Relationship, Identity and Mass Media: the Consumer Culture in Nabokov’s Lolita
Xi Nan

Abstract
Lolita, a novel of controversies since being published due to its erotic theme, actually reflected its writer Nabokov’s insightful observation on the consumer culture in 1950s America. In the novel, the relationship between Humbert Humbert and Lolita turned to be a business transaction; Humbert’s clothing consumption for Lolita was a process of refashioning her identity; the mass media such as advertisements and movies deluded Lolita. Both as European intellectual elite, through the protagonist Humbert Humbert’s narration, Nabokov satirized ironically the illusory and deceitful characteristics of commodities’ signified symbols and the whole system.

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