Epstein, ‘Lolita’ and a Culture of Disembodiment
Amid the cascading horrors of the Epstein files, we should not overlook several photographs of female bodies with lines from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Lolita” written on their flesh.
There are no faces in these photos, just anonymous flesh bearing excerpts from the famous opening passage, in which the protagonist, Humbert Humbert — a grown man who molests his young stepdaughter for years — muses with delectation on the girl’s various nicknames. (He prefers these to her real first name, Dolores, which means “pain” or “sorrow.” )
The disturbing photos remind us of Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophilic tendencies, of course, but they also communicate more than that. They rely on motifs that are entirely familiar — motifs underlying much of fashion and beauty culture. Like the legend at the bottom of a map, they provide a key to grasping vast swaths of a ghastly world.
In one of the photos, a young female throat and upper chest (with a hint of chin and mouth visible) bear the inscription “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.” Another photo shows an expanse of waist and lower hip (pants pushed down), with the phrase: “She was Lola in slacks.” Scrolling down an exposed spine, we read, “She was Dolly at school.” A fourth photo shows a bare, extended lower leg and (pedicured) foot reading: “She was Lo, plain Lo in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.” In the background of that photo, we see a well-worn copy of the novel.
These are staged images, the words carefully handwritten, perhaps in indelible marker. And the quotations seem deliberately placed, several referring to the body part where they appear: The line about “slacks” covers the waist; the one about a “sock” is written on a foot. Is this an inside joke? And if so, who is the presumed audience? Or could this be an attempt to elevate a crime into an act of literary appreciation — trying to soft-pedal abuse by lending it the patina of a secret book club?
The photos feel like messages passed between co-conspirators. It seems unlikely that the girl (or girls, it’s impossible to tell) on the bed is reading Nabokov. No, she is more text than reader. That book, we infer, is a winking missive between abusers, much as the young women were, their bodies the intermediaries, no more worthy of consideration than a blank sheet of paper, a product to label, an animal to brand. Unsettling as these images are, their basic concept is hardly new: What are models if not young women being used as blank slates, living billboards on which to write messages?