the material, but Kubrick was the most cerebral filmmaker America ever had--even back in the 60s--which is why "populist" directors like Stephen Spielberg keep trying to tarnish his legacy by dumbing his signature cerebral style of filmmaking down for the public.

I'm not sure what "tragedy" you're talking about. Lolita is a victim of child abuse. But she gets her revenge and triumphs in the end. She moves on, gets to live a normal, happy healthy fulfilled life with an adult man. The two douchebags who exploited her become destroyed. One is killed and the other spends the rest of his life a lunatic still obsessing over her.

[–] Heisenberg (6266) 3 years ago

Of course cinema has been used to influence people. Propaganda vastly used movies for such purposes. That's not what I meant at all, I phrased it wrongly.
I meant, in the 50s there was no DISCOURSE with the public. Kubrick and any other director would make their film and that would be received passively. There was no back and forth with any possibility of adjusements. Post modernism and social media were yet to happen.
Nabokov wrote Lolita, and it was a fresh success and a notorious book by the time Kubrick made the film. There was no notion of "I'm gonna respond to this success and sway the public away from appreciating this by ridiculing it". They barely reinterpreted some classic now and then, let alone something that recent still.
What I mean is, making a movie about Lolita, meant translating the book to film with little room for added commentary or rewriting. Kubrick added his style and point of view, but he didn't tackle the subject in a personal, artistic, intellectual way like he would only do later on in his carreer (see Shining).

Kubrick is certainly one of the most cerebral filmmakers ever. Don't mention Spielberg in the same sentence please. But I feel like he missed the boat on this one.
While with the nuclear menace his parody hit the spot, in Lolita he overlooked the elephant in the room and trivialized it, never really condemning it. Lolita is a minor. Humbert is a lowly piece of shit. What's happening is a crime. Her life is gonna be hugely affected by it, and possibly ruined. Yet, no mention of these.

What you recollected in the last paragraph is quite different than what happens in the movie, watch it again: Lolita is seen often as the guilty one, plotting and cheating (while, let me point it out again, her morals and actions have little value in this context). She is seen with such scorn that at the end she is given her comeuppance: she marries a poor, dumb guy that she doesn't love; lives a squalid life; dies young.
Not quite a triumph.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

I don't understand your comments at all, because it's not based on the reality of how people thought before postmodernism and social media. It's a projection of how you think they thought.

For example, you say there was no "social discourse" between directors, no back and forth. Of course there was. There was enough social discourse to where people were writing letters to David O. Selznick when all he had done was just optioned the rights to Gone with the Wind. The discourse was so intense that he was pressured to change the script repeatedly before the movie was completed: https://screenrant.com/gone-with-wind-movie-problematic-slavery-racism-reason/. There was such intense public scrutiny that there were organized protests against the movie on opening day: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/06/14/arts/14GONE-WIND8/14GONE-WIND8-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale

So, the social discourse that you claim didn't happen DID; it's just that you can't imagine how it could've taken place before the internet and postmodernism.

I can't comment on the last scene of the movie because like I said, it's been awhile since I saw it. But knowing what I know of Kubrick, I'm positive that he didn't mean to use comedy to trivialize pedophilia. The reason why I say that is that Kubrick took a very "Show, Don't Tell" approach to whatever moral stance he had. If he was against or for something, he would never say it explicitly; he would let the audiences figure it out for themselves, because he wanted people to THINK about what they just saw, not be spoon fed what he felt was right or wrong.

For example, in Full Metal Jacket, there's a line where one of the characters talk about how soldiers develop this "thousand yard stare" after they've killed someone. In the last scene, the Matthew Modine character does that exact thing after he mercy kills a Vietnamese soldier, but it's done so subtly that you have to watch the movie several times before you catch it--or be shown it by a more observant friend.