During the early 1960s, Stanley Kubrick was the centre of controversy in the film industry over his attempt to film Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov the original writer and famous novelist wrote a novel that brought controversy throughout English literature in the 1950s for its rather explicit sexual and immoral content involving a relationship between a professor of literature; Humbert Humbert and the obsession he has for a nymphet named Dolores – also known as Lolita. Unfortunately, due to limitations in the filming process of the mid 1900s and sensitive publication of media it was impossible to recreate an even slightly sexualized movie especially one depicting a minor. Therefore, Kubrick’s film rendition received heavy criticism for it’s inability …show more content…
Early on it is foreshadowed that she has a very peculiar relationship with Humbert, as they hold hands in the movie theatre. Nevertheless, as the audience progresses through the movie it is observed that she has a father-complex, perhaps due to the lack of father figure in her life as it is revealed Harold dies in one of Ms. Haze’s conflicting expressions. This can be seen when Lolita runs ups to hug Kubrick when she leaves for boarding school opposed to the kiss they share in Lyne’s version, revealing a different portrayal of innocence from Kubrick versus Lyne’s perspective. Naremore notes, “Kubrick forged a distinctive style, which evolved, as all styles do. He also showed a preoccupation with several of the leading ideological or aesthetic tendencies of high modernism: a concern for media-specific form a resistance to censorship, a preference for satire and irony over sentiment, a dislike of conventional narrative realism, a reluctance to allow the audience to identify with leading characters and an interest in the relationship between instrumental rationality and it’s ever-present shadow, the irrational unconscious” (Naremore 4). Ironically, it can be seen that a certain twist has been placed into Lolita and Humbert’s relationship as if Lolita represents the rationality while Humbert the latter. About an hour and thirty minutes into Kubrick’s Lolita, Dolores suggests that she sees Humbert as no more than a fatherly figure as she declares the thing she wants most in the world is for Humbert to be proud of her. We see a very Kubrick styled relationship, in which the relationship remains no more than a platonic one based around familial or brotherly love, which is in direct contrast to Lyne’s depiction of their relationship based around that of benefits. Both movies finish off with Humbert giving Lolita and exorbitant amount of money, however Kubrick’s finishes
The idea of enlightenment and the feeling of liberation seem unattainable most of the time. However, once you discover a gateway, such as literature or meditation, it becomes easier to reach your goals of becoming open-minded. Azar Nafisi’s “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran” describes the struggles she and her students face and how they use literature to escape from their atrocious life. Similarly, “Wisdom” by Robert Thurman explores the idea of reaching a nirvana-like state where people become aware of their surroundings and the nature of themselves. Nafisi and Thurman state that once people have attained the knowledge to reach an utopian, nirvana like state and have unmasked themselves from a pseudo-self mask put on for society, they must share their knowledge with others. Both Nafisi and Thurman propose that in order to act out selflessly and become an honest, true self, an individual needs bravery and courage to escape from their comfort zone and reach a state of compassion.
Themes in the Novel and Movie Adaptation of James Cain’s Mildred Pierce. In contemporary film making, “Hollywood-ization” generally refers to the re-creation of a classic work in a form more vulgar and sexually explicit than the original in an effort to boost movie attendance. After all, sexuality and violence sell. However, from the mid-1930’s to the 1950’s, “Hollywood-ization” referred to the opposite case where controversial books had to be purified to abide by the Production Code of 1934.
...vernment that led them into such a crisis. In stating that this movie is a valuable piece of our cultural history, it is not to say that this film should be taken as a historical piece only. There is a danger in relying on material culture for historical knowledge. This danger exists in the fact that during the course of years, creative intentions become lost, and only the product remains. To rely on this film for historical knowledge, rather than cultural information, would be gravely wrong. This is because this film was not made to be historically informative, and centuries from now, society may not know that Kubrick's suggestive names, distortion of actual history, and cultural bias were simply vehicles used to convey an opinion. So these same vehicles that make this film effective as a societal criticism make it inaccurate as a source for historical knowledge.
Lolita, by Vladamir Nabokov is a controversial book that elaborately represents and forces the reader to deal with a pedophiles obsession with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. As the reader finishes reading Lolita, he must establish a meaning for the novel which hinges heavily upon whether or not he should forgive Humbert for his rape of Lolita and for stealing her childhood away from her. This rape is legally referred to as a statutory rape because Humbert is having sex with Lolita who is under the age of consent. Humbert also figuratively rapes Lolita of her childhood and a normal teenage life. This decision to forgive Humbert will rely upon Humbert's words as he realizes what he has done to Lolita. In order for the reader to be able to forgive Humbert he must determine if Humbert is truly sorry for his actions.
Beginning roughly with the release of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb in 1964, and continuing for about the next decade, the “Sixties” era of filmmaking made many lasting impressions on the motion picture industry. Although editing and pacing styles varied greatly from Martin Scorcesse’s hyperactive pace, to Kubrick’s slow methodical pace, there were many uniform contributions made by some of the era’s seminal directors. In particular, the “Sixties” saw the return of the auteur, as people like Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick wrote and directed their own screenplays, while Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in his own films. Kubrick, Coppola and Allen each experimented with characterization, narrative and editing techniques. By examining the major works of these important directors, their contributions become more apparent.
