Oedipus Wrecked

Oedipus Wrecked?
The Moral Boundaries of Incest

Author(s): Nancy L. Fischer
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 92-110
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Perspectives
OEDIPUS WRECKED?
The Moral Boundaries
of
Incest
NANCY L. FISCHER
Macalester
College
This article describes the
meaning of
incest in
contemporary popular
culture. The author
explores
how
feminism
and
changes
in
systems of kinship
and
sexuality
have
affectedpresent-day
discourse on
incest,
comparing
the
significance of
blood relations and notions
of
abuse in
constructing
incest. The author
analyzes
media commentaries on two
contemporary
incestuous events that
generated publicity:
Kathryn
Harrison's memoir
of
a sexual
affair
with her
biologicalfather
and
Woody
Allen's
relationship
with Soon-Yi Previn. The author
explores
how commentators
framed
incest as
morally objectionable
in
reaction to these two cases. She
argues
that blood ties are
prevalent,
but are
becoming
less relevant to
discussions
of
incest in
popular
culture,
and that
feminist
constructions
of
incest as an
exploitation of
power
relations have been
powerful enough for
individuals to
apply
this
framework
even when adults
(rather
than
children)
are involved.
Keywords:
incest;
kinship; sexuality; feminism;
child sexual abuse
Nearly
2,500
years ago, Sophocles penned
the
tragedy Oedipus
Rex.
Oedipus
unwittingly
kills his
father,
marries his
mother,
and
produces
unnatural
offspring
from that incestuous union. In the
Oedipal myth, Oedipus transgresses
the laws of
blood-or
kinship rules-by marrying
and
having
sexual relations with his mother.
The
immorality
of
incest,
based on the idea that blood relatives should not mate and
the
progeny
of such unions are tainted and
unnatural,
is at the heart of
Sophocles's
tale. What is not at moral issue in
Oedipus
Rex is a
complex configuration
of issues
that
today
fall under the rubric of child sexual
abuse,
which rests on notions of
incest as
wrong
because it
represents
sexual
exploitation
and an abuse of
power
between adults and children
(Finkelhor 1994;
Gelles and Conte
1990).
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to thank the
anonymous
reviewers,
Lynn Appleton,
Christine
Bose,
Ann
Branaman,
Lars
Christiansen,
Patricia
Clough,
Norman
Denzin,
Marcia
Hernandez,
Richard
Lachmann,
Chet
Meeks,
Linda
Nicholson,
Steven
Seidman,
and Sarah
Sobierajfor
their
insightful
com-
ments in
reviewing
earlier versions
of
this article.
REPRINT
REQUESTS: Nancy
L.
Fischer,
Carnegie
207
C,
Department of Sociology,
Macalester Col-
lege,
1600 Grand
Avenue,
St.
Paul,
MN 55105.
GENDER &
SOCIETY,
Vol. 17 No.
1, February
2003 92-110
DOI: 10.1177/0891243202238980
? 2003
Sociologists
for Women in
Society
92
Fischer / THE MORAL BOUNDARIES OF INCEST 93
These two
ways
of
talking
about incest-in terms of blood and child sexual
abuse-represent
two ends of a continuum that
correspond
to older and newer
sys-
tems of
kinship
and
sexuality.
The older
system
of
kinship
and
sexuality
is
repre-
sented
by
the
symbol
of
blood,
while the newer
system
is
represented by
the
symbol
of desire. The blood end of the continuum
corresponds
to what Foucault
(1978)
called the
"deployment
of
alliance,"
an older
system
of
organizing sexuality
where
the
family
is defined in terms of
biological
relations,
sex is about
procreation,
and
incest is about
offending
the boundaries of
kinship.
The desire end of the continuum
corresponds
to Foucault's
"deployment
of
sexuality,"
a newer
system
of
organizing
sexuality
where diverse
relationships
define the
family
and sex is constructed in
terms of
pleasure
and
perversion.
Under the
deployment
of
sexuality,
the
meaning
of incest is about
perpetrators' pathological
desires and the harm it causes individu-
als. In the words of Bell
(1993, 113),
At one extreme are those
ways
of
speaking [about incest]
which
deny
or minimise the
existence of incestuous desires and incest in
any
form and/or set
up questions,
under
the
symbol
of
blood,
around the incest
prohibition
and
kinship systems.
At the other
are those
which,
under the
symbol
of
desire,
focus on the incestuous act and
ignore
any
connections or
implications
that
may
have for the
family
and social structure.
What incest is "about" therefore becomes
very
different at different ends of the
spectrum.
Foucault
argued
that both sexual
systems
continue to influence
contemporary
con-
structions of
sexuality.
However,
he
suggested
that the alliance
system
is
fading
slowly.
This article asks what incest is about in
popular
culture under the blood-desire
continuum. How are blood relations still
significant
in
popular
culture in construct-
ing
incest as
morally wrong?
How
significant
is abuse for
constructing
incest in
popular
culture? I find that both blood and desire inform
popular understandings
of
incest. More
specifically,
I
argue
that blood ties are
significant
on a
superficial
level
for
interpreting
incest as
morally wrong
but are less relevant for
framing
incest for
two reasons.
First,
changes
in
kinship
and families in the West have led to
questions
about the rules and
meanings
of incest and child sexual abuse. This occurs because
increasingly,
families are not based on blood relations.
Instead,
diverse
family
ties-
that
range
from
legal relationships
based on
being
an
adoptive parent
or
stepparent
to the informal ties of chosen
family (that provide intimacy, enduring
connection,
and emotional and financial
support)-are
as valid for
defining
families as blood
relations
(Coontz 1992;
Dunne
2000;
Rubin
1997). Frequently,
when blood ties are
discussed,
the
emphasis
is no
longer
about
offending
rules of
kinship
but has shifted
to concerns that
biologically
related individuals will
produce
defective
offspring
(Bell 1993).
Second,
I
argue
that blood ties are
becoming
less relevant because of feminist
influences on
popular
discourse. Feminists have been
primarily responsible
for
redefining
incest as child sexual abuse.
However,
while feminists
(or
for that
matter,
social workers and sex abuse
professionals)
have
long
considered the harm incest
94 GENDER & SOCIETY /
February
2003
causes the
primary aspect
of
why
it is
immoral,
in
popular
culture,
transgressing
blood ties still remains
shocking, suggesting
a
lag
between feminist constructions
of incest as child abuse and how incest has been framed in
popular
culture.
