Activities

Events that occur on a daily basis. Interactions that would be considered the norm and how they are able to shape our perception of the world and people. People come not only in all shapes and sizes but they are all unique in their own way. The impression we may have of a person also may determines how we may view race, religion and even ourselves. I will talk about something that has effected me and that has left a lasting effect on me.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Journal Entry Number 6: Lolita

Lolita is given great power as a nymphet and it just reinforced this article that I came across on Yahoo the other day. It was about young girls and the pressure they face in the technological society, such as Facebook, to look pretty.
The article actually continued to say how it was all about looking sexy and a lot of teens as well as tweens are fully aware of this. Throughout the novel Lolita is fully aware of how she affects Humbert and she tries to utilize that to get what she wants. For her childhood to consist of that is very horrific. Despite the pros and puns, childhood should not be smeared with sexuality.
Going back to the article that I just mentioned looking pretty for these young girls consist of awkward poses and scanty clothy. Young girls that have not fully developed are showing their cleavages and trying to attract any form of attention. Cyber stalkers are having a field day. My question at this point, would Lolita have been more vulnerable in this high geared technological society versus the fifties?
They are many issues that creep into the mind. I am not saying that technology is bad but its not just all flowery either. The fact that young girls cant go through the awkward phases of childhood is horrible and inadvertently a loss to our society.
There is so much eye candy for pedophiles on the internet. It makes the accessibility of vulnerable children quite easy. There are girls, on Facebook, that don't know who half their friends are and just want to add them because they want the attention.
With this article, there were many comments about the responsibility that parents have to protect their children and make sure that they are appropriate. To blame Facebook for the entire issue would be highly unfair.
I knew kids in high school that would actually drink and be encouraged by their parents. There parents didn't care to implement the drinking age and thought it was fully appropriate for the child to drink or get drunk. Some of my fellow classmates were alcholic as teens.
A lot of disturbing questions and yet no real answer.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Journal Entry No 5: "Lolita, My Mother-in-law, the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flint"

      Thoughts were spiraling in my head . I could  not contain them even if I wanted to. The essay, "Lolita, My Mother-in-law, the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flint" by Norman Podhoretz,  in itself was really interesting and I say this with the utmost sincerity. The author mentions his mother in law and her denial of the truth. He talks of her like a benign stranger with a distant aloofness. The fact that she denies the sinfulness in the Mid-west annoys the author who is a Native New Yorker. He mentions coming across this article about a pedophile and in the process ends up venting about his mother in law.
    Personally, I feel like denial is the best form of protection from the outside world. I live in Bensonhurst and growing up it was an Italian dominated neighborhood. At this point and time it's predominantly Asian and heavily diversified. Italians still live here and yet they are horrified with the change in the ethnicity in the neighborhood. I was walking on the sidewalk the other day and an Italian individual mumbles "I don't like change"  while looking dead at me. I presume he wanted a confrontation of some sort and I refuse to cave in to such patronizing conversation. My amazement was in the fact that he did not notice that the majority of people around him were not Italian. This kind of behavior, in New York, would be astonishing for some but it still does occur.
     The author mentions a book that was banned called the "Last Exit in Brooklyn" by Selby Jr. The fact that the book was banned made my mind question with all caps "WHY"! I was so curious that I had to stop reading the article and find the book. With the self imposed intermission, I ended up reading the short story "Tralala" that mentioned a gang rape of a prostitute with the frank clarity that was horrific. Yet, I wanted to understand, my questions were stark and demanded an answer. Common questions would be "Where is the mother of this minor?" "How did she come to be in such a predicament?" When Tralala is offered love she does not understand and just trashes the letter like the trashy lifestyle that she embraces.
        This scene was considered pornography and was an issue in a courtroom. There was  much outrage over the graphic undertones of the novel and local shop owners were taken to court for selling them. Today, Lindsay Lohans' mother considers it "classy" if her daughter poses nude for the Playboy magazine. Nude magazines are highly accessible and religions seems to have no influence. The costliness of maintaining censorship overrides the stance that certain local communities would like to take. The stance that needs money to stand on is that really a true outcry of morality? Shouldn't communities consider the protection that they wish to engulf their children in?
          The author is very contrite when he defends pornography with the defense that all books cause emotion and pornography should be considered another extension of that very emotion. He mentions that Nabokovs' wordplay has no regard for the reader which I do agree with. I found while reading "Lolita" the fact that I had to constantly flip pages annoying. The annotation made it seem like I was reading a textbook. I do concede that the prose and puns, once understood, were remarkable in understanding Humbert Humberts' character but the length of time that it took to read and decipher this puzzle of Lolita was quite lengthy and frustrating.
       Regardless, I have waded through the thorns of puns and prose of "Lolita" and  came to appreciate the love of words that Nabokov does convey. This is a book that I truly believe came into existence to quench his love of the interplay of words in a language.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Lolita Continued: Journal Entry No 4

  Lolita s mother dies at the end of Part 1. I found it interesting that  Lolita is not one bit afraid of Humberts Humberts attention. Rather she mentions the word incest and with much relish. She is well aware, even at the tender age of 12, how immoral the relationship is.
   Part two begins with the two of them on a journey across the states. I found it bizarre the merging of paternal love with that of being a nymphet lover. Humberts matter of persuasion can be anything from bribing her, threatening her (with the fearful abode), to even confusing her. Humbert is a character of mass contradictions. He claims that he wants to protect Lolita yet he is the biggest danger to her physical self.
  Even at the end when Lolita is pregnant with another mans child, Humbert desires her. This situation reminded me of a recent recovery of a victim of pedophilia, named Joyce Dugard. She was impelled to have two children with her abuser. Diane Sawyer did a special on her and was horrified when she calmly stated that her abuser was the  father or "Daddy" of her children.
   The lack of horror confounded Diane and I truly believe that is what horrifies society about Nabokov. Nabokov had the audacity to use the pedophiles viewpoint and present it to the public. Expectations from society would have been horror, disgust and indignation. The lack of that response from the author might have baffled certain people. The language, of the book, unique as it is in bringing beauty to the tale of pedophilia also backs the theory that not all pedophiles are victims of child abuse.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Lolita: Journal Entry No 3

     Lolita is a book that I find highly disturbing. I read this book initially in my Freshman year of college. I was horrified by the subject matter, that of pedophile, and lacked the eagerness to understand it.
      The fact that life has impelled Lolita to the forefront at this time in my life is highly symbolic for me. Even as a freshman in college, I could see the beauty of prose that Vladimir used in this book.
      Experiences make up the person and I am no different, yet this book brings up the question of pedophile and how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty and pedophile in one sentence would horrify many people but isn't that what Vladimir desired?  Normalcy is what we make it? "We" would be society, and Humbert Humbert shatters the box of that very "we". Vladimir would have found that amusing and probably did, the ripples in the pond that his book became.
   Since the mention of the book "Satanic Verses", I have been thinking of that book constantly. I even went so far as to go to the library to grab a copy. It is harder to fight with a quill, as one might know, yet the impact of words is inarguable. Knowledge does come at a price and innocence is never redeemable yet I have already paid that price.
    In my freshman year of college I was exposed to many subjects that to this day are considered taboo. Vladimir does question  how society can consider the vulnerability of young children. Did he have awareness in mind? The awareness of people, like Humbert Humbert, and what steps should be taken to avoid Lolita s' plight?
    I actually did research in reference to the background and found it funny how his wife Vera carried a gun to protect him. Vladimir never learned how to drive; his wife was his driver and bodyguard. The author was a masterpiece of contradictions. The prose and subject matter in the book Lolita is in itself a contradiction.