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Incest is a popular topic in English erotic fiction; there are entire collections and websites devoted solely to this genre, with an entire genre of pornographic pulp fiction known as "incest novels." This is probably because, as with many other fetishes, the taboo nature of the act adds to the titillation. With the advent of the Internet, even more of this type of fiction is available.
Besides this, incest is sometimes mentioned or described in mainstream, non-erotic fiction. Connotations can be negative, positive, or neutral.
- 1 Literature
- 2 Comic books
- 3 Japanese manga and anime
- 4 Film
- 5 Television
- 6 Popular music
- 7 Video games
- 8 Incest as a metaphor
- 9 See also
- 10 References
Incestuous families in fiction[edit]
- The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), and Juliette (1797) by the Marquis de Sade are all replete with detailed descriptions of incest.
- Samuel R. Delany's novel Hogg, written in 1969, is also replete with detailed descriptions of incest.
- In Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) there are several cases of sex between more or less close relatives, including that which occurs between a nephew and aunt. Other works of literature show consequences not so grave, such as *Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, in which fraternal twins share a cathartic sexual experience.
- Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada, or--Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) deals very heavily with the incestuous relationships in the intricate family tree of the main character Van Veen. There are explicit moments of sexual relations primarily between Van and his sister, Ada, as well as between Ada and her younger sister, Lucette. Nabokov does not necessarily deal with any complexities or consequences, social or otherwise, which may be inherent to incestuous relationships—outside of the strictly practical concerns of having to hide the taboo relationships from others. Incest in Ada seems mainly to be a sexual manifestation of the characters' intellectual incestuousness, and operates on a similar plane as do other instances of "sexual transgression" in Nabokov's novels of this period, such as pedophilia in Lolita and homosexuality in Pale Fire.
- In Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love (1973), Lazarus Long uses genetic arguments to initially dissuade a brother and sister he has adopted from sexual experimentation with each other. However, he later arranges for them to be married, having discovered that they (in an extremely rare but scientifically possible circumstance) are not brother and sister on a genetic level; he also consummates his strong sexual attraction to his own mother, Maureen Johnson, whom he goes back in time to see again. Long is himself cloned into two female forms, Lorelei Lee and Lapis Lazuli, who are raised as his daughters and are later said to have seduced him.
- In the last book published before Heinlein's death, To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), Maureen Johnson, encourages her husband (Brian Johnson) to sleep with their teen daughter, Nancy, and is with him when he actually does so. Maureen later discovers that her two youngest children are engaged in heterosexual incest, which bothers her primarily in that the sister will not let her brother see other women.
- Same-sex incest is the one of central focuses of the 1975 French novel Gemini (published in French as Les Meteors) by Michel Tournier. In it twins Jean and Paul (known concomitantly as Jean-Paul) have been sexually bounded since childhood. This bound is threatened when Jean falls in love with a woman while at university. The novel follows Paul's erotic obsession with his twin and his attempts to rectify their intimate union as he follows Jean across the world. There is also a rather provocative scene in the novel where the twins' homosexual uncle Alexandre finds himself sexually attracted to Jean (whom he is unaware is his nephew). He has a voyeuristic moment where he watches his twin nephews in engaging in sex behind a sand dune on a beach.
- Incest and inbreeding is a frequent theme in the works of V. C. Andrews. In her Dollanganger series of novels, starting with the book Flowers in the Attic, the main character, Cathy Dollanganger, develops an incestuous relationship with her older brother, Chris, after being locked up in the attic for over three years, even living with him as his wife. In the following sequels, they find out that their parents were half-uncle and niece (as well as half-siblings). Their grandfather was obsessed with his mother, stepmother, and daughter. The Cutler series, starting with the book Dawn (1990), the main character, Dawn, who was abducted at birth, discovers that her new boyfriend is really her brother. Her brother obsesses over her and at one point rapes her. Elsewhere in the series, it is revealed that Dawn's father is really her half-brother. Her grandfather is really her biological father and that the woman she had believed to be her grandmother was raped as a teenager by her own father, resulting in the birth of a child. She later marries her adopted brother. The Casteel series' main character, Heaven, falls in love with her uncle and has a daughter with him. The Landry series' main character, Ruby, finds out that her first boyfriend is really her half-brother and even marries him in one of the sequels. In the Logan series, the main character, Melody, discovers that her boyfriend (who is a distant cousin) was obsessed with his twin sister.
- In Lady of Fortune (1984) by Graham Masterton, Effie Watson, the titular heroine, gives birth to a daughter fathered by her nephew Alisdair.
- Anne Rice's Mayfair trilogy (1990–94) deals with a family of witches who are heavily inbred. One character fathers children with his sister, daughter, and granddaughter.
- Incest is detailed in Linda Howard's novel, Shades of Twilight (1996). It deals with the incestuous feelings the main character, Roanna, has for her second cousin, Webb, who is married to another cousin, Jessie. It is revealed that Jessie had a secret incestuous affair with her father and became pregnant by him, which led to her grandmother accidentally killing her and Webb leaving the family when he is blamed for her death. At the end of the book, when the secrets of Jessie's death are cleared, Webb professes his love for Roanna and marries her after she becomes pregnant with his child.
- Incest plays an influential role in George R. R. Martin's bestselling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (from 1996). In the series, incest is illegal and seen as abnormal; however, children born from incestuous parents (brother and sister, father and daughter) are shown to be healthy and no different from children born from non-incestuous parents, although one of them is shown to be extremely sadistic and psychologically unstable. Two of the main characters, the queen Cersei Lannister and her twin brother Jaime Lannister, practice incest in secret, which leads to a major war across the land when it is discovered that their illegitimate children (not the King's) have inherited the throne. Their public denials of the incest and their secret love for each other causes a great deal of tension and conflict in the series. The royal house of Targaryen was known to have practiced the custom of sibling incest and often polygamy for hundreds of years. The first Targaryen king, Aegon, wed both of his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys. Baelor I, a.k.a. Baelor the Blessed, imprisoned his three sisters (who were also his wives) in the Maidenvault so as not to be tempted by their beauty. There may be evidence of genetic problems due to inbreeding in the Targaryen family, as some of them, such as Aerion Brightflame and Aerys II, were insane. King Jahaerys II once famously stated that the gods flip a coin when a Targaryen is born to determine his or her fate: on one side lies greatness, the other madness. Theon Greyjoy also unwittingly makes sexual advances upon his sister, Asha, after meeting her for the first time in many years. Upon arriving at their father's castle, Asha's identity is revealed, and Asha, among others, proceed to mock Theon for his actions. The character of Craster marries his daughters and granddaughters.
- Incest is a central theme in Mario Puzo's The Family (2001).
- Incest is a theme included in Alayne Whitesnow's vampire series 'Memento Mori', where the royal family of the Jacques inbred to keep the line pure. It is also implied that the Tepes family inbred as to not dilute the Slayer's blood. Two main characters, Krissy and Robb Everheart, have been carrying an incestuous relationship since the fall of the Petrova kings.
Sibling incest in fiction[edit]
Fantasy fiction[edit]
- In Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (1813–83), the hero Siegfried is the son of the incestuous relationship between Siegmund and Sieglinde.
- P. C. Hodgell's God Stalker Chronicles (from 1982) feature a group of races tied together by religion. The Highborn race was trying to bred the "Tyr-Ridan", three people representing the three faces of their god, to full fill a prophecy that the Tyr-Ridan would defeat Perimal Darkling, their god's enemy. The breeding project involved brother-sister and other incestuous matings.
- In The Mists of Avalon (1983) by Marion Zimmer Bradley, half siblings Arthur and Morgaine engage in sexual intercourse during a religious ritual and then again the morning afterwards, which leads to the conception of Mordred. After Morgaine finds out that they are siblings, she is repulsed and immediately draws away from him. However, Arthur continues to have feelings for Morgaine. Arthur and Morgaine's mother Igraine notices that during Arthur's wedding ceremony to Gwenhwyfar, that Gwenhwyfar is looking at Lancelet while Arthur is looking at Morgaine. Gwenhwyfar is also raped at one point by a man who claimed to have the same father as her. Morgaine has an unrequited love for Lancelet, her half-first cousin (their mothers are half-sisters) and the two share an intimate moment. Morgaine also has an affair with her stepson Accolon and is almost raped by Accolon's older brother. It is also strongly implied that Lancelet harbors homosexual feelings for Arthur, which he believes may be the reason for his attraction to Arthur's wife. The three of them even share an intimate moment.
- The historical fantasy novel Teito Monogatari (1985–89) by Hiroshi Aramata features a subplot involving incest. The minister of finance copulates with his sister, producing a daughter; an act which foils the efforts of the protagonist Yasunori Kato.
- In the Elenium trilogy (1989–92) by David Eddings, Queen Ehlana's widowed father Aldreas carried on an incestuous affair with his sister, Princess Arissa. She had initially seduced him in their youth with the intent of getting him to marry her, as one of the advisors had found an obscure law which would permit it, but was thwarted by the hero's father. The affair resumed after the death of Ehlana's mother and continued until the King's death, at which time Arissa was confined to a convent.
- In Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana (1990), a consensual, sexual relationship is strongly hinted between Dianora and her brother, Baerd.
- In the novel Silverhand (1996) by Morgan Llywelyn and Michael Scott, the main antagonists Sarel and Lares, who are twins, facilitate their magic through an incestuous relationship.
- In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (from 1996), Queen Cersei and her twin brother, Jaime, have been in love with each other since they were young and have been having an affair since then. It is further revealed that Cersei's three children were fathered by Jaime as a result of their affair. This remains unknown to the King. Her justification lay with the fact they shared a womb, stating that they were one person split into two. Also in that saga, the ancient Targaryen family is known to marry their children between themselves in order for "blood- purity" to prevail, an example of this is the marriage of Aegon the Conqueror to his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys.
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Children of Húrin (2007), the characters Túrin and Nienor, who are brother and sister, unwittingly enter into an incestuous marriage when they meet for the first time while Nienor is suffering from amnesia. This is a development of the story explored more briefly in Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and Book of Lost Tales, all of which included versions of the tale.
- In Alayne Whitesnow's book series 'Memento Mori', twin vampires Robb and Krissy Everheart have an incestuous relationship which they have carried since before they were turned, Phillippe and Elizabeth Jacque, siblings and French royalty, were married before they were turned, but post-vampirism, Elizabeth broke the union and ran away with Brie, their sister. It is implied that Elizabeth and Brie explored each other sexually at one point during their travels.
- A character in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Last Question" (1956) states that he is the son of siblings.
- Incest plays a central role in Theodore Sturgeon's short story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" (1967), in which the main character visits a world in which it is actively encouraged, and which is a utopia as a result. Sturgeon's afterword in Dangerous Visions, where it was originally published, indicates that he is not arguing for incest per se, merely demonstrating the manner in which a culture absorbs certain 'truths' without questioning them.
- Incest also appears in the writings of two major authors of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert A. Heinlein. Le Guin's short story "Nine Lives" (1969) features ten clones (five male, five female) of the same person, whose intimate relationship includes incest. Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) contains a story of two siblings who mate, despite a taboo against it.
- In Philip K. Dick's novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), Inspector McNulty is in a sexual relationship with his sister.
- Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (1976) sees the marriage of fraternal twins Ghanima and Leto II in the closing chapter of the book. However, the marriage is non-sexual and merely a means to cement the imperial throne solely under the Atreides name. All children born under this marriage are secretly those of Ghanima and the House Corrino prince Farad'n.
- In Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant (from 1983), The main character's sister has sex with him when he is 15 and she is 12.
- In George Lucas' highly successful Star Wars series of films and books, the characters of Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (portrayed by Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia Organa (portrayed by Carrie Fisher) are twin brother and sister, though this is not made known until the final film, Return Of The Jedi (Episode VI). Before their relationship is known (they are the children of fallen Jedi Knight Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker and Padme Naberrie Amidala), there is an implied attraction between the two and there are several brief on-screen kisses. The attraction is most noticeable in the first Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster. However, there is no sex between Luke and Leia, and even before their relationship is revealed in Return of the Jedi, Leia turns her attention toward (and later eventually marries) smuggler-turned-Rebel Captain Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.
Historic fiction[edit]
- Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner (1951) explores the spiritual consequences of unintentional incest. His short story "The Blood of the Walsungs" also depicts brother-sister incest, drawing explicitly on Wagner's Siegmund and Sieglinde.
- Carolyn Slaughter's 1976 novel The Story of the Weasel (also known as Relations in the US) concerns an incestuous relationship between the protagonist, Cathy, and her older brother Christopher, during the 1880s.
- The novel Aztec (1980) by Gary Jennings contains a subplot that portrays the sexual relationship between the main character Mixtli and his older sister Tzitzitlini, which they manage to keep secret from their parents and the rest of their society- that would have punished them with death- for years, since their late childhood until their adolescence, when circumstances separate them and cause her death. He pines for her for many years afterwards. He later fathers a daughter with his wife and, after the deaths of both his wife and child, he reveals during sexual intercourse with the character Malinche, that his attraction to her was caused by her physical resemblance to his own late daughter, who would have been the same age as Malinche at that point of the story.
- In two books of Philippa Gregory's Wideacre Trilogy, Wideacre (1987) and The Favored Child (1989), the central female character of "Wideacre", Beatrice, commits incest with her brother, Harry, and her two children, Julia and Richard, were fathered by Harry. In The Favored Child, Richard rapes Julia and forces her to marry him when she discovers that she is pregnant with his child, Sarah (or Meridon). Philippa Gregory also insinuates incest between siblings in her novel The Other Boleyn Girl. It seems that George Boleyn has had some level of a sexual relationship with both of his sisters, Anne and Mary.
- At the end of A. S. Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia (1992), a Victorian naturalist—recently married into an aristocratic family—discovers the ongoing affair between his languid, alluring wife and her brother.
- Pauline Melville's The Ventriloquist's Tale (1997) explores the impact of European colonization on the Amerindians of Guyana through the affair of a pair of half-Scottish, half-Guyanese siblings at the time of a solar eclipse.
- Laura Wilson's novel A Little Death contains a brother and sister pairing ing which is an integral part of the novel's story and mystery.
- Incest also played a minor role in Stephanie Laurens' 12th Cynster novel The Truth About Love (2005), where the villainous Fritham siblings, Jordan and Eleanor, often tryst in Hellabore Hall's Garden of Night. They murder the heroine's mother Miribelle, purely because she heard and witnessed them in the Garden of Night (which was directly under the balcony of the Hall), and thus tried to prevent her daughter Jacqueline from ever consorting with them again. This creates a huge problem for Jordan, who had plotted to gain Hellabore Hall through a marriage with Jacqueline.
- Ken Follett's 1989 novel The Pillars of the Earth and the eventual mini-series with the same title both depict the incestuous relationship between Lady Regan and her son William Hamleigh.
