Warning: spoiler alert.
If you primarily understand the 1960s as a hippie-dippy wigout, you’re missing a lot of what went on then. Many diverse, occasionally competing, cultural themes co-existed.
Sure, the youth movement had become the craze of Western civilization since the 1950s mainstreaming of rock and roll, with its decadent mores. As sociomusicologist Simon Frith put it, rock gave teenagers their bodies back. That meant freedom of movement, freedom to experience the joys of physicality and sensuality.
Of course, implicit in that: the freedom to experience sex in a more exciting way than the birds and bees teachers lectured about in hygiene class. So it shouldn’t surprise us all that much that during the 1960s we begin to see the hypersexualization of the teenager–and not just by and for other teenagers. After all, a lot of people born before 1935 didn’t want to miss out on all the fun.
Simply put, one of the most curious themes in mainstream 1960s culture was hebephilia/ephebophilia: the middle-aged sexual obsession with pubescent and post-pubescent teenagers.
Lolita, a 1962 Stanley Kubrick film based on the 1955 novel by Vladmir Nabakov (who also co-wrote the screenplay), tells the story of a teenybopper who becomes the desire of not one, but two older men (played by James Mason and Peter Sellers). Although cute, there’s nothing especially attractive about her. She’s not brilliant, or witty, or cultured, or urbane. She has problems just taking the gum out of her mouth. And because neither Nabakov nor Kubrick gave us much insight as to what went on in the head of little Delores (Lolita’s real name), we can’t tell if she’s really as shallow and vacuous as the protagonist (Humbert Humbert) projects her to be. After all, he’s not really so much interested in her as he is in her youth, and what that signifies.
In order to get the movie past Hays Code censors, Nabakov had to rewrite some aspects of it. In the novel, for example, Lolita’s twelve years old. In the movie, she’s a few (unspecified) years older; clearly post-pubescent. Kubrick cast fourteen-year-old actress Sue Lyon (left) as the title character in part because her physical maturity made her look more like an adult woman, and less like a little girl (you can imagine it would have really freaked out a lot of people if she could pass for a Brownie–especially during the sex scene).*
Nabakov made one more critical change to get the project past censors. In the movie, Humbert had no jailbait ideation until he met Delores. So, Lolita comes across as uniquely sexual for a girl her age. She becomes the irresistible force that lures two men, and one woman (namely her mother), to their deaths. In the novel, however, Nabakov made it clear that Lolita did nothing special to attract Humbert. Humbert had an illicit predilection for pubescent and post-pubescent girls his entire adult life. Nabakov even gave us a reason for his paraphilia. Way back during his own adolescence, Humbert’s first love, Annabel Leigh, died at the age of fourteen. Thus, in the novel, Humbert neurotically saw Annabel in Lolita and all of the other girls he fantasized about.
Most of the adult actors who comprised the Lolita cast–Mason, Sellers, Shirley Winters, etc.–went on to make other movies, often tackling diverse roles. In her next film, a 1964 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana, Lyon played another underage femme fatale who ruins the life of a defrocked Episcopalian priest, played by Richard Burton.**
Just as the Twenty-First Century has its divas, the 1960s had its nymphets. Lyon realized that if she played her cards right, she could become their queen. But she chafed under the Hollywood machine. Cutting back on the grind, she acted sporadically before leaving the silver screen in 1986.***
So the title of Queen Nymphet would have to go to another actress. And if you believe some of the recent conspiracy stories about her, the front-runner for that honor was already a queen, of sorts.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
–Edgar Allen Poe, “Annabel Lee”
If you primarily understand the 1960s as a hippie-dippy wigout, you’re missing a lot of what went on then. Many diverse, occasionally competing, cultural themes co-existed.
Sure, the youth movement had become the craze of Western civilization since the 1950s mainstreaming of rock and roll, with its decadent mores. As sociomusicologist Simon Frith put it, rock gave teenagers their bodies back. That meant freedom of movement, freedom to experience the joys of physicality and sensuality.
Of course, implicit in that: the freedom to experience sex in a more exciting way than the birds and bees teachers lectured about in hygiene class. So it shouldn’t surprise us all that much that during the 1960s we begin to see the hypersexualization of the teenager–and not just by and for other teenagers. After all, a lot of people born before 1935 didn’t want to miss out on all the fun.
Simply put, one of the most curious themes in mainstream 1960s culture was hebephilia/ephebophilia: the middle-aged sexual obsession with pubescent and post-pubescent teenagers.
Lolita, a 1962 Stanley Kubrick film based on the 1955 novel by Vladmir Nabakov (who also co-wrote the screenplay), tells the story of a teenybopper who becomes the desire of not one, but two older men (played by James Mason and Peter Sellers). Although cute, there’s nothing especially attractive about her. She’s not brilliant, or witty, or cultured, or urbane. She has problems just taking the gum out of her mouth. And because neither Nabakov nor Kubrick gave us much insight as to what went on in the head of little Delores (Lolita’s real name), we can’t tell if she’s really as shallow and vacuous as the protagonist (Humbert Humbert) projects her to be. After all, he’s not really so much interested in her as he is in her youth, and what that signifies.
In order to get the movie past Hays Code censors, Nabakov had to rewrite some aspects of it. In the novel, for example, Lolita’s twelve years old. In the movie, she’s a few (unspecified) years older; clearly post-pubescent. Kubrick cast fourteen-year-old actress Sue Lyon (left) as the title character in part because her physical maturity made her look more like an adult woman, and less like a little girl (you can imagine it would have really freaked out a lot of people if she could pass for a Brownie–especially during the sex scene).*
Nabakov made one more critical change to get the project past censors. In the movie, Humbert had no jailbait ideation until he met Delores. So, Lolita comes across as uniquely sexual for a girl her age. She becomes the irresistible force that lures two men, and one woman (namely her mother), to their deaths. In the novel, however, Nabakov made it clear that Lolita did nothing special to attract Humbert. Humbert had an illicit predilection for pubescent and post-pubescent girls his entire adult life. Nabakov even gave us a reason for his paraphilia. Way back during his own adolescence, Humbert’s first love, Annabel Leigh, died at the age of fourteen. Thus, in the novel, Humbert neurotically saw Annabel in Lolita and all of the other girls he fantasized about.
Most of the adult actors who comprised the Lolita cast–Mason, Sellers, Shirley Winters, etc.–went on to make other movies, often tackling diverse roles. In her next film, a 1964 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana, Lyon played another underage femme fatale who ruins the life of a defrocked Episcopalian priest, played by Richard Burton.**
Just as the Twenty-First Century has its divas, the 1960s had its nymphets. Lyon realized that if she played her cards right, she could become their queen. But she chafed under the Hollywood machine. Cutting back on the grind, she acted sporadically before leaving the silver screen in 1986.***
So the title of Queen Nymphet would have to go to another actress. And if you believe some of the recent conspiracy stories about her, the front-runner for that honor was already a queen, of sorts.
Footnotes
1. Lyon was sixteen at the time of Lolita’s release.
2. According to Wikipedia, multiple versions of this movie were filmed, edited and released. In one, the movie ends with the Richard Burton character committing suicide by walking into the ocean.
3. Click here to see Lyon in a 1980s interview where she discusses the making of Lolita, and some of the `aftermath.
2. According to Wikipedia, multiple versions of this movie were filmed, edited and released. In one, the movie ends with the Richard Burton character committing suicide by walking into the ocean.
3. Click here to see Lyon in a 1980s interview where she discusses the making of Lolita, and some of the `aftermath.
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