Abhiroop Das
Created by Julia May Jonas and based on her eponymous novel, Netflix’s ‘Vladimir’ steps into campus life from the perspective of professors, specifically M. As she juggles writer’s block, a scandal accusing her husband of sexual misconduct, and a crippling fear of getting older, M realizes that she has lost the Dionysian spirit that once guided her through life and fiction. However, the arrival of Vladimir Vladinski, a younger, charming writer-turned-professor, pours new hope into her dull life. Vladimir, as it turns out, is married and a father, but that hardly puts a dent in M’s growing obsession with the hottest man in town. As days turn into weeks, her attraction only grows stronger, but so does the mystery surrounding Vladimir. While he feels perfect from a distance, a closer look reveals a level of interiority that shocks M, for better or for worse.
Vladimir is a Modern-Day Spin on the Archetype of Attractive Middle Aged Writers
Vladimir Vladinski is a fictional character specifically conceptualized by Julia May Jonas as a crystallization of several projections and fantasies emerging from various cultural spheres. As the centerpiece of her novel, ‘Vladimir,’ he most directly calls back to the archetype of a straight, middle-aged writer, which Jonas has a very distinct perspective on. In a conversation with Another Magazine, she described them as “Writers who, in general, I feel are probably good, decent people,” whom she herself fantasizes about.
While she acknowledged that to be unfair to them, she also noted that it is common for people to romanticize, or form parasocial relationships with figures of notoriety, and writers, artists, or actors just so happen to fall into that category more often than not. Jonas’ approach to desire and fantasy finds its way into her storytelling through the character of M, our protagonist, also known as the narrator in the book. Since Jonas wrote the novel from the narrator’s point of view, for her, Vladimir emerged as a cipher to pour her all into.
Vladimir Does Not Share a Biographical Resemblance to the Author Vladimir Nabokov
From the very start, Vladimir draws his strongest parallels to Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-American novelist, poet, and professor who is famous for penning works such as ‘Lolita,’ ‘Pale Fire,’ and ‘Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.’ In a conversation with Netflix, Jonas has herself acknowledged the similarities and states that the show’s title, ‘Vladimir,’ is a subversion of ‘Lolita,’ amongst other “novels that name themselves after the young woman who the man is obsessed with, whether it’s Clarissa or Lolita or Pamela.” By framing Vladimir as her work’s primary fascination, Jonas “wanted to flip the script” and present the narrative from a woman’s perspective.
The similarities between Vladimir on screen and Vladimir Nabokov do not just end there, as they are both experimental novelists from Russia who become professors in America. Nabokov was born in Imperial Russia, but had to flee to the city of Crimea during the October Revolution in 1917. Two years later, his family moved further west — during which time he studied at the University of Cambridge in England — before settling in Berlin in 1922. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian before taking the English language for a spin, starting with ‘The Real Life of Sebastian Knight’ in 1941. Renowned for his mastery of prose and narrative techniques, Nabokov quickly rose to prominence as one of America’s best literary stylists and penned several classics over his lifetime.
Notably, Nabokov was also a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959, where he served as an influence to famous writers such as Thomas Pynchon. While many of these details do resemble how Vladimir is portrayed in the show, the similarities are largely superficial. From what we know, ‘Negligible Generalities’ is Vladimir’s only novel, and the show makes no mention of him writing in the Russian language prior to this book’s publication. Furthermore, none of M’s comments seem to indicate that ‘Negligible Generalities’ is a work of prose experimentation, which is what Nabokov is perhaps most renowned for. As such, while ‘Vladimir’ may have referenced Nabokov at several points, most of Vladimir’s characterization likely originates from the mind of Jonas herself.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Vladimir Based on a True Story?
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