- In Lia Cacciari's novel set in 12th century England, Hieros Gamos (Sacred Union) - a Confession (2013), the feud between a pair of siblings - a monk oblate and his elder sister, culminates in an incestuous union.
- Tracey Sinclair's novel Doll contains a troubled sibling relationship, as does Rosamund Chissick's Colorbook.
Contemporary fiction[edit]
- In books written as early as 1956, Robert Heinlein dealt with incest and the sexual nature of children.[1]
- Liza and Ludwig Pursewarden in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet (1957–60) are sister and brother. They have a long sexual relationship until she marries a man called David Mountolive.
- Doris Lessing's short story, "Each Other", in the anthology A Man and Two Women (Granada 1965) features the incestuous relationship between Fred and Freda, adult brother and sister and each in another relationship.
- In A Little Demonstration of Affection (1975) by Elizabeth Winthrop, teenage siblings Jenny and Charley struggle with their growing attraction to each other.
- In Ian McEwan's 1978 novel The Cement Garden, the tension between the protagonist Jack and his older sister Julie culminates in incest. Also, Donna Tartt's The Secret History contains incest between the twins Charles and Camilla, which is not revealed until the final chapters of the book.
- Paul Theroux's 1978 novel Picture Palace revolves around the incestuous love that the protagonist, Maude Pratt, has for her brother Orlando, without realizing that he is having an affair with their sister Phoebe.
- John Irving's 1981 novel The Hotel New Hampshire chronicles the lives of the Berry family. Two of the Berry siblings, John and Franny, share a closeness that develops into an incestuous encounter when they are adults.
- Teresa, the troubled protagonist of Alice Hoffman's White Horses (1982), idolizes her brother Silver, and only after several incestuous episodes and a lifetime of disappointment does she discover that all along she has only been in love with the man she thought he was.
- In Penelope Lively's 1987 novel Moon Tiger, the main character Claudia Hampton reveals to the reader that she had an incestuous relationship with her brother Gordon while both were in their late teens.
- Incest plays a minor role in Robert Cormier's 1988 novel Fade. The main character, a teenage boy named Paul Moreaux, has the ability to disappear or 'fade' from sight. He uses the 'fade' to spy on two new friends, twins Emerson and his sister Page Winslow, and is shocked to witness an incestuous encounter between the two.
- In Banana Yoshimoto's 1990 novel NP, there are present multiple incestuous relationships. The narrator and protagonist, Kazami, attempts to translate into Japanese a series of many stories written in English by the writer Sarao Takase, who commits suicide after finishing the ninety-eight story of his volume, after her boyfriend Shouji himself commits suicide for trying to translate the last story himself. Kazami meets the twins brother and sister Otohiko and Saki and their acquaintance Sui. Upon reaching the last story, Kazami discovers that Sui was actually Takase's daughter with a prostitute and he has sexual relations with her, thing which determines him to kill himself. Kazami also discovers that Sui has an incestuous relationship with her step-brother Otohiko, all the while finding Kazami herself irresistibly attracted to Sui.
- The Josephine Hart 1991 novel Damage (and 1992 Louis Malle film) has an implicit depiction of incest. The character Anna (portrayed by Juliette Binoche) alludes to having had an incestuous relationship with her brother, who commits suicide because of his desire for her.
- In James Ellroy's 1992 novel White Jazz, the main character David Klein has an incestuous relationship with his sister Meg.
- Helen Dunmore's A Spell of Winter (1995) centers around the story of orphans Catherine and Rob Allen, who grow up in the bleak, desolate environment of their grandfather's country manor and whose relationship eventually evolves into a sexual one.
- Carlos Ruiz Zafón's best-selling novel The Shadow of the Wind (2001) features main characters Julián Carax and Penélope Aldaya who are siblings and also lovers. After a sexual encounter it is revealed that Penelope produces a child later named David. She is left to die by her father and mother whilst giving birth to her son due to her parents disgust and shame.
- The intersex narrator of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002) traces his condition to a rare recessive gene which he inherited from his grandparents, a brother and sister who fled Greece for Detroit, Michigan when the Turkish army invaded in 1922. His parents had also been second cousins.
- In the 2007 Irish drama Single-Handed, the main protagonist unknowingly has incestuous relations with his half-sister.
- Jess C Scott's Wicked Lovely was banned by Amazon in December 2010[2] (Amazon approved a revised edition in 2011). The story features a brother and sister who look to themselves, and not society, to make sense of the sexual love they share.
- Diane Rinella's romance novel "Love's Forbidden Flower" (2012) follows the trials of two siblings who struggle with their emotions and society's biases. The book's cult following is prompting a sequel, "Time's Forbidden Flower" due out in 2013.
Non-consensual incest[edit]
- In Matthew Gregory Lewis's Gothic novel, The Monk published in 1796, the protagonist, Ambrosio, lusts after and eventually rapes the girl, Antonia, who he later discovers to be his sister.
- Judith Krantz's 1980 novel Princess Daisy contains some rather graphic scenes of a woman being raped by her half-brother.
- In E. Annie Proulx's 1993 novel The Shipping News and the 2001 film adaptation of the same name, it is explained that Agnis Hamm was once raped by her teenage half-brother when she was 12, resulting in a pregnancy which was terminated.
- In the novel Hide (2007) by Lisa Gardner, it is revealed that a previous mental patient and serial killer, Christopher forced his younger sister Natalie into performing sexual acts on him when they were teenagers.
Young-adult fiction[edit]
- In Sonya Hartnett's Sleeping Dogs (1995), a brother and sister's incest is only one symptom of the family's degradation.
- Francesca Lia Block's Wasteland (2003) features the incestuous relationship of a teenage brother and sister.
- In the young-adult series "Blue Bloods" (from 2006) by Melissa de la Cruz, which features vampires reincarnated every lifetime and couples who are "bonded" and find each other every lifetime, two of the semi-main characters, who are a bonded couple, are twins.
- In the 2007 novel City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, the main character, Clary, and her romantic interest, Jace, discover that they are siblings. Their romantic relationship (though now very tense) continues into the second book, City of Ashes. But in the third installment, City of Glass, it is later revealed they are not siblings, so it really isn't incest. However, Clary's real older brother, Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern (who Clary has never met), impersonates Sebastian Verlac (whom Clary or the other characters have also never met). Clary is unaware that Sebastian is really her brother spying for their father, Valentine, and it leads to them sharing a kiss. However, unlike when she kisses Jace (even when they still think they are related), she notices that kissing Sebastian feels wrong.
- Forbidden (2010) by Tabitha Suzuma tells the story of a teenage brother and sister who fall in love while caring for their younger siblings.
Incest between same-sex siblings[edit]
- Jean Genet's Absurdist play The Maids (1947) contains incestuous undertones between the two sisters, Solange and Claire.
- Michel Tournier's 1975 novel Gemini deals with the sexual relationship between twin brothers Jean and Paul. It also depicts a psychosexual attraction of the twin's uncle Alexandre to his nephew Jean.
- Agustín Gómez-Arcos's 1975 allegorical novel The Carnivorous Lamb (published originally as L'Agneau carnivore) depicts a coming of age story of a boy having a sexual affair with his brother.
- In Paul Russell's 1992 novel Boys of Life the tormented and enigmatic film director Carlos Riechart reveals to his lover Tony that his first sexual relationship was with his older brother Adrian. Later in the story Tony discusses his own unfulfilled feelings and desire for his brother Ted.[3]
Parent-children incest in fiction[edit]
- The 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate (and less explicitly in the two film adaptations based upon it) portrays incest between Eleanor Iselin and her son Raymond and refers to earlier incest between Eleanor and her own father.
Father/daughter incest[edit]
- Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a loose adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's aforementioned The 120 Days of Sodom, is replete with father-daughter incest.
- In George Wilkins's and William Shakespeare's plays Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Antiochus, king of Antioch, is engaged in an incestuous relationship with his daughter, a fact correctly interpreted by the play's titular character.
- In Zacharias Topelius's Tales of the Barber-Surgeon (1853–67), the forefather of Bertelskiöld noble family, Gustav Bertel, is son of his older sister. It is revealed only on the last pages of Book I that his sister, whom he had thought to be only his sister of his father's earlier marriage (he has assumed his mother died at childbirth) is also his mother and he got begotten in an incestuous relationship with his father and sister.
- In Sunset Song (1932) the central character's father tries to persuade her to have sex with him, but as he is bedridden he is not able to force her.
- In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night (1934), the character Nicole Diver eventually has a nervous breakdown as a result of an incestuous relationship with her father.
- Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) also deals with incest. The main character, at one point in the novel, comes into contact with a family in which the daughter has been impregnated by the father.
- In Homo Faber (1957) by Max Frisch, the main character Walter Faber falls in love and has a sexual relationship with Sabeth, who he discovers, in the final part of the novel, is his daughter, from his young, witless relationship with art student Hanna.
- Theodore Sturgeon's science fiction 1967 short story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" depicts a utopian society based on the absence of an incest taboo.
- The 1973 novel by Jacqueline Susann, Once Is Not Enough, and the film by the same name starring Deborah Raffin and Kirk Douglas, depicts the intensely psycho-sexual relationship between Mike Wayne and his daughter January who suffers from a distressing father complex. (This is sometimes referred to as "the Electra Complex.")
- In Charlotte Vale Allen's 1980 novel Daddy's Girl, she narrates how the main character was viewed by her father as his lover not his daughter.
- The central theme of Deborah Moggach's 1983 novel Porky is the abuse by a father of his daughter from the age of eleven and the impact this has on her later life.
- Dick Crick, one of the main characters in Graham Swift's 1983 novel Waterland is the son of his mother and grandfather.
- In a later novel of Irving, The Cider House Rules (1985), the chief picker of the apple crop, Mr. Rose, has an incestuous relationship with his daughter, Rose Rose, and even makes her pregnant.
- In Poppy Z Brite's 1992 novel Lost Souls there are two incidences of adult/child incest. Wallace Creech sleeps with his young adult daughter Jessy and vampire, Zillah, has a deeply sexual relationship with his son, Nothing.
- The critically acclaimed Korean thriller, Oldboy, also has father/daughter incest as one of its main plot points.
Sexual abuse[edit]
- In Harper Lee's only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) it is not stated but insinuated that Mayella Ewell is sexually abused by her father.
- In Sidney Sheldon's Tell Me Your Dreams(1998), the central character, Ashley Patterson, had been sexually abused by her father, because of which she develops multiple personality disorder.
- Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970) echoes Ellison's work in its portrayal of father-daughter incest, which, like in Invisible Man, is portrayed not as consensual incest but as child molestation.
- Jessie is the central character in Stephen King's 1992 novel Gerald's Game. She is sexually abused by her father at the age of 10.
- In Sapphire's debut novel Push (1996), the main character, Precious, has two children with her own father. She is also sexually abused by her mother.
- In Danielle Steel's 1996 novel Malice, the main character Grace shoots and kills her father when he tries to rape her after her mother's funeral. He had been sexually abusing her almost nightly for years after her mother became ill and could no longer satisfy him.
- In Sharon M. Draper's 1997 novel Forged By Fire, a character, Angel, is constantly molested by her father, who is also Gerald's stepfather. Gerald and Angel's mother refuses to listen to them, as she pays more attention to Jordan than her children.
- In Denise Mina's crime-fiction novel Garnethill (1998), the main character Maureen O'Donnell is raped by her father.
- In J.K Rowling's The Casual Vacancy (2012), one of the main character, Krystal, has a mother, Terri, who was sexually abused by her father
Father/son incest[edit]
- Cameron Miller is aged 14 in Counterfeit Son (2000), written by Elaine Marie Alphin. He has been sexually abused all his life by his father, a serial killer of more than 20 young boys. In Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy, the adolescent Nathan is sexually abused by his drunken father and it is clear that his mother knows, but does nothing.
Mother/son incest[edit]
- Incest is a major element of the Sophocles play Oedipus the King, based on the story from Greek mythology, in which the title character unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. This act came to great prominence in the 20th century with Freud's analysis of the Oedipus complex as lying beneath the psychology of all men. Its female counterpart is called the Electra complex. Incest also plays a major role in the sequel to Oedipus, Antigone, which revolves around the lives of the four children produced by Oedipus and his mother. The main figure is their oldest daughter, Antigone, who believes she and her siblings are cursed because of their parents. Also, Antigone is engaged to her first cousin, once removed, Haemon (which was, however, not considered incestuous in the culture of the time nor is today in other parts of the world).
- My Mother (1966) by George Bataille is a coming-of-age story leading to a mother/son relationship. Christophe Honore's Ma Mère movie is loosely based on the book.
- In Chthon, a Nebula and Hugo nominated 1967 sci-fi novel by Piers Anthony, the main character Aton Five falls for and eventually wins the love of Malice, a woman he discovers to be his mother only after she first seduces him, but before they become an item.
- In The Vampire Lestat, a 1985 novel by Anne Rice, the titular character has a clearly incestuous relationship with his mother, although since they are both vampires (he having transformed her into one after his own transformation) they are unable to actually consummate their relationship sexually. Vampires in Anne Rice's works cannot have sex, but drinking each other's blood is the vampiric equivalent.
- In The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2001) by JT LeRoy, five-year-old Jeremiah is physically and sexually abused by his prostitute mother.
- In Incendies, a 2010 French-Canadian film about twin siblings travelling to Lebanon to find their brother and father in obedience to their late mother's will, the twins discover that they are the product of incest between their mother and a son she had in 1970, who raped her aged 18 when she was in prison for murder of a Christian far-right militant. They then give the two envelopes their mother has prepared (labelled "to the father" and "to the son" in French) to the same man after finding him in their own country under an assumed identity.
Other adult/child incest in fiction[edit]
- One of the main plots of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Rant features the possibility of time travel combined with incest. By replacing one's own father, grandfather and great-grandfather by the means of time travel, one might purify one's own genetic material to a great extent. The main character, who is assumably the product of such a process, has for example, a largely extended ability to smell, increased perception and has also an increased ability to deal with pain and poisoning.
- The opera Salome by Richard Strauss (1905) based on the stage play of the same name by Oscar Wilde implies a stepfather-stepdaughter incestuous relationship between King Herod and Salome.
- Time for the Stars in which Tom returns from his travels to marry his great grand niece, having known her telepathically since she was a baby. Glory Road in which a mother and her daughters (18 and 13 years old) offer their sexual favors to the protagonist—the more of them he accepts, by their cultural standards, the more he honors them—but, bound by his own Earthly inhibitions, he does them the dishonor of refusing their offer.
Grandparent incest[edit]
- Incest appears in many of William Faulkner's works, either enacted or imagined. Examples include Go Down, Moses, The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary.
- The novel, First Love: A Gothic Tale by Joyce Carol Oates, portrays the abusive/sexual relationship 11-year-old Josie has with her adult cousin, Jared. The psychological and physical abuse she receives from her mother and aunt makes her believe that Jared's sexual abuse is a form of him expressing his love to her.
