I see Pretty Baby when I am fourteen. I have a better understanding, I think, of what that male hunger for a little girl is all about: The chance to shape the malleable child to serve the adult desire; the infusion of youth, the transference of a restorative life force that fulfills the vampire’s existential need to stave off age, decay, death. But now I feel uncomfortably complicit in the exploitation of this child — if I love this movie so much (and I do), if I am so captivated by that face, the mysterious alchemy of that beautiful old head on those naked young shoulders, am I all that different from those leering men looking to possess her, their dollars at the ready?
And which child is captivating me: Violet or Brooke? As with Iris/Jodie, I am confused: Is my discomfort due to the demands being made on the character or the actress? This is not the case of an eighteen-year-old playing thirteen (or a nude seventeen); this is not an adolescent dressed up as a mock adult; there is no reassuring distance between the illusion and the reality here. This is an actual sexualized child playing an actual sexualized child. This is Violet running around stark naked in a whorehouse; this is Brooke Shields running around stark naked on a movie set. I’ve been a naked little girl around other naked little girls my whole life — why are these images suddenly so disturbing to me? It is the context of the film, of course; her juvenile nakedness is meant to be both sexual and innocent, Louis Malle intends to juxtapose the one against the other in order to heighten our awareness of both and thus provoke that discomfort. And it is also my now-fourteen-year-old self, in the process of shifting from my own oblivious childhood to a self-conscious awareness of the realities, and vulnerabilities, of the sexual body.
But if I identify, in my beguilement, with those gazing, beguiled men, I still also completely identify with this Pretty Baby — I am a still-prepubescent fourteen, I am as flat-chested and thin-limbed as Violet and Brooke are, and, in order to hold on a while longer to a self-protective denial of that vulnerability, I still want to believe in the glory, and buy into the illusion, of erotic girl-child power.
Stanley Kubrick, in his 1962 adaptation of Lolita, largely avoided the discomfiting question of illusion versus reality by casting, as his titular nymphet, fifteen-year-old Sue Lyon, in part because she looked nothing at all like Nabokov’s little twelve-year old-girl.16 It is 1981, my friends and I are on a Kubrick kick, and we go see Lolita at the Nuart Theatre, our favorite revival house in Los Angeles. I have not yet read the novel, but am surprised nevertheless by Lyon’s mascara’d eyes and developed breasts, her bouffant hairdo, her kitten heels and bosom-enhancing cocktail dress; I’d expected another pretty baby, an adolescent Iris, a nubile Violet, even an almost-legal Sandy in her schoolgirl uniform, and I find it ironic that this most iconic of “Lolitas,” despite a few signifiers of youth — the lollipop-sucking on the poster, the Hula Hoop, the stuffed teddy bear on the bed — actually seems older than any of them. She seems older than I am, at seventeen. She certainly seems too old for nymphet-fixated Humbert (delightfully smarmy James Mason, all sweaty obsessive fumbles); when Lolita’s mother, Charlotte (delightfully desperate and pretentious Shelley Winters), or Quilty (delightfully Sellers-esque Peter Sellers) keep referring to her as a “little girl,” it only highlights Lyon’s smooth sophistication, her lack of Shirley Temple cutesiness. Humbert seems to be garden-variety-cheating on a mother with her younger daughter (still a huge ick, of course), but not necessarily trying to feed a depraved appetite.
Lolita is also far less explicit than The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or Taxi Driver or Pretty Baby—Kubrick goes for fully clothed innuendo, clever verbal puns, and visual sight gags, playing Humbert’s obsession entirely for delightful comedy, and so the disturbing hebephile eroticism is pruned away. (Adrian Lyne tried to correct this in his own 1997 adaptation by casting a far-more youthful and sexualized Dominique Swain, and in doing so got back some of the story’s sexuality — but lost all its comedy. The novel is a brilliant balance of both, and neither film version gets that right.)
So, if Sue Lyon’s Lolita seems too old to be a Lolita. . what am I? I am seventeen now, and I have only just, at last, gotten my first period: Hello, womanhood! My friend Marie and I have recently been hit on by two fortyish guys in a restaurant, who bought us a chocolate soufflé and ordered us wine and stroked our gleaming bare shoulders and tender arms in a delightfully, satisfyingly mesmerized way, and, like Violet, I am by now a pro at the girlishly flirtatious coo, the promising butterfly side-glance, the bit of dialogue that flatters and invites and yet still suggests a virginal blush. I have mastered illusion — if not with boys my own age, for whom my age holds no special appeal, then absolutely with older men — and playing this role is still one of my favorite interests.
And then these older men invite us to Las Vegas for the weekend: Right now, come on, girls, let’s go! I look at Marie, hesitant; she is equally unsure. And I am still a virgin, it is not all illusion — is a Las Vegas weekend with these men my big Auction Night, am I setting a high enough price on myself? Are these men appreciative Teddys, protective Bellocqs, comedically fumbling Humberts. . or just creepy Cousin Morris’s? Marie and I suggest we should maybe call our mothers for permission; the men seem to have no problem with this — perhaps it even underscores our enchanting youth. Marie and I head to the pay phone, dial, explain, ask; both of our mothers are delighted by this possible adventure before us: Sure, if you want to, sounds like fun, go have a good time! they say. We are flummoxed by their equanimity; we have expected, hoped, to be ordered immediately home, perhaps told to brush our teeth and put our pajamas on, it is way past our bedtime, and are disappointed to have been given this terrifying degree of agency. Aren’t we still little girls? Just a little while longer, please? We lie to the two men, apologizing, that we have to get home, and we flee, just as a terrified Sandy once fled Teddy’s studio/lair.
But I feel like a coward, a failure at my role as tantalizing teen seductress; Sandy walked back into Teddy’s studio on her own accord, after all, Violet sought out and seduced Bellocq, Lolita was ultimately the one to suggest the game of sex to Humbert. I also feel regret; have I missed out, perhaps, on an opportunity, a precious experience? One that may soon, I am starting to wonder, be increasingly rare?