Lolita Censored

When debating whether a novel such as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita should be censored, it is often assumed that the text is being presented to a passive audience. What we learn from reading texts such as Lolita and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, though, is that one cannot offer a moral without presenting the vice. In fact, Sonia Livingstone in her book Media Audiences argues that the exposure of taboo subjects does not seem to have as harmful an effect as is commonly believed. Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin comments on the effects exposure to taboo subjects can have on an audience suggesting that while the exposure of certain behaviours can possibly lead to copycat crimes, if journalism can report on such social phenomena,

Lolita is often wrongly viewed as “a naïve pre-teen who only engages in sex with Humbert under duress or the spell of pubescent illusion about romance” (Herbold 80). However, Herbold suggests that Lolita is actually “not only a sexy creature but also as sophisticated and wily as Humbert, and perhaps more so” (Herbold 80). Nabokov even argues in the afterword to Lolita that while the “novel does contain various allusions to the psychological urges of a pervert…, we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents” (360). If Lolita is to be read as a moralising story about paedophilia as is suggested by John Ray, Jr. in the foreword, then Nabokov had to represent the behaviour that is being criticised. It is in this way that we understand that Nabokov’s representation of paedophilia is not to be confused with endorsement. Similarly, we cannot dismiss the novel based on the “theme itself” (Nabokov 357), but must realise that it is this exposure of the “ugly elements” (Sherman Alexie, qtd. in The Guardian) that renders the text

In regard to Lolita the Chairman of the IPT, A.P. Blair, takes the view “that some minors and indeed some adults would be likely to be corrupted by the book” (5). The novel contains content that is perverse and with young people being “at an age of experiment, an age of indiscretion and an age of increasing sexual impulse”, this perversion can be wholly corrupting (Blair 5). We Need to Talk about Kevin centres on the question of corruption and whether Kevin was influenced by his predecessors. The novel refers to the real high school shooting in which Michael Carneal killed a number of people in a prayer group in Paducah, Kentucky. Michael Carneal, it was suggested, was influenced by violent films in committing his violent crime. Along this same line, Eva Khatchadourian suggests that Kevin was influenced by incidents such as that of the Heath High killings, the Westside Middle school shooting in Jonesboro, and the eighth-grade graduation dance shooting in Edinboro. Kevin’s shooting, perhaps, is then a copycat crime of other shootings that occurred before his. However, we must take into consideration the media effects theory that suggests people are not as easily influenced by violent media to commit crimes as is commonly believed. There is an ongoing moral panic that flares up when a new medium is introduced such as comic books,