Incest in film and television

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Incest in film is precipitated in various mediums.

Film

Incestual families

Incestual siblings

Instances of incest between siblings.

Historical films

  • 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 Hamlet (1990), King Claudius (Alan Bates) murders his brother, Hamlet's father, by poisoning him so he could take his kingdom and his late brother's wife Queen Gertrude (Glenn Close) as his bride. Hamlet is disgusted by this turn of events as well as his discovering his mother's incestuous relationship with his uncle and plots revenge. The film even hints at the Oedipal relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude in the "bedroom" scene, with the fight culminating in a rather passionate kiss given the unhealthy attraction between the two.

Fantasy and horror films

  • In the film Excalibur (1981), Mordred is Arthur's illegitimate son born by his half-sister Morgana.
  • In the film The Hamiltons (2006), Wendell and his twin sister, Darlene, have an incestuous relationship and share it openly.
  • In the horror fantasy film "Tamara" (2005), the protagonist Tamara suffers from constant verbal abuse from her father Mr. Riley who is discovered to have harbored incestuous fantasies towards his own daughter. Once she discovers this, Tamara compels him with her witchcraft to "finish" his whole beer bottle, causing his death.
  • In the medieval horror film, "Red Riding Hood" adapted by Catherine Hardwicke, Lucie fell in love with a blacksmith named Henry Lazar and wanted to marry him (which according to tradition, the firstborn are to be the first to marry to their sweethearts) but she was forbidden by her mother Suzette to do so as she was Adrian Lazar's illegitimate daughter, who was her mother's lover, making her Henry's half-sister.
  • In the film Crimson Peak, Lady Lucille Sharpe has been carrying on an incestuous relationship with her younger brother Sir Thomas Sharpe since they were children. Their relationship resulted in the birth of a sickly child which was killed by Lucille while still an infant.
  • In Blood and Chocolate, seeking a member of his pack to join him as his alpha female, the alpha male werewolf Gabriel desires to take the reluctant orphan Vivian as his mate despite both of them knowing they're uncle and niece.
  • In the fantasy adventure film Zathura (2005), the rebellious older sister Lisa (Kirsten Stewart) first meets the mysterious Astronaut (Dax Shepherd) when the house was under attack by the Zorgons. She is scared but the Astronaut assures her to trust him and that everything will be okay. Lisa, taken by surprise by his blue eyes, agrees with him and tells him that she will never leave him. He leaves to take out the Zorgons, and Lisa takes shelter with her brothers. Lisa, having become infatuated with the Astronaut, comments on feeling safe and protected by him, noting also that "He has such gorgeous eyes", much to her brothers Walter and Danny's dismay. Walter, tells her to not to try to get so close to the Astronaut but she doesn't listen. It isn't until after Walter wishes for the Astronaut to have his brother back, who just happens to be Danny, that she's shocked to realize that the Astronaut is her younger brother Walter, from 15 years into the future.