- The novel (and subsequent manga series), Silver, is about the main character's love for her cousin turn into hate when he betrays her by killing her father and pretending to be in love with her so he can gain her inheritance. She seeks out revenge against him by disguising herself as the "perfect woman" and begins an affair with him, with intents on ruining his life by taking away all the things he desires.
Parental incest in non-fiction[edit]
- In High on Arrival, the autobiography of actress Mackenzie Phillips, she purports to having a consensual incestuous relationship with her father, John Phillips, a member of the 1960s music group, The Mamas and the Papas. She spoke of the decade long affair on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
- In Daddy: An Erotic Memoir, author Raul Schmidt (pseudonym) chronicles his consensual sexual relationships with both of his adult daughters.
- In The Kiss, by Kathryn Harrison, the author gives her account of the consensual sexual relationship she had with her father as a young adult.
- Strong at the Heart: How it feels to heal from sexual abuse, by Carolyn Lehman, includes a number of true stories of incest.
- Casanova would accidentally fall in love with his own daughter, Leonilda, only finding out the truth when she introduces him to her mother. Of which Casanova writes, "My hair stood on end, and I relapsed into a gloomy silence." Having been courting her for some time, the "rapid transition from carnal to paternal love" was almost overwhelming emotionally.
- Where There Is Evil by Sandra Brown tells the story of the disappearance of 12-year-old Moira Anderson in 1957 and the involvement of Alex Gartshore, the author's father and a convicted child molester, as a member of a pedophile ring.
Incest as sexual abuse[edit]
- Daddy, written and directed by Niki de Saint Phalle, tells the story of Saint Phalle's history of sexual abuse at the hands of her father.
- Don't Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal tells the story of Toni Maguire who was abused by her father from the age of six to 14, when he gets her pregnant.
- Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed by Stuart Howarth describes his abuse at the hands of his father and the despair that drove him to kill him years later.
- In A Girl Called Karen: A True Story of Sex Abuse and Resilience by Karen McConnell, Eileen Brand is abused by both her father and stepfather.
- In Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy, he reveals how he was sexually abused as a child by his uncle over a period of a few years.
Comic books[edit]
- In the Planetary comic book series by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday, Doc Brass was the result of an eugenics experiment that went all the way back to the French revolution. In issue #5, 'The Good Doctor,' it is revealed that his parents were siblings.
- In the Alan Moore graphic novel Lost Girls, incest plays a prominent part in the retelling of the story of Wendy Darling and her brothers from Peter Pan and Dorothy Gale and her "uncle" (actually her father) from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
- In the Marvel book The Ultimates, the characters Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver shared an incestuous relationship together until she was shot by a bullet tracking her D.N.A. in a plot orchestrated by Doctor Doom.
Japanese manga and anime[edit]
Incest has been a recurring subject in Japanese manga such as Osamu Tezuka's Ayako (1972–1973). Incest has also been a subject in Japanese anime, dating all the way back to one of the medium's earliest pornographic titles, Cream Lemon. Sibling incest is the most common manifestation.
Sibling incest[edit]
Certain anime programs, such as Koi Kaze and Please Twins!, are serious, even sympathetic, studies of the characters as they struggle with their emotions and societal taboos. In Please Twins! this is because both girls fell in love with the protagonist, despite knowing that either of them could be his biological twin sister. Also the side character Matagu has shown an obvious sexual attraction to his younger sister, who is fully aware that he is a pervert. In Koi Kaze, a brother and sister fall in love without realising their blood relationship, and when they do find out, they struggle with continuing the relationship and hurting their parents or moving onto a platonic relationship and lying to themselves. They even consider a suicide pact, but they ultimately decide to continue the relationship and live together.
The incestuous feelings may be a source of trouble or angst for the protagonists. In shojo manga Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru, Yori and Iku are twin brother and sister who have been extremely close all their lives and who now begin to fall in love with each other and have to face the consequences of it. It is later revealed that they are half-twins due to them being the product of a heteropaternal superfecundation (they have different fathers). At the end, Yori attempts to separate from her for 10 years but when he and Iku reunite, he says that he still loves her and it is hinted that they have resumed their relationship. In the manga Tsumi Ni Nureta Futari, Kasumi begins an incestuous affair with her younger brother, Yoshiki, after being separated most of their lives. Their friends and mother try to separate them, even by kidnapping and violence. At the end, Yoshiki fakes his death so he and Kasumi can move to Rome and be together for good.
In the manga series Oniichan☆Control, Noa's big brother Hirose Goushi is in love with her, but tries to control himself, as he knows he should not. However, Noa is fully aware of this and is in love with her brother, so she does everything she can to get him to stop restraining himself all while pretending to be an innocent little sister.
Shojo manga author Kaori Yuki has used this theme twice. In Godchild, the protagonist, Cain Hargreaves, is the product of the incestuous union of his father and his father's older sister, inheriting gold-green eyes and the curse of being unable to love anyone who was not blood related to him. Cain also has a love interest in his half-sister/cousin who doesn't return his feelings. Later, in Angel Sanctuary, she uses incest as a necessary plot device. Setsuna Mudo is in love with his sister, Sara, who returns his feelings. As it turns out, Setsuna is the reincarnation of the angel Alexiel, who long ago was punished to be reincarnated as a human, while Sara is in fact Jibril, the Angel of Water. They are so determined to stay together that they willingly abandon their family and future without a second thought and Setsuna searches relentlessly in Hell for Sara's soul.
Sometimes the incest is ambiguous or suggested. In Revolutionary Girl Utena, the character Nanami Kiryuu expresses sexual desire and jealousy towards her older brother Touga, who is the school playboy. Another character, Kozue Kaoru, uses her sexuality to elicit a frustrated protectiveness from her twin brother Miki. Incestuous themes between the central character Anthy Himemiya and her brother Akio Ohtori develop towards the end of the show.
Sometimes, these feelings end up happily. In Myself ; Yourself, twins Shuusuke and Shuri elope near the end of the series. In the epilogue, it is implied that they return to Sakuranomori and are a couple. In Yosuga no Sora, Sora has feelings for her twin brother, Haru, ever since they were kids. After their parents passed away, they moved back to the old house and Sora has been keeping her feelings suppressed while she fantasizes being with him. In episode 11 and 12, they had opened themselves to their feelings and decide to abandon their friends and home to be together. in the manga sequel called Haruka na Sora the twins are living together in Scandinavia and is revealed they got married and are expecting their first child.
Other times, the love story ends dramatically. In the manga series Flowers of Evil, Se-Joon has loved his twin sister, Se-Wan, ever since childhood. They eventually make forbidden love one night, which Se-Joon regrets. They attempt to redeem themselves by running away, during which Se-Wan dies. At the end, despaired over the loss of his beloved sister, Se-Joon commits suicide with a photo of him and her in his arms.
In some series, sibling incest is shown to be common or allowed in a particular setting. In anime and manga Vampire Knight, pureblooded vampires often marry siblings to keep their bloodline pure – Yuki Cross's parents were siblings, and it was stated that she was "born" to be Kaname's (her older brother) wife. In Tenchi Muyo!, the character of Ayeka was once engaged to her half-brother, Yosho. On Ayeka's planet, such a thing is not considered bad. She is later shown to have feelings for Yosho's grandson Tenchi, who is technically her nephew.
In other occurrences, the incest is the result of special circumstances. In Hitsuji no Uta, the two protagonists (who are twins) suffer from a strange disease that forces them to isolate themselves from society and develop an infatuation with each other as a consequence of that.
Sometimes, the incest is reserved to the antagonists. The anime and manga Black Lagoon alludes to an incestuous relationship between two antagonists, the Romanian young twins Hansel and Gretel. It is mainly used to enhance the repercussions of their highly traumatic childhood and illustrate their unbalanced mental state. In Shakugan no Shana, the Tomogara twin siblings Sorath and Tiriel publicly expressed incest through kissing each other. In the anime Twilight of the Dark Master, an incestuous relationship is hinted at/revealed between two of Tsunami's enemies, the Long siblings.
The incestuous feelings are not always returned. In the anime/manga series Shugo Chara!, the character Utau is in love with her older brother, Ikuto. She forcefully kisses him in both the anime and manga. Ikuto, though, does not return her feelings. In the manga series 17-Sai no Real, Ruri finds out that her brother, Keito, has feelings for her. He is very jealous of her relationship with Jyunya and attempts to rape her once. At the end, they reconcile and remain close.
Others use incest mainly for shock value and titillation. For example, in Ouran High School Host Club, two of the main characters, Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, are identical twins who often engage in romantic displays to titillate the female patrons of the Host Club; the two have a close bond, but there is no clear evidence that their romantic behavior is anything but an act. However, they do sometimes act affectionate with each other while no one else is around, and they share a bed as well.
In the anime and manga .hack//Legend of the Twilight, the characters Rena and Shugo, siblings, carry out actions that allude to an incestuous attraction to each other's in-game avatars. This is usually done through as a running gag, or more serious instances. Shugo's dedication to saving Rena when she disappears may be an incarnation for an incestuous romantic caring for her, although this is questionable.
There may also be cases, used for dramatics, where one or both of the characters do not know of their relationship, such as seen in Berserk where the character Farnese appears to house incestuous feelings for her (although unknown to her) half-brother Serpico. He knows and refutes her advances. In the manga Andante, Natsu discovers that his girlfriend, Mei, is his half-sister by the same father and they break up. Previously, Natsu had dated Mei after his father married her mother but they broke up when they became attracted to other people. In Jewelpet Sunshine, Kanon and Mikage break off their love relationship when they learn they are twins.
Other times, incest is just a passing reference. In Tenjho Tenge, Mana Kuzunoha, the deceased girlfriend of the deceased brother of Maya Natsume, Shin Natsume, once stated that Shin and Maya treated each other like lovers instead of siblings.
Sometimes, they may be the representation of a character's desire. In the manga After School Nightmare, by Setona Mizushiro, one of the three main characters, the teenage student Sou Mizuhashi, is often persuaded by his elder sister Ai into having sexual intercourses with her (he even loses his virginity to her). Though, it is later revealed in the story that this does not occur in reality, but it only happens in a sort of oneiric/subconscious state of the characters' mind.
Even in other cases, the incestuous relationship happens when the characters are not themselves, by reason of brainwashing, amnesia or other circumstances. In the series Big O in Episode 9, it is revealed that Mr. Wise's 40 year old son is a child of incest with his sister, though this due to the fact at the time when all memories were wiped out at the time they were unaware of who the other was. In the series Ayashi no Ceres, Aya is nearly raped by her twin brother, Aki, when he is brainwashed by Mikagi.
In Maze, Mei and her brother, Akira, had an incestuous encounter when they were young and this led him to being viewed as an outcast by their parents. However, they are still in love with each other and remain together, despite their love being a taboo.
The manga series Densen Complex, portrays several stories of sibling incest.
In True Love, Ai and her older brother, Yuzuru, fall truly in love with each other after being separated for nine years.
Brother/sister complex[edit]
Incest often takes the form of brother/sister complex. The series B Gata H Kei, the character Kyouka Kanejou is known to have a severe brother complex. To the point she has a room with nothing but his images everywhere, uses her influence to keep any other girls away from him, and even wishes for nothing more than for her brother to take her virginity.
In the series Kiddy Grade, the agent Tweedledum is known to have a strong sister complex towards his partner/sister Tweedledee.
In the anime/Light Novel series My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute, it is heavily hinted that the character Kirino has a brother complex as she loves adult games with a little sister love theme. She also hints a feeling of jealousy when her brother is with, or shows interest in, other girls.
In the manga series Girls Saurus, Subaru Chiryū, the main character Shingo Chiryū's little sister, has a strong incestuous love towards him, to the point that tries to drive away the other girls who are interested in him, as well as proclaiming she wishes to bear her brother's child.
In the anime/manga To Love-Ru, it is often highly suggested that Mikan Yuuki has feelings beyond sisterly affection to her brother, Rito. This was more evident in the OVA, where she even asked if they were not blood related, so he would marry her. In the 5th OVA, when the main female cast is stricken by a pollen that confesses their true feelings, Mikan was infected and almost confessed to Rito that she loves him before being interrupted.
In the anime/manga Baka and Test, Akira Yoshii, the main protagonist Akihisa Yoshii's older sister, possesses strong affections for her younger brother. She consistently tries to seduce him by kissing him or bathing with him, will reduce his allowance out of her own volition, as well as flirting and trying shamelessly to engage in mild sexual relations with him. Akira also tends to blush extremely red whenever Akihisa admits that he loves her, as well as showing jealousy and mild anger when she finds him in a "relationship" with another girl, forcing and warning him not to unless its herself.
In the anime/manga Tona-Gura!, it is suggested that Marie Kagura has a secret brother complex to her older brother Yuji, with stronger hints later as she becomes jealous of Yuji's and Kazuki's growing relationship
In the manga Super-Dreadnought Girl 4946, Kuumi, despite her usual dark and cold personality towards her brother Makoto, reveals she actually is in love with her brother. Revealed she adopted that personality both as a way to distance him from her, as well as feeling she was nothing more than a hindrance to him while they were children. However, she often shows strong hints of jealousy towards Mana and any other girl that shows interest in him.
In the series They Are My Noble Masters, Both brother and sister Ren and Mihato comment they have brother/sister complex. Also it is often suggested that Shinra regularly "molests" her little sister Miyu due to the fact Shinra cannot resist anything she finds "cute".
In Re:Birth - The Lunatic Taker, Ayaka is known to have a deep love for her younger brother Renji. However, she hides a disturbing yandere personality, and would not hesitate (if anything she finds pleasure in do so) to kill whomever is believed to be a threat to his safety.
In the manga and anime series Magikano, the character Maika displays a brother complex towards her older brother and central protagonist Haruo. She becomes jealous when other girls try to get close to Haruo, and one episode focuses around several other characters trying to figure out why Maika developed a brother complex in the first place.
In the manga version of Kirarin Revolution, a minor character, Ren, appears to be in love with his twin sister, Rin, as he does whatever she tells him to do and almost kissed her.
In This Ugly Yet Beautiful World, Kimi has a brother complex towards her older brother, Ryou. She is overprotective of him to the point that she tries to keep Ryou and Akari separated from each other. Elsewhere, Takeru is the object of unrequited love from Mari, his cousin, who is very jealous of Takeru and Hikari's relationship, to the point of verbal and physical violence.
Another example from Hetalia: Axis Powers, Russia's younger sister, Belarus has the Yandere tendencies toward his brother and reveals that she has deep infatuation for him that occurred her obsessive ideal to force her brother in marriage, which appalls Russia exceedingly. She shown stalking after him, and also in fact envious or averse anyone else who is near to her brother and often stick by his side to threaten other countries with a knife.
Siblings with no blood relation[edit]
A similar theme sometimes explored in both media is pseudo-incest, which is most often depicted as romantic/sexual relationships between step-siblings or adopted siblings. The plot in Marmalade Boy revolves around this theme: step-siblings Miki and Yuu at one point believe they are half-siblings but this turns out to be false and they actually get married in the anime.
