Every Age Gets the 'Lolita' it Needs

I've found myself mulling over the #MeToo movement more and more over the last few years, seeing echoes of its influence in the popularity of certain books (see my review of ‘Song of Achilles’ for more hot takes!), and of course, its impact on the discourse around rape culture that exploded in its aftermath and continues up to now.

What better way to address some of that discourse in fiction than to give the world a retelling of Nabokov's 1955 novel 'Lolita', but centering Dolores rather than Humbert Humbert?

But is that what 'My Dark Vanessa' is?

Though ‘Lolita’ the novel gets referenced and quoted many times in the text, and is a tool our protagonist, Vanessa, uses to try to understand her own circumstances (and also a tool her teacher, Mr. Strain, uses as a nefarious means to tip open the door to eventually entering into a sexual relationship with her), 'My Dark Vanessa' feels more like a response to 'Lolita' the film(s) than to Nabokov's work.

Youtube video essayist, Lola Sebastian, published a video in November of 2019 (predating the publication of 'My Dark Vanessa' by just 4 months) called "we need to talk about Lolita". In this video, she opens with a question "Could another Lolita movie ever happen? More importantly: should another Lolita movie ever happen?"

A noteworthy observation Lola makes in her essay about 'Lolita' the novel is that Nabokov himself was very vocal about not wanting the image of a young girl to appear on the cover because it would reinforce the exact sexualization of young girls the novel is condemning.

Not only has that wish been completely ignored by many publishing houses, but the images of young girls on these covers tend to be sexually suggestive: a young girl's bare legs under a short skirt, a young girl making bedroom eyes while a red lollypop rests just inside her mouth, a young girl lolling in the grass in a bikini, a close-up of a young girl's lips.

Sometimes all you can do is heave a deep sigh.

She goes on to point out that in the novel Dolores is 12, yet in both film adaptations, she's been aged up and played by actresses who were 16 and 17 at the time of each film's release (in 1962 and 1997).

"In attempting to lessen the shocking age difference in 'Lolita' so that audiences will be more comfortable viewing it, we discover how comfortable we are with sexualizing teenage girls," she says.

How comfortable indeed.

I don't know the exact reason the character was aged up for the films (the age of consent in many US states is 16, so it's possible actresses of that age or slightly older were chosen because only they could legally kiss their co-stars on camera?), but it is undeniable that we have a long and storied history of sexualizing teenage girls.

I vividly remember how, just a few years back, when teenage singer Billie Eilish was starting to get big, there were websites that had clocks counting down to when she'd turn 18, the implication being 'can't wait ‘til she's legal to fuck because I'd do it right now if it wouldn't land me in jail.'

And a quick peek at PornHub (America's go-to porn site for the uninitiated) reveals that 'teen' is the second largest category on the site with 173,482 videos under that tag. Which is an insane amount of content suggesting an insane appetite for that type of content.

All of this is very much part of the peritext of 'My Dark Vanessa.' Author Kate Elizabeth Russell sprinkles many other subtle and not so subtle examples of how pervasive this was and is in our culture throughout the novel, including references to Britney Spears's 2000 music video for ...Baby One More Time in which the then 18-year-old dances provocatively in a sexified school girl uniform, and the lyrics to the 1979 hit 'My Sharona: "I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind."

While we're in the case-building section, I'd also like to enter into evidence two more things:

One, the 2010-2017 television adaptation of YA book series 'Pretty Little Liars'.

A major plot point throughout the series is that one of the teenage protagonists, Aria, is having a sexual affair with her high school English teacher (all of the girls have dalliances with adult men across the series, but this one is such an on the nose parallel that we're just going to stick to this one). This is presented as a 'forbidden romance' with little to no examination within the text of either the books or screenplay. Even though the characters verbalize the problem with the relationship (i.e. that she's his underage student), this is framed as 'high stakes', and part of what makes it sexy; 'oh no, we might get caught!'

No, this isn't 'high stakes drama' --this is illegal and morally reprehensible on the part of the teacher, who, it's revealed, sought Aria out on purpose. And yes, her parents do eventually find out, and in a truly bizarre twist, eventually accept it with a grudging: 'well, we don't like it, but we're helpless to do anything about it.' And then at the end of the series, when Aria is in her early 20s, they get married.

Not only is the writing of this relationship very 'thanks, I hate it', but the casting of the parts of Aria and her teacher does a lot to help prop up the dishonest framing of this relationship as 'ok, actually.' The actress who plays Aria was 21 when season 1 of the show aired, though her character was only 16. The actor who plays her teacher was 24, and was the same-ish age as his character in the show.

So while on paper we're talking about a sexual relationship between a 24 year old man and a 16 year old girl, we're visually seeing a 21 year old woman and a boyish 24 year old man macking on each other, which could be completely fine.

And here we encounter a strange sleight of hand at play. We live in a world that sexualizes teenage girls, but we also live in a world where the teenage girls we see in our favorite films and series are 20-somethings posing as 16 year-olds.

