The GoT effect
IS GAME OF THRONES TO BLAME FOR THE RISE IN INCEST-THEMED PORNOGRAPHY?
In case you haven’t heard — or don’t happen to be watching Game of Thrones (what is wrong with you?) — incest is on the rise. Well, incest porn, to be specific, and we have the hit HBO series and A Song of Ice and Fire book series on which it’s based to thank.
Featuring several plot lines alluding to or explicitly featuring familial relationships – most infamously, the love that would “burn down cities” between twins Jaime and Cersei Lannister – the Game of Thrones television adaptation has not shied away in the least from the normally taboo subject.
“Jaime and I are more than brother and sister, we shared a womb, came into this world together, we belong together,” Cersei said in season one of the series, while Jaime has continued to ceaselessly declare his adoration ever since.
Even in the adult entertainment field, incest has mostly been considered off limits — until recently. Porn actress Ashley Fires, who has been working in the industry since 2003, has profited so much from the genre in the past year, that she’s focusing on it ex- clusively, she revealed in an interview with Vice.
In an interview with Refinery29, Jeff Dillon, VP of business development at Game-Link, said, “‘Family role play,’ as we call it, is one of our top sellers for couples and women.” According to Dillon, the interest in the incest genre has grown by 1,000 per cent since 2011, and saw a 178-per-cent spike in 2014 alone. But why? If you ask Dillon, it’s because women prefer a narrative to their pornography and “you have to have some background to show who these people are and how they’re, well, related to each other.”
But, for many, it’s still the taboo itself that’s the thrill.
“Porn’s job has always been to show what is taboo, but we’ve kind of gotten to the point where we’ve run out of taboos,” Kelly Shibari, a porn performer and Penthouse model, told Refinery29.
“Once something becomes mainstream, people don’t go looking for it in the underground anymore because it’s so easy to find. What’s left in the list of taboos that we can still legally do? Incest. It’s re- creation of taboo fantasy scenarios, which is what porn is.”
While the adult entertainment industry is cashing in on this latest trend, it’s far from the first to take advantage of this particular taboo fantasy.
From the classic story of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, in which, unknowingly consumed with a Lannister-style lust, Oedipus kills his father so that he can marry his mother, to Myrrha’s love for her father Cinyras in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, incest in literature has its beloved roots, right down to the Bible.
In more contemporary pop culture, we’ve seen how incest can be a bestseller with V.C. Andrews’ pivotal 1974 book Flowers in the Attic, which sold over 40 million copies, was adapted into a film and remade recently into multiple highly rated TV movies.
Because as uncomfortable as the taboo may make us, we can’t help but watch.
WE CAME INTO THIS WORLD TOGETHER, WE BELONG TOGETHER.