I
analyze
media discourse
surrounding
two
well-publicized
incestuous moral
dilemmas that occurred
during
the 1990s. The first case concerns the 1997
publica-
tion of the memoir The
Kiss,
an account of a sexual affair between author
Kathryn
Harrison and her birth father. The second case involves the 1992-1993 scandal con-
cerning Woody
Allen's
relationship
with
(ex-lover
Mia Farrow's
daughter)
Soon-
Yi Previn.
These two cases involve adults rather than individuals
sexually
abused as chil-
dren. In
popular
culture,
incest between an adult and child is
automatically regarded
as
morally reprehensible.
However,
because these two cases involved
adults,
they
were
ambiguous,
and media commentators were forced to
clarify
the rationale of
their
judgments.
Had both cases involved
children,
it would be difficult to tease out
whether commentators
disapproved
of incest because it involved
crossing
blood
boundaries or because it was
clearly
a form of child abuse.
This article contributes to feminist literature on incest in two
ways.
First,
there
has
previously
been little research on how feminists have influenced incest dis-
course in
popular
culture
(Kozol
1995 is an
exception).
Second,
I
argue
that femi-
nist constructions of incest as
exploitation
of
power
relations and a
betrayal
of trust
have been
powerful enough
to
penetrate interpretations
of incest in
popular
culture
even when adults
(rather
than
children)
are involved. While most feminist research
focuses on women who were
sexually
abused
during
childhood
by
an
adult,
because of
powerful gender dynamics
in male-dominated
society,
incest between
adults is also
problematic
from a feminist
point
of view because men hold more
power
and are more able to coerce women into sexual relations.
CHANGING
KINSHIP,
CHANGING SEXUALITY
Before the
eighteenth century
in the
West,
kinship
and
sexuality systems
were
indistinguishable (Foucault 1978;
Levi-Strauss
1969;
Rubin and Butler
1994).
In
premodern society, sexuality
was
organized
around the
family (D'Emilio
and
Freedman
1988;
Foucault
1978). Legitimate
sexual relations were limited to mar-
riage partners,
and sexual
practices
were
judged according
to whether
they
were
procreative
and occurred within the confines of
marriage.
Rules
governing appro-
priate
and
inappropriate marriage partners
ensured that wealth circulated
among
families
only through legitimate
kin. The incest taboo was the
penultimate
rule of
premodern kinship.
In the words of
Gayle
Rubin
(1997, 36),
"The incest taboo
divides the universe of sexual choice into
categories
of
permitted
and
prohibited
sexual
partners. Specifically, by forbidding
unions within a
group
it
enjoins
marital
exchange
between
groups."
Therefore,
the older
kinship/sexuality system
was
organized
around the
symbol
of
blood,
since
only
blood relatives were
legitimate
heirs.
In the
eighteenth century,
the
organization
of
sexuality
and
kinship began
to
change.
As the West
industrialized,
men who left home
increasingly began
to have
more diverse sexual encounters outside of marital
relationships (D'Emilio
and
Freedman
1988). By
the nineteenth
century,
the
emerging
fields of
psychiatry
and
sexology began
to
categorize
sexual
practices
on a
normal/perverse
basis rather
than in terms of
permissible
and forbidden
(Foucault 1978).
The
significance
of
blood started to
fade,
and
kinship
and
sexuality began
to
separate.
Under the
deployment
of
sexuality, sexuality gradually
became construed in terms of
pleasure
and the
quality
of erotic
experience (Foucault 1978;
Rubin
1984).
Sexual
practices
(such
as
incest)
came to be
judged according
to whether
they
were
pleasurable
and
healthy
or harmful and
perverse (Foucault 1978).
Correspondingly, twentieth-century kinship
has
increasingly
moved
away
from
blood relations as
defining
families. A
greater diversity
of
family
forms such as
adoptive
families,
stepfamilies,
families headed
by
cohabitants,
and
single-parent
families have
proliferated. Rising
divorce rates and
remarriages
have made recon-
stituted families-families
configured
with a mix of
biological
and
steprelatives
such as
stepparents, stepsiblings,
or half
siblings-more
common than the tradi-
tional nuclear
family consisting
of two
parents
and their
biologically
related chil-
dren
(Coontz 1992;
Skolnick
1991).
Divorce and
remarriage
have
changed
the role
of
fathers,
leading
to less intimate ties between father and child
following
divorce
(Furstenberg
and Cherlin
1994;
Teachman
1991). Single-parent
families have also
become a more common
family
form
through rising
divorce rates and some
single
women
choosing
to raise children on their own
(Bock 2000;
Miller
1992).
Further-
more,
lesbian and
gay parents
have redefined families and
kinship
ties in terms of
support, friendship,
and
enduring
emotional commitment rather than in terms of
biological
ties
(Dalton
and
Bielby
2000;
Dunne
2000;
Horn
1992). Today,
families
are
configured by
both kin and nonkin and are often
organized by ideologies
of love
and rational
choice,
in addition to blood relations.
While
changes
in
family
forms
encourage
families to be
thought
of in diverse
terms in American
culture,
blood as a
symbol
of
family
still has cultural resonance.
Residues of the older
kinship system
based around blood
remain,
and the older
norms of
kinship
have not
completely disappeared (Rubin
and Butler
1994).
For
example,
in the
legal
realm,
courts have been reluctant to
recognize nonbiological
parents'
claims to the titles "father" or "mother" because of the
legal history
of
defining
these
relationships
as based on
biological
fact
(Rosen 1997).
The
impor-
tance of blood ties is often recast in
genetic
terms that establish
patriarchal kinship
ties
by connecting biological
fathers with children
through
notions of
passing
down
"seeds" of
"genetic
essence"
(Katz
Rothman
1989). Specifically
in
regard
to
incest,
older
kinship
rules
forbidding
sex between blood relatives have transmuted into sci-
entific
arguments
that incest
produces genetically
defective
offspring (Bell 1993).
Studies conclude that children of incestuous
parents
exhibit differences in health
and mental
ability compared
to nonincestuous children
(Adams
and Neal
1967;
Seemanova
1971).