Other films

  • 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 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.
  • In Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), adoptive siblings Richard Lestrange and Lilli Hargrave grow up as lovers and have a child after being marooned on a tropical island for many years.
  • 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.
  • 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 action 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 comedy Blades of Glory (2007) features a pair of twin 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 caught having sex with her twin brother Chad by her fiance's father Donny, 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.[1]
  • In the film Dogtooth (2009) by Yorgos Lanthimos, a couple keep their adult children ignorant of the world. At some point, they make their son choose one of his two sisters. He fondles them, eyes closed, then chooses the elder one and has sex with her.
  • In the film The Unspeakable Act (2012), the 17-year-old protagonist Jackie Kimball is deeply in love with her 18-year-old brother Matthew, and he, though moderately accepting of the fact, does not reciprocate.
  • In the teen drama Clueless (1995), former step-siblings Cherilyn "Cher" Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) and Josh Lucas (Paul Rudd) fall in love and begin a relationship together.
  • In Not Another Teen Movie (2001), Jake Wyler (Chris Evans) attempts to avoid any physical contact with his younger sister Catherine Wyler (Mia Kirshner), who is sexually attracted to him and makes various attempts to win his affection, even going far as to dance seductively with him as his love interest Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh) watches.
  • In Joe Dirt (2001), Joe Dirt meets a seductive woman named Jill (Jaime Pressley) who shares the same interests and hobbies with him and it eventually leads them to making out during which Jill's storytelling of how she was abandoned by her parents at a bus stop causes Joe Dirt to worry the possibility that Jill could be his long-lost half-sister. However, he has sex with her first before telling her he couldn't see her anymore because she's his half-sister, but Jill clears up this misunderstanding about their being related to each other and they resume having sex only this time is a disaster as Joe is only aroused because he wants Jill to be his sister, which they both agree on and try again, succeeding in their more passionate lovemaking as they shout in ecstasy: "I'm your sister! You're my sister!".
  • In "High School Musical" (2006) and the film's two sequels, a close seemingly incestuous relationship is hinted and often mistaken by the other students between popular high scholars Sharpay Evans and her twin brother/partner-in-crime, Ryan Evans as both twins are often singing love songs to each other when paired up as love interests in the school's play and Ryan becoming jealous when Sharpay's love for Troy Evans remains unrequited.

Twincest

  • 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 Beautiful Kate (2009), 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

  • 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.
  • In Homesick (2015), the protagonist, Charlotte (Ine Marie Wilmann), meets her half-brother, Henrik (Simon J. Berger), for the first time when they are adults and they began having an affair.

Incest between same-sex siblings

  • 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 film Velvet Goldmine (1998), 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 half-brothers.

Relationship unknown to the characters

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 film Lone Star (1996), Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) and his high school sweetheart and current lover Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Peña) both learn they are half-siblings and have the same father, Pilar's mother having been Sam's father's mistress.
  • In the film The King (2005), 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, making the pastor's daughter his half-sister/cousin.
  • 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.
  • In the 2009 teen film 17 Again, after being magically transformed back into his 17-year-old self, Mike O'Donnell (Zac Efron) must fend off the advances of his teenage daughter Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg) who has grown infatuated with him after being consoled from her break-up, all the while remaining completely unaware to the knowledge that her love interest is her father.
  • In Back to the Future (1985), Marty McFly goes back in time and although saving his own father from being hit by a car, he accidentally disrupts the timing of his parents meeting for the first time, causing his own mother to fall in love with him instead of his father. Throughout the film, Marty attempts to get his parents to fall in love with each other in order to save his existence while Lorraine continually falls more in love with Marty after he saves her from the clutches of Biff Tannen numerous times. Only when Marty (though reluctant) takes Lorraine to the "Under The Sea" prom dance does she manage to passionately kiss him, then stops and stares at Marty with a shocked expression on her face upon feeling that the kiss somehow felt "wrong" (though Marty is aware of Lorraine being his mother, she is unaware to the knowledge that she and her love interest are future mother and son).

Non-consensual incest

  • In the film The Shipping News (2001), 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 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.
  • In Home Run (2013), a woman named Karen reveals to a church consulting support group that she was sexually abused by her alcoholic father from early as five years old as well as revealing that she's unable to bear children.
  • In Exposed (2016), the protagonist Isabel de La Cruz has suffered a child sexual abuse by her father.

