Subject
Re: Fwd: "I suspect Andrew's line of thought is right" Re HH's
psycho-stays
psycho-stays
From
Date
Body
Dear Sandy
We´re discussing now the evil enchanters and their dangers. I agree with
you on the general tendency to explain away evil: " to find that psychology
or history mitigated moral repugnance, as with Bolshevism or
Psychoanalysis".
There is something I cannot understand, though, both in your message and
Andrew´s, maybe I missed the point.
You seemed to be discussing HH´s guilt and moral responsibilty towards
Lolita. And yet, in the films and in the novel Humbert Humbert is behind
bars because he was a murderer and not a pedophile.
As a deluded enchanter Humbert Humbert addressed the imaginary members of a
Jury describing his love affair with Lolita to get away with murder, to
seduce them into believing the beauty and truth about his feelings, to
garantee an explanation for his actual murder of Quilty.
In the process of writing down his story with Lolita he entered in a
special kind of healing process where there was even space for remorse (
quite reduced, though).
Lolita was HH´s alibi, his love for her his excuse for murder?
Jansy
-----Mensagem Original-----
De: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Para: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Enviada em: Terça-feira, 26 de Abril de 2005 13:04
Assunto: Fwd: "I suspect Andrew's line of thought is right" Re HH's
psycho-stays
>
> Don and List-
> Exactly.
> It is HH himself who plants all the evidence that he suffers from
a
> "malaise".
> Perhaps in his panoramic view of American, Nabokov was also examining a
> liberal American tendency to "explain" evil - to find that psychology
> or history mitigated moral repugnance, as with Bolshevism or
> Psychoanalysis.
> Not only on film, but in the text as well, it is important that
the
> viewer/reader become at least somewhat seduced by the attractive,
> urbane European. For when that happens, a degree of complicity can be
> brought home in the final hill-top scene.
> Mason was too bland, Irons too creepy. The young Anthony Hopkins
could have
> seduced an audience and then brought it up short.
>
> -Sandy Drescher
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, April 25, 2005, at 07:00 PM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:
>
> > ED NOTE. I suspect Andrew's line of thought is right. It might have
> > made an
> > interesting difference if one of the films had included the
> > institutional
> > backstory. Nobody (film or lit crit) seem to have taken much interest
> > in this
> > angle. Seems important to me.
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from as-brown@comcast.net -----
> > Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:55:47 -0400
> > From: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
> > Reply-To: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
> > Subject: Re: Re: Fw: pedagogia/douglas harper online
> > dictionary/pederosis
> > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum This is an interesting point. The
> > omission of
> > HH's spells in sanatoriums does, I think, tend to make him seem more
> > "normal"
> > to viewers. The omission of such scenes, though, was probably more in
> > response
> > to the limitations on the amount of "backstory" the film medium allows
> > its
> > characters.
> >
> > One requirement was to make HH superficially attractive to women,
> > which James
> > Mason and Jeremy Irons do well. The second was to show that he is
> > selfish,
> > perverted and obsessed. If the filmmaker portrays the dark aspects too
> > well, it
> > makes it very difficult to put across the first. Both films fall
> > short by
> > giving almost no indication that what HH has done, and is doing, is a
> > terrible
> > crime.
> >
> > One could have made a very different, but equally faithful film of
> > Lolita if one
> > showed HH's European efforts to obtain child prostitutes; HH's
> > marriage to
> > Valeria, and his brutal thoughts toward her; HH writing ads for his
> > uncle's
> > perfume business; HH obtaining sleeping pills from doctors; his plans
> > to drown
> > Charlotte; the system of threats and bribes by which he forces his
> > captive to
> > do his will; and the tears that Lolita sheds every single night. But
> > all this
> > would make an almost unbearably dark film.
> >
> > As it is, a person unfamiliar with the novel could watch either film
> > and suspect
> > -- with the exception of a very few brief scenes in Lyne's
> > interpretation --
> > that HH is doing nothing more than taking his legitimate step-daughter
> > on a
> > driving trip across the U.S.
> >
> > Since neither director chose the dark path, I think the omissions they
> > made were
> > more about getting an amazingly rich story down to the 90 to 120
> > minutes of film
> > time that the commercial movie world allows.
