Do you remember a little girl named LOLITA?

'How did they ever make a movie on Lolita?'

Stanley Kubrick, movie mastermind and one of the first directors to explore the theme of sexual obsession, a subject much despised in the 1960s and 70s. Lolita is a twelve year old nypmphet who falls prey to the sexual obsessions of a forty year old college professor named Humbert. Humbert has a perverse infatuation towards young girls. He deviously marries Lolita's widowed and sexually desperate mother in order to take advantage of her daughter. When Lolita's mother dies of a traffic accident, Humbert manipulates Lolita into doing sexual favors for him.

The idea of sexual obsession is very evident in the film as many of the characters are sexually active. Lolita for instance loses her virginity at age twelve to a boy she had met at camp and continuously engages in sexual activities with various men throughout the movie. Humbert is perhaps the most misunderstood character in the film. Unlike Lolita who is looking for pleasure through sex, Humbert is looking for love through sex. His lesson learnt is that it is easy to have a person's body but it is difficult to have their heart. Lolita never returned his love for her and jumped at any occassion to escape him. Quilty, the man whom Lolita falls in love and runs away with is the real person to blame in the film. He tricks Lolita into thinking he would anything for her and abandons her as soon she does not comply to his commands. Lolita's mother Charlotte, widowed and desperately seeking for replacement love makes the biggest mistake of her life by marrying Humbert. Lesson learnt from her mistake: If there is even a single doubt in your mind about getting married, don't go ahead with it.

Lolita seems too complex to be compared with reality. The truth is, it is very close to what happens in our own world today but more subtle. Sexual obsessions in our own time era revolves around one night stands, rape, money and what more. Movies based around sex are very common in today's society. Sex is glamourized and encouraged as a natural human instinct. When Lolita was released in 1962, the world was still very primitive and quiet on the matters of sex, especially with a minor. Lolita's release made a bold statement on how destructive human nature is. Thankfully, Kubrick was a director who was not afraid to challenge the odds. Some may say he was too ahead of his time, but honestly, the only thing that has changed about sexual obsession is the way human beings view it.

I do not encourage sex and neither does this article. The point of me writing this is to pull Lolita apart and view it from our own time period, the twenty first century.