February
2003
INCEST,
PRESENT AND PAST
Older notions of
kinship
were once central to
nineteenth-century
social-scientific
perspectives
on incest. Theorists
attempted
to
explain
both the
origin
and function
of the incest taboo in human
society (Durkheim 1897;
Freud
1905;
Levi-Strauss
1969;
Parsons
1974).
Freud's
theory
of the
Oedipal complex
maintained that chil-
dren had incestuous
longings
for their
opposite-sex parent. Learning
to direct these
sexual desires toward a love interest outside the
family
was a
key stage
in a child's
sexual
development (Freud 1905).
Levi-Strauss
(1969)
built off of Mauss's
(1950)
idea that the
exchange
of
gifts
was the
primary
means of
forging
links between
members of
primitive
societies,
where women were the ultimate
gifts
to be
exchanged
between male
family
members. The formation of rules
regarding
with
whom one could and could not
forge
sexual relations marked a move
away
from the
chaos of nature and toward the order of culture.
Similarly,
Parsons
(1974) argued
that the incest
prohibition propels
individuals outside the
family
and causes them to
perform
other nonfamilial roles
necessary
for the
functioning
of a
"higher-level
social structure."
In the
1970s,
feminist scholars
began
to
generate arguments
that
challenged
incest
prohibition
theories.
They
refuted the idea that incest was a rare occurrence
and instead
argued
that the
only
taboo
surrounding
incest was a
prohibition against
speaking
about it
(Alcoff
and
Gray
1993;
Armstrong
1978;
Driver
1989).
Feminists
contended that acts of sexual abuse were not committed
by perverse
individuals but
reflected normal
gender
relations in Western culture. Feminists stressed that incest
and sexual abuse are marked
by striking gender dynamics:
Most victims are
girls,
and most
perpetrators
are men
(Finkelhor 1994;
Sedlak and Broadhurst
1996).
They argued
that incest is
produced
and maintained
by
male-dominant
culture,
characterized
by patriarchal family
structures
(Armstrong
1978;
Driver
1989;
Herman and Hirschman
1977).
Sexual abuse reflects masculine sexual norms of
associating
sex with
prowess, power, conquest,
and domination and
expressing
affection
primarily through
sexual channels
(Driver 1989;
MacKinnon
1987).
Incest reinforces conventional feminine sexual norms of
passivity, serving
men's
needs and
deriving
a sense of self-worth from
caregiving
and
relationships
with
others
(Herman
and Hirschman
1977;
Liebman Jacobs
1993).
Families in which
incest occurs have
pronounced gender
roles where the father has absolute
authority
and a
profound
sense of
entitlement,
expecting
to have his demands
obeyed
and his
needs served
by
his wife and
(female)
children
(Gordon 1988;
Herman and
Hirschman
1977).
Feminist accounts of incest and survivor testimonials
emphasize
themes of
betrayal,
breach of
trust,
abuse of
power,
and
exploitation.
These feminist
themes reached a
broader,
popular
audience
through
books directed toward abuse
survivors
(e.g.,
Bass and Davis
1988;
Courtois
1988).
Approximately
one in five women in North America have been
sexually
abused
(Finkelhor 1994). Figures
from the National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect
have shown that the incidence of sexual abuse
(the
number of cases of sexual abuse
reported
to
authorities)
has
greatly
increased since 1980.
However,
researchers are
uncertain as to whether increased rates
represent
an actual escalation in abuse or
more
willingness
of individuals to
report suspected
abuse
(Gelles
and Conte
1990).
Research has varied
greatly
in terms of
reporting
what
proportion
of sexual abuse
cases involve incest-or "intrafamilial abuse"-and "extrafamilial abuse"
(Finkelhor 1994).
Studies
report
rates that
range
from 16
percent
of sexual abuse
cases
involving family
members
(Russell 1983)
to 29
percent (Finkelhor 1994).
Sedlak and Broadhurst
(1996)
found that 29
percent
of sexual abuse
reports
involved the birth
father,
while 25
percent
of victims
sexually
abused
by stepfathers
or "parent substitutes" such as mothers'
boyfriends.
Intrafamilial abuse
begins
ear-
lier and is of
longer
duration in the child's lifetime than extrafamilial abuse
(Fischer
and McDonald
1998). Furthermore,
intrafamilial abuse is often
accompanied by
more serious sexual acts and leaves victims more
physically
and
emotionally
injured
than victims of extrafamilial abuse
(Fischer
and McDonald
1998).
METHOD
I conducted a discourse
analysis
of media
commentary surrounding
two well-
known incest cases to
explore
how incest is framed in
popular
culture. Discourse
analysis
involves a close
reading
of texts to
explore
the
production
and distribution
of
knowledges
in
society (e.g., Skillington 1997).
I use
newspaper
and
magazine
articles because the media
shapes public opinion
and because
newspapers
and
mag-
azines are indicators of
popular
culture.
My
first case concerns the 1997
publication
of the memoir The
Kiss,
an account of author
Kathryn
Harrison's sexual affair with
her birth father. The second case is the 1992-1993 scandal
concerning Woody
Allen's
relationship
with
(ex-lover
Mia Farrow's
daughter)
Soon-Yi Previn. I ana-
lyzed
articles
searching
for rationales based on Foucault's
(1978)
and Bell's
(1993)
blood-desire framework for
understanding
the
popular
media's
meaning
of incest.
Kathryn
Harrison and Soon-Yi Previn were both women in their
early
20s when
they
became
sexually
involved in incestuous
ways
with
significantly
older men
who were well established in their
respective
communities. The
primary
difference
between the two cases is that Harrison and her father were blood
related,
although
they
did not see one another
during
Harrison's
childhood,
while
Woody
Allen was
not related to Soon-Yi Previn
by
blood or law but saw her
frequently during
her
childhood when he
daily
visited her mother and his
adoptive
children.
Thus,
Harri-
son and her father
primarily
had a blood
relationship,
while
any family
ties between
Allen and Previn rested on newer notions of
kinship
and
sexuality.
The similarities
(both
women were
adults)
and differences
(the family situations)
between the two
cases make them ideal for
comparing
the
impact
of the blood-desire
spectrum
on
popular
culture.
Media commentators discussed the moral
implications
of incest in The Kiss and
Woody
Allen's situation.
By
"moral,"
I mean that commentators made normative
judgments
about the actors involved in the incestuous affairs.