According to literary theories and the theories of Fredrich Nietzsche, human beings have an unquenchable urge for power and will use "ethics," and everything else, in order to increase their authority. In Nabokov's Lolita, we see how Humbert controls Lolita in the beginning stages of their relationship but eventually finds himself going mad because of her deceitful ways and the control she has over his sexual desires.
First of all, I enjoy the movie “The Lorax”; my children and I watch it often. Based on a book by Dr. Seuss, “The Lorax” is about a man named the Once-ler, who is an entrepreneur in search of making it big. The Once-ler stumbles upon an untouched wilderness where beautiful Truffula trees grow everywhere. The trees are just what he needs, so he harvests the Truffula Trees to create his product called a Thneed (a thing that all people need). The Once-ler meets a creature called the Lorax, who speaks for the trees and the interests of the natural environment and its native residents. The Lorax advises him not to cut down and destroy all the trees but the Once-lers greediness to mass produce the Thneeds leads to the extinction of Truffula Trees,
When the film Sunset Boulevard premiered in Hollywood in 1950, the picture caused a riot in the theatre after the feature finished. Director Billy Wilder commented, “I’ve never seen so many prominent people at once – the word was out that this was a stunner, you see. After the picture ended there were violent reactions, from excitement to pure horror”(May 570). Wilder did whatever he could to keep the plot of Sunset Boulevard a secret outside of the walls of Paramount Studios because of its controversial subject matter. Today, Sunset Boulevard is hailed as one of the best films in motion picture history, so what was so controversial about it that made Hollywood so scared? The answer is that the film dealt with the truth about Hollywood and its stars. It scared people because it portrayed the life of a faded movie star in a realistic way, making members of Hollywood evaluate their careers and life after stardom. However, it was not only the plot that terrified Hollywood, but also Wilder’s casting of Gloria Swanson and Erich Von Stroheim in two of the leading roles. Both had been film stars of the silent era back in the roaring twenties, but had fallen on hard times after their careers had fizzled. Therefore, the “stunner” that Wilder talks about is not the plot of Sunset Boulevard, but the terrifying realism demonstrated by the actor’s lives molding the characters they play in the film.
In his "On a Book Entitled Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov recalls that he felt the "first little throb of Lolita" run through him as he read a newspaper article about an ape who, "after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." The image of a confinement so complete that it dominates and shapes artistic expression (however limited that expression may be) is a moving and powerful one, and it does, indeed, reflect in the text of Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the novel's eloquent poet-narrator, observes the world through the bars of his obsession, his "nympholepsy", and this confinement deeply affects the quality of his narration. In particular, his powerful sexual desires prevent him from understanding Lolita in any significant way, so that throughout the text what he describes is not the real Lolita, but an abstract creature, without depth or substance beyond the complex set of symbols and allusions that he associates with her. When in his rare moments of exhaustion Humbert seems to lift this literary veil, he reveals for a moment the violent contrast between his intricately manipulated narration and the stark ugliness of a very different truth.
Although they are intimately involved, the title character of Nabokov's Lolita never fully reveals her true self to Humbert. Likewise, Humbert pours his physical love into Lolita, but he never reveals to his stepdaughter a self that is separate from his obsession with her. These two characters mask large parts of their personalities from each other and the rest of the world, creating different images and personas in regard to different people and situations. One assumption of post-structuralism holds that “persons are culturally and discursively structured, created in interaction as situated, symbolic beings.” In accordance with this idea that people are created by their culture and in their interactions, both Lolita and Humbert have different personalities in different situations and circumstances. However, they ultimately show a more continuous and profound self-existence than just as faces created in their various interactions.
Literary critic and the novel’s annotator Alfred Appel Jr. claims “what is extraordinary about Lolita is the way in which Nabokov enlists us, against our will, on Humbert’s side… Humbert has figuratively made the reader his accomplice in both statutory rape and murder” (Durantaye, Style Is Matter: the Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov 8). Nabokov employs various literary devices such as direct second reader address, metaphor, and allusions through Humbert Humbert as a means to conjure up feelings of empathy. The reader comes to find that . It is clear that Humbert Humbert uses second person address as a way to control how the reader perceives him. Through the use of this narrative mode, he aims to convince the reader that his sexual violence is artistically justifiable and that the art he creates is a remedy for mortality. I will argue is that art is not a remedy for mortality because in Humbert Humbert’s creation of Lolita, t...
His first redeeming attribute is his real and true love for Lolita. Humbert infact confesses that, “I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight and ever sight”(270). If the reader thinks back to the beginning of the novel Humbert refers to Lolita as someone who only brought him lust. Humbert also makes it a point to tell the audience that he only like girls who fall into his nymphetic criteria and anyone who is too old does not appeal to him. When Humbert sees Lolita though after three years of being apart he says that “I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine”(278). No matter how she has age and move past her nymphetic stage of life Humbert still loves her. Humbert even goes on to say that, “No matter, even if those eyes of hers world fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn-even then I world go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita”(278). This is true love that he is feeling. No matter what happens to her he will still love her. Humbert has
The patriarchal cinematic ideology detailed by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is pervasive in Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut. The women in the film all eventually become the passive sexual objects that Mulvey has described in her paper. There are times in the film that women attempt to defy these strongly enforced gender roles, but they are always punished and returned to their positions as objects of the male
Kagan, Norman. The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. Print.
...ys that she is profoundly touched when she does. Lurie, at the same time, says he loves his daughter, however he does judges her sexuality, and the decision she has made of spending her live in the farm, which he calls “poor land”.