I actually think this makes perfect sense, and these things aren't as contradictory as they seem. After you're no longer a teenager yourself, it's likely that most of your interaction with teenagers will be via the media you consume rather than by hanging out with actual teenagers. And if in that media the teenage girls are often played by women in their 20s it's fine to view them sexually because if you saw them in any other context, finding them hot would, in principle, be appropriate (lots of caveats, but that's more than can be fully unpacked here). So there's this subconscious thing where you conflate women in their 20s with actual teenage girls, which as we're in the process of establishing, is an identity that is steeped in sexualization.

And I can see how that would (wrongly) lead a lot of men (because we're talking about men right now) to think of teenage girls as being 'basically the same' as women in their 20s, but with that super sexy taboo of 'jailbait' tacked on.

Secondly, and on a more personal note, I'd like to enter into evidence the 2008 song 'Seventeen Forever' by popular emo/alternative band Metro Station with the charming lyrics:

"We're one mistake from being together
But let's not ask why it's not right
You won't be seventeen forever
And we can get away with this tonight"

In fairness, the singer was 19 when this song was making its radio rounds, but I think the lyrics are still indicative of the pattern being discussed here. And it's more relevant to me, because I remember when it was big. I was 13, and just beginning to come into an understanding of sexuality and what it means to be viewed as a sexual object by boys, never mind men. It was also around this time that I had my own brush with the salivating men do over teenage girls.

There was a teacher and girls' swim coach at my high school who was conventionally attractive, and young enough to be considered (or at least consider himself) cool and hip. I was never his student, but he would call me over for chats in the hallways sometimes, and I remember him complimenting a rather form-fitting dress of mine once. It was the first time I had ever had the sixth sense feeling that an adult man was looking at me, at my body, and commenting on it, even though he hadn't said that directly. And I felt uncomfortable for even thinking that's what he was thinking. Why would a man look at me that way? Was I narcissistic enough to think this man thought I was hot stuff? Had I subconsciously chosen that dress to get attention?

I bumped into him one other time that I remember at a Best Buy near my house when I was with my mom. I was looking at CDs or something and he came over to say hi and have a chat, and I remember again that creeping feeling of 'I think there's some sexual undertone to what's happening, but that's so embarrassing if that's the case, and maybe just me being presumptuous?'

Just then, my mom, who must have witnessed something of this, came over and pretty firmly sent him on his way, and then turned to me and said: "he was flirting with you, you know that, right?" and I was mortified and said "no, I don't think so." But she was pretty adamant to me that that's what had happened, and that it was inappropriate. And her saying that out loud could have been the thing that prevented anything truly bad from happening. Or maybe not. The world will never know. But I'm glad that she said that, because it let me know that that feeling I'd had was based in reality, and that he, not I, had done something wrong.

Vanessa also has such a conversation with her mother in the novel. On a car ride back to her school, Vanessa reveals that a male teacher told her she had 'hair the color of maple leaves.' Her mother replies: "He shouldn't have said that to you." She demands to know who said this, and Vanessa lies and gives the name of a different teacher, who her mother spends the rest of that section giving the stink eye to on the rare occasion that she's at the school. Because this doesn't take place at a typical high school like mine-- this is a boarding school, where parents have much less regular access to their kids and the goings on in their lives.

There's a lot of implicit critique of schools in general in the novel, and how, institutionally, they don't do a very good job acting in loco parentis. This is evidenced by not only the fact that Vanessa's teacher gets away with his grooming of Vanessa, but multiple other students, and also her references to at least one other boarding school having a similar scandal attached to it.

But Russell goes beyond discussions of schools and the abuse of power and its intersection with sexualizing teenage girls -- she delves deeply into the impact of that abuse and sexualization on these girls as they start to grow into adulthood.

I'm lucky that I was never in any situation at that age that I would describe as abusive, sexually or otherwise, despite definitely having experiences of feeling like a fish getting circled by sharks, both visible and invisible. And so, I can't really speak to how authentically Russell captures PTSD or the processing of that kind of adolescent trauma. I can, however, comment on a much more subtle thread.

Vanessa in the present day timeline makes two passing remarks at different points in the novel. One, is how at twenty-two she was too old to be sexually attractive to her teacher anymore, and the second is that at thirty-two she is starting to notice signs of aging in her face--an observation she makes in disgust.

It's not, I don't think, news to anyone that we live in a youth-obsessed culture. A culture that ties youth to beauty and desirability very tightly.

But for whom?

It's been standard practice in Hollywood for years to pair 'leading men' in their 40s or even older with 'leading ladies' who are in their 20s to maybe, sometimes, their 30s. And on the odd occasion that a woman closer to that leading man in his 40s's age is cast, she is styled to look younger or has maybe even had work done to look younger, while leading men, wrinkles and all, are presented to be desirable in part because of their age and the implied experience that comes with it.

So now let's imagine what it might do to women, who have grown up in a culture that places their sexual prime and age range for mainstream desirability at 15/16-25ish, to age.

As someone who was socialized female, I have felt that clock ticking down ever since I became aware of it as a teenager. Aware of how, at twenty-two, my youth was a large part of what my employer (an English language school) found marketable about me, and that that was much more finite than what my male colleagues had.