In the Mitsuru Adachi's manga and anime "Miyuki" (manga publicated in 1980, 1983 for the anime), the main character Masato Wakamatsu is in love with his step-sister Miyuki Wakamatsu. But they have no blood relations because Masato's father had remarried with another woman who already had a daughter, Miyuki. Being aware they have no relationship, Masato prefers to hide the truth for the sister's welfare. However, he doesn't know she has romantic feelings towards him and it's at the end of the twelfth volume that they get married.
In the series Kiss×Sis, the twin sisters Ako and Riko are in love with their step-brother Keita. However they have no blood relations to each other. In one chapter and an OVA episode however, Ako and Riko do experiment with each other to practice for if ever they ended up having a threesome with Keita.
In the anime version of Blood Plus, Diva's rape of Riku is technically incest, since Riku is the adopted younger brother of Saya, who is Diva's twin sister. If so, then the Diva's twin daughters, that resulted from the rape, are the somewhat product of incest.
In the series Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!!, Nao has a sexual attraction to her brother Shūsuke before it was revealed to her she is adopted, to the point she was completely shocked that she could no longer have the tragic romantic life of incest lovers.
In the manga series Kimi ga Uso o Tsuita, the main character Saki falls in love with her older brother Midori, whom she has recently met, as well as he is in love with her. It is later revealed they are not blood related, and in the end of the manga get married.
In the manga Sugar Family, Yuka is said to have some degree of romantic interest in her step-brother/teacher, Taichi, who has a severe case of sister complex towards her.
In the anime series Da Capo, Jun'ichi is in love with his adopted sister, Nemu, and is pursued by his cousin, Sakura. Since they are not related by blood, they relationship is accepted by their friends. In Da Capo II, it is revealed that the two female main characters, Otome and Yume, are their granddaughters and both are in love with Yoshiyuki, the imaginary son Sakura wished she had with Jun'ichi.
In the manga series Cherry Juice, Otome develops feelings for her step-brother, Minami, who has always loved her. Even their own family and friends encourage them to get married. At the end, they begin dating after confessing.
In the anime and manga series Georgie!, Georgie has been extremely close with her adopted brothers, Abel and Arthur, all their lives. However, the brothers have feelings for her and Georgie eventually realizes that she loves Abel. They have a night together and she moves in with Arthur to give birth to her and Abel's son, whom she named after Abel, after Abel is executed.
In the manga series Flower of Eden, Midori has feelings for her brother, Tokio. However, he admits that they are actually step-siblings and he confesses his love to her. His family, who hates Midori and blames her for their parents' death, try to separate them. But at the end, they marry when his family understands what makes Tokio happy.
In the manga series Kiken Junai D.N.A, Ami develops feelings for her brother, Chihiro, even though she knows it's wrong. However, Chihiro admits that he is actually her adopted brother and they can have a relationship. At the end, they are married and have a daughter.
In a manga one-shot, Suki to Ienai, Shiina is in love with her adopted brother, Kiri. She keeps this and his adoption a secret, but he later admits that he knew of the adoption all along and confesses his love to her.
In the manga series Ano Koro ni Aitai, after Yuzuru found out that her older brother, Fuyuhisa, is adopted, she tried very hard to forget her feelings for him, but failed in this.
In the manga series, Desire Climax, Mio is heavily pursued by her younger brother, Hina, who even tries to rape her and tries seduce her boyfriend, Shoei. She later begins to suspect that Shoei is her half-brother when she thinks her mother had an affair with his father. However, it turns out that neither Shoei and Hina are her brothers, but are half-brothers themselves (they have the same father).
In the series, Happy World!, Elle comes to live with Takeshi as his step-sister. However, as time goes by, they begin to fall in love with each other, despite her being an angel and he being human. At the end, they have a daughter named Prayer. However, Prayer is not Takeshi's child biologically because she was hatched from an angel's egg and was adopted by him.
In True Tears, Shin'ichiro is in love with his adopted sister, Hitomi. However, because she was told by his mother that he is her brother, she keeps her feelings for him suppressed, even though she wants to be with him. However, she does eventually learn that it was a lie and they begin a relationship.
In Yoru Made Matenai, Haruka and her step-brother, Tsukasa, have been in love with each other since they began living under the same roof and began their intimate relationship at age 12.
In Oniichan Love, Sumire has feelings for her older step-brother, Kon, who returns her feelings, even though not until the very end due to their status as siblings by marriage.
In the series, Mamotte Lollipop, Ichi was in love with his step-sister, Sarasa, in his young teens. However, she never returned his feelings and ended up marrying Zero's older brother, and he does eventually get over her after he realizes that she is happy.
In the manhwa series, Forbidden Kiss, Haeun falls in love with her step-brother Shin, who has loved her ever since he first met her. After their parents and friends refuse to acknowledge this, they break up. They, however, reconcile after he survives from dying in a fire.
In Love Hina, Kanako is adopted by Urashima family. She develops a crush on her older step-brother Keitaro, who seems to be very understanding and caring of her. Soon after adoption Keitaro leaves Kanako and his family in order to study further. He leaves her with a carefree promise that they'll once manage together a rotenburo hotel. When Kanako arrives back, she pokes Keitaro with her adolescent curves and tries to seduce him, as well as recalls him of making a promise. It soon came out that they're not blood-related, but even that doesn't convince Keitaro to change the way he perceives Kanako, as his younger sister. In the series Kanako shows some of her brother complex habits/fetishes, such as smelling his garment or revealing naked body in his presence, but also deep affection and sentiment towards Keitaro.
Cousin couples[edit]
In anime and manga, cousin coupling is very common, this because cousin marriages are not considered incestuous, but actually have been desirable in Japan.[4]
In the anime and manga series Elfen Lied, Kohta and his first cousin, Yuka, had been extremely close as children and eventually develop a romantic relationship as teenagers. At the end, they marry and have a daughter, Nyu, who was named after Kohta's first love.
In the series Black Butler, Ciel is engaged to his first cousin, Elizabeth. While he is not completely open about his feelings for her, he cares deeply for her and feels it is his duty to protect her. She, on the other hand, is more open about her feelings for him and is always trying her hardest to make Ciel smile more.
In the series Kaze no Stigma, Ayano develops feelings for her second cousin Kazuma, though is more one-sided. At first, the two did not like each other and only had a mutual respect for one another, until later they start to love each other mostly due to the influence of others trying to get them together. Ayano shows great jealousy and frustration whenever she sees Kazuma with another girl or woman.
Fruits Basket involved incest between several of the members of the zodiac. It consists of mainly cousin relationships and one case of an affair between a nephew and aunt by marriage.[citation needed]
In Kokoro wo Hadaka ni Shite, Mina and her cousin, Yukiya, have romantic feelings for each other.
In Kodomo no Jikan, Rin's mother, Aki, was in a romantic relationship with her first cousin, Reiji, who became a father figure to Rin. After Aki's death, Reiji took custody of Rin and seems to be projecting his feelings for Aki to Rin, as he gets jealous over Daisuke and is possessive of her.
In Canvas 2, Elis is in love with her first cousin, Hiroki, who doesn't return her feelings until the end.
Other examples[edit]
Sometimes, the fantasy elements makes it very difficult to track the exact relationship between the characters. In the manga version of Card Captor Sakura, it is revealed that Sakura and her love interest, Syaoran, are related in some way. Syaoran's ancestor, Clow Reed, had reincarnated himself into two people when he died: one into a boy named Eriol and another into Sakura's father. In Tsubasa Chronicle, Sakura and Syaoran's son, Tsubasa, develops feelings for his mother's counterpart, Princess Sakura, who returns his feelings. It is also specultated that Sakura's second cousin, Tomoyo, has feelings for her and Syaoran is heavily pursued by his first cousin, Meiling, who proclaims herself as his fiancée.
Similarly, in the series Kamichama Karin, Karin begins to suspect that her love interest, Kazune, is her half-brother after finding out that they have the same picture of their parents. However, this turns out to be false when Kazune reveals that he is his father's clone and she is his wife turned back into a child and that his cousin, Himeka, who had feelings for Kazune, is their daughter. In Kamichama Karin Chu, it is revealed that they will marry and Suzune is their son from the future.
In the manga Ai to Himemoto, Mao has had romantic feelings towards her uncle, Jin, ever since she went to live with him. However, she finds out they are not blood-related and begin a relationship. At the end, they are married and have two children.
In the manga version of Pita-Ten, Kotarou discovers that his first crush, Shia, is actually his great-grandmother who is a demon in a permanently young body.
In the manga version of Kodocha, it is said that Sana's biological parents were uncle and niece.
In the series, Crimson Climax, Ryo develops feelings for her cousin, Hotaruko. She later has sexual relations with a man named Mizuno. Hotaruko was raped by Bungo, who is revealed to be her uncle. Near the end, it is revealed that Hotaruko is not Ryo's cousin but is her mother and Mizuno is Hotaruko's twin brother. It is also presumed that Ryo is the product of incest between Hotaruko and Mizuno because it was said that if the twins had not been born, Ryo would not have been born.
Parental incest[edit]
In the manga series Sankarea, it is highly suggested that Danichirou Sanka has a disturbing incestuous love towards his daughter Rea, such as taking photos of her naked and wishing to kill Chihiro Furuya under the belief he "stole" his daughter from him. The maids even rumor that his wife sleeps with other men because of her husband's attraction to their daughter.
In the manga series, Bitter Virgin, Hinako was sexually abused by her stepfather, resulting in the birth of a child and a miscarriage.
In Black Butler anime series, Alois Trancy was sexually abused by his father during his childhood.
In the series Kaze to Ki no Uta, Gilbert is physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by his father, Auguste, who poses as his uncle. Auguste, who is interested in making Gilbert as his own personal pet, can be kind to Gilbert at one time and then be cruel in another. His influence is so strong that Gilbert actually believes they are in love.
Incest is also a common theme in hentai manga and anime; there, its treatment ranges from lighthearted to serious, and can go as far as mixing the theme with controversial sub-genres such as ero guro. In Juan Gotoh's Boys Empire, Makoto Tamura, who appears 12 years old, impregnates his same age girlfriend Hitomi, his older sister Mina, and his mother Umeko.
In the manga Aki Sora, Aki is in love with her little brother, Sora, and is later able to persuade him into a sexual relationship, though he often considers breaking it off due to the fact he cannot see a future with this relationship. In the final chapter, they compromise and end their forbidden relationship. Later on in the manga he is repeatedly forced to have sex with his twin sister Nami. It is later discovered that their parents had been brother and sister.
In the series Sakura Diaries, the lead female Urara Kasuga is in love with her cousin, Touma Inaba. She would make a number of attempts to playfully seduce him by wearing skimpy to little clothing, affectionately referring to him as "Tonma-chan" and making sexual innuendoes in order to "cheer him up." Touma often feels aroused by her actions, but claims to love another girl named Mieko Yotsuba. He, however, does not object to the idea of using his cousin as practice for future sexual relations with other girls or Mieko and both cousins would like to lose their viginities to each other.
Incest is also a theme used in yaoi and shonen ai manga. Apart from the previously mentioned Kaze to Ki no Uta, examples include Love Prism by Asami Tojo and Uso to Kiss by Masara Minase.
Papa to Kiss in the Dark centers around a 15-year-old boy having an incestuous relationship with his father, who is later revealed to be his uncle.
Incestuous families[edit]
- The American horror films The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original series 1974–1994 and remake series 2003–2006), and Wrong Turn (2003) feature villains who are the product of inbreeding.
- In the musical The Rocky Horror Show and the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Riff Raff (Richard O'Brien) and Magenta (Patricia Quinn) are revealed to be brother and sister who have a sexual relationship. In the unproduced sequel Revenge of the Old Queen, it is implied that Dr. Frank-N-Furter had been incestuously involved with his own mother, the "Old Queen" of the planet Transsexual (in the galaxy of Transylvania); she later dies in the throes of seducing her own grandson.
- The sequel to Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a musical called Shock Treatment which meets Brad and Janet some time after their adventure with Frank 'n' Furter. In this film, brother and sister Cosmo and Nation McKinley are clearly displayed as having a sexual relationship. The film even includes a bedroom scene between the two during the song 'Lullaby'. These two siblings are, as in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, played by Richard O'Brien and Patricia Quinn.
- The pornographic Taboo film series of the 1980s deals exclusively with incest, including mother/son, brother/sister and father/daughter.
- In the 2001 film Kate & Leopold, Stuart Bessers' (Liev Schreiber) ex-girlfriend Kate McKay (Meg Ryan) is revealed to be his close ancestor, as she is destined to travel back in time to marry another of Stuart's ancestors, Leopold (Hugh Jackman).
- In the 2004 film, Van Helsing, Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) intends to make a young, Gypsy princess, Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), his newest bride, both of them knowing that Dracula is one of Anna's ancestors.
- Park Chan-Wook's Oldboy (2003) features an instance of brother-sister incest as well as father-daughter incest,both resulting in possible pregnancies. The director's 2013 film Stoker also features a teenage girl's infatuation with her uncle.
- The 2006 film Borat!: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan features Borat Sagdiyev (Sasha Baron Cohen) as an incestuous journalist, also featuring his whole village in Kazakhstan living under an incestuous way of life.
Sibling incest[edit]
Historical films[edit]
- Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), when Anne Boleyn is on trial for treason by adultery, her own brother (among many others) is accused of being her lover. This theme is also used in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), where Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman), in pure desperation to be with child, asks her own brother George (Jim Sturgess) to have sex with her. At first, George agrees for the sake of Anne's safety, but as they prepare, they both realize they cannot go through with it. They are both later charged with incest, and although innocent, they are both sentenced to death.
- Incest is also a main plot device in the movie Caligula (1979), in which the title character (Malcolm McDowell) has sexual relations with his sisters.
- In Ridley Scott's film, Gladiator (2000), the new Emperor Commodus is in love with his sister Lucilla, though she does not return his affections in that way.
- In the 1986 horror/historical drama film Gothic author Mary Shelly (played by Natasha Richardson) chastises Lord Byron (played by Gabriel Byrne) for his erotic infatuation with his own sister Augusta.
- Tabu: Es ist die Seele ein Fremde auf Erden (Tabu: The Soul is a Stranger on Earth) (2011) follows the love between Georg Trakl and his sister (hinted at in his real-life poetry), and how his internal conflict over their relationship drives him to drug abuse.
Fantasy and horror films[edit]
- In Excalibur (1981) Mordred is Arthur's illegitimate son born by his half-sister Morgause.
- In Cat People (1982), Paul Gallier (Malcolm McDowell) wants to sleep with his sister Irena (Nastassja Kinski) in order not to transform into a panther in order to live up to his family's werecat heritage.
- In the 2006 film The Hamiltons, Wendell and his twin sister, Darlene, have an incestuous relationship and share it openly.