They judged
whether
they
found these celebrities' actions
wrong
or offensive
according
to what
February
2003
commentators believed were
community
norms.
Indeed,
sometimes the scandals
provoked
discussion of whether
society's
standards
regarding
incest,
privacy,
and
the
family
were in decline.
I
initially
located 116 articles
published
in 1997 on the author
Kathryn
Harrison
and her memoir
using
Lexis-Nexis and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.
These included book
reviews, editorials,
and interviews of Harrison. I
investigated
these
articles,
specifically looking
for those that offered normative
judgments
on
Harrison and her father. Two
general
themes
repeatedly emerged
in commentators'
reactions to The Kiss: whether Harrison's
relationship
with her father was
equiva-
lent to child sexual abuse and whether her memoir was too offensive to be
published
in nonfictional form.
I
initially
located 183 articles on
Woody
Allen's
relationship
with Soon-Yi
Previn from 1992 to the end of
1993,
spanning
the time when the scandal first broke
to the immediate aftermath
following
the
custody dispute.
These articles consisted
of
editorials,
various
experts' diagnoses
of the
case,
public opinion pieces,
inter-
views with Allen and
Previn,
and articles
describing
the
opinion
of the
judge
who
decided
against
Allen in a
subsequent custody
case
(discussed below).
Commenta-
tors' reactions to the Allen-Previn affair can be characterized
by
two
general
themes:
They
discussed whether the affair was akin to incest and the
meaning
of
family
and fatherhood.
I eliminated several
types
of articles from both of
my
final
samples
because the
commentaries offered
only
facts about the book and no
commentary
about the
incestuous
situations;
came from
foreign newspapers
or
magazines;
were
syndi-
cated columns
repeated
in other
newspapers
under new
headlines;
made too
spare
mention of the book or the affair to be of
value;
or focused
only
on the
custody
case
concerning
Allen's
adoptive
children.
My
final
sample
on The Kiss included 46
articles,
and
my
final
sample
on the
Woody
Allen case included 40 articles.
KATHRYN HARRISON'S THE KISS
The Kiss is a memoir that describes a destructive sexual
relationship
between
author
Kathryn
Harrison and her birth father. Harrison's
parents
divorced when she
was six months old. When she was
20,
her
40-year-old biological
father,
a minister
who had remarried and since had other
children,
visited and
immediately
showed
sexual interest in his
grown daughter,
who seemed both thrilled and
repulsed by
the
attention.
Following
the
visit,
during
which the infamous sexual kiss from the
book's title
occurred,
the father seduced his
daughter through
constant love letters
and
phone
calls,
encouraging
her to
quit college
and embark on an affair. Father and
daughter
became involved in an obsessive
relationship.
Harrison became
highly
dependent
on her father
during
the
relationship;
cut off from
college,
her
friends,
and other
family
members;
and became
increasingly emotionally
unstable. The
affair ended after her mother died.
In the case of The
Kiss,
blood relations were
clearly informing
commentators'
rationales since the
only relationship
Harrison and her father had to one another
prior
to the affair was one of blood ties.
Twenty-seven
commentators
supported
Harrison,
while 19 criticized her.
However,
all of those who reviewed The Kiss
found the situation of a blood-related father and
daughter having
sexual relations
immoral in some
way.
Whether critical or
supportive
of
Harrison,
not one commen-
tator took a libertarian
position
that the
relationship
was
acceptable
because both
partners
were adults who had consented to the affair. Yet beneath this
superficial
level of
agreement
that the sexual
relationship
between blood relatives was
immoral,
there were a
range
of
positions
on what
precisely
was deemed
wrong
with
the incestuous situation. The
primary
issues at the center of
controversy
concerned
whether Harrison's
relationship
was akin to child sexual abuse and whether Harrison
should have
publicly
disclosed the affair or
kept
the information
private.
Is It Abuse?
Twenty-eight
commentators were
compelled
to state whether
they
believed the
incest
depicted
in The Kiss was similar to child sexual abuse.
Twenty
of those
described the affair between Harrison and her father as
analogous
to child sexual
abuse
(while eight argued
that it was
not).
Commentators could have characterized
the
relationship
as
emotionally
abusive due to Harrison's father's
cutting
her off
from friends and
family
without
suggesting
it was
analogous
to child sexual abuse.
However,
they argued
that the affair was abusive because of Harrison's emotional
vulnerability
as a
formerly
fatherless
daughter
and her father's
exploitation
of his
parental
role. Some
employed
the
language
of feminist
self-help
books
throughout
their
essays, referring
to Harrison as a "survivor" of incest and/or abuse. The fol-
lowing passages
illustrate how observers framed Harrison's situation as
analogous
to child sexual abuse:
What's
really going
on in this memoir has to do with the
shifty
issues of
power, pos-
session,
how families live and
lie,
how the role of
parent
is not
God-given
or
inviolate,
how a child can be both victim and collaborator.
(Roberts 1997, 12K)
The
period
of sexual involvement that followed in
many ways
was
typical
of father-
daughter
incest,
with the emotional coercion made
possible, despite
Harrison's nomi-
nally having
reached an
age
of
independence, by
the
profundity
of her
parentless
neediness.
(Udovitch 1997, 57-58)
He abuses his
authority
as a
parent
and a
preacher,
with
seemingly
little concern for
his victim.
(Kothari 1997, G10)
The Kiss is not a book about incest. It is a book about the
power
that
parents
have over
their
children,
and the
heartbreaking things
that
happen
when that
power
is abused.
(Peterson 1997, 3)
What makes the incestuous situation abusive for these observers are issues of
emotional
coercion,
a
power
imbalance between
parent
and child
(rather
than
only
February
2003
a
power
imbalance between an adult and
child),
an
exploitation
of the
parental
role,
and her father's lack of concern for the
consequences
of his actions.
Despite
the fact
that there was a
generational
difference between Harrison and her
father,
commen-
tators on The Kiss did not focus on the
age
difference.
Instead,
observers blurred
distinctions between adults and children in terms of emotional
maturity, arguing
a
parent's authority
and
power
can be
exploited beyond
childhood.
They clearly
dem-
onstrate a move
away
from
framing
incest in terms of blood and instead conceive of
it in terms of sexual and emotional harm. The act of incest becomes
wrong-
regardless
of the
participants' ages-because
of the
psychological
trauma induced
from a sexual
relationship occurring
in the context of
power
imbalances based on
social roles and
gender.
