Beyond Text: short research pieces, example 3

'Lolita –Star as intertextual symbol'
Stephen C. Kenyon, Glyndwr University

“What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet...”

The opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1967) ushers in evocations of Classical Hollywood, a smoothly flowing rhythm of fascination and seduction, disembodied forms caressing and permitting to be caressed, beckoning in a stylistic counterpoint of obsession, fetish and containment.



What follows, is Quilty: An ephemeral, implacable object, as disembodied as the severed personas of the opening sequence. Quilty, as Sellers, as Spartacus, and back again, a textual interface and intertextual star persona;

“...I’m Spartacus. Have you come to free the slaves or something?”

These first utterances would seem to provoke an initial sense of intertextual familiarity and reassurance for the viewer. Yet this image, of a drunken ghost manifesting from underneath a burial shroud, simultaneously places Kubrick’s previous film (Spartacus) to the forefront of consciousness and extricates it via the ridiculous nature of its arrival. The sheet wearing decadent operates as a visual throwback to a work that was, on a production and artistic level, an unsatisfactory exploration for the director. The character as image is operating as an intertextual inversion of itself, undermining the value of previous expression.

“Roman ping, you’re supposed to say roman pong.”

The return of serve is not answered by a corresponding rally, at least not by Quilty, this is a game played by Sellers as Star performer; the robed jester, the backwoods banjo playing letter reader, the boxer, the pianist, and finally, behind a bullet ridden painting the chameleon meets his demise, transferring wholly to image, to artefact.



A Kubruckian muse interlinking the star laden, top-heavy Kirk Douglas extravaganza of Spartacus, the reeling and chaotic opening sequences of Lolita, and projecting ahead to the multi-faceted black comedy performance of Dr Strangelove (1964), Sellers’ fractured, kaleidoscopic performance operates not simply as a “twofold nymphet”, but as a cohesive triumvirate meta-textual device between the three films.



Text by Stephen C. Kenyon, Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, Glyndwr University, August 2010.