A double comment on Lolita

A book I haven't read, a film I haven't seen. A lesson I think superfluous to learn, at least from a certain point of view.

How to LAUGH at EVIL | Analyzing Kubrick’s LOLITA
Empire of the Mind | 1 Feb. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y70FZs6g7So

10:04 Are you aware that in the Russian Empire where gramp Elijah Kubrick was born in 1877, marrying a girl of Lolita's age would have been perfectly legal?

Are you aware that it was so in the US in many states as well, at least with parental consent up to the progressive era, about 100 years ago?

By the way, by fatigue, I checked on the wrong guy.

Nabokov certainly was born in Russia.

And when he was 15, if it hadn't been for his being a noble who had to qualify himself first, he could in Russia legally have married, but for a girl it would have been 13.

To his pre-Revolution experience, except perhaps esoteric views within his élite background, the predatorial relation to Lolita did not base itself on her age - or on Humbert's older age.

But on the hypocrisy imposed by Progressive Era US to label as a "child" what is sexually an adult or capable.

24:15 I think there are people who, unjustly, are seeing me as some Humbert.

And I think that they are as expert as Humbert at control.

And I am feeling the butt end of it.

28:51 In looking up the work on wiki, I find this:

"Near the end of the novel, Humbert admits to himself, as noted in the above plot synopsis, that he has committed statutory rape, which his actions were according to the law at the time of publishing. Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd denies that it was rape "in any ordinary sense", on the grounds that "it is she who suggests that they try out the naughty trick" which she has already learned at summer camp; however, consent laws for adults cannot be applied to children."

In pre-Commie Russia, unlike US at the time, doing it with a consenting 13-year old would not have been statutory rape.

Whether one could have escaped legal consequences of another type, like obligations to marry, is a totally different question. In pre-Commie Russia, a 13 year old girl could have married.