These commentaries also illustrate how feminist
perspec-
tives on incest and child sexual abuse have become influential
enough
to be used
even when adults are involved rather than children.
By
contrast,
eight
observers
explicitly argued
that Harrison's situation was not
analogous
to child sexual abuse. What was
key
for them was that Harrison was an
adult who
willingly
became
sexually
involved with her father.
They questioned
the
degree
to which Harrison was
personally responsible
for
being
in an incestuous
relationship
where she found herself
emotionally
unstable. The fact that she was an
adult made her accountable for not
spurning
her father's advances. The
following
passages aptly
illustrate this view:
But it's one
thing
to be a small child at the
mercy
of
adults,
and another
thing
to be an
adult
participant yourself.
Her father
may
have
peppered
her with
wheedling phone
calls and
letters,
but he wasn't
looming
at her bedroom
door,
taking advantage
of his
size and his
age.
Their affair wasn't a sordid domestic
situation,
it was a
complex oper-
ation.
(Wolcott 1997, 32-37)
Was her dad worse? Of course. Was she vulnerable?
Apparently.
But at 20
years
old,
Harrison was old
enough
to know the act was immoral.... Is this what America can
expect
in the
spate
of
copycat
adult incest tales sure to follow? Ambivalence. As if the
women are moral children who know
they
will not be held to the same moral standards
sure to
pinion
their
pervert
fathers?
(Saunders 1997, 9)
In the
jargon,
Harrison is the
victim,
yet
there is
something
about this memoir that
suggests
a need to exonerate herself. Is she not
culpable?
Does an
unhappy
childhood
or even the obvious
psychoanalytic interpretation
excuse what she has done?
(Moore
1997, 44)
The
problem
is Harrison
presents
herself as a
complete
victim: she wasn't awake
enough
to make moral
choices,
and thus is not
responsible
for what she has done.
There is no
price
to
pay
for
incest,
not even shame.
(Bush 1997, 519)
These commentators saw a clear demarcation between childhood and
adulthood,
where abuse constitutes
exploiting
a child's
physical
and emotional
vulnerability,
rather than
exploiting
the
vulnerability
of one's
offspring.
In this
case,
abuse is
defined as
taking advantage
of
greater
adult size and
age;
once the child reaches
adulthood,
he or she is assumed to be
unsusceptible
to abuse.
Therefore,
emotional
coercion of a woman
past
the
age
of consent is not abusive.
Moreover,
these critics seemed to hold
Harrison,
rather than her
father,
primarily
responsible
for the affair. This reflects the
patriarchal assumption
that it is women
who bear the
responsibility
for
rebuffing
men's sexual advances. In these commen-
taries,
Kathryn
Harrison is not afforded the same access to libertarian values of sex-
ual choice and
privacy
as her father is but is held
primarily responsible
for the con-
sequences
of the
relationship.
Furthermore,
commentators who
judged
her actions
as
irresponsible
had no
deeper explanation
for
why
the affair was
wrong
other than
an
implicit assumption
that it is immoral for blood relatives to become
sexually
involved.
They nonreflectively employed
blood relations as a foundation for
why
incest is
immoral,
providing
no rationale for
why
sexual relations between blood
relatives should be considered
problematic. Interestingly, only
one commentator
raised the
question
of whether the sexual
relationship
between Harrison and her
father could have resulted in the birth of
genetically
defective
offspring, suggesting
that this was not a main issue for commentators who viewed the incestuous rela-
tionship
as
wrong.
Public/Private Boundaries
The second theme that
emerged
was whether
Kathryn
Harrison should have
published
a nonfiction account of the affair. In
1991,
she had
published
a fictional
version of the affair in the novel Thicker Than
Water,
which
by
and
large
received
favorable reviews.
Thirty-four
commentators discussed whether Harrison should
have
published
The
Kiss,
with 17
arguing
that she should not have
published
it and
another 17
defending
her
right
to
publish
the memoir.
Critics felt that Harrison offended notions of common
decency,
discretion,
and
privacy by describing
her affair in nonfictional form. The
following passages
illus-
trate the
range
of such
commentary:
What
greater good
is Harrison
serving by making many
thousands of
people privy
to
an intimate and shameful
story
that should
really
be between
herself,
her
husband,
her
analyst,
and,
if she has
one,
her God? ... If Harrison were
really courageous
as her
supporters
assert,
she would have
fought
her demons in
private
and
protected
her chil-
dren at
any
cost.
(Allen 1997, 64-70)
This woman
slept
with her father. And then told the world. To
put
it another
way, just
because a writer can
speak
the
unspeakable,
does that mean that she should? Harrison's
mother is
dead,
but the unnamed father ... is alive somewhere with his second wife
and their children.
(Schwarzbaum 1997, 30-31)
But it's
impossible
to silence the
question:
Has she chosen
writing
over her
family?
Has she
exposed
her
young
son and
daughter
to a lifetime of taunts about their mother
and their
grandfather? (Gordon 1997, 136)
This confession isn't from the
heart,
it's from the
pocketbook....
The real
dishonesty
is this shameful
book,
which
exploits
the
private
life of the author's
family-if, by
the
way, anything
herein
actually happened
as she claims it did-for
personal gain
and
talk show
notoriety. (Yardley
1997, D2)
February
2003
There were several reasons
why
commentators felt she should not
publish
the mem-
oir. Some
simply
felt the
subject
matter of adult incest offended notions of
public
decency
and should be disclosed
only
under circumstances of
privacy.
Others
argued
that
publishing
The Kiss was an
irresponsible
act that would harm Harri-
son's
family, including
her
biological
father and his
(other) children,
as well as her
own children.
They
criticized Harrison for
placing
her
biological
father in a
position
where his
identity
could be discovered.
They
also assumed that
Kathryn
Harrison's
own children would be traumatized
by public
disclosure that their mother
engaged
in incest.
Here,
the
implication
is that Harrison was both a bad mother and a bad
daughter,
not
necessarily
for
having
the incestuous affair but for
breaking
the norms
of
privacy
and
secrecy
that often surround incestuous acts.
Furthermore,
no com-
mentators
expressed
concern that Harrison's father would commit incest with his
other children. This
position
can
only
make sense in the context of
viewing
the
institution of the
family
as an
absolutely private sphere
where
family
secrets should
be
kept
to
protect
other
family
members,
including
children and
(incestuous)
fathers.
