“Putting the geography of the United States into motion”: Kubrick’s Lolita as an American Travelogue

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the representation of America as seen by a European in Kubrick’s Lolita. The movie is understood as a fictionalized travelogue where Humbert Humbert is the great organizer whose point of view channels the representation of America and determines the way actors...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zachary Baqué
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès 2010-11-01
Series:Miranda: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/1654
Description
Summary:The purpose of this paper is to analyze the representation of America as seen by a European in Kubrick’s Lolita. The movie is understood as a fictionalized travelogue where Humbert Humbert is the great organizer whose point of view channels the representation of America and determines the way actors incarnate characters. Despite claims that the movie does not render visually the travels of Humbert and Lolita through the United States, Kubrick anchors his fiction in a determinate setting. The three levels of American space (poetic, realist, and metafictional) help us to understand Humbert’s ironic stance on American culture and his feeling of estrangement in a sex-crazed America.
ISSN:2108-6559