- In Black Christmas (2006), A mother, realizing her new boyfriend is impotent, rapes her son in order to conceive a child.
- In Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) harbors romantic feelings for his twin sister, princess Nuala (Anna Walton). It is unclear whether she returns the sentiment, or ever returned those feelings in the past. As commented by Goss in an interview, "There is an incestuous relationship that's not maybe overly obvious to everybody, but some people hopefully will pick up on the fact, certainly from my direction towards her."[5]
Other films[edit]
- Love Sick (film) (2006), Romanian drama film, deals with two types of forbidden relationships: lesbian relationship between (Cristina) Kiki and Alex, university students and the incestuous relationship between Kiki and her unnaturally jealous brother, Sandu.
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The treacherous newspaper columnist J. J. Hunsecker (played by Burt Lancaster), has repressed incestuous feelings for his younger sister, Susan. Although not stated during the film, J. J.'s feelings are implied by several things. Such as him consistently touching Susan in borderline-inappropriate ways, keeping an 8×11 photograph of her (and only one of her) on his desk and (of course) his refusal to let Susan marry or even date other men.
- Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) An incestuous relationship is implied between the two siblings, Steven ('Stevie') and Ann Lake. But the possessive Steven, furious at Ann's daughter, Bunny, for stealing his sister's loving attention, kidnaps the child with intentions to kill her.
- Scarface (1983), Gina Montana, claims that her older brother, Tony, has incestuous feelings for her after he kills her husband, Manny. However, whether Tony actually had these desires is left up to the viewer.
- In the film adaptation of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), John (Rob Lowe) feels intense sexual desire for his sister, Franny (Jodie Foster). Franny succumbs and, after spending an entire day having sex, they move on to a strictly platonic relationship.
- In the film adaptation of Flowers in the Attic (1987), Cathy shares a close bond with her older brother, Chris, that is hinted to be incestuous, but not shown, while they are imprisoned in the attic with their siblings.
- In the Channel 4 film Close My Eyes (1991), a brother and sister (Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves) embark on a passionate but incestuous love affair. In this film there are a few sexual scenes between the siblings.
- The Cement Garden (1993), after the death of their mother, the siblings Jack and Julie begin an incestuous relationship.
- In Fun (1994), Hilary reveals to Bonnie that her father is in prison for having an affair with her and Bonnie recounts of how joking around with her brother turned into intercourse, and that she has kept it to herself.
- In Angels & Insects (1996), the hero discovers that his wife has been participating in an incestuous affair with her brother which began when they were young, and that all of his children are in fact not his own, but rather the product of the incestuous union.
- The film Kickboxing Academy (1997) features real life brothers and sisters Christopher Khayman Lee and Chyler Leigh who kissed each other on the set with a french kiss. Christopher Lee was 18 years old at the time while his sister was 14 years old at the time.[6][7]
- Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) stars Julien (Ewen Bremner) and his disturbing life and family. Toward the end of the film it is revealed that his sister Pearl (Chloë Sevigny) is pregnant as a result of an incestuous act between the two of them.
- In L.I.E (2001) One of Howie Blitzer's friends also his age, Kevin, has an incestuous relationship with his sister during a time when they are all discovering their sexuality. He clearly states that "she won't fuck anyone else."
- The 2004 motion picture Eurotrip includes a scene in which inebriated siblings Jamie and Jenny French kiss. This is then used as a plot device to reveal the (now sober) siblings' revulsion at their behavior.
- The 2005 Argentinian film Géminis involves a brother and sister having sexual relations with each other behind their family's back, as they prepare for their older brother's wedding.
- La Coupure (2006) (French-Canadian) is a film about a brother and his sister in love since their adolescent years and their struggle to end their incestuous relationship.
- The comedy Blades of Glory (2007) features a pair of brother-sister figure skaters who are revealed to be lovers. They were played by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, who were married in real life at the time.
- In the film Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) when Harold and Kumar are hiding from the FBI since they are accused to have been terrorists, they hide with a couple who turns out to be brother and sister and they tell Harold and Kumar to stay in the basement with their kid. But the guys get scared when they see that the kid is one-eyed.
- In the film That's My Boy (2012) Jamie is cught having intercourse with her brother Chad by her finance's father Bobby, and blackmailed at her wedding. After the siblings announce their relationship to their family, they are chastised but continue their affair. The film was panned because of this.[8]
- In the film 7 seX 7, an incestuous relationship between a sister and a brother is depicted.
- In the film Edge of Madness, a young girl who is mistreated by her husband develops an affection to his younger brother, and the two, being at almost the same age, begin a sexual relationship. However, later the girl begins to repent what they did and loses her mental balance.
Incest between twins[edit]
- The film The House of Yes (1997), based on the play by Wendy McLeod, is about the ongoing consensual incestuous relationship of a pair of fraternal twins (played by Josh Hamilton and Parker Posey).
- In the 2003 film The Dreamers, fraternal twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) have a psychologically incestuous relationship; they bathe together and sleep naked in the same bed. Theo was also in the room when Isabelle lost her virginity to another man.
- In Beautiful Kate, a writer returns home with his fiance to see his dying father on a farm in the Australian outback. Returning home brings up memories of his love affair with his fraternal twin sister, and his own tragic role in her death.
Incest between half-siblings=[edit]
- In The Crow (1994), Top Dollar, the main antagonist, and his half sister, Myca, are also lovers which is revealed in the scene when Top Dollar holds a meeting with his associates where they discuss new plans for their Devil's Night criminal activities.
- The Devil's Advocate (1997) features two scenes where Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) fantasizes about having sex with Christabella (Connie Nielsen), who is revealed to be his half-sister towards the climax.
Incest between same-sex siblings[edit]
- A case of consensual incest between adult sisters Christine and Lea (Joely Richardson and Jodhi May) is portrayed in the English film Sister My Sister (1994), which is based on a true story.
- In the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine, the singer, Curt Wilde, allegedly had an incestuous relationship with his older brother when he was 13. His parents had Wilde start shock treatments to "fry the fairy clean out of him".
- Harry + Max (2004) features an incestuous relationship between two teen idol brothers.
- In Starcrossed (2005), Darren (J. B. Ghuman, Jr.) and Connor (Marshall Allman) are two brothers who, as teenagers, realize that the feelings they have for each other are not just those of brothers.
- In From Beginning to End (2009), features an incestuous relationship between two hal*-brothers.
Relationship unknown to the characters[edit]
Sometimes, two characters do not know about their blood relationship when they enter a sexual or romantic relationship, or one of them knows while the other does not.
At the end of the 1996 film Lone Star, Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) and his high school sweetheart and current lover Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Peña) both learn they have the same father, Pilar's mother having been Sam's father's mistress.
- In the 2005 film The King, the main character has a sexual relationship with his pastor's daughter and gets her pregnant. He knows, though she does not, that the pastor is also his father and uncle, who had an affair with his mother.
- In Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), a prince and his half-sister unknowingly enter into an incestuous relationship. There is also an instance between a woman and her stepson.
Non-consensual incest[edit]
- In the 2001 film The Shipping News, based on E. Annie Proulx's 1993 novel of the same name, it is revealed that Agnis Hamm was raped by her 15-year-old half-brother Guy Quoyle when she was 12 and terminated the resulting pregnancy.
- In Murali K. Thalluri's film 2:37 (2006), High school student, Melody, is raped and impregnated by her brother, Marcus.
- In Triloquist (2008), Angelina is raped by her psychotic brother Nobert, resulting in the birth of a child.
- In Daniel & Ana (2009) Daniel and Ana Torres are kidnapped and forced to have sex while being videotaped. After being released they must return to their lives and family home as if nothing happened. Daniel unable to cope or speak to anyone about his feelings, and Ana going ahead with the marriage to her fiancé, culminates in Daniel raping Ana.
Siblings with no blood relation[edit]
- The Unforgiven (1960), Ben Zachary (Burt Lancaster) represses his romantic feelings for his adopted sister, Rachel (Audrey Hepburn), although Rachel sees no problem with their relationship since they are not blood relatives.
- The film Clueless (1995) concludes with former step siblings Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and Josh (Paul Rudd), getting together at her teacher's wedding. Cher points out early on in the movie that her father was quote "hardly even married to the woman (Josh's Mom), and that was five years ago!"
- In the film A Very Brady Sequel, released in 1996, Greg and Marcia grew sexually attracted to each other when an impostor named Trevor Thomas posed as their mother's first husband, Roy Martin, and came into the house to stay with them. Even after the impostor was arrested they ended up making out at the end of the film during their parents wedding anniversary. (This is believed to have been inspired by Barry Williams and Maureen McCormick having briefly "hooked up" during the production of the actual original series. Williams tells Chris Kreski about this in Growing Up Brady: I Was A Teen-Age Greg, but McCormick, in Here's The Story..., is not known to have made any mention of this to her ghost co-author.)
- The film Cruel Intentions (1999) and to a lesser extent, the film it is based on, Dangerous Liaisons (1988), features a quasi-incestuous step-sibling relationship. Cruel Intentions 2 (2000) also includes a short part that features identical twin sisters Gretchen and Sarah (real-life twins Alicia and Annie Sorell) making out.
- In the film The Royal Tenenbaums, (2001), Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) has a lifelong secret love for his adopted sister, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), who eventually returns his affections.
- The Ballad of Jack and Rose features a scene in which step-siblings Rose and Thaddius (played by Camilla Belle and Paul Dano respectively) engage in sexual intercourse, a fact which Rose parades in front of her father later on in the film.
- In the film Mr. Nobody (2009), young Nemo starts a romantic teenage relationship with Anna, a daughter of his mother's boyfriend.
- İn the film Bad Family it is implied there is a liaison between sister and brother
Make-believe incest[edit]
- In the 2001 film Say It Isn't So, while searching for his birth mother, a man (Chris Klein) is deceived into believing his girlfriend (Heather Graham) is his sister.
- In the 2001 film Joe Dirt, a hillbilly girl, with whom Joe had sex, seems for a while to be his sister. They shared almost the same background, but it is revealed later that she is not in fact related to him. A scene is shown as a daydream sequence where Joe Dirt is making love to the girl again, but enjoying it only because he wants her to be his sister, shouting over and over again in passion, "You're my sister". Joe immediately commented, however, that the event never happened and only stated so as a joke to the audience.
- In Molly an autistic woman tells her brother she is attracted to him and asks him to marry her, not understanding this would be incest. He then explains to her that siblings can't get married and the dangers of inbreeding.
- In "We're the Millers" (2013), the Millers are composed of unrelated friends pretending to be a related family. A particular scene depicts the son, Kenny Rossmore (Will Poulter) receiving kissing lessons from his sister, Casey Mathis (Emma Roberts) and mother, Rose O'Reilly (Jennifer Aniston) while their father, David Clarke (Jason Sudeikis) encourages them. This is further complicated when they are interrupted by someone believing them to be a related family. The truth of the make-believe family is revealed later in the film.
Parent/children incest[edit]
Father/daughter incest[edit]
- A notable example of censorship in this area surfaces in Kings Row (1942). While the relationship is explicit in Henry Bellamann's best-selling 1940 novel of the same name, Joseph Breen, director of the Production Code Authority and his superior, Will H. Hays, first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America forbade clearly showing that Dr. Tower (Claude Rains) commits incest with his daughter Cassandra (Betty Field) in the film.[9]
- Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) features father-daughter incest, resulting in the daughter giving birth to her own half-sister.
- In Stay As You Are (1978), a girl (Nastassja Kinski) falls in love with a man (Marcello Mastroianni) who may be her father.
- In the Mexican film Angel de Fuego (1992), after his mother left her circus-born Alma starts an affair with her father, has sex with him and becomes impregnated by him.
- In Butterfly (Matt Cimber, 1982), a miner living in the Nevada desert, who has not seen his daughter for years, is confronted then seduced by his now sexy and troubling teenage child, while struggling against his own reluctance as well as the 1937 rural society.
- In the 1997 film U Turn, Grace (Jennifer Lopez) and Jake (Nick Nolte) are initially thought to be husband and wife. In a plot twist, it is revealed that after the death of her mother, Grace married her father Jake.
- Wicked (1998), starring Julia Stiles and William R. Moses, features an incestuous father-daughter relationship.
- The 1999 film The Cider House Rules depicts a father-daughter incestuous relationship that results in the daughter's pregnancy.
- Tim Roth's 1999 film The War Zone explores the effect of father-daughter incest on a family.
- In Girl, Interrupted (2000), a recently released patient of the mental institution, Daisy Randone (Brittany Murphy), is well known to have had an incestuous relationship with her father. Being taunted over this eventually leads her to commit suicide.
- The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), Rose (Camilla Belle) is in love with her father, Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis), although he is unable to accept his romantic feelings for her.
- In The Quiet (2005), A young woman (Camilla Belle) discovers an incestuous relationship between her God-father (Martin Donovan) and his daughter (Elisha Cuthbert).
- In Madeinusa (2006), the Mayor of an indigenous community lusts after his 14-year-old daughter and has off screen sex with her in the days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the days when his village believes God is dead and cannot see what is happening in the world.
Sexual abuse[edit]
- In the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a prequel to the television series Twin Peaks, a sexually abusive relationship between father and daughter is depicted that eventually leads to murder.
- Based on a true story, the 1993 TV film Shattered Trust: The Shari Karney Story stars Melissa Gilbert as Shari Karney, an incest victim who was sexually abused by her father.
- In 2005 film An American Haunting, the curse turns out to be caused by the father sexually abusing his daughter.
- In the 2009 Oscar-winning movie Precious, the titular character (played by Gabourey Sidibe) had been sexually-abused by her father, who has gotten her pregnant twice, and mother.
Father/son incest[edit]
- A subplot of 2000 film The Gift, involves a mentally unstable man being abused by his father.
- In 2002 film Ken Park, Claude's drunk father attempts to give him oral sex while he's sleeping.
- In the British soap opera Hollyoaks it is revealed that main character Brendan Brady, was sexually abused as a child.
Mother/son incest[edit]
- In the political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the character Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) has an incestuous relationship with his mother (who had an incestuous affair with her father) while in his hypnotized state. One of the film's most notable scenes is one which involves the two of them sharing a passionate kiss. Their relationship is shown more explicitly in the 2004 remake.
- In the movie The Damned (1969), by Luchino Visconti, the deviant young character of Martin (played by Helmut Berger) besides having paedophilian tendencies, forces his mother Sophie (played by Ingrid Thulin) into having sexual intercourse with him.
- My Lover My Son (1970), by John Newland, in which the main character (played by Romy Schneider) falls in love with her son (played by Dennis Waterman, who was only 10 years younger).
- Murmur of the Heart (French: Le souffle au cœur) (1971) by Louis Malle that tells a coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy who is growing up in bourgeois surroundings in Dijon, France. The various adventures of the boy lead to an incestuous relationship with his mother.
- In Bernardo Bertolucci's film La Luna (aka Luna) (1979), Jill Clayburgh plays an opera singer on tour in Italy whose desperate attempts to wean her son off of drugs result in an incestuous relationship with the boy.