Some
profeminist
commentators countered this
type
of
argument, noting
that
critiques
of Harrison had the air of
depoliticizing
the
personal.
For
example,
The
Women's Review
of
Books
(Alther 1997, 33-34) argued,
And
why
is it that whenever women describe their
experience
of life in a
public
forum,
they
are
automatically
accused of
being
bad
wives, mothers,
or
daughters,
while if
they
nurse their wounds in
silence,
they
are accused of
being hypocrites
and
martyrs?
However,
another feminist reviewer
critiqued
Harrison on this same
count,
arguing,
"The
helpless
victim stance ... is
hardly helpful
to women either
personally
or
politically,
and it
certainly
can't be characterized as
liberating" (Lehrman 1997, C3).
The criticism that Harrison was
wrong
to have
published
a nonfiction account of
her incestuous affair illustrates the feminist contention that there is a cultural
prohi-
bition
against speaking
out about incest. The
silencing
of incest survivors
supports
a
patriarchal
social
system by demanding
that women
(and
children)
hide the
per-
sonal indiscretions of their fathers
(Alcoff
and
Gray
1993;
Armstrong
1994;
Barringer
1992;
Gordon
1988).
The other 17 commentators who defended Harrison's
right
to
publish
The Kiss
all
directly responded
to the
critiques
of Harrison described above. These commen-
tators
argued
that Harrison had the
right
to
publicly
air the
pain
that the affair had
caused her and that it was a well-written memoir that deserved an audience. For
example,
one reviewer
asserted,
"Not to want to
know,
not to
speak
the truth
would,
I
believe,
be the real
obscenity" (Wood 1997, 8J),
and author Tobias Wolff
(1997,
19)
defended Harrison in the New York Times: "I've never met
Kathryn
Harrison,
but I have read her
book,
thought
it
remarkably courageous
and well-told and have
been
happy
to recommend it."
In
summary,
blood relations remain
important
in moral rationales
by
media
commentators,
demonstrated
by
the fact that all commentators viewed the
relationship
between Harrison and her father as
inherently wrong.
No commentator
argued
that Harrison and her father were
consenting
adults and could thus
engage
in
sexual relations as
they
so chose.
However,
beyond
this
superficial
level of
agree-
ment,
commentators
disagreed
on whether
they
viewed Harrison's incestuous situ-
ation as
analogous
to child sexual abuse. Those who viewed the
relationship
as abu-
sive
argued
that her father
exploited
his
parental
role and
psychologically
and
emotionally
coerced his
daughter
into
engaging
in an affair.
They
viewed the rela-
tionship
as
wrong
because it was
asymmetrical
in terms of
power
relations,
causing
Harrison
psychological
and emotional trauma as the less
powerful player.
On the
blood-desire
continuum,
these
deeper
commentaries fell toward the desire
end,
questioning
her father's incestuous desire and the harm it had caused his
biological
daughter.
This
framing
was
obviously
influenced
by
a feminist
perspective
of
incest.
By
contrast,
those who blamed Harrison indicated that as an adult
woman,
she was
responsible
for
rejecting
her father's sexual advances or at least was
responsible
for
keeping
their sexual indiscretions
private.
The
relationship
was
wrong
because it offended blood relations and notions of familial
privacy.
WOODY ALLEN'S INCEST CONTROVERSY
In
1992-1993,
filmmaker
Woody
Allen was mired in an incestuous scandal.
When he was
57,
Allen became
romantically
involved with Soon-Yi
Previn,
the
adopted 20-year-old daughter
of his
long-time
lover,
Mia Farrow. Debate ensued
over whether his
relationship
with Previn was incest. Allen's
relationship
with Mia
Farrow and her 11 children was
legally complex.
He had been
romantically
linked
with Farrow for 12
years, though they
neither were married nor cohabitated. He had
adopted
her son Moses and her
daughter Dylan
and was the birth father of her
youn-
gest
son Satchel.
Thus,
Allen was not
biologically
or
legally
related to Previn.
Woody
Allen was also accused of
having sexually
abused his
seven-year-old adop-
tive
daughter Dylan.
Allen sued Farrow for
custody
of
Moses,
Dylan,
and Satchel in
1992. For the most
part,
observers
separated
their
commentary
on Allen's affair
with
Previn,
the sex abuse
charges,
and the
custody
case,
so I focused
my study only
on
commentary concerning
Allen and Previn's
relationship.
Most observers focused on whether the Allen-Previn
relationship
was incestu-
ous. Out of 40
articles,
29 commentaries were critical of
Woody
Allen. Of these
29,
18 believed Allen's
relationship
was incestuous and 11
argued
it should be consid-
ered incest but could not be because of the informal ties of Allen and Farrow's fam-
ily.
The final 11 commentators were
supportive
of
Allen,
arguing
the
relationship
did not constitute incest and that Allen was not a father
figure
to Previn. Commen-
tary
on the
controversy
was
fascinating
because of the nature of the Allen-Farrow
postmoder family consisting
of two unmarried
parents
with
biological
and
adop-
tive children
(who
had been
adopted by
two different
fathers). Arguments
about
whether the
relationship
was incestuous almost
completely hinged
on commenta-
tors'
thoughts
on whether Farrow and her children constituted a real
family
and
February
2003
whether Allen was a real father.
Usually,
those who considered Allen a father to
Farrow's children also felt that his
relationship
with Previn was immoral because it
smacked of incest. Some used the Allen-Farrow-Previn
controversy
to discuss
changing conceptualizations
of the
family
and fatherhood in American
society.
Incest and Abuse of Power
With the Allen-Previn
controversy,
18 observers felt the
relationship
was inces-
tuous.
They argued
that Allen was a father
figure
who had abused that role to
gain
access to Previn. The
following quotes represent
these views:
His
relationship
to Soon-Yi Farrow Previn... is
unavoidably
about
leverage:
Parental
nurturing
and adult
example
have been
put
to ulterior
purpose. (Trueheart 1992,
C
1)
That would
put
him into
violating generational
boundaries. He is
put
in a
parental
role,
regardless
of whether he is the
parent
or not.
