Steve Martin wrote the short story «Lolita at Fifty», included in his collection Pure Drivel of 1999, which is a gently humorous look at how Dolores Haze’s life might have turned out. She has gone through many husbands. Richard Corliss writes that: «In six pages Martin deftly sketches a woman who has known and used her allure for so long—ever since she was 11 and met Humbert Humbert—that it has become her career.»
Emily Prager states in the foreword to her novel Roger Fishbite that she wrote it mainly as a literary parody of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, partly as a «reply both to the book and to the icon that the character Lolita has become». Prager’s novel, set in the 1990s, is narrated by the Lolita character, thirteen-year-old Lucky Lady Linderhoff.
References in media
Books
The Bookshop (1978) is a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, whose heroine’s downfall is precipitated in part by stocking copies of Lolita.
In the novel Welcome to the N.H.K. (2002) by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, chapter 5 is titled «A Humbert Humbert for the Twenty-First Century» wherein the protagonist, Tatsuhiro Satō, becomes obsessed with online child pornography.
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003) is a memoir about teaching government-banned Western literary classics to women in the world of an Islamic Iran, which author Azar Nafisi describes as dominated in the 1980s by fundamentalist «morality squads». Stories about the lives of her book club members are interspersed with critical commentary on Lolita and three other Western novels. Lolita in particular is dubbed the ultimate «forbidden» novel and becomes a metaphor for life in Iran. Although Nafisi states that the metaphor is not allegorical (p. 35), she does want to draw parallels between «victim and jailer» (p. 37). She implies that, like the principal character in Lolita, the regime in Iran imposes their «dream upon our reality, turning us into his figments of imagination». In both cases, the protagonist commits the «crime of solipsizing another person’s life». February 2011 saw the premiere of a concert performance of an opera based on Reading Lolita in Tehran at the University of Maryland School of Music with music by doctoral student Elisabeth Mehl Greene and a libretto co-written by Iranian-American poet Mitra Motlagh. Azar Nafisi was closely involved in the development of the project and participated in an audience Q&A session after the premiere.
My Dark Vanessa is Kate Elizabeth Russell’s 2020 debut novel. The protagonist in the novel, Vanessa, receives a copy of Lolita from her English teacher, who then sexually abuses her. The dedication page of My Dark Vanessa reads: «To the real-life Dolores Hazes and Vanessa Wyes whose stories have not yet been heard, believed, or understood», citing the victim of Lolita. My Dark Vanessa has been compared to Lolita, but as told from the victim’s perspective.
Film
In «The Missing Page», one of the most popular episodes (from 1960) of the British sitcom Hancock’s Half Hour, Tony Hancock has read virtually every book in the library except Lolita, which is always out on loan. He repeatedly asks if it has been returned. When it is eventually returned, there is a commotion amongst the library users who all want the book. This specific incident in the episode is discussed in a 2003 article on the decline of the use of public libraries in Britain by G. K. Peatling.
In the movie Irma la Douce (1963), perky Parisian streetwalker Irma has a co-worker named Lolita, who is middle-aged.
In the movie Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), Rita Khanna (Nanda) reads Lolita in the houseboat at the time of teaching Hindi to Raja (Shashi Kapoor).
In the Woody Allen film Manhattan (1979), when Mary (Diane Keaton) discovers Isaac Davis (Allen) is dating a 17-year-old (Mariel Hemingway), she says, «Somewhere Nabokov is smiling.» Alan A. Stone speculates that Lolita had inspired Manhattan. Graham Vickers describes the female lead in Allen’s movie as «a Lolita that is allowed to express her own point of view» and emerges from the relationship «graceful, generous, and optimistic».
Tracy Lemaster sees many parallels between Lolita and the 1999 film American Beauty, including their references to rose petals and sports, arguing that Beauty’s cheerleading scene is directly derived from the tennis scene in Lolita.
In the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, Bill Murray’s character comes across an overtly sexualized girl named Lolita. Although Murray’s character says it is an «interesting choice of name», Roger Ebert notes that «Neither daughter nor mother seems to know that the name Lolita has literary associations.»
Popular music
«Moi… Lolita» (English: «Me… Lolita») is the debut single of the French singer Alizée, which was released on her debut album Gourmandises (2000) when she was 15.
Spanish-born Mexican singer Belinda Peregrín made a song for her third studio album Carpe Diem titled «Lolita» inspired by the book. She made a reference saying «sin duda Nabokov, fue el que me escribio pero en realidad fui yo que lo invento» (English: «without a doubt Nabokov, was the one who wrote about me but in reality I’m the one who invented it»).
In The Police song «Don’t Stand So Close to Me», about a schoolgirl’s crush on her teacher, the final verse states, «It’s no use, he sees her/ he starts to shake and cough / just like the old man in / that book by Nabokov.»
In the title song of her mainstream debut album, One of the Boys, Katy Perry says that she «studied Lolita religiously», and the cover-shot of the album references Lolita’s appearance in the earlier Stanley Kubrick film. She identifies with the character, named a guitar of hers «Lolita», and had her fashion sense at a young age influenced by Swain’s outfits in the later Adrian Lynne film. Charles A. Hohman from PopMatters noted that one summer, the tomboy lifestyle just didn’t hold her interest, so she started ‘studying Lolita religiously’ and noticing guys noticing her.
Rolling Stone has noted that Lana Del Rey’s 2012 album Born to Die has «loads of Lolita references», and it has a bonus track entitled «Lolita». She has herself described the album’s persona to a reviewer from The New Yorker as a combination of a «gangster Nancy Sinatra» and «Lolita lost in the hood». The reviewer notes that «her invocations of Sinatra and Lolita are entirely appropriate to the sumptuous backing tracks» and that one of the album’s singles, «Off to the Races», repeatedly quotes from the novel’s opening sentence: «light of my life, fire of my loins».
