How <em>Lolita </em>Seduces Us All

Let us now reread the old texts, examining them with a cold eye to determine what they reveal about the #MeToo transgressions of the artistic past. Even the popular entertainments must be probed for common savagery. Molly Ringwald watched her film The Breakfast Club in the company of her young daughter and realized that one scene contains within it a suggestion of offscreen physical harassment. And just like that, the movie—the Citizen Kane of 1980s teen cinema—went whistling down the memory hole, a plaintive echo of its hit song fading to silence as it plummeted: “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”

Is nothing safe? Perhaps—and at Vegas odds—only can survive the new cultural revolution. No one will ever pick up that novel and issue a shocked report about its true contents; no feminist academic will make her reputation by revealing its oppressive nature. Its explicit subject is