Parent/offspring incest

Father/daughter incest

  • In the 1972 William A. Fraker film, A Reflection of Fear the main protagonist, 15-year-old Marguerite (Sondra Locke) vies for her father's attention sexually, even eliminating her mother and grandmother in the bargain.
  • A notable example of censorship in this area surfaces in Kings Row (1942). While the relationship is explicit in Henry Bellamann's bestselling 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.
  • Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) features Jack Nicholson's character forcing Faye Dunaway's character, one of his clientele, to admit, just before she is killed, to have been involved in father-daughter incest between her and John Huston's characters, resulting in the daughter giving birth to her own half-sister. In its sequel, The Two Jakes, in which Nicholson starred and which he also directed, Meg Tilly is revealed to be the daughter born from that act.
  • In Butterfly (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 film U Turn (1997), 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 film The Cider House Rules (1999) depicts a father-daughter incestuous relationship that results in the daughter's pregnancy.
  • Tim Roth's film The War Zone (1999) 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.
  • 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.
  • In Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia (2006) based on the best-selling Novak of the same name, Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) is revealed to having a secret incestuous relationship with her father Emmett Linscott when they are found together entwined on the stairs, they nearly kiss before they are interrupted and interrogated by LAPD Officer Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert for their aid in the murder of actress Elizabeth Short. A similar stance is discovered between the disfigured man Georgie Tilden and his infatuation with the late Elizabeth Short who bared a sickingly striking resemblance to his own daughter, Madeleine.
  • In The Ballad Of Jack and Rose (2005), Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis), a widowed man with a heart condition and his beautiful but unstable daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) maintain a close relationship together after her mother left them years ago. However the relationship is threatened when Jack decides to move in with his girlfriend Kathleen and her two sons prompting Rose to go to extreme lengths to get rid of the new family members and be with her father.
Sexual abuse
  • In the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a prequel to the television series Twin Peaks, a sexually abusive relationship between father and daughter is depicted that eventually leads to murder.
  • The fact-based television film Shattered Trust: The Shari Karney Story (1993) starred Melissa Gilbert as Shari Karney, an incest victim who was sexually abused by her father.
  • In the film An American Haunting (2005), the curse turns out to be caused by the father sexually abusing his daughter.
  • In the television series Brookside Trevor Jordache abused his daughters.[2]
  • In Forrest Gump (1994), the protagonist discovers that his childhood love interest Jenny (Robin Wright) along with her sisters, has been sexually abused by her widowed alcoholic father, narrating how her daddy was "a loving man. He was always kissing and touching her and her sisters."
  • In the film Dolores Claiborne (1999), based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Stephen King, the troubled writer Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is revealed to have been molested by her alcoholic father Joe, as discovered in a repressed memory where a young Selena is being forced to give her father a handjob.
  • In Perfect Stranger (2007), flashbacks reveal convicted killer Rowena (Halle Berry) was sexually abused by her father throughout her childhood, prompting her mother to kill him and both mother and child to bury his body in the front yard.
  • In The Butterfly Effect (2004), a teenage girl named Kayleigh (Amy Smart) is discovered to have been molested by her father (Eric Stoltz) as depicted in flashbacks as he touches her while forcing her to partake in child pornography.
  • In Stephen King's It (1986), Beverly Marsh suffers constant physical and emotional abuse from her father, Alvin Marsh, who is discovered to be sexually attracted to his own daughter, even fantasizing about raping her and other sexual acts. Such being the reasons why he inflicts abuse on her.
  • In Black Christmas (1974; remake: 2006), after attacking his half-sister/daughter Agnes one Christmas night leaving her mentally unstable with one eye, Billy and Agnes escape their imprisonment from mental hospitals and become incestuous lovers, reuniting to take revenge and murder everyone in their old childhood home, "just to be home for Christmas with their family".
  • In The Color Purple (1982 novel), a teenaged girl named Celie Harris is sexually abused by her father Alphonso and by the time she's 14, gives birth to two children named Adam and Olivia who are then taken away by her father. Alphonso also lusts after his other daughter, Nettie and makes various attempts to seduce her, much to Nettie's horror.
  • In Eve's Bayou (1997), a young girl named Cisely reveals to her sister that though she and her father had a normal yet affectionate relationship, she had attempted to seduce him. One night, while consoling her drunk father, she attempts to kiss him first as a daughter then as a lover, causing her father to violently slap her and throw her on the ground. Though her father regretted hitting her and tried to apologize, being rejected by her father causes Cisely to plot his murder which her sister foresees.
  • In Tyler Perry's "Precious" (2009) a illiterate teenaged girl is raped by her AIDS-ridden father Carl Jones on a daily basis beginning from when she was three, and gives birth to two children as a result (one of them suffers from Down's Syndrome from being inbred). After her father dies, her mother Mary Jones physically, verbally and sexually abused Precious until she managed to escape her abusive household only to discover she's HIV-positive from the constant abuse of her late father.
  • In the television adapted movie, "Chasing Secrets" (1999), Jo Ann Foley who was born from a prostitute mother and raised in a dysfunctional family, is harassed by her racist alcoholic grandfather who forces her to put on her mother's red dress which she wore nights "working the street corners" and is beaten and nearly raped by him when she tells him no. Jo Ann manages to escape her attacker, prompting her to run away and live with an elderly black couple for comfort.

