Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 64

Popular Culture Review

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identifies the film ’s inability to effectively represent “mental states” and the novel’s
symmetrical inability to represent “the obliteration between past and present” that film,
on the contrary, can accomplish so well (411). Contrarily, Panofsky tells us film can
convey psychological experiences and, moreover, that “it is the movies and only the
movies” that “do justice to that materialistic interpretation o f the universe which, wiiether
w e like it or not, pervades contemporary civilization” (260-263). Finally, Seymour
Chatman makes the useful distinction between discourse-time and story-time; he
concludes that novels describe whereas films depict^
For these reasons, McFarlane calls upon his readers to dispense with the fidelity question
altogether and to embrace, instead, a “N ew Agenda” premised on intertextuality (2330). See also Keith Cohen’s Film and Fiction: the Dynamics o f Exchange and Morris
Beja’s Film and Literature for alternatives to the fidelity paradigm.
See Harold Bloom ’s Vladmir Nabokov s Lolita: Modern Critical Interpretations^ Alfred
Appel’s Nabokov’s Dark Cinema^ and Michael Wood s The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov

and the Risks of Fiction.
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More traditional fidelity criticism, as characterized by McFarlane, can be found in
both academic and middle brow journals. Journals such as Cineaste. the New Republic,
Time, and the Literature/Film Quarterly, all exhibit the constitutive features o f fidelity
criticism: arguments for fidelity based upon a naturalized interpretation o f the novel
and a sacralization o f the fictional text. While point o f view and the subject o f language
remain inherently unassimilable to film, these journals concur, Lyne’s adaptation has
remained faithful to the spirit o f Nabokov’s novel. Ultimately, all o f these journals
applaud Lyne’s film for being “more faithful” to the novel tlian Stanley Kubrick’s
1962 adaptation, while conceding that, as Stanley Kauffmann writes, “Probably any
film must fail, because Lolita cannot truly exist outside the novel. Nabokov gives us
the chronicle o f Humbert’s perversion in coruscating prose; and that prose is where the
story lives, as porpoises live in the sea” (2). Such reviews echo not only McFarlane’s
discontents with the impressionistic and subjective nature o f fidelity criticism, but,
also, the generic distinctions adumbrated by Bluestone, Panofsky, and Chatman.
Esquire's Elizabeth Kaye, for example, writes that Lyne is “propelled by the panic and
bliss that accompany the bringing o f desire into being” (1). She characterizes his
commitment to “his Lolita'^ in terms that could just as easily apply to Humbert’s
commitment to Lolita— “intrepid or as quixotic or misguided”— while claiming,
simultaneously, that the project has been “albatross, privilege, [and] vindication” for
Lyne (6).
Similarly, Premiere s Rachel Abramowitz describes the action on the set as a repetition
o f the novel’s flirtations: “[Dominique] snaps a picture o f Lyne with a friend. She
drapes a plastic necklace around his neck. She teases him about his laughter. He turns
red and laughs some more. (When Irons arrived on the set after a month o f shooting, he
seemed miffed to find that Lyne had completely hijacked Swain’s affections)” (3).
Lyne’s critique is a but confused, since Kubrick’s film does not “remain true” or
“faithful” to Nabokov’s script. Rather, Kubrick’s adaptation o f Nabokov’s novel is
also an adaptation o f Nabokov’s script, which would have produced a film o f some
seven hours. Moreover, Lyne him self is not above soliciting the approval o f the Nabokov