"Lolita is pornography, and we do not plan to review it," Those were the words of Frederic Babcock, the editor of the Chicago Tribune Magazine of Books. Pornograghy has a tendency to be censored by many sources. For example, the flim was modified to fit the requirements of an R flim in the United States. That's the one I saw. And it was horrible.
I have read the the orginal Lolita. Dealing with pedophila in a movie and getting it to pass for an 'R' rating requires two things: the pedophile in question must be a bad guy, and he must be defeated. Sadly, this not the case in Lolita. There is no such thing as evil in the book and the movie, meaning, it's just a love story. Which is bad. Because it's love that's illegal. Meaning, it going to be censored to the point were the film is ruined by it. Lolita's relationship with Humbert Humbert doesn't really seem like a sexual one, or in fact, a loving one, it just seems really, really flirty. Like, oh say, a bad Disney love story. It destroyed the entire film for me, because I have a rabid hatred of said Disney love stories. However, that being said, Kubrick is not to be blamed here; the censorship which the governments pushed upon the movie is to be blamed for the flim which was unclear in it's point. It ruined the film completely for me, as an orginal reader of the book. Watch it if you want to see art ripped apart by censorship. |