(Bonker 1992, Q1)
As a
parental figure,
Allen did not enter his
relationship
with Soon-Yi on a level
play-
ing
field. In a
strictly legal
sense,
Allen is
guilty
of neither harassment nor abuse. But
by "falling
in love" with Soon-Yi and
acting upon
that
emotion,
he has
severely
dam-
aged
the
family
structure of which he is a
part. (Wall 1992, 795-96)
In these
accounts,
the
immorality
of incest
encompassed exploiting
the
parental
role,
violating generational
differences,
and
damaging
the
family
structure.
Observers contend that
Woody
Allen used whatever
power
and admiration he
might
have
gained by
virtue of
being
an adult
presence
in Farrow's household to
gain
sexual access to Soon-Yi Previn. The fact that Previn was an adult mattered
less to critics than the idea that there was a
power
imbalance between the two based
on Allen's father
figure
status and the
age
difference between them. Commentators
also
argued
that Allen's
relationship
with Previn hurt Farrow's
family, dividing
family
members. Soon-Yi Previn became cut off from her
adoptive
mother and sib-
lings
when the affair was discovered. Critics of
Woody
Allen
(including
the
judge
who
presided
over his
custody case)
maintained that what was immoral about the
relationship
was that he did not consider the
consequences
of his actions and how he
damaged
the
family
of which he had been
part.
The same 18 observers who viewed Allen's
relationship
with Previn as incestu-
ous
argued
that Farrow's
family
was
legitimate
and that Allen had been a father
fig-
ure
regardless
of whether the
parents
and
siblings
were
biologically
related or
joined
by legal
ties of
marriage.
The
following quotes represent
the
range
of these
views:
Still for all its Norman Rockwell
asymmetry,
the Farrow-Allen
polyglot
was
every
much a
family
unit as that statistical
anomaly
with a
working
father,
stay-at-home
mother and 2.3 children. Mutual
nurture,
support
and
respect
not
only
sustain,
but also
defines families. All of which combines to make Allen's love affair with Farrow's 21-
year-old daughter
as
morally repugnant
as incest between blood relatives.
(Editorial
Staff
1992, A8)
That means
Woody
Allen knew Farrow's
previously adopted daughter,
Soon-Yi Farrow
Previn,
as a child and watched her
grow up.
He was a
stepfather
to
her,
and to her
brothers and sisters. Even
though
Allen and Farrow never married or lived
together,
they
still formed a
family,
albeit an untraditional one. And
Allen,
as
patriarch,
assumed the
rights
of fatherhood.
(Lofas 1992, 55)
Allen and Farrow have not
forged
a
typical family
unit,
but to the adults and children
involved it is their
family
and their
home,
the
place
where
they
eat,
where
they sleep,
and where
they
should
expect
to be
protected
and not
exploited. (Wall 1992, 795)
The
family
is defined here in
social, emotional,
and even
geographical
terms rather
than
merely by
blood. Emotional ties and the social role of
being
an adult caretaker
took
precedence
over
biological
relations for
defining
fatherhood. The
family
becomes wherever children call
home,
and adults who
engage
in
any
sort of
caretaking
role while there constitute
parental figures.
These commentators
employed
a broad
meaning
of incest to fit the untraditional
family
structure at issue
in this
case,
reflecting
a feminist influence.
Eleven other critics of Allen
provided
a variation on this theme.
They argued
that
the Allen-Previn
relationship
should be considered incest but could not be since
Farrow and Allen had not married. Articles that featured
expert commentary by
psychologists, psychiatrists,
and
family therapists
often utilized the Allen-Previn
affair to consider whether the decline of the nuclear
family (consisting
of two bio-
logical parents
and
children)
would contribute to a
potential
rise in the incidence of
incest in
society.
The
[Allen-Farrow]
clash raised
troubling questions
for
every
nouveau
Brady
Bunch
family, every jerry-built
alliance of
siblings
who are more like classmates and
parents
who
may
be
only
lovers. What is incest? How affectionate can a man be to those in his
care? What is a father? How much distance must he
put
between himself and his unof-
ficial children before he is free to date one of them?
(Corliss 1992, 54-58)
In
biological
families ... incest is
regarded
as a crime
against
nature. In
stepfamilies,
where a natural attraction exists between
stepparents
and
stepchildren
of the
opposite
sex,
there are few taboos
against acting sexually. (Lofas 1992, 55)
These commentators used the
ambiguity
of the Farrow alternative
family
to
decry
the
declining significance
of
marriage
and the
spread
of more diverse
family
forms.
They
seemed to assume that
biological
relations formed a
fundamental,
natural
boundary
that
effectively prevents
incest within families. The Allen-Farrow-Previn
clan was used
symbolically
in these accounts to
represent
more fluid
family
rela-
tions that trouble notions of the traditional
family.
This sort of rhetoric
expressing
fear over the decline of
family
values was common in the United States
throughout
the
1990s,
both in
public
rhetoric and within academic circles
(e.g., Popenoe
1999;
Quayle
2001).
Not
surprisingly, Woody
Allen himself did not think of his
relationship
with
Soon-Yi Previn as incestuous because he did not see himself as
having
been a father
February
2003
figure
to Previn. Allen defined his
relationship
to
Farrow, Previn,
and their
family
in
the
following way:
I am not Soon-Yi's father or
stepfather.
I've never even lived with Mia. I've never in
my
entire life
slept
at Mia's
apartment,
and I never even used to
go
over there until
my
children came
along
seven
years ago.
I never had
any family
dinners over there. I was
not a father to her
adopted
kids in
any
sense of the word.... This was not some
type
of
family
unit in
any
remote
way....
These
people
are a collection of
kids,
they
are not
blood sisters or
anything. (Corliss 1992, 59-61)
He added in a Newsweek
(Allen
and Kroll
1992, 54-55) interview,
"I was a father
figure
to
my
own
children,
period.
Those are the three in
my
will." Soon-Yi Previn
concurred
(Corliss 1992, 61):
"To think that
Woody
was in
any way
a father or
step-
father to me is
laughable. My parents
are Andre Previn and
Mia,
but
obviously
they're
not even
my
real
parents."
The roles of fathers were
important
in both The Kiss and the Allen-Previn scan-
dal. Harrison's father was
physically
distant
during
her
childhood,
which therefore
allowed him to think of his
daughter
as
sexually approachable.
