"A super-cute Lolita look"

[IWouldNotCouldNotWithAGoat]

here

Am I being prudish? Wear sandals with socks for a super-cute Lolita look? This is aimed at teenage girls!! Am I over-reacting or is this just wrong?

It's a New Zealand shop, BTW.

saf - that sounds (the narration bit with the 'real' pics of her) like that documentary made by the woman out of her father's vids of her growing up (after years of abuse). it was her way of dealing with the abuse... can't remember her name - there was a thread a while back. creepy.

Yes I agree there had to be a semblance of reality in order to allow us to suspend our disbelief. But that reality does not have to be men as rapists and/or purveyor of sexual violence. The reality can be love/sexual desire/desire for beauty/desire of the forbidden which are all common literary themes. The other things that happen in the narrative which are beyond most people's reality are what make it interesting and provoking but not an accepted reality of the masses.

can anyone remember her name? i can't remember if any comparisons were made to lolita at the time - i think not...

Remains of the Day is a fantastic film adaptation of the novel overall. I don't know that they quite manage to convey the extent of Stevens' unreliable narrative but it is very moving and poignantly done and certainly conveys how he gradually becomes aware of the opportunity he missed to have a life with Miss Kenton.

I like the idea of the reality being self-deception very much but I think it can only be a small part as it's not something I think most people consciously are aware of.

I can't accept the idea that anyone other than paedophiles find children attractive. There are different types admittedly (eg those attracted to pre-adolescents, adolescents) but I think the sexualization of children is a different problem with a different cause.

The whole sexy school girl image belies the truth that most school children are not sexy. Short skirts and low cut tops stretched around adult breasts and thighs looks markedly different to what most school children look like. I do concede that the element of the forbidden is also a little at play in that scenario though.

Ooh, I've just got a Kindle.

Game of Thrones is good entertainment (admittedly I read it ten years ago) but potentially problematic in the way it treats women. Most if not all are either raped, beaten, humiliated, killed or controlled by men, while arguably there are several men who get to participate in the above and otherwise go about their business as they want. It is set in 'medievalish' times but given that it's a fantasy world I don't think it would've been hard for the author to create one or two female characters in roles where they did not suffer so much.

Haven't read Lolita.

I was thinking about it for "perspective flip" rather than feminism, but I agree the female characters have a pretty bad time of it. On the other hand I disagree that any males get to go about their business as they want. It's shit for everyone. (GRRM hates his characters, it would seem)

The TV show makes a better job of pointing out (via the female children and their dreams for the future) how in that sort of society even a high-born woman was only really considered good for decoration and popping out heirs.

Keep going SGM it's a gradual unveiling but it does get there.

katie I read the book when I was 18 and have re-read it many times, and what is pissing me off is that I would have argued all that you are saying a few years ago.

However

since moving further into feminism I am having trouble here

itma "Sakura The book doesn't "dehumanize(s) a young girl and humanize(s) a sex offender". The narrator tries to do this, the author shows us him
doing this and undermines it. The book is a critique of such thinking. Nabokov cannot be held responsible for the (possibly) deliberate mis-interpretation of his book by a reader.

You could argue that Nabokov shows us the deviousness and manipulative nature of Humbert Humbert - these are human characteristics seen in adults who abuse children. So, maybe it does 'humanize' him - but the word humanize doesn't necessarilly mean that you like the character. We are all human beings - doesn't means that we are all 'good', do 'good' things.The book does not condone his thinking, or his actions."

After going through all these analyses myself, after admiring Nabokov's poetic language and cleverness and blah blah I came to the conclusion (on this thread in fact) that there is an Elephant in the living room

The elehpant can only be seen when you are mired in a feminist perspective

I have read umpteen male critics gushing about how wonderful the book is

The elephant again

The only people who can judge this book as good or bad are women who were themselves abused as children

Nobody else has a fucking clue as to how an abuser thinks, acts or behaves

And yet we have all theses armchair experts lookin in as outsiders, guessing at the relevance of the characterization.

You are making children's pain into an academic excercise and I cannot stand it.

THe book was all about HUmbert, all about him as if the world needs even more information about men's inner worlds than we have already.

I think this book became a success because the subject is sexxxaaaaayyy

I think the book silences victims of child abuse

the incessant ramblings of Humbert's thoughts silence the victim

So my main point:

The only people who can judge this book as good or bad are women who were themselves abused as children

Nobody else has a fucking clue as to how an abuser thinks, acts or behaves

empathy is impossible without direct experience?

i don't agree.

to experience abuse must be horrific, sakura. and it clearly has a lasting impact.

i think the book shows how victims of abuse are silenced. it doesn't silence them directly. it is a work of fiction.

YEs I agree that empathy is possible without direct experience.

But you have to ask yourself the question

why are we being asked to empathize with a sexual predator

resulting in rave reviews from critics

the book does not empathize with the child; she is a charicature

she is a caricature in humbert's eyes.

not necessarily that of the reader.

that? those

"i think the book shows how victims of abuse are silenced."

honestly,

I think you're giving too many men, and popular culture in general the benefit of the doubt

I can see women here tying themselves up in knots. We've had double irony, we've now got women saying the silencing of the victim in Lolita is to show how victims are silenced.

What is so scary about taking this book, and its success, on face value

no tears are shed for lolita. that's definitely not the point of the book.

Wink wink nudge nudge is how this book is treated coupled with perhaps a sort of mortification at the grotesqueness.

we are being asked to put ourselves in the uncomfortable shoes of a predator - and to show what a thin line there is between his veneer of reality and every decent person's.

it serves to highlight how predators justify their behaviour.

no text can dictate how society will alter and promote it.