Father/son incest

  • A subplot of the film The Gift (2000) involves a mentally unstable man being abused by his father.
  • In the film Ken Park (2002), Claude's drunk father attempts to give him oral sex while he's sleeping.
  • In Strella (2009), Yiorgos (George) meets Strella, a beautiful trans woman and falls in love with her. Later in the film, he learns than Strella is no other than his own son he hasn't seen for 14 years and feels conflicted.
  • The 2013 film Aleksandr's Price follows a young male prostitute as he gathers clients in New York City, the last client accidentally being his own father.
  • 8½ Women (1999) depicts the relationship of a man with his widowed father.

Mother/son incest

  • 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 sharingsharing 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 detoxicate her drug-addicted son from drugs result in an incestuous relationship with the boy.
  • In the horror film Sleepwalkers (1992), the energy vampires, Charles Brady (Brian Krause) and his mother Mary (Alice Krige), maintain an incestuous relationship.
  • 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 Sitcom (1998), by François Ozon, depicts a mother seducing her son in an attempt to "cure" him of his homosexuality.
  • The French film La Petite Lili (2005) portrays a fictional case of incipient consensual mother-son incest between independent adults.
  • 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 (Eva Green) 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.
  • In the Korean film Moebius (2013), a Korean woman, driven mad after discovering her husband's infidelity, exacts revenge by sexually castrating then cannibalizing her only son's penis.
  • In Not Another Teen Movie (2001), not wanting to see her son alone and miserable, Jake's mother, Mrs. Wyler (Julie Welch) offers herself sexually to her own son as a date for prom as well as to help him lose his virginity, much to Jake's disgust.
  • In Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and the film's three sequels depict an incestuous relationship between Norman Bates and his late unstable mother Norma Bates, who abused him throughout his childhood up to his teen years. Being jilted from his mother choosing her lover over him prompted Norman to poison his mother as well as her lover then, reeling from her death, create another living personality in his head as "Mother" to replace his deceased mother, which causes him to kill women upon feeling an attraction towards them and the "Mother" personality becoming jealous.

Mother/daughter incest

Stepparents/stepchildren incest

  • In Lolita (1962) (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 film Mini's First Time (2006) features a sexual relationship between the main character, Mini, and her stepfather, Martin.
  • In the film Hallam Foe (2008), Hallam (Jamie Bell) suspects his stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) is responsible for his mother's death. When Verity confronts him about his suspicions, she discovers he secretly fantasises about her. They end up having sex which leads to Hallam running away from home.
  • Carl Th. Dreyer's film Day of Wrath (1943) deals with a stepmother-stepson romantic relationship.
  • In "The diary of a teenage girl" (2015), protagonist Minnie recklessly initiates an affair with her mother's boyfriend Munroe whilst undergoing a sexual awakening entering her teen years.

Mixed

  • In Pedro Almodóvar's film Volver (2006), a man lusts after his stepdaughter, who is in fact the product of incest between her mother and her mother's father.

