Update on Consanguinamory in Media

Glenn Kenny at nytimes.com reviewed "Marguerite and Julien" and called it "distressing."

­Jérémie Elkaïm and Anaïs Demoustier as siblings who are a couple in “Marguerite and Julien.” Credit Sundance Selects

“Marguerite and Julien” transposes the factually based, centuries-old tale of incestuous French lovers to a not-quite-modern setting (much nostalgia is expended depicting one of its characters developing photographs in a darkroom) that could be called “Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola Land,” only it isn’t as attractive as that sounds.

The real-life counterparts of this sibling couple were compelled to dissolve their association in 1602, when Julien de Ravalet was 21 and Marguerite was 17. Anaïs Demoustier, who plays Marguerite, is in her late 20s, and Mr. Elkaïm, who plays Julien, is 37, and looks it. (A well-maintained 37, but still.)

So in the movie, they are well into adulthood.

I make this complaint not out of prurient interest, but because I believe there is a distinction between teenagers pursuing incestuous relations and adults doing so. The sight of these two enacting what amount to children’s games before getting down to sex is frankly off-putting, and not in any usefully provocative way. The colloquial term is “icky.” This goes double for the wide-eyed delivery of dialogue like “If we got married, I would be your wife and your sister.”

Oh, come now. Finding the love between others to be "icky" is no reason to dismiss it.

Kenny goes on to explain "contrivances" in how the movie is put together. You can watch a trailer on YouTube.

The trailer actually reminds me a bit about the couple in this interview.

And here's coverage we had of another new movie dealing with these topics.

It's good to see more movies dealing with these issues. Hopefully we'll see more realistic and overall positive portrayals.

Meanwhile, Victoria Irwin wrote at dirgemag.com about "Five Incestuous Relationships That Make Us Want to Keep it in the Family."

How many of us discovered the idea of incest thanks to V.C. Andrews? While Flowers in the Attic was careful not to show too much in 1987, we were all pretty sure that hitting on family meant instant arsenic cookies and lashings.

Want a better read when it comes to sibling consanguinamory? See here.

History has a wealth of family members keeping it close. The Ptolemy and Julio-Claudian dynasties were full of siblings bumpin’ uglies. In the Bible, Lot’s daughters got him drunk and rode the old bone burro to Pound Town to repopulate what they thought was an empty world. European royalty married so many of their relatives that Queen Victoria was the grandmother to half of the Western world.

Yes, there's a long and widespread history of this.

Of course she lists Jaime and Cersei Lannister, somewhat approvingly. To read about that and the four others, go to the site.

Our stories have always had consanguineous sex and consanguinamorous relationships, because life always has had these things.