- In the 1985 movie, Back to the Future, when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) accidentally goes back in time, he meets his parents, and his mother, played by Lea Thompson, falls in love with him. Knowing that she is his mother, however, and that if they do connect then he will never exist, McFly does not allow for anything to happen between them, turning her attention towards his future father instead.
- The 1992 horror film Sleepwalkers, the energy vampires, Charles and his mother, Mary maintain an incestuous relationship. Although the reason remains unexplained, it may be the simple fact that they have lived so long with each other, or the fact that they may be the last of their kind.
- The Australian film Bad Boy Bubby (1993) depicts an incestuous relationship between a mother and her adult son, who has never been outside his mother's house in his life.
- The film Spanking the Monkey (1994) depicts a situation in which mother-son incest takes place, leading the latter to attempt suicide.
- The French film La Petite Lili (2005) portrays a fictional case of incipient consensual mother-son incest between independent adults.
- In the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, Billy's mother, desperate to have a child, goes up into Billy's attic and has sex with him, resulting in her giving birth to her daughter and Billy's daughter/half-sister, Agnes.
- Savage Grace was released in 2007. Fact-based, it was modeled on the true story of the dysfunctional, incestuous relationship between heiress Barbara Daly Baekeland and her son Antony.
- Womb is a literary science fiction film released in 2011. After the death of her lover, a woman decides to clone him, and carry him inside her, eventually giving birth to him. They continue their sexual relationship with each other throughout the film.
Mother/daughter incest[edit]
- The 1990 Greek film Singapore Sling, directed by Nikos Nikolaidis, is concerned with a lesbian mother-daughter incestuous relationship.
Stepparents/stepchildren incest[edit]
- In 1962's Lolita (and its 1997 remake), a man and his stepdaughter have a sexual relationship.
- In the French film Beau-père (1981) after the sudden death of his wife, Remy (Patrick Dewaere), is forced to take care of his 14-year-old stepdaughter (Ariel Besse) who, unbeknownst to him, has fallen in love with him. He finally succumbs to the girls insinuations, move out of town and start living as a couple.
- The 2006 film Mini's First Time features a sexual relationship between the main character, Mini, and her stepfather, Martin.
- In the 2008 film Hallam Foe Hallam (Jamie Bell) suspects his stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) is responsible for his mother's death. When Verity confronts him about his suspicions, they end up having sex which leads to Hallam running away from home.
- In the Italian film My Father's Wife a woman frustrated with her husband's infidelity and her failing sexual life starts having sex with her stepson. Eventually, the woman is killed by her husband.
- Carl Th. Dreyer's 1943 film Day of Wrath deals with a stepmother-stepson romantic relationship.
- [Guy Maddin]]'s film Careful (1992) features one character, Johann, lusting after his mother and another character, Klara, who is attracted to her father (who lusts after his other daughter)[10]
- In Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver, a man lusts after his stepdaughter, who is in fact the product of incest between her mother and her mother's father.
Make-believe incest[edit]
- Little Boy Blue (1997) features what at first appears to be a non-consensual incestuous relationship between a mother, Kate (Nastassja Kinski), and her son, Jimmy (Ryan Phillippe). Kate's psychotic husband Ray (John Savage) repeatedly forces Kate and teenaged Jimmy to have sex, often at gunpoint, while he watches. Ray, whom Jimmy believes to be his father, had been rendered impotent years earlier by a castrating war wound and violently commands Kate and Jimmy to provide these vicarious thrills. Jimmy's situation is further complicated by two children he has fathered with the woman he believes to be his mother. However, it is later revealed that Jimmy is not really related to Kate or Ray when Jimmy discovers that Ray kidnapped him when he was only an infant.
Cousin incest[edit]
The practice of cousin incest remains legal in many USA states today as well as many countries, where cousin marriage is allowed.
- In Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (published 1814), Fanny ends up marrying her first cousin, Edmund, the son of her mother's sister, with whom she has been in love since he befriended her as a child. This relationship is explicit in the novel and in several adaptations of it, a BBC series starring Sylvestra Le Touzel in 1983, a 1999 film starring Frances O'Connor, a television adaptation in 2007 starring Billie Piper and a chamber opera commissioned and produced by Heritage Opera in July–August 2011, although there is no sexual component to it until they are married.
- In Gone with the Wind (1939), two first cousins marry; however this practice was common and widely accepted in the Southern United States in the 19th century.[citation needed]
- In The Godfather (1972), two first cousins marry. A subplot in The Godfather Part III (1990) features Mary Corleone falling in love with her first cousin; the Godfather's heir, Vincent Mancini.
- The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) and her cousin, Ralph (Martin Donovan) share a close friendship until, upon Ralph's deathbed, they each admit to being in love with the other (although this may not have been considered incest at the time the film is set). One the films most memorable scenes is an interpolated dream sequence in which Isabel has an erotic fantasy involving her cousin.
- In Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), it is implied that the character Michele lost her virginity to a cousin.
- Mean Girls (2004), Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried), the ditsy one of the plastics, revealed that she made out with her first cousin, not understanding that first cousins are directly related.
- In the South Korean film Maundy Thursday (2006), Yu-jeong (Lee Na-young) reveals that she was raped at the age of 15 by her older cousin.
- Kissing Cousins (2008), starring Samrat Chakrabarti and Rebecca Hazlewood, A "relatively" romantic comedy about a professional heartbreaker (and cynical bachelor) who teams up with his attractive cousin from the UK in order to fool his friends into believing he is capable of a relationship.
- In The Blue Lagoon (1980), two cousins grow up as lovers and have a child after being marooned on an island for many years.
- In Jude (1996), starring Kate Winslet and Christopher Eccleston, based upon the Thomas Hardy novel Jude the Obscure, Cousins Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead burn for one another, but for various reasons the love is unrequited until Sue breaks down one evening and professes her love for Jude and they begin to live together. Only when Jude's estranged wife reenters his life does Sue finally give herself sexually to Jude and they have several children together.
- In My Girl 2 Veda kisses Nick after after her uncle proposed to his mother, meaning they'd be future cousins by marriage.
Aunt/uncle incest[edit]
- In the 2003 Chilean film Sexo con Amor, a man has sex with his niece on top of a washing machine.
- In the film Hannibal Rising (2007), a young Hannibal Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) falls in love with his aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li) and enters into a mild incestuous relationship with her (although, as they are not biologically related, this may not truly be incest).
- The well known Marathi film Gharkul features an incestuous relationship where a boy is raped by his aunt.
- In the Korean film Old Boy, a man has sex with woman who turns out to be his daughter, whom he has not seen in years. Elsewhere, another character had an incestuous relationship with his sister, who committed suicide when she suspected she was pregnant and the relationship was accidentally publicized.
Several kinds of incest on the same show[edit]
The CW television series Supernatural stars two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, who are mistaken for lovers on occasion, and even go along with it a few times. The show openly plays this, going as far as having one of their characters, angel Zachariah, describe the siblings as "erotically codependent on each other".[11] Sam and Dean also happen to be "soul-mates", as stated in season 5 (episode 16). Their relationship is constantly reported by other characters as co-dependent, dysfunctional, unhealthy, and generally "weird". In the season 4 episode "The Monster at the End of This Book", fans of a fictional Supernatural book series are revealed to have a subgroup who believe the brothers to also be lovers, this is also true of the TV show fans itself; this phenomenon is called "Wincest". The show has used incest as a plot device on several occasions. In season 1, the episode "The Benders" featured an incestuous family. In season 4 (episode 7), incest is implied between two witches (brother and sister) that are trying to raise a demon. Again in season 4, in the episode "Family Remains", they find a wild girl and a wild boy living in a secret room under a house; they are the product of a girl having been raped by her father. It is also heavily implied and, though never made explicit, widely accepted as fact that Bela Talbot, a reoccurring character in season 3, was sexually abused by her father throughout her early teenage years. Supernatural has dealt with non-sibling incest within the Winchester/Campbell family a few times as well. In season 3, an FBI agent falsely states that Dean was brainwashed and molested by his father. In the season 4 episode "In the Beginning", Dean travels back in time and, upon seeing his mother as a young woman, proceeds to say that she is a "babe", and then, "I'm going to hell. Again.". In the same episode, Mary Campbell (their mother) makes a deal with a demon possessing her father's body. The deal is sealed with a drawn out, open mouthed kiss between the two. In season 6, a few of Dean's distant cousins are introduced and one flirts with him a few times. More recently, in the season 7 episode "The Mentalists", Sam and Dean investigate in a Museum and stumble upon a photograph of 2 brothers whose last name is none other than Campbell (Sam and Dean's mother's maiden name). It then turns out that the two men on the photograph weren't brothers but lovers. In a recent season 8 episode, incest is implied between a dead football player and his mother before it is revealed that the player was actually a god who didn't age, and the woman posing as his mother had been his mortal lover.
The 1980s American soap opera Dynasty featured a storyline whereby Fallon Colby and Adam Carrington become attracted to one another, eventually sharing a kiss, not realising that they were in fact sister and brother. Fallon would also go on to marry and divorce two of her cousins, Myles and Jeff Colby.
The FOX television drama House featured two young patients, a husband and wife, who share the same symptoms. Later it is revealed that they are agnate half-siblings and they suffer from hereditary angioedema inherited from their father. (Episode 3x05, Fools for Love). In the episode 2x13, Skin Deep; a teenage supermodel confesses to having an incestuous relationship with her father simply to get what she wants.
In The Simpsons, Springfield's rival town Shelbyville was founded specifically to allow men to marry their cousins because, according to Shelbyville Manhattan, the founder of the city, "they're so attractive". There was also the relationship between Cletus Spuckler and his wife Brandine, who may be siblings, mother and son, or even father and daughter.
Incest is sometimes added to the plot of episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In the episode "Blood Drops" (1.07), a young girl is sexually abused by her father, who is also her grandfather. Her mother is also her half-sister. The episode "Committed" (5.21), portrays mother-son incest. In "Table Stakes" (1.15), a brother and sister fake being a couple to avoid the authorities; they even allow themselves to be caught making love by the CSIs. In "Burden of Proof", the Father raped his daughter as she reminded him of her mother back when she was younger, and the father killed the soon to be step father after she told him while trying to frame him for molesting her.
The Fox sitcom Arrested Development constantly plays with the idea of incest. The most ongoing is George Michael Bluth's (Michael Cera) crush on his cousin Maeby Fünke (Alia Shawkat), who in turn has a crush on Steve Holt (Justin Grant Wade), another cousin. In another scene, Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) sings the song "Afternoon Delight" with his niece Maeby at the company Christmas party, not realizing the sexual innuendo of the song, Lindsay Bluth (Portia de Rossi) and her nephew George Michael also sing the song in the same episode, also not realizing the sexual content. Lindsay reveals to her brother Michael, that she has always had a small attraction towards him once it is stipulated that she was adopted. Lindsay also attempts to steal her daughter Maeby's love interest, Steve Holt (her nephew), by pretending to be Maeby's sister, although she is unsuccessful. Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter) and her son, Buster (Tony Hale), live together, even though Buster is in his mid-30s and they have a comedic codependent relationship, although it is not sexual. It is later revealed that Linsay Bluth is adopted, and thus neither the relationship between her and Michael nor Maeby and George Michael is actually incestuous.
In HBO's Rome, Octavia seduces her brother Octavian in the hopes of learning some of his secrets during pillow-talk, and Octavian is once accused of having an affair with his great uncle, Julius Caesar.
Incestuous families[edit]
The FOX television drama The X-Files featured an episode, "Home", in which a family in the real Pennsylvania town of Home had pursued incestuous relationships for several generations and, as a result, developed genetic deformities. The episode received a TV-MA rating and was banned from replaying for years.[citation needed]
Sibling incest[edit]
British shows[edit]
I, Claudius was a 1976 BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves's I, Claudius and Claudius the God. In it, the sordid lives of the Caesars are detailed, including the historical incestuous relationship between Caligula and his sister Drusilla.
The British soap opera Brookside ran a controversial storyline featuring consensual incestuous sex between the two sibling characters, Nat and Georgia Simpson, in the 1990s.
In "The Killings at Badger's Drift", an episode of the British television series Midsomer Murders, an old woman discovers a brother and sister in an incestuous relationship.
The British soap Family Affairs featured a storyline involving Gavin and Polly Arnold, a brother and sister in a consensual incestuous relationship.
In the Coming Up series for the UK's Channel 4, a woman who is obsessed with breaking social taboos seduces her brother during the 7 July 2005 London bombings. They eventually part ways as they realize they cannot be a normal couple.
American shows[edit]
Incest features heavily into the plot of a second-season episode of the NBC medical drama ER, titled "The Secret Sharer" (air date: 16 November 1995). A seventeen-year-old girl named Julia (Miriam Reichmeister) is brought in after a suicide attempt. She at first resists all attempts at treatment and will not talk about the reason for trying to take her own life. As the episode progresses, however, the reason for her bizarre behaviour is revealed: following the death of their mother, the girl's attempts to comfort her younger teenage brother Kyle (Austin O'Brien), who was hit particularly hard by the loss, eventually resulted in a sexual encounter between the two and she is now pregnant with his child.
The television series Prison Break (2005) portrays the character Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell (Robert Knepper) as the product of incestuous rape, specifically that of his Down syndrome-afflicted aunt by his father; he was also molested by his father. Siblings President Caroline Reynolds and Terrence Steadman were also incestuous lovers.
In the finale episode of the third season of FX Network's television drama Nip/Tuck, Quentin Costa (Bruno Campos) and Kit McGraw (Rhona Mitra) are exposed as incestuous lovers, of likewise incestuous parents. This discovery comes soon after Quentin is unmasked as the serial killer The Carver, the main antagonist of the third season, along with his accomplice, Kit. In the sixth season, it is Matt Macnamara who has incestuous intercourse with a girl who turns out to be his sister.
In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 12 episode "Bombshell", a woman who cons men from a popular Swinging club and her jealous boyfriend turn out to be twins in a romantic and sexual relationship, as confirmed by the DNA tests.
In the FX Network's comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the McPoyle brothers are heavily "implied" to have an incestuous relationship with each other and are explicitly seen publicly tongue kissing their deaf-mute sister.
In Degrassi Takes Manhattan, a drunk Fiona gets jealous when she sees her twin brother Declan making out with his girlfriend Holly J. at a party. She grabs Declan and pulls him into the middle of the room and kisses him.
In the Family Guy episode "Hannah Banana", Meg Griffin reveals that she and her brother, Chris Griffin, practice kissing on each other. Another instance is in the episode "Halloween on Spooner Street", when siblings Meg and Chris Griffin unknowingly play Seven minutes in heaven at a Halloween party. Upon finding out each other's identities, they are shocked and disgusted, but in a later scene they are proud of themselves for finally "hooking up" with someone.