> >
> > Andrew Brown
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
We´re discussing now the evil enchanters and their dangers. I agree with
you on the general tendency to explain away evil: " to find that psychology
or history mitigated moral repugnance, as with Bolshevism or
Psychoanalysis".
There is something I cannot understand, though, both in your message and
Andrew´s, maybe I missed the point.
You seemed to be discussing HH´s guilt and moral responsibilty towards
Lolita. And yet, in the films and in the novel Humbert Humbert is behind
bars because he was a murderer and not a pedophile.
As a deluded enchanter Humbert Humbert addressed the imaginary members of a
Jury describing his love affair with Lolita to get away with murder, to
seduce them into believing the beauty and truth about his feelings, to
garantee an explanation for his actual murder of Quilty.
In the process of writing down his story with Lolita he entered in a
special kind of healing process where there was even space for remorse (
quite reduced, though).
Lolita was HH´s alibi, his love for her his excuse for murder?
Jansy
-----Mensagem Original-----
De: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Para: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Enviada em: Terça-feira, 26 de Abril de 2005 13:04
Assunto: Fwd: "I suspect Andrew's line of thought is right" Re HH's
psycho-stays
>
> Don and List-
> Exactly.
> It is HH himself who plants all the evidence that he suffers from
a
> "malaise".
> Perhaps in his panoramic view of American, Nabokov was also examining a
> liberal American tendency to "explain" evil - to find that psychology
> or history mitigated moral repugnance, as with Bolshevism or
> Psychoanalysis.
> Not only on film, but in the text as well, it is important that
the
> viewer/reader become at least somewhat seduced by the attractive,
> urbane European. For when that happens, a degree of complicity can be
> brought home in the final hill-top scene.
> Mason was too bland, Irons too creepy. The young Anthony Hopkins
could have
> seduced an audience and then brought it up short.
>
> -Sandy Drescher
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, April 25, 2005, at 07:00 PM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:
>
> > ED NOTE. I suspect Andrew's line of thought is right. It might have
> > made an
> > interesting difference if one of the films had included the
> > institutional
> > backstory. Nobody (film or lit crit) seem to have taken much interest
> > in this
> > angle. Seems important to me.
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from as-brown@comcast.net -----
> > Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:55:47 -0400
> > From: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
> > Reply-To: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
> > Subject: Re: Re: Fw: pedagogia/douglas harper online
> > dictionary/pederosis
> > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum This is an interesting point. The
> > omission of
> > HH's spells in sanatoriums does, I think, tend to make him seem more
> > "normal"
> > to viewers. The omission of such scenes, though, was probably more in
> > response
> > to the limitations on the amount of "backstory" the film medium allows
> > its
> > characters.
> >
> > One requirement was to make HH superficially attractive to women,
> > which James
> > Mason and Jeremy Irons do well. The second was to show that he is
> > selfish,
> > perverted and obsessed. If the filmmaker portrays the dark aspects too
> > well, it
> > makes it very difficult to put across the first. Both films fall
> > short by
> > giving almost no indication that what HH has done, and is doing, is a
> > terrible
> > crime.
> >
> > One could have made a very different, but equally faithful film of
> > Lolita if one
> > showed HH's European efforts to obtain child prostitutes; HH's
> > marriage to
> > Valeria, and his brutal thoughts toward her; HH writing ads for his
> > uncle's
> > perfume business; HH obtaining sleeping pills from doctors; his plans
> > to drown
> > Charlotte; the system of threats and bribes by which he forces his
> > captive to
> > do his will; and the tears that Lolita sheds every single night. But
> > all this
> > would make an almost unbearably dark film.
> >
> > As it is, a person unfamiliar with the novel could watch either film
> > and suspect
> > -- with the exception of a very few brief scenes in Lyne's
> > interpretation --
> > that HH is doing nothing more than taking his legitimate step-daughter
> > on a
> > driving trip across the U.S.
> >
> > Since neither director chose the dark path, I think the omissions they
> > made were
> > more about getting an amazingly rich story down to the 90 to 120
> > minutes of film
> > time that the commercial movie world allows.
> >
> > Andrew Brown
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----