The eclectic movie references in Lana Del Rey’s songs
Lana Del Rey owes a lot of her imagery to books, poetry, and films. Despite those obvious influences, it is the realm of cinema that largely informs not only Del Rey’s creative direction but her sound, which itself has often comprised of sweeping, cinematic epics like ‘Born To Die’ and ‘Young and Beautiful’.
Hollywood is a fitting inspiration for Del Rey, home to the dreams and tragic starlets that preoccupy her songwriting. Sometimes her ties to movies are mostly aesthetic associations – like the dark look at sexuality in American Beauty, for example. But her consistently frank look at relationships with age gaps stem directly from the seedy inspiration of Lolita.
Adrian Lyne’s 1997 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel bought a lot of the aesthetic tokens of the novel to life, some 35 years after the iconic Stanley Kubrick attempted to take the story to the big screen. We see Lolita quickly become infatuated with typical American consumerist objects like magazines and chewing gum. The heart-shaped sunglasses she wears also feature on Del Rey’s unreleased ‘Every Man Gets His Wish’ with the line: “He loves my heart shaped sunglasses / He loves the heart shape my ass is.”
On Born To Die: The Paradise Edition, Del Rey nods to the character’s loss of innocence in the aptly titled ‘Lolita’ as she sings: “No more skipping rope / Skipping heartbeats with the boys downtown”. The preoccupation with Lolita has drawn criticism, but her lyrics never veer into glamorising warped power dynamics but nod to the misery they create.
This is done masterfully on ‘Off To The Races’, as Del Rey sings: “Light of my life, fire of my loins / Be a good baby, do what I want”. Not only is it a direct Nabokov quote from the novel, but examines the controlling nature of the paedophilic relationship that a child wouldn’t be able to grasp in the thralls of manipulative attention, as she sings: “My old man is a bad man, but I can’t deny the way he holds my hand”.
Lolita is the most pronounced reference across her work and, indeed, her ever-changing Americana aesthetic. But it’s not the only movie to make its way into her lyrics. ‘Body Electric’ references Gentleman Prefer Blondes, where the singer declares Marilyn Monroe her mother and nods to the 1950s work she starred in with: “Diamonds are my bestest friend”. The song’s accompanying video, Tropico, also heavily features Monroe and John Wayne.
Del Rey loves cinema so much that in 2012 after the landmark success of Born To Die, she told Vulture: “Hopefully, I will branch into film work and stay there. That will be my happy place. I’d like to stay in one place for a long time”.
Whether it be in her ‘Ride’ monologue that referenced A Streetcar Named Desire or just the embrace of Old Hollywood’s opulence and tragedy, movies serve as an enduring inspiration for the baroque-pop poet.