In American Dad, an explicit example is seen in the episode "Stannie Get your Gun". After Steve stole Roger's cookie, in revenge, Roger convinces Steve that he was adopted (and later, that he was kidnapped by his "fake" parents). Then, Steve tells Hayley, his big sister, that he is going to do "something they both wanted to do for years", and then, he French kisses Hayley passionately. So: Steve is in love with Hayley, but he respects the line between brothers and sisters. In a later episode Steve masturbates to a nude portrait of Hayley done by Roger (though he only painted from the chin down), becoming obsessed with it. However he became horrified upon discovering it was of his sister.
In the Showtime series The Borgias the growing and obvious romance between siblings Lucrezia and Cesare is major subplot.
Half-siblings incest[edit]
A recent Hollyoaks plot has dealt with incest between two members of the Ashworth family, Rhys Ashworth and his half-sister Beth Clement. They did not know they were half brother and sister when they began seeing each other; upon finding out they were related when their dad died, they tried to halt the relationship, but in the end could not stay away despite Rhys moving into a relationship with Mercedes McQueen and Beth moving into a relationship with Rhys' best friend, Gilly Roach. When Beth is planning to be married to Gilly, they decide they must leave Hollyoaks, as they cannot end their relationship and see no other way to be together.
In the German television soap opera Alles was zählt, one of the main characters, Jennifer Steinkamp, had a secret affair with her half-brother Maximilian.
In British soap opera Emmerdale, characters Ryan and Maisie were in a romantic and sexual relationship until it was revealed that they shared the same father.
In the CBS horror series Harper's Island, it is revealed in the last episode that main characters Abby Mills and Henry Dunn are half siblings, sharing the same mother even though the mother gave Henry up for adoption. Henry learned of this from his biological father and is still in love with Abby. However, when Abby finds out, she calls him sick and wants to leave him.
In the ABC Family series Pretty Little Liars, Jenna Marshall forced her half-brother Toby Cavanaugh to have sex with her.
In the FOX Television series Two and a Half Men, Charlie Harper has a one-night stand with a woman named Gloria, who is revealed to be his and Alan's half sister from when their mother's husband had an affair with another woman.
In the FX original series Sons Of Anarchy, Protagonist Jax Teller and Irish IRA family member Trinity Ashby were developing romantic interest towards each other while Jax and SAMCRO were in Belfast, Ireland. Before they had sex, both of their mothers walked in and were forced to tell them that they are paternal half siblings as a result of an affair between Jax's father and Trinity's mother.
Relationship unknown to the characters[edit]
In the CSI: Miami episode "Divorce Party", two teens who are in love and having a child discover they are actually half-brother and sister when they figure out they have the same father, who had two families under different names.
In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Families" in season 5, a young girl is found dead in an ally. It is revealed that she is pregnant with her brother's child. They initially question her brother, until they realize that the victim's father and the father of her boyfriend Aidan Connor are the same person, and the victim's mother was Aidan Connor's father's mistress.
Siblings with no blood relation[edit]
The ABC television drama Lost features two step-siblings, Boone and Shannon, who engaged in an incestuous encounter.
In the 2009 remake of Melrose Place, there was a storyline of Violet (Ashlee Simpson) having a relationship with her stepbrother, Levi. Both adopted into the same family, they had a romance during high school and had plans to run away together. However, Violet left their family, stealing money as well, and ended their relationship.
Make-believe incest[edit]
In ABC's Ugly Betty, Amanda Sommers and Daniel Meade, sexual lovers, briefly panic when they believe Amanda's father is Bradford Meade (also Daniel's father). However, this proves not to be the case, much to the relief of both Daniel and Amanda.
In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Repression", Megan Ramsey, after having a session with her therapist, reveals that she was raped by her father when she was fifteen. However, it is later revealed this was all just a delusion brought up by a suggestive state in a sodium pentothal session with her therapist, and in fact she was still a virgin. Also in the episode "Father Dearest", a man posing as a sperm donor seduces young teenage girls, pretending to be their biological father. Psychiatrist Dr George Huang identifies the girls' desire to have sex with their father as Genetic sexual attraction.
In Veronica Mars, we can piece together from flashbacks that Duncan Kane's father Jake Kane told him that his high school girlfriend Veronica may be his half-sister and his father Jake and Veronica's mother were high school sweethearts and had continued to have an affair over the years despite their marriage to others. This prompted Duncan to break up with Veronica (before Lily Kane's death). Shortly afterwards, the two consensual sex while both were under the influence of GHB. When Veronica finds out and asks Duncan about it, he says it was wrong of him to do it because he knew that they were brother and sister. A DNA test later reveals that Veronica was not Jake Kane's daughter and therefore Duncan was not her brother.
Parent/children incest[edit]
Father/daughter incest[edit]
In the PBS Mystery! production of Heat of the Sun (1999), former Scotland Yard detective Albert Tyburn investigates a murder that involves what seems to be father-daughter incest in colonial Nairobi, Kenya.
In the 2006 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit named "Taboo", a young woman seduces and is impregnated by her father. The franchise touched again the issue in the 2009 episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent named "Family Values". Paul Devildis develops an incestuous attraction towards his daughter Kathy, which due to his deep religious beliefs makes him believe everyone else as well is attracted to her in a lustful way and therefore sinners. In turn he goes on a killing spree under the belief he is doing god's work.
In Twin Peaks, David Lynch's 1990–91 cult hit, seventeen year-old Laura Palmer, whose brutal murder causes the events depicted in the series to unfold, has been sexually abused on a regular basis by a demonic entity referred to as Bob, who has taken possession of her father Leland.
A storyline arc at the end of Melrose Place's second season (which concluded early in the third) dealt with Alison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith) and her sister Meredith being molested by their father when they were children.
The Storyteller episode Sapsorrow features a situation where a daughter is forced to engagement with her father.
In the Breakout Kings episode Out of the Mouths of Babes, a young girl named Tess is revealed to have been sexually abused by her father, but blamed the school councilor out of fear.
Anaïs Nin's first work of fiction House of Incest, published in 1939, was based in part on an incestuous relationship with her father.
In the postmodern Latin American literary classic, "Empire of Dreams" by Giannina Braschi the heroine Mariquita Samper of "Intimate Diary of Solitude" has an incestuous relationship with her father.
In CBS's Numb3rs, episode 12 of season 3 ("Nine Wives") features the discovery of incest in a polygamist fundamentalist cult. A teenage victim, Josephine Kirtland learns that her mother, Emmanueline (played by Anne Dudek) is also her half-sister.
Mother/son incest[edit]
The British comedy Green Wing features a mother and son, Joanna and Guy, sleeping together, albeit unknowingly as Guy was abandoned by Joanna as a baby.
In the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its revealed that after Spike bit his own mother, she was so overwhelmed with the power that she tried to rid herself of him. Spike tried to reason with her, but his mother grew so angry that she insinuated that Spike had always had a sexual fascination with her. She even tried to seduce Spike before he killed her.
In the NCIS episode "Meat Puzzle", a killer named Vincent Hanlan (Morgan Weisser) is convicted of the rape and murder of a female Navy Lieutenant but Ducky notes Vincent was unable to rape the woman as he was impotent and he beat her to death in a rage. Later Vincent's brother implies Vincent and their mother have a consensual sexual relationship ("They have lots of secrets, terrible secrets with each other") This is also implied when his mother, Mary (Lee Garlington) caresses Vincent's face and winks at him in a seductive way.
In season 4 of Smallville, it is implied that Jason Teague (Jensen Ackles) is in a relationship with his mother, Genevieve (Jane Seymour); this is hinted at by Lionel Luthor (John Glover) many times.
In Boardwalk Empire, Gillian Darmody (Gretchen Mol) was a dancer who was raped at the age of 13 and gave birth to Jimmy Darmody, (Michael Pitt). Their relationship is unusually close and a flashback in the second season episode "Under God's Power She Flourishes" reveals that Gillian had seduced Jimmy when he was a student at Princeton, leading to him dropping out and enlisting to fight in World War I.
At the end of a 5-episode arc in Boston Legal's third season (beginning with "New Kids on the Block" and ending with "The Verdict"), the suspected murderer is revealed to have an incestuous relationship with his mother (played by Katey Sagal).
The 2013 reboot series Bates Motel features a heavily suggested incestuous relationship between Norman Bates and his mother Norma Bates.
In the FX series, "American Horror Story: Coven", Kyle has an incestious relationship with his mother, shown when he is brought home after being resurrected. It is not revealed if the relationship is consented on Kyle's part, and it seems that his mother is incredibly in love with him
Mother/daughter incest[edit]
In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 12 episode "Totem" features a domineering mother who sexually abused her two daughters for years, until the younger one ended up killing a young girl, which led Detectives Benson and Stabler to unravel the truth.
Cousin incest[edit]
In an episode of the FOX sitcom That '70s Show entitled "Eric's Hot Cousin", Eric Forman (Topher Grace) is tricked into thinking that he is not related to his cousin, whom he desires but only learns the truth as he is embarrassed in front of his parents.
In the episode of King of the Hill, The Wedding of Bobby Hill, Bobby plays a prank on Luanne of taking away her birth control pills and his parents teach him a lesson by saying that he made her pregnant so he has to marry her.
Another FOX sitcom, Arrested Development, two prominent characters, the cousins George-Michael Bluth and Maeby Funke become involved in an intimate relationship whose intensity builds up over the course of the first three seasons. However, in the final episode of the third season, it is revealed that they are not related by blood.
In an episode of Seinfeld named "The Junk Mail", George Costanza convinces his cousin to start a romantic relationship with him. However, he was not actually interested in her; he simply wanted to anger his father (although she was into it, even referring to herself as his girlfriend). They never have sex, however.
In the 7th season of the popular sitcom Friends Ross was shown sexually attracted to his cousin Cassie (Denise Richards).
In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency", Howard Wolowitz reveals he lost his virginity to his second cousin at his uncle's funeral. Wolowitz lived with his mother until age 30, (when he got married) and has a strong attachment to her, and hatred for his father who abandoned them when he was 10 years old, possibly the origins of his unresolved Oedipus complex. He is also turned on when he wife Bernadette imitates his mother's manner of speaking (high pitched screaming), and later began calling herself "mama" when speaking to him in a dominant tone.
A recent storyline in the BBC soap EastEnders involves a romance between cousins Lauren and Joey Branning.
Other kinds of incest[edit]
EastEnders also featured a storyline between Zoe Slater, Kat Slater and Harry Slater. Zoe discovered Kat who she thought was her sister is actually her mother who had been sexually abused by her uncle Harry resulting in her becoming pregnant with Zoe.
In the Futurama episode "Roswell that Ends Well", the crew is sent back in time to the 1940s while watching a supernova occur. With the loss of all guidance systems, their ship crash lands at Roswell, where Philip J. Fry meets his grandfather, Enos. Professor Farnsworth then warns Fry not to interfere with anything lest he disrupt his own timeline. In an attempt to prevent his grandfather's death, however, Fry locks him in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere – which unknown to him is a nuclear test zone (resulting in his grandfather's death). Soon afterward, he quickly becomes entangled in his young grandmother's emotional despair and ends up sleeping with her. He justifies this by thinking that, since he still exists, the people he thought were his grandparents must not have been. The Professor, after discovering the two, then informs Fry that he is his own grandfather. This is a reference to the famous Grandfather Paradox of time travel. A later episode("The Day the Earth Stood Stupid") cites this scenario as the cause for Fry's lack of a cognitive function called the Delta Brain Wave, enabling him to be immune to an invasion of intelligence-absorbing flying Brains.
In the TV series Malcolm in the Middle episode College Recruiters, Reese's Russian bride claimed that the man she was having sex with was her brother, though this was an obvious lie to cover up her affair.
Popular music[edit]
One of the first incest lines was a song called "The End" by psychedelic rock band The Doors, in which Jim Morrison sings, "Father/ Yes son?/ I want to kill you/ Mother, I want to... (fuck you),"
In his classic song for the Flamin' Groovies' 1970 album "Flamingo", Roy Loney's song "Second Cousin" describes a man's desire to marry his second cousin ("with the kind of body on her make a bald man tear his hair!") despite the opposition of their families.
Prince's groundbreakingly explicit album Dirty Mind contains the song "Sister", an ode to incest.
British musician Kate Bush's song "The Kick Inside" from her 1978 album of the same name depicts an incestuous relationship, pregnancy and suicide involving a brother and sister.
The song "Fa La Fa Lee" by rock band Sparks contains the line: "Fa la fa lee /she ain't heavy, she's a brother to me/ What I need, she can't be / Nature, nurture, who's to say?/ But still fa la, fa lee / Anything between us is a felony"
Southern Californian Pop Punk band Blink 182 are notorious for being lighthearted about it in songs like, "The Grandpa Song", and "The Country Song", as well they joke about it frequently at live shows.
The song "Weakest Moments" by American rock musician John Mellencamp contains the line "Well, I hear you downstairs/ you're fooling around/ with your father's brother/ and your mother's gown".
The song "Don't Wake The Baby" by Jack Off Jill is also apparently about father-daughter incest.
American rock band Giant Drag have a song called "YFLMD" – which stands for "You Fuck Like My Dad".
Alternative rock band Pixies utilize themes of incest in several songs, including "The Holiday Song", "Nimrod's Son", "Break My Body", and "Broken Face".
The German metal band Rammstein touches on incest in "Spiel mit mir", ("Play with me"), featuring an incestuous relationship between brothers. In "Spiel mit mir", the older brother apparently forces himself on his younger brother for sex so he will be able to sleep. Rammstein has written other songs dealing with incest including "Laichzeit" ("Spawn time") and "Tier" ("Animal").
Alternative rock band 3 Doors Down also deals with father-daughter incest in the song "Sarah Yellin'", and the subsequent murder of the father by his daughter.
The song "Little Sister" by Queens of the Stone Age deals with what can be seen as a brother-sister relationship.
Nirvana released an album entitled Incesticide on December 15, 1992.
Steely Dan's "Cousin Dupree" from their 2000 album Two Against Nature is about a travelling singer who lusts after his cousin. For example, "When I see my little cousin Janine walk in / All I could say was ow-ow-ouch / ... How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree."
American singer Sophie B. Hawkins sings about brother-sister incest in her song "Don't Stop Swaying" from the 1992 album Tongues and Tails. The spoken phrase at the end of the song is explicit: "Hansel and Gretel are holding hands deep in the forest. They are lost. This is their own story. The two have fallen in love, and so, after a long quietness amidst the creatures of the night, they begin to kiss."
There are many examples where incestuous themes are interpreted into lyrics that are undoubtedly dealing with "normal sex". For instance, the term "mama" and "my old lady" are sometimes misinterpreted as representing "mother".
Arena rock band Queen was criticized for their song "Tie Your Mother Down", for the theory that the song was about incestuous rape, although cursory inspection of the lyrics reveals that the song actually refers to the singer's girlfriend's mother, who wants to prevent her daughter from seeing the singer.
