The contradictions regarding public morality in America have never been more obvious. Since the beginning of this year Americans have been absorbed by a heated debate over one of our greatest taboos: sex. Again our stubborn Puritan heritage has triggered questions about what can be seen, what can be heard and, in the parlance of the moment, what about the children? No, it's not Clinton; it's the release of Adrian Lyne's Lolita.

When in the mid-1950s Vladimir Nabokov wrote his sustained analysis of a middle-aged man's obsessive relationship with a "nymphet", a child of only twelve years old, it was rejected by four American publishers before first appearing in Paris under the Olympia Press imprint. Between 1955 and 1958, the British Embassy bitterly complained to French officials that too many copies of the novel were being smuggled into England, where it was banned until 1958. In Ireland, Nabokov's earlier 'Laughter in the Dark' and 'Lolita' were banned from 1950 and 1956 respectively. When it was published by Putnam's in the US in 1958 it enjoyed the better part of a year on the best-seller list.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that two of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, 'Lolita' and 'Death in Venice', deal with a middle- aged intellectual obsessed by very young beauty. Nabokov's novel is utterly unlike Mann's, except, in its deeply ironic and openly satirical qualities. Narrated by Humbert Humbert, first as a diary and then as an impassioned plea to the jury sitting in judgement, 'Lolita' is told exclusively from Humbert's perspective. As often in Nabokov's fiction, the reader must grapple with whatever reality may lie beyond or beneath an obviously self-interested account of a consummate solipcist.

When Stanley Kubrick made his black and white film version in 1962, starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, and Sue Lyons, he left Hollywood and America to do so. Although Nabokov's novel was, in fact, so successful that he was able to devote himself to writing full time when he so chose, the film raised new questions about the visual images America could tolerate.

Thirty-odd years on, Lyne could look at Lolita (I can't believe he ever read Nabokov's novel; more likely he pored over the York Notes) as a "property" to be re-made in a more tolerant age. Indeed, as a logical progression from Foxes (1980) and Flashdance (1983) to Nine and 1/2 Weeks (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Indecent Proposal (1993), Lolita must have looked daring, cutting-edge. And Lyne professed fidelity to the novel, saying he "decided to make a film that went by the book as closely as possible". He couldn't have been more misguided.

The film is so hopelessly literal, so one-dimensional, that it fails on every count. In a just world, the heirs of Nabokov could sue him for travesty, cinematic malfeasance or bad taste. Here's Humbert portrayed with all the sympathy that befits a tragic figure like Oedipus and none of the folly of Nabokov's comic self-deceiver. Lyne may incorporate the rare detail from the novel —the pink sponge at a filling station — but he's stuck with his own clichés: the female form objectified in the dull glow of the refrigerator light (remember Kim Basinger in Nine and1/2 Weeks? And where's Meatloaf when we really need him?); wet clothing plastered against the body; the fatal attraction of lust and self-destruction. Lyne uses film as a fundamentally realistic medium to re-tell a novel intricately detached from reality. The non-realistic moments in his Lolita — anachronistic bug zappers from the 1940s, throbbing ceiling fans in slow motion — only call attention to Lyne's ineptitude.

The only good thing to be said of Lyne's Lolita is that it is an English teacher's dream. Students who simply want to watch the film will have no clue as to what the novel is actually about. They will have had the complexities of Nabokov's novel stripped away and find only a hollow shell, a work reduced the broadest outline of plot summary.

When no distributor would touch Lolita, the American release was delayed for months until Showtime, a premium movie channel whose new trademarked motto is "No Limits", agreed to broadcast it. And at the very last moment, an American distributor was found so that it might also be seen in theatres. Well, not all theatres; in fact, not many at all. In major cities, it could be found in select "art houses".

And why couldn't America just let the film fail on its own worthlessness? The answer lies in the fortunes of 'Father Ted'. 'Father Ted cannot be shown on American television — not even late night, not even cable, no how, no where, never. It would be like air dropping 'The Satanic Verses' in Farsi on downtown Teheran during Ramadan. On American commercial television, outside the realm of premium subscription channels, only brief and supposedly tasteful scenes of bare backsides are allowed after 10 p.m. Eastern Time/9 p.m. Central Time. No frontal nudity unless, as now happens all day, every day, it is pixilated. George Carlin's celebrated seven forbidden words still are never heard, but they are often beeped out. Broadcasts of 'The Jerry Springer Show' is often little more than a series of sustained beeps and imposed mosiacs.

For films, the near equivalent to a ban is the NC-17 rating, but more dangerous is the wrath of well-organized groups that can assure that movie theatres will show a given film at their extreme peril. Such was the case in the mid-1980s when the theatre and its owner in Kansas City showing Jean-Luc Goddard's Hail Mary was threatened with unspecified violence. For Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988 theatre patrons had to run a gauntlet of the angry faithful. No amount of violence seems over the top, but religion and pedophilia remain beyond the pale. Stephen Schiff, who was apparently paid for his wretched screenplay, tried to foist a moralistic reading on Lolita by saying that he was "trying to tell a romantic story of someone who finally sees that he needs to seek redemption", but no one was buying that.

Father Ted commits the unforgivable sin of viewing religion from a comic perspective. Americans are perfectly willing to accept the fact that priests might be alcoholics, but only if this is recognised as a tragic situation. We could deal with a member of the clergy who was involved in financial irregularities, but only if he was now in therapy. The notion that a priest might be plain stupid is, however, entirely unacceptable. More to the point: priests could never be heard to say "feck" or "shite", even though most Americans have never heard those words. I hasten to add that Canadians, in a bizarre twist, ARE allowed to watch Father Ted. Oddly, Kubrick's Lolita is widely available on video and is often shown on cable channels at all hours of the day and night.

In his essay "On a Book Called Lolita", Nabokov suggested how his novel differs from pornography: "Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés. Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust. The novel must consist of an alternation of sexual scenes. The passages in between must be reduced to sutures of sense, logical bridges of the simplest design, brief expositions and explanations...." Substitute "Adrian Lynn's Lolita" for "pornographic novels" and you'll have a cogent analysis of the film.

As for American film distribution and television broadcasts, one only needs to think of the four and a half hours of Grand Jury testimony that was carried into our homes under the aegis of "news" to see a very confused system rife with contradictions.

FW 34