Now, many are wondering if it’s just another harmless example of TV studios attempting to shock and titillate audiences, or if there could be dire real-life consequences to the trend.
Mike White’s acerbic, pitch-black comedy series is no stranger to pushing boundaries, but all signs point to season three taking things to a whole new level.
Early in the first episode, in what reads pretty clearly as foreshadowing, eldest son Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) protests that his sister Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) should not sleep in the same room as their younger brother Lochlan (Sam Nivola) as they have ‘full grown genitals.’
Later on, Saxon is fully nude in the bathroom, watching porn as his brother looks on – possibly because Saxon intentionally left the door open.
At another point, Saxon makes comments about how hot his sister is to his brother, pointing out that she’s ‘never been laid.’
While the siblings in the show are adults, their behaviour falls onto the spectrum of sibling sexual behaviour (SSB), a term psychology practitioners and researchers use to refer to incestual relationships between siblings that are abusive or otherwise.
Doctor Sophie King-Hill, a professor at the University of Birmingham who specialises in this area of research, says SSB behaviour ‘exists on a spectrum of behaviours that vary in severity. It does not just refer to penetrative acts but encompasses other behaviors such as forced pornography viewing, watching a sibling undress, and making them engage in sexual acts with another child.’
Because it often begins in childhood, professionals don’t refer to children who exhibit these behaviours as perpetrators of abuse, but that doesn’t mean the consequences aren’t severe or abuse is never present.
So what does it mean that so many TV shows are depicting these kinds of deeply damaging dynamics? Could it lead to more instances of SSB abuse in real people’s lives?
‘Storylines that show it as abusive are a different conversation, but storylines that normalise it are dangerous and damaging,’ Dr. King-Hill tells Metro, quick to call shows that use sexual dynamics between siblings as tools of sensationalism ‘ethically wrong.’
In her opinion, the last thing an already underresearched, underreported, and undertreated form of abuse needs is normalisation by the media, especially given that approximately 34 percent of perpetrators in cases of child sexual abuse are family members.
While the dynamics between the Ratliffs may seem like just another morbidly funny storyline in a series that tends towards the macabre, Dr. King-Hill explains that the SSB can have devastating consequences in real life.
People who experience it often go on to have ‘co-morbid issues, lots of long-term damage, and may even end up being ostracised from their families. They may feel guilt and shame,’ Dr. King-Hill explains.
Another recent example of SSB on TV is the Netflix hit Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which is based on a true story that involves two sons being sexually abused by their father, leading them to eventually murder him and their mother.
There’s no question that Monsters portrays the son’s relationship with their father as abusive, but, to the outrage of the very real Menendez family, the show added a speculative homoerotic relationship between the two brothers.
But perhaps you can argue that The White Lotus – as well as Monsters – is condemning this kind of behaviour?
As Catherine Rottenberg, a professor of Media, Communications, and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London, tells Metro, part of the appeal of these kinds of shows is that they intentionally portray ‘the rot and corruption at the root of this amount of power and wealth.’
Or, as X user @silverplled put it: ‘People not realizing that The White Lotus is a satire denouncing its characters while presenting you with the attraction and the allure of the incest storyline… like it hasn’t been doing the same thing with murder and cheating for 2 seasons now…’
But viewers have been reacting to the show in droves online, and most aren’t calling the sibling plot abuse. In fact, for the most part, fans seem excited about the taboo twist.
@coreytimes joked: ‘The White Lotus writers are despicable for this gay incest storyline. Portraying such abhorrent and morally corrupt behavior in the current political climate is detrimental to the LGBTQ+ community. I can’t wait to watch them kiss.’
@mescalordi agreed: ‘I’m nastier than I thought because why am I excited to see the gay incest on the white lotus… I hear episodes 5 and 6 are the ones where stuff rlly goes down between them. Can they drop all episodes tonight.’
@culkinco wrote: ‘Gay incest on the white lotus…I’m slightly intrigued.’
@undonekingdom posted: ‘Need to watch white lotus for the incest plot.’