On his 2003 album Poodle Hat, "Weird Al" Yankovic included a parody of Avril Lavigne's song, "Complicated (Avril Lavigne song)" titled "A Complicated Song". The song was sung in the first-person, and one of the verses sung was about going to dinner to propose to his girlfriend, only to learn that she was his cousin. The verse was sung as, "How was I supposed to know we were both related?/Believe me, if I knew she was my cousin, we never would have dated."
In their 2003 "metal opera" Days of Rising Doom, the band Aina tells through music a story that features an unknowing incestuous relationship between the Ainae princess Oriana and her half-brother Syrius. The evil warlord Sorvahr abducts the queen Oria from his brother Talon, the king of the land of Aina, and rapes her until she bears a son named Syrius. Oriana, whom Oria had conceived with Talon before Sorvahr kidnapped her, encounters Syrius many years later, who was being groomed to be the leader of Sorvahr's Krakhon army, falls in love with him, and has sexual intercourse with him. In a later battle between the Ainae and Krakhon, Syrius calls a truce between his forces and the Ainae when he spots Oriana on the Ainae battle line. Furious, Sorvahr kills Syrius with magic and appears in the sky, telling Oriana how Syrius was her brother. Oriana then destroys Sorvahr, and with the help of the Ainae army, defeats the Krakhon, rescues her mother, and restores peace to the realm of Aina.
Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers based their song "The Deeper In", from their Decoration Day album, on the real-life consensual incestuous relationship between Allen and Patricia Muth. The Muths are a brother and sister from Wisconsin, although Hood mistakenly implies Michigan in the song. In interviews he has claimed this is due to incorrectly recalling an article from Esquire magazine, in which he read about the couple. Patricia was adopted at birth and did not meet Allen until she was eighteen and he thirty-three, however both were aware of their relationship to each other. They went on to produce four children, one of which was disabled; this led to their arrest and subsequent imprisonment in 1997. Allen was sentenced to eight years and Patricia five, to be served in maximum-security prisons, twenty-five miles apart.
The song "This Love is Fucking Right" by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is about a consensual brother-sister relationship that is both romantic and sexual in nature.[12]
The so-called "Mamasan Trilogy" by Seattle rockers Pearl Jam tells the story of a man's incestuous relationship with his mother and the subsequent unfolding events. The trilogy begins with Alive, which singer Eddie Vedder explains as being part autobiographical and part fiction. When Eddie was a teenager, his mother revealed to him that the man he thought was his father was actually his stepfather, and his biological father was dead. It is the first piece to a trilogy of songs: "Alive", "Once" and "Footsteps." "Alive" tells a story of incest, which leads to the murderous killing spree described in "Once", and eventually looking back from a prison cell in "Footsteps".
The song "My Promiscuous Daughter" by West Chester, Pennsylvania band CKY starts off with lyrics, "I caught my daughter giving head to my brother", suggesting sexual relations between a man's daughter and her uncle.
Eyehategod have a song called "Sister Fucker."
"Suck My Left One" by Bikini Kill was about father-daughter incest.
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut features the song "Uncle Fucka", in which accusations of incest are leveled by Terrance and Phillip.
"Chinese Dunkirk" by the Australian blues/hard rock band, Rose Tattoo, on their 1981 album Assault & Battery contains lyrics that suggest brother-sister incest.
The indie rock band from Boston Jaggery released a song entitled Incestuous Tendencies off their 2010 album Upon a Penumbra.
The song "Ark" from the Japanese band Sound Horizon deals with a brother-sister relationship where the sister falls in love and kills her older brother.
The horrorcore rapper King Gordy talks about smoking crack with and repeatedly raping his sister on the song "This World" in 2009.
There is a brutal death metal band named Begging for Incest from Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.[13]
Parental incest in songs[edit]
A thirteen year-old boy is molested by his mother because he looks like his deceased father in the song "Alive" by Pearl Jam, from the album Ten. Similarly, The Prize Fighter Inferno released a song titled "Our Darling Daughter You Are, Little Cecillia Marie" on the album My Brother's Blood Machine, detailing a case of habitual father/daughter incest/rape, resulting in her attempted murder of her father. In Bad Cliché by Cosy Sheridan, from the album Grand Design, a girl is sexually abused by her uncle from the age of nine to twelve.
"Breaking Silence" by Janis Ian, from the album of the same name, is about fathers sexually abusing their daughters. In "Cherokee Louise" by Joni Mitchell, from the album Night Ride Home, a young girl hides from her sexually abusive stepfather. In "Crack in the Mirror" by Betty Elders, from the album Peaceful Existence; also covered by Joan Baez on Gone From Danger, a girl is sexually abused from the time she is a baby. In "Daddy's Girl" by Scorpions, from the album Face the Heat, a mother denies that her daughter is being molested by her father. In "Daddy's Song" by Toni Childs, from the album House of Hope, an incest survivor sings of sexual abuse by her father. In "Fiddle About" by the Who from the rock opera Tommy, Tommy is molested in bed by his uncle.
In "Nightmare" by Gaye Adegbalola, from Bitter Sweet Blues, a girl molested by her father forgives, but does not forget.[citation needed] Sleep by Stabbing Westward, from Wither Blister Burn & Peel tells of the despair felt by a child who is a victim of incest, and her withdrawal from reality.[citation needed] "Island" by Heather Nova, from her album Oyster, deals with a daughter being sexually abused by her father with nowhere to escape.[citation needed]
"Razorblade" by Blue October, appears to relate the occurrences of a boy being sexually abused by his previously idolized uncle.
The song "Amy In The White Coat" by indie rock artist Bright Eyes tells the story of a girl (and her sisters) being molested by her father.
The German thrash metal band Sodom has a song titled "Incest" on their album Agent Orange.
"Family Tree" by the thrash metal band Megadeth, from their album Youthanasia, is about incest between a father and daughter.
"Embryo" by the Japanese band Dir En Grey is about a mother dying and the father raping the daughter. At the end of the song, the girl kills the father and discovers she is pregnant with his child.
The song "Sugar Pain" by the Japanese band The GazettE depicts the struggles of a man who can't tell the difference between platonic and sexual love and ultimately goes insane and rapes his own mother.
The song "The Dark I Know Well" in the 2006 musical Spring Awakening is about a girl who admits to her friends that she is sexually and physically abused by her father, and that her mother is either oblivious or uncaring "Mom just smiles that smile/just like she never saw me/ just like she never saw me." "You say all you want is just a kiss goodnight/then you hold me and you whisper/ "Child the Lord won't mind"/ It's just you and me,/ Child you are a beauty."
"Royally Fucked" by Mindless Self Indulgence off their "Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy" album has the teller complaining "Mom, Dad, why don't you finger me too?" and how he will "never be loved" because he was not sexually touched by his parents like his sibling was. This song could also be about inbreeding in royal families which had been happening from the 17th to late 18th century.[citation needed] Being royally fucked is being deformed and tainted. "All of them dead now, let me be the same", could be referencing the dead inbred kings/queens of the time.
The song Lemon Incest by Charlotte and Serge Gainsbourg is a song and music video about an incestuous relationship between a father and her daughter. The single cover is a picture of the half-clothed father with his daughter lying across his chest. Considering that father/daughter was the same family tie that the singers shared it caused suspicions that the song may be autobiographical. However, the Gainsbourgs denied these allegations and the song became very popular in France.
In "Janie's Got a Gun" by the band Aerosmith, Janie kills her father after he sexually abuses her.
The Bravery's song "Tragedy Bound" involves a girl abused by her father. (Her daddy was a demon watching her dress./ He shriveled her down, wore her like a crown.)
G Tom Mac's song 'Cry Little Sister' recorded for the movie The Lost Boys, may imply incest between siblings. The song was covered by bands such as Aiden, and BluTengel. Although the literal interpretation hints at incest, It is most commonly interpreted as a metaphor for vampirism.
The song My Secret Friend by IAMX and Imogen Heap depicts the tight-knit relationship of two siblings, maybe implying that it's incestuous. In the video, the siblings (played by Chris Corner and Imogen Heap) are in two rooms separated by a boarded up wall and when they finally break through it, they decide that the only way they can truly be together is if they die by drowning themselves.
Kathleen Hannah's former band The Fakes released a spoken word piece entitled Held (sometimes referred to as Safety Cuts). Told from the point of a view of a girl named Billie, it recounts the memories and trauma sustained due to a childhood filled with sexual abuse at the hands of the character's father. Though it is unclear whether the abuse is an actual memory or some sort of grandiose delusion as it becomes apparent throughout the monologue that the girl is severely psychologically disturbed and is admittedly somewhat of an unreliable narrator.
Video games[edit]
Kana: Little Sister is a visual novel game about the relationship that develops between an older brother and his ill younger sister. Depending on the choices made by the player the relationship can develop along traditional brother-sister roles or can become an incestuous relationship. (by the time the brother makes a choice to have sex with her, he discovers she is adopted)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is a game where Victor Vance's important ally, Phil Cassidy, confesses that he was beaten by his father under the belief that he had sexual attraction for his sister and cousin, which Phil denies. Later on in the game when Vic starts dating Phil's sister, Louise Cassidy-Williams, Phil is fine with that relationship.
In Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu, the Archbishop Manfloy of the Lopt Sect, attempts to revive the dark dragon lord Loptous by manipulating Duke Arvis of Velthomer and the maiden Deirdre into marrying each other. The two of them are, unbeknownst to each other, half-siblings and the only living carriers of Loptous' blood, and their union will produce a human vessel capable of hosting the consciousness of Loptous. Manfloy kidnaps Deirdre from her husband, Lord Sigurd of Chalphy, and erases her memory and manipulates Arvis into finding and falling in love with her. Arvis, who is in league with Manfloy to overthrow the Granvallean Empire but completely unaware of Manfloy's true intentions, murders Sigurd and his army under the guise of a celebration. Arvis and Deirdre marry and eventually have twins, Julius and Julia, the former becoming the host of Loptous. Julia, however, does not inherit Loptous' blood but instead inherit's the blood of Naga, Loptous' sworn enemy. Years later, after Julius becomes completely possessed by Loptous, attempts to kill his sister but Deirdre sacrifices herself and teleports Julia to safety, at the cost of her own life. Shortly before her death she regains her memories. Julia eventually reunites with her half-brother, Seliph, who is Sigurd and Deirdre's son and the leader of a resistance army against Arvis and Julius. Julia begins to harbor romantic feelings for Seliph but stops after finding out he is her half-brother. Eventually with the help of Julia, Seliph kills Arvis, Julius, and Manfloy. avenging his parents' deaths.
In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Dr.Hal "Otacon" Emmerich confessed to his dead step sister Emma that he had an affair with her mother and his step mother, Julie. The affair was what led Hal's father to kill himself by drowning in the family's swimming pool and nearly killed Emma in the process. As a result, Hal left the family, unable to face Emma for not being able to save her. Emma grew to resent Hal in the years that followed, but continued to feel a degree of romantic attraction towards him (even though he admitted that he could never see her as a woman).
In Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, the two "sisters" Therese and Jeanette Voerman are revealed to be the same person: Therese was the original personality, and Jeanette was a sex-obsessed personality created so that Therese did not have to consciously experience being repeatedly sexually abused by her father. One day, "their" father forced himself on her when Therese was still in control, and she murdered him with a shotgun and was sent to an asylum. There, a Malkavian turned her into a vampire. The resulting supernatural psychosis caused her personality split to worsen, each side becoming a wholly fleshed out consciousness, with "Therese" being cold and repressed, and "Jeanette" getting the hyper-sexuality and Borderline Personality Disorder.
In Resident Evil Code: Veronica, it is heavily implied that Alfred Ashford had a sexual relationship with his sister Alexia Ashford.
In Grand Theft Auto IV, Michael Keane (a.k.a. Saint-Michael), a minor character, is often said by other characters to be born from an incestuous relationship between siblings. This is not confirmed nor denied by Michael himself. Also in Grand Theft Auto IV, It is revealed by Patrick 'Packie' McReary that both he and his older brother Gerald were molested by their father at a young age and he implies that Gerry murdered their father and made it look like suicide.
In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the main villain, historical figure Cesare Borgia has an incestuous relationship with his younger sister Lucrezia, who it is suggested was also sexually manipulating her father, on the instructions of her brother.
In the BlazBlue series, incest is a recurring theme; Jin lusts after his brother Ragna in multiple "omake" segments, and in the main story of Calamity Trigger, Ragna is pursued by a cyborg clone of his sister Saya, who is madly in love with him. The main heroine of the series, Noel, is also a clone of Saya, and it's repeatedly hinted that she has a romantic interest in Ragna.
In Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse the character You Haibara harbored a "twisted love" for his older sister, Sakuya. It is also hinted throughout the game that the character Ayako is their daughter.
Incest as a metaphor[edit]
Sometimes the word "incestuous" is also used metaphorically to describe other inappropriately close relationships, for example between an authority figure and a subordinate, between co-workers, or between people in the same profession or creative field. The term "incest group" is also common in high school, and denotes a group of friends that only date others within their group. Institutions such as churches, colleges, and sometimes whole nations can be described as incestuous when inappropriately close relationships, corrupt conflicts of interest and secret collusions occur inside the institution and especially within the institution's top echelons such as in cases John Boyd exposed in the Pentagon.
See also[edit]
- Incest in the Bible
- Incest in folklore
- Incest in pornography
- Incest between twins in popular culture
- ^ The Heinlein Society
- ^ The Register UK: Amazon randomly censoring incest books
- ^ Russell, Paul (1991). Boys of Life. New York, NY: Dutton. pp. 129–130. ISBN 0-525-93327-1.
- ^ Townsend, Susan C. (2000). Yanaihara Tadao and Japanese colonial policy: redeeming empire. Curzon studies in East Asia. Richmond: Curzon. p. 18. ISBN 0-7007-1275-5.
Ibid. p. 35, n. 5. - ^ Edward Douglas (2008-01-31). "Luke Goss is Hellboy II's Prince Nuada". SuperHeroHype. Retrieved 2014-02-12.
- ^ Christopher shares incestous snog with his blood sister Chyler
- ^ "Chyler Leigh likes her brother A LOT!!!!". YouTube. 2008-04-25. Retrieved 2014-02-12.
- ^ Comedy about middle school statutory rape? Does Adam Sandler's 'That's My Boy' go too far?. Fox News (2012-04-30). Retrieved on 2012-08-15.
- ^ Kings Row#Kings Row and the Hays Code
- ^ Careful (1992) - Plot summary
- ^ Gonzalez, Sandra. "EW.com: PopWatch: 'Supernatural' 100th episode recap: Because you're still my big brother". Retrieved May 20, 2012.
- ^ "The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - This Love is Fucking Right - (4 of 10)". YouTube. Retrieved 2014-02-12.
- ^ "Begging for Incest - Encyclopaedia Metallum". The Metal Archives. Retrieved 2014-02-12.