Imagining incest on film: curse, scandal and subversion

Abstract

In the paper, the analysis of films that thematize incest shows primarily that sexual defilement is prescribed as a curse, i.e. a mythical force that suddenly possesses the actors of the story, regardless of whether they know that they have engaged in an
incestuous relationship, or whether it is a conscious urge that they cannot resist. Likewise, in most of the analyzed films, incest is presented as a scandal, a deviation from moral and legal norms, thereupon it terrifies both the protagonists and the audience.
The narratives of these films build a clear demarcation line, whereat incest is presented as an anomaly, entropy, split in relation to a rationally based social reality. In the paper, I also tako into consideration films that use the scandal of incest to question the rationally established social context, the “normal world”, presented as a manifestation ofpower. In these films, incest is subversion