Cousincest

The practice of cousin incest remains legal in many US 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 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.
  • 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 United Kingdom in order to fool his friends into believing he is capable of a relationship.
  • In The Blue Lagoon (1980), cousins Richard and Emmeline Lestrange grow up as lovers and have a child after being marooned on a tropical 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 Muhteşem Yüzyıl:
  • In the 1939 classic film "Gone With The Wind", distant cousins Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton fall in love, marry and have two children together. Ashley's sister India Wilkes is betrothed to her cousin Charles' Hamilton, such of which is tradition in the Wilkes family who have traditionally wed their cousins. However, generations of inbreeding has resulted in weakness and many possible illness in the Wilkes' family.
  • In "Mean Girls" (2004), while attending a Halloween party, Karen (Amanda Seyfried) has an attraction towards her (unseen but mentioned) cousin Seth Mosakowski and shares it openly, much to Gretchen's disgust. She even admits "he's a good kisser" due to making out with her cousin Seth on several occasions and tries to defend her incestuous relationship defying that he's only her first cousin, even though first cousins are directly related to the family. Against Gretchen's objections, Karen still continues her relationship with Seth at the Halloween party.

Aunt/uncle incest

  • In the Chilean film Sexo con Amor (2003), a man has sex with his niece on top of a washing machine.
  • In the Korean film Old Boy (2003), 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.
  • In "The Perk Of Being A Wallflower" (2012), the protagonist Charlie (Logan Lerman) is revealed to have suffered child sexual abuse from his late mentally unstable aunt Helen (Melanie Lynsky) who died in a car crash Christmas night when he was five and flashbacks from long-repressed memories of the abuse cause Charlie to eventually suffer a nervous breakdown and wind up in a mental hospital.

Television

Several kinds of incest on the same show

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 episode 2x14 "Sex Kills", a teenage boy suffering from inappropriate messages admits that his attractive stepmother is coming onto him, turning to Dr. House for prescriptions to kill his sex drive till he graduates and moves out.

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, cousins, mother and son, or even father and daughter.

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.

In "CSI", the quadruple-murder episode "Blood Drops" reveals a teenage girl named Tina (Allison Lange) was sexually abused by her father beginning from when she was 6, gave birth at 13 and that her little "sister" Brenda (Dakota Fanning) is really her daughter/half-sister from such abuse. The little girl Brenda is also subjected to being sexually abused by her father/grandfather, prompting Tina to have him murdered. In the episode "Table Stakes", a young wealthy married couple, Patrick and Amanda Haynes (Shawn Christian and Elizabeth Lackey), are discovered to be brother and sister in an incestuous relationship posing under different aliases whilst killing numerous rich socialites for their money. In the season two episode, "Got Murder?", a teenage girl named Nora Easton (Evan Rachel Wood) is a suspect in a woman's murder and harbors a sexual attraction to her own father. This is revealed in a flashback when the father's girlfriend caught Nora with her father in the act of incestuous lovemaking, culminating with the jealous Nora killing the woman with a shovel. Nora even desired to have her father's baby, forcing her body to undergo "false pregnancy". In "Burden Of Proof", a teenaged girl named Jodie Bradley (Sara Paxton) thought to have been "touched" by her stepfather, is actually being victimized to acts of sexual abuse from her own father Russ. When Jodie turned to her innocent stepfather Mike for protection, her father kills him for trying to keep him away from Jodie before finally being arrested by the authorities.

In the CW's "The Big Bang Theory", after his father abandoned him and his mother when he was a little boy, Howard Wolowitz maintained a close yet dysfunctional relationship with his mother, the late Mrs. Wolowitz continually even to his adult years, causing Sheldon and several of his friends to mock Wolowitz's relationship with his mother to be compared to the unresolved Oedipus Complex. In season two, after being stoned from ingesting "magic cookies", Howard confesses to losing his virginity to his cousin Jeannie in the backseat of his uncle's car during his uncle's funeral. In "The Maternal Capacitance", Leonard and Penny both troubled by their loving but one-sided parents get drunk and come close to sleeping together until Leonard compares their encounter to "her not being loved by her father and Leonard not being loved by his mother would lead to their having sex together as a way of making up for the lack of intimacy received from when they were children. Disgusted by Leonard using psychology and noting that he is having sex with his mother and her with her father subconsciously which Leonard is okay with, Penny throws him out of her apartment because of this.

