Lolita, Literature and Cancel Culture

I'm a self-certified member of the planner community, and while researching an incident involving a prominent member in the community I came across an article describing how singer Madison Beer had been "cancelled", due to her opinions on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. 

For people who haven't heard of/read the novel, Lolita recounts the story of pedophile Humber Humbert and his obsession with prepubescent girls, or "nymphets" as he calls them. When in a relationship with a woman his own age, he becomes infatuated with her pre-pubescent daughter Delores, aka Lolita, and he forces himself into a sexual relationship with the child. There is no sugar coating the topic of the novel, it's about pedophilia and rape, end of. 

The reason that people took to social media in an attempt to "cancel" the singer, was because of her feelings towards the book. Describing the piece as one of her favorite texts, she said that she "romanticizes" the novel, causing a plethora of shouts, screams and opinions from people hell-bent on destroying the woman's career with a few tweets. 

Personally, I love Lolita. It was one of the first texts I studied whilst at university, and I spent hours ploughing through it in bed when the combination of Canada's ridiculous winter temperatures and the fact that my room had no heat was enough to shove me under the covers, whenever I wasn't traipsing across the city to work. It's a seminal piece, provocative and intense and it's meant to cause a reaction. Although I'm pretty sure Nabokov didn't bank on it being a catalyst for a social media campaign. 

Just to be clear, in case anyone was wondering, I obviously do not support pedophilia. There's nothing else that needs to be said about this, but it's not just the controversial subject matter than makes Lolita such a beautiful piece. It's stunningly written, bold, brave and shows Nabokov's daring nature as a writer. One of my favourite books is American Psycho, arguably one of the most controversial texts of the nineties, but my love for Bret Easton Ellis' book has nothing to do with my supporting the gruesome deplorable behaviours the protagonist Patrick Batement engages in, it's because it's a really good book. 

They say that no publicity is bad publicity, and this can mean the same for literature. Just because the subject matter of a text makes the reader uncomfortable, doesn't make it bad. If anything, it's a good thing. We witness events every single day that makes us uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean that we have to water-down literature, particularly literature written in 1953, just because the subject matter is taboo. Controversial and shocking content has amassed millions in the film industry, and few would make a bid to "cancel" anyone if they enjoyed films that affected them in a similar way to Lolita, so why should literature be any different?

Although, the whole thing where brands use sexually provocative names to sell their products (I'm looking at you Kat Von D. and your Lolita lip colour) is lazy, unimaginative and just plain boring at this point. That really can be "cancelled". 

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