Today, the word ‘Lolita’ has expanded to a myriad of connotations-none flattering to the human race: it is the title of a notorious novel (some think it the greatest novel of the twentieth century) it passes as a pseudo-literary term in academia it has become the source of an endless list of mostly sordid films and it is a pop-term exploitative of pornography in video and internet sources. Though the book was thought scandalous, it catapulted its author to fame and fortune, and soon attracted the attentions of Stanley Kubrick, who brought it to the screen in 1962. The word was coined soon after an obscure literature professor, Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian émigré, published a novel, in 1955, descriptive of the obsessions of a middle-aged man for a twelve-year-old girl. The Amy Fisher story spawned several TV and film versions, while many young Hollywood actresses, from Shirley Temple and Deanna Durbin, to Brook Shields, Linda Blair, and Drew Barrymore (the list is long), have been relegated to this dubious category of stardom. Books have been written on the subject, and videos and films made. In more recent times, the scandal between President Clinton and one of his interns has brought about the same worn out eponym to Monica Liewinski. Unfortunately, life itself has furnished plenty of examples to establish this negative vocabulary: not very long ago, Amy Fisher, named the “Long Island Lolita”, was convicted for having shot the wife of Joey Buttafuoco, her older male friend, and spent seven years in prison. The word (often lower-cased to ‘lolita’) connotes badness for both sexes, but it is especially demeaning to women. ‘Lolita’, the now word, is a term used to describe a certain type of young woman-usually a teenage girl with precocious sexual drive that proves ruinous to the life of a sinful older man. ‘Lolita’ has become a recognizable word in the English language, having taken up a life of its own, with ever widening connotations and rarely if ever a reference to its literary progenitor.
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