Allen was seem-
ingly emotionally
distant as a father
figure
and therefore could not understand
why
the
public
viewed his
relationship
with Previn as incestuous. Eleven
supporters
of
Allen
agreed
that Farrow's
family
did not constitute a real
family
and that Allen was
not a father
figure
to
Previn,
only
to her
siblings
for whom he was
seeking custody.
Commentators
supportive
of Allen also did not view Farrow's
family
as a
legitimate
family
or Allen as a father
figure. They
did not see his
transgression
as incestuous.
As these editorials most
clearly
framed
it,
And we must be clear here about the nature of
Woody
Allen's crime. It was not child
abuse. And it was not
incest,
for Allen was never a father to Soon-Yi. Allen's crime
was to fall in love in a
way
for which
society
was not
really prepared. (Lewis 1992,
11-12)
The
pursuit
of
youth
and
beauty
has been an
integral part
of
highly accomplished
male
life for centuries. Allen has the
right
to seek his muse wherever he
may
find her.
(Paglia 1992, 42)
These rationales
arguing
that the Allen-Previn affair was not incestuous rest on the
libertarian
assumption
that Allen and Previn were
consenting
adults who were free
to become
sexually
involved as
they
so chose.
By
contrast,
with The
Kiss,
critics
argued
that sexual relations between
consenting (but
blood
related)
adults was
wrong.
Blood relations
play
a
strong
role in this
argument, providing
a rationaliza-
tion for
why
the
relationship
between
Woody
Allen and Soon-Yi Previn was
legiti-
mate: Real relatives are related
by
blood; therefore,
they
were not
committing
incest. Such an
argument employs
a traditional definition of incest-limited
only
to
sexual relations between blood relatives-that cannot
encompass
alternative fam-
ily arrangements
where
family
ties are not defined
by
law or blood.
In
summary, although Woody
Allen was not related
by
blood or
legal
ties to
Soon-Yi
Previn,
most commentators found the
relationship morally wrong,
and
they
often defined the
relationship
in incestuous terms. Critics of Allen
employed
more flexible definitions of incest and the
family
that instead
hinged
on
psychologi-
cal, emotional,
and social ties
binding family
members. In terms of the blood-desire
continuum,
most comments on the Allen-Previn affair fell toward the desire
end,
reflecting
values associated with Foucault's
(1978) deployment
of
sexuality.
Allen's desire for a
younger
woman with
family-like
ties to himself was viewed as
problematic,
and the
relationship
is framed in terms of harm.
Contrastingly,
for
sup-
porters
of
Allen,
the
immorality
of incest
depended
on blood relations-Allen's
actions were not immoral because he was not a blood relative.
CONCLUSION: OEDIPUS WRECKED?
Sophocles composed
the
tragedy Oedipus
Rex when Western
society
was
orga-
nized around a different
system
of
kinship
and
sexuality.
Incest was
thought
of
strictly
as sexual relations between blood relatives and was considered
morally
wrong
because it
produced
tainted
offspring
and threatened to confuse lines of
inheritance around which
premoder society
was
organized.
This embodies the
blood end of the continuum that Bell
(1993)
referred to in
interpreting
the
meaning
of incest.
In the
contemporary
context,
where
marriage
is based on emotion and families
are constructed
by
will and choice in diverse
arrangements,
does the
tragedy
of
Oedipus
still make sense? Is it the
case,
as a reviewer of The Kiss
commented,
that
"there is no
price
to
pay
for
incest,
not even shame"?
Or,
as 11
expert
commentators
on
Woody
Allen's affair
suggested,
can
stepfathers
and
boyfriends
feel free to
pur-
sue their lovers'
daughters
in the absence of
legal
and
biological
ties that tradition-
ally
defined children as
part
of families and therefore as
sexually
off limits? Has a
moral vacuum been created where an incest
prohibition
once existed?
My study suggests
that
changing family configurations
have not created a moral
vacuum where incest is concerned. Power relations are now central to discussions
of incest as a moral issue. Norms and morals for
protecting
children have been
reconstructed in feminist terms
indicating
that incest
represents
an abuse of
power.
The
meaning
of incest has shifted to
represent
the sexual
exploitation
of emotional
ties between relatives of all sorts
including stepfamily,
blood
relatives,
and chosen
kin. Feminist
perspectives
on incest
represent
the desire end of the continuum
where incest is about incestuous desires and the
psychological, physical,
and emo-
tional harm
experienced by
incest survivors is often
phrased
in terms of child sexual
abuse.
Changes
in institutions of
family
and
kinship
have transformed the
meaning
of
incest. In the cases discussed
here,
the
impact
of
changing family
relations on incest
discourse is
apparent.
In media
commentary
on
Woody
Allen's
relationship
with
February
2003
Soon-Yi
Previn,
although they
were not related
by
blood or
by
law,
commentators
explained why they
nonetheless found the
relationship
incestuous and
morally
sus-
pect.
Blood relations were not needed
by
the commentators in this case to define the
relationship
as
incestuous,
even
though biological
relations have
traditionally
been
the foundation of what incest means.
Thus,
the
meaning
of incest
changed
to fit the
new
family
forms that Mia Farrow's
family represented.
In
seeming
contrast,
commentators on The Kiss
universally
found the sexual
relationship
between blood related father and
daughter
immoral,
suggesting
that
blood is still
significant
for
understanding
incest.
However,
most commentators did
not focus on
offending
blood relations as the
primary wrong,
but
they
instead honed
in on the father's abuse of his
parental
role and his
controlling
manner within the
relationship.
Thus,
most
commentary
on The Kiss and the
Woody
Allen case framed incest in
terms of the desire end of the
continuum,
constructing
incest in terms of immoral
desires on the
part
of the offender and the harm it causes. This is based on feminist
perspectives
on incest as
sexually exploiting
the role of
parent,
even if the
meaning
of
"parent"
has
expanded
to include different
relationships.
Feminism
encourages
framing
incest in terms of sexual
abuse,
even when children are not involved. In
recent
years,
feminist ideas in
popular
discourse have often been met with ridicule
or
sharp
criticism
(Ashley
and Olson
1999;
Faludi
1992). However,
the media com-
mentaries on the incestuous situations
presented by
The Kiss and
Woody
Allen
illustrate that feminism has had an
impact
on
popular
constructions of incest.
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The Moral Boundaries of Incest

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