Are We Happy Now?

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

(Lolita, Part I, by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955.)

I don’t think anyone realized how like Nabokov’s legendary Lolita Britney Spears would prove to be. We assumed she was too vapid and too innocent to inhabit the outlines of one of culture’s most compelling archetypes. Britney’s Lolita was a creation we assumed–a character Britney performed at the behest of stage parents and greedy managers, publicists, and record company executives rather than a reflection of her own desires. So when she beckoned all of us to peak at what was under her school girl skirt singing “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” culturally, we found ways to rationalize Britney’s clear flirtation with a Lolita-like sexuality through a mixture of America’s blind admiration for capitalism, third wave and sex positive feminism, and allowances typically made for teen culture phenoms (its temporary, she’ll grow out of it).

We have played Humbert Humbert to Britney’s Lolita–at first surprised by how easily she seduced us, we quickly returned to our familiar incurious life. But the less curious we became, the more Britney needed our attention. She needed to finally show us what was under that school girl skirt.

But just as Humbert Humbert’s Lolita is an idealized version of a girl named Dolores Haze, Britney was an idealized version of the real girl who grew up to disappoint us by marrying a loser and popping out a couple of babies:

“…and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt arm-pits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen,with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D. — and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.”

(Lolita, Part I, by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955.)

Britney doesn’t need our money, but she obviously needs help.

Similar Posts:

• The Last Thing Britney Spears Needs Is Dr. Phil
• Reno Baby! on the Ning blog
• Forget About The Elections: Spears Says Sayonara To K-Fed

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