{"id":311,"date":"2016-09-07T00:08:48","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T00:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/?p=311"},"modified":"2016-09-07T22:26:15","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T22:26:15","slug":"lolita-redesigned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/uncategorized\/lolita-redesigned\/","title":{"rendered":"Lolita, redesigned"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my analysis of Lolita<\/i> covers over the last 60 years, I argued that those following Kubrick\u2019s film were notably more sexually explicit than\u00a0those released in the 90s and later. I attribute this to a shift in how we have come to think about sexuality, youth, rape. Though this text is considered a respected piece of literature, I think our society now might find it more difficult to celebrate a text that excuses and even glorifies the abduction and rape of a twelve year old girl.<\/p>\n

In my new cover of Lolita<\/i>, I attempt to capture this more acute\u00a0social awareness of\u00a0sexual assault and rape. Rather than focus on Lolita\u2019s sexuality, I wanted to emphasize Humbert\u2019s position as a scourge on her life. I first imagined an\u00a0image cast in\u00a0shadows, perhaps even the shadow of a man over something suggestive of childhood. I read\u00a0that an effective cover should be simple and should utilize negative space, and I worried that this initial idea might become\u00a0too complex or cluttered.<\/p>\n

\"Lyne<\/a>For further inspiration, I next turned to the posters for Adrian Lyne\u2019s 1997 film remake. Lyne\u2019s film, though still marketed as \u201cerotic\u201d and a \u201clove story,\u201d more clearly explores\u00a0the uncomfortable ambivalence of the story than Kubrick\u2019s version did. For instance, the IMDB description reads, \u201cA man marries his landlady so he can take advantage of her daughter\u201d (imdb.com<\/a>). Though the film posters still position Lolita as beautiful and sexual, she\u2019s bathed in white–a marker of purity and innocence. In a more recent iteration of Lyne\u2019s film poster (left), Humbert is seen behind Lolita, watching her, veiled in shadow. His presence seems almost haunting and somewhat ominous. This was the feeling that I wanted to capture in my cover.<\/p>\n

In my design, I started with a simple image of a doll\u2019s face. The toy represents childhood, and the image of a doll might be read as Lolita herself. Though the doll is lightly dusted with freckles, she also appears to be adorned with heavy makeup on her brows, eyes, and lips. Like Lolita, the doll is a beautiful play thing, meant for somebody else\u2019s pleasure. Her empty plastic eyes convey no desire of her own. This image puts \"Lolita<\/a>emphasis on the ambiguity of Lolita\u2019s position in the text and also suggests passivity. This is an aspect of the text that isn\u2019t emphasized in the film adaptations and isn\u2019t often the focus of conversations about the text.<\/p>\n

I cast the doll image into black and white to more heavily emphasize the shadows across her face. Like Lyne\u2019s film poster, I wanted an creeping\u00a0sense of Humbert’s presence. The shadow across her face, then, is meant to represent Humbert. Significantly, the shadow largely obscures most of the doll\u2019s features\u00a0and almost entirely erases the child-like freckles evident in the original image.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>Black and white was\u00a0too stark for this cover, so I changed the white to a dusty pink. This soft pink draws on Lolita\u2019s femininity and also her youth. The red suckers and lips used in Kubrick\u2019s images suggest womanhood and sex, but soft pink–while still akin to red–is more fitting for a young girl.<\/p>\n

The title and author are set in opposite colors on opposite sides of the cover not only for aesthetic balance but also to emphasize tension and opposition between the pink which represents Lolita and black which represents Humbert. This is a visual representation of the stark contrast in their ages and the tension between their characters in the text. Significantly, however, the colors are not in discord. On the contrary, the cover is aesthetically pleasing and balanced. This balance is meant to play on the ambivalence that exists in the text. Though I think it\u2019s important to at least acknowledge Lolita\u2019s position as an innocent who was, more or less, preyed upon by an older man, it\u2019s also important to consider that Lolita did\u00a0perhaps love Humbert. I think it would be a misrepresentation of the text to design a cover that cast Humbert as a villain and Lolita as a victim–the story is much more complex than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my analysis of Lolita covers over the last 60 years, I argued that those following Kubrick\u2019s film were notably more sexually explicit than\u00a0those released in the 90s and later. I attribute this to a shift in how we have come to think about sexuality, youth, rape. Though this text is considered a respected piece […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}