It terrified me, and still does as I careen towards 30, even though I know that it's stupid. But how can it not terrify me in a world where, if you're viewed as a woman, your value is tied to how likely the men around you are to want to fuck you? What happens to you when they don't anymore? Do you still have value? If you’re lucky enough to have a long-term partner, will he remain faithful? Because he still has another decade and a half to be found hot by a lot of people, so why should he stick by an old hag like you?

In the novel, thirty-two year-old Vanessa notices (and envies) the youth of her teenage colleague, she notices and judges the looks of the other women around her through that aforementioned lens of 'how hot would men find you?' This, more than any of the plot specifics, hits at the heart of what is meant by 'rape culture', and 'the male gaze.'

The Mr. Strains and Harvey Weinstein's and Andrew Tates are the symptoms, the zits if you will, but they're only there, purulent and ugly, because of what's been festering underneath; the part that so many people (men and women) deny is even there.

Interestingly, none of that is why this novel was controversial, at least, not from what I can tell. Going to the one-star Goodreads reviews (a mere 1% of the nearly 34,000 reviews the novel’s amassed on the site since it’s release), there were two main things readers took issue with, and really, it’s the same thing: Vanessa.

The people who didn’t like this novel didn’t like it because they didn’t like our protagonist. This dislike fell into two camps: people who found her unsympathetic, narcissistic, and bitchy, and people who found her to be one-dimensional.

I think that to an extent both of these critiques hit on something true, but I also sense that this was by design. Vanessa is a one-dimensional miserable melt who thinks she’s always the smartest person in the room, who is ‘not like the other girls’. And she never grows beyond that, or at least, not until an inkling of character growth in the very last pages. But that arrested development is part of the tragedy. Her inability to move beyond the version of herself she was at fifteen is sad. And let’s be honest; it’s not unheard of for teenagers to be unsympathetic, narcissistic, and bitchy – whatever their gender. Did 2000s-era emo rock band My Chemical Romance not famously screech: “All teenagers scare the livin’ shit out of me” ? Like, c’mon.

Moreover, I think it is essential that Vanessa be unlikeable, just as much as it was essential for Humbert Humbert to be charismatic. If Vanessa were likeable, she’d be the perfect victim, and this would be a story that’s easy to understand: ‘a nice girl was sexually abused by a man in a position of power over her.’ But what if it’s not a nice girl that this happens to? What if her character flaws are the very things that make her susceptible to being groomed by someone like Mr. Strain?

He reinforces her belief that she’s ‘special’, ‘more mature’, ‘an old soul.’ He knows she thinks she's 'not like the other girls' and so he says: ‘you’re so right, Vanessa; you arebetter than them. You’re better than a lot of people. I love you. I worship you. Oh, Vanessa, can’t you pity how your perfection torments me so?’ That's his entire ruse.

And for it to work, she has to be exactly who she is.

Russel is asking us, the readers, to have empathy for someone she designed for us to dislike. That’s much harder to do. But it’s also a better way to understand our own morality. Are we truly principled if we only have empathy for people we like and identify with?

Now, all of this does make this book unpleasant to read. And unfortunately, it’s not so uncommon for ‘unpleasant to read/watch’ to be conflated with ‘morally bad/harmful.’
A wise man by the name of Don Powers once said: “sometimes if a thing feels uncomfortable, it's on the one feeling it.”

This book made me feel uncomfortable, and I didn’t much like Vanessa, but I can also see that that discomfort actually means, in this case, that the book is doing its job. Just like when reading ‘Lolita’ one might feel uncomfortable, not because Nabokov was promoting a bad thing (he patently wasn’t), but because he touched on something ugly about our culture that is also true. On the other hand, watching ‘Pretty Little Liars’ makes me uncomfortable because the writers were reckless in a way that plays into a narrative that causes harm. But impact matters too.

I love horror films; I think they can be creative and fun, and that the genre as a whole can be incredibly insightful. However, lots of people don’t like horror films. They think they’re unpleasant to watch, they are sensitive to violent content, whatever. They don’t want to watch them.

I think it’s just as unfair to tell someone who doesn’t want to watch a horror film that they’re being ‘too sensitive’ and that they should ‘get over it’ because the social commentary in that film is so provocative as it is for the person who finds such films upsetting to claim that them finding it upsetting makes the genre/film ‘bad.’ Alas, I think that’s what happened here. Those that loved this novel cut into those that didn’t by sniping about how anyone who couldn’t finish the book or didn’t like it ‘just didn’t get it’. Those that hated it panned it as ‘bad/harmful.’

‘My Dark Vanessa’ isn’t a perfect novel. Overwriting is its biggest crime – this lack of faith in the readers to ‘get it’ a giveaway of this being a debut novel. But it has something true and important to say, so read it. Talk about it. Argue about it. And for god’s sake, if you ever make it into a movie, learn from the mistakes that were made with ‘Lolita’ (both times) so that Nabokov, Lola Sebastian, and the rest of us can finally have that film we’ve been promised for over half a century.