@fIeafag chimed in: ‘I want the white lotus brothers to kiss. It’s not incest if you can’t get pregnant.’
Similar titillation resounded among fans of Monsters, who saw a shower scene between brothers Lyle and Erik as distinctly sultry, even romantic.
Despite ‘Research indicating that it’s one of the most common forms of sexual abuse,’ Dr. King-Hill continues, it remains a grey area in the realm of psychology that many families and mental health practitioners struggle to handle effectively.
In her professional opinion, SSB storylines that are intended to titillate viewers are ‘insulting to victims of this kind of abuse who are trying to recover and heal from trauma.’
So why is the topic popping up so often? For one thing, as Rottenberg says: ‘In the case of incest (and here it is different from House of Dragon, which is sci-fi), it is also about watching taboos be broken but in mediated form.’
She goes on to explain that as ‘popular culture increasingly thrives on the sensational’ media has to go to greater and greater lengths to shock and titillate their audiences.
‘Social media theorists have been saying this for a while,’ she continues. ‘In order to gain attention in a like/attention economy, content has to be ever more attention-grabbing.’
Dr. King-Hill agrees that there is still a sense of taboo around SSB and incest but she does not think programs like The White Lotus are engaging with it in a productive way.
Victims of incest, SSB or otherwise, are often more hesitant to report than victims of other forms of abuse. Dr. King-Hill explains this is because SSB: ‘Sits within family dysfunction, which often takes a lot of time to realise and is often not realised until adulthood. Additionally, professionals are often not trained adequately to handle sibling sexual abuse, and can catastrophise and minimise when SSB is reported.’
But as much as more funding and research needs to go into the treatment and prevention of SSB and other forms of incest, oversimplified and sensationalised storylines are not the way to shed light on this issue.
‘We do need to remove taboos so people can report when they’re being abused,’ she says. ‘We need to take the stigma away and create safe spaces where people can report.’
But, she stipulates, the issue: ‘Needs attention in the right way, and this is not the right way.’
Indeed, it’s difficult to argue that there isn’t at least an aspect of endorsement in The White Lotus’ portrayal of the conventionally beautiful Ratliff siblings lust for eachother.
Rottenberg ultimately agrees, theorising that storylines like it – or the murderous romantic love between twins Cersei and Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones, or, more recently, Rhaenyra Targaryen and her uncle Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon – grab the audience’s attention because ‘There is pleasure and repulsion, both.’
Not all viewers are finding the trend enjoyable. @nagumosdays wrote on X: ‘Okay so I just watched the White Lotus and I honestly think it has to do with the fact that ppl are incapable of recognizing incest as abuse, especially in regards to this show.’
Reddit user @krustomer posted in a thread about the show: ‘As a victim of incest, this character is incestuous. This season might be too triggering to watch, especially if they just skirt around the issue.’
As Dr. King-Hill points out, incest is not just a trend on TV. A quick scan of any free porn site will reveal that among the most viewed videos are step-sibling and step-parent porn.
‘On PornHub when you see things like step siblings get so many hits, it does normalise this kind of behaviour,’ she says.
Incest-themed porn, known as fauxcest, is one of the fastest-growing categories of porn, ranking within the top 10 most searched categories on Pornhub, a mainstream porn site that received 42billion site visits last year.
Of course, it’s difficult to know if people are truly seeking out this kind of material or if the algorithm is pushing it to them and causing them to associate it with images they like. ‘Are they really seeing the category? Or are they just liking what they see in the thumbnail?’ Dr. King-Hill questions. ‘It’s hard to say, but it tells the algorithm that this category does well so it offers more to the viewer.’
Similarly, it’s difficult to know if TV viewers are really drawn to these kinds of storylines or if they’ve become a trend among creators of major shows that were always going to draw large audiences, regardless of content.
But no matter why incest has begun to appear so often in popular media, it’s hard to see the trend contributing to meaningful change in the treatment or prevention of a very real problem.
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