Game of Thrones is Back and So Is Prejudiced Commentary

Ariana Romero has an article at refinery29.com about "incest" being all over TV, with a headline asking if Game of Thrones is to blame for depictions of something that has always been a part of life.

The HBO fantasy epic is so serious about inappropriate family-member loving, the very first episode of the series, "Winter Is Coming," ends with Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) having doggy-style sex in a tower and then flinging Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) out of said tower to keep their relationship hidden.

Let's be clear. Consensual (to be redundant) sex between adult siblings is not inappropriate. Cheating is inappropriate. Assault is inappropriate. Sex between consenting adults who aren't cheating is not inappropriate. Unless they're doing it on the dining room table in the the middle of a big family dinner when that sort of thing wasn't expected.

So, does that mean Thrones is to blame for the recent incest boom on television?

Consanguineous sex and relationships have always been in our stories (see The Bible, Greek mythology) because those things have always been a part of life.

Game of Thrones certainly isn’t the first television show in history to deal with the taboo topic. Series from Arrested Development to Twin Peaks have dipped into the incest pond.

Please note the reason we use "consanguineous" and "consanguinamory" is that it is very important to distinguish sex from assault and molestation.

Throughout Arrested, the awkward George Michael Bluth (Michael Cera) is absolutely in love with his "cousin" Maeby Fünke (Alia Shawkat), whose mom Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) was actually adopted into the Bluth family. In Twin Peaks, a possessed Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) raped and murdered his own daughter, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). On top of all this, there’s the aggressively inbred McPoyle clan on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, with their love of milk and unibrows. While all of these incestuous storylines pre-date Game Of Thrones by nearly a half-decade or more, the premium cable drama does something no TV blockbuster went all-in on before: making one of the core romantic relationships both incestuous and 100 percent serious.

It would be great to get a lot of both dramatic and comedic realistic, loving portrayals that aren't about cheating. If Diane Rinella can write it well, surely others can depict it on TV.

In March 2014, Norma (Vera Farmiga) and Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) shared a not-in-the-least-way chaste kiss in Bates Motel’s "The Immutable Truth" to close out season 2. By the next season, the pair is sharing a bed, spooning, and not exactly acting like a cookie cutter mother-son pair. With all of this sexual tension in the air, it’s no surprise Norman also starts seeing super-sexy hallucinations of his mother everywhere. In the same year Norma and Norman were enjoying their bizarre lovers paradise, Pretty Little Liars revealed the identity of puppetmaster "A." The Rosewood tormenter turned out to be CeCe Drake-Slash-Charlotte DiLaurentis (Vanessa Ray). At one point, CeCe dated Jason DiLaurentis (Drew Van Acker), meaning everyone thought the transgender woman was romantically involved with her secret brother. It was eventually revealed CeCe was actually Jason’s cousin, which doesn’t make the situation much better.

Sigh. The writer just assumes everyone is a bigot. Not so. In half of US states and many countries, first cousins can legally marry.

At least we can all take solace in knowing nothing sexual ever happened during the incestuous relationship, which Jason was tricked into.

See?

In 2017, incest proved to be a huge trend once again, thanks to both newbie CW soap Riverdale and FX’s grimy limited series Taboo. In Riverdale, it’s implied twins Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) and Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines) were a little too close for comfort until the latter sibling was murdered.

Well, murder is one thing, but affection is "too close for comfort." Great. I mean, thank goodness one of them got murdered before they could depict some serious affection! We wouldn't want anything disgusting, like sexual stuff, on there... killing someone, though, that's OK to portray.

Go read it all, if you dare, but be warned the article muddies things up by throwing assault into the mix.

Are you watching GoT? What about other shows that have, or flirt with, consanguinamory?