Incestual families

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.

Sibcest

British shows

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.[3]

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

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 half-sister.

The television series "The Fosters" depicts an on-again-off-again incestuous relationship between foster/adoptive siblings Brandon Foster and Callie Jacobs-Foster, who fall in love but continually break up for the sake of Callie getting adopted by Brandon's family.

In "True Blood", a woman named Portia whom Bill Compton has a one-night stand with, is discovered to be his long-lost great-great granddaughter. After this discovery, Bill refuses to return anymore of her affections, though Portia argues about the laws regarding incest being legal in some state as well as desiring a romantic incestuous relationship with Bill, prompting Bill to compel Portia to scream and run away from him every time she sees him.

In "Hope & Faith", Faith Fairfield discovers in a court case that the elder man and his stepdaughter testifying against her mother are lovers plotting to put her mother in prison so they could be together. Against judge's orders, Faith exposes the lovers of their plot as well as their incestuous relationship to the court, leaving the old man and his stepdaughter no choice but to confess of their crimes.

In "The Secret Life Of The American Teenager", Adrian Lee meets her stepbrother Max for the first time and the two begin dating upon feeling a connection together. However, her father catches them in the act and forbids them from seeing each other. Also, Ricky Underwood reveals to Amy that both him and his mother were sexually abused by his father, Bob Underwood when he was a child.

In Tales From The Crypt, the second season episode "Four-Sided Triangle" depicts a young, beautiful farm hand (Patricia Arquette) held captive on a farm being abused by her physically disabled mother and sexually harassed by her father, eventually prompting the woman to seek help from a scarecrow she believes to be alive. In the fourth season episode "Seance'", a young woman ignites an incestuous affair with her distant cousin Prescott in her own attempt to swindle money from him and his blind wife.

Twincest

In the HBO original show Game of Thrones, Jaime and Cersei Lannister share an consensual, incestuous relationship with each other. Their relationship began at a very early age and was known to their mother, while their father only learns of it later in the series. The twins have three children together which are (at least at the beginning of the series) widely regarded has the children of Cersei and her husband Robert Baratheon. The show also holds an abundance of other incestuous instances.

Half-siblings incest

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 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 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, Northern 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.

Parent/children incest

Father/daughter incest

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.

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.

In "21Jump Street", After being asked to help assassinate her father, a pair of undercover cops are prompted to investigate the case of a high school student named Diane Nelson who is discovered to being sexually abused by her widowed father, who is also a high maintenance police officer.

Mother/son incest

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 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.

In the FX series, "American Horror Story: Coven", Kyle has an incestuous 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

In "Smallville", villainess Genevieve Teague and her son Jason Teague are revealed to having an incestuous relationship together. This is discovered by Lionel Luthor who takes pride in mocking their secret relations in comparison to the Oedipus Complex.

In "Animal Kingdom", Janine "Smurf" Cody (Ellen Barkin) is the tough matriarch of the Cody family and J's estranged grandmother, who is protective towards her family. In the television series, she's revealed to maintaining a close relationship with each of her grownup sons and presents a borderline-incestuous love toward them as shown in one episode where she openly ogles her sons shirtless bodies during the family summer car wash.

Cousincest

A recent storyline in the BBC soap EastEnders involves a romance between cousins Lauren and Joey Branning.

In the Seinfeld episode "The Junk Mail" (1997), George dates his cousin Lisa in an attempt to further enrage his parents over their differences.

Other kinds of incest

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" (2001), 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.

See also

References

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ Cooper, Lorna. "Brookside: Trevor Jordache - Soap villains: is Karl Munro the baddest baddie?". Tv.uk.msn.com. Retrieved 2014-08-21.
  3. ^ "Entertainment | Brookside's two decades of trauma". BBC News. 2002-10-10. Retrieved 2014-08-21.
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