Exploring the complex theme of incest in mythology, literature, and cinema across cultures, highlighting its influence on art, storytelling, and society through iconic films, literature, and cross-cultural narratives. Sharad Raj writes…

Incest, a taboo topic rooted in global mythology and literature, has long influenced storytelling across cultures. From Oedipus in Greek mythology to Brahma and Saraswati in Indian folklore, this complex theme recurs in films like Subarnarekha, Devi, and Chinatown. Cinema, including works by Mira Nair, Werner Herzog, and Alfred Hitchcock, explores repressed desires shaped by socio-political forces like colonialism and feudalism. With its symbolic undertones, incest remains a powerful lens to examine human relationships, control, and defiance in post-colonial societies.

Incest in Mythology and Literature: An Ancient Obsession

Incest, derived from the Latin word incestus, meaning unchaste or impure, is a taboo across cultures in both ancient and present times. Yet, it has populated our mythology, folklore, literature, art, and cinema. For every Myrrha, who bore Adonis—the god of ideal male beauty—from her father in Greek mythology, there is a myth of Brahma and Saraswati in the East, where Brahma was cursed for molesting Saraswati, his daughter, with the belief that the world was created as a result of their incestuous alliance. Similar folk tales about incest exist in non-Western cultures across the Far East, the Middle East, and Africa.

From the mythical Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, where he kills his father to marry his mother Jocasta, to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung theorizing these dynamics as the Oedipus and Electra complexes—a daughter’s attraction to her father—incest has occupied a significant place in human imagination and social evolution. I believe even Ganesha guarding his bathing mother Parvati and preventing his father Shiva from entering—leading to his decapitation and the replacement of his head with an elephant’s trunk—carries incestuous and phallic undertones.

Beyond mythology, Indian literature explores incest in both ancient and modern works. Salman Rushdie’s Fury and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Raj Kamal Jha’s The Blue Bedspread, and Munshi Premchand’s Bhoot all engage with this theme. In Bhoot, Premchand departs from his characteristic social-realism to explore the mind of a character consumed by incestuous desire.

Incestuous Themes in Global Cinema

Cinema has engaged with incest in both overt and nuanced ways. Films that come to mind include Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), Imtiaz Ali’s Highway (2014), Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985), Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), and my own debut film, Ek Betuke Aadmi Ki Afrah Raatien (2023). Ek Betuke... draws upon the myth of Brahma and Saraswati, Premchand’s Bhoot, and Herzog’s Aguirre, while paying homage to Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha (1965) and Satyajit Ray’s Devi (1960), both of which contain incestuous undertones.

In Subarnarekha, Ishwar Chakraborty (Abhi Bhattacharya) finds himself in his sister Sita’s (Madhabi Mukherjee) brothel in post-partition Bengal. In Devi, Kalikinker Roy (Chhabi Biswas) sublimates his attraction to his daughter-in-law Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) by deifying her in his son’s absence. My professor Suresh Chabria at FTII explained how psychoanalysts interpret Kalikinker’s behaviour as an expression of repressed incestuous desire. Though Devi and Bhoot do not fit the strict definition of incest (forbidden relationships between immediate family members), they depict taboo relationships within the family fold.

Cross-cultural influences allow such themes to transcend time and space. Subarnarekha and Devi were made before I was born; Premchand wrote Bhoot nearly a century before my film, and Herzog’s Aguirre premiered when I was seven. These narratives continue to resonate across generations, shaping and reinterpreting incestuous themes in new contexts.

Rebellion, Power, and Tragedy: Incest and Society

In Ek Betuke..., I sought to reinterpret these narratives for the 21st century. The film adapts the myth of Brahma, exploring a father figure’s incestuous desire for his adopted daughter, as depicted in Bhoot. The father (Adil Hussain) belongs to the Jatav caste and wants to marry his adopted daughter, Gomti (Archana Gupta), to challenge Brahminical tyranny and assert Jatav rule. Similarly, in Aguirre, Klaus Kinski’s character, obsessed with racial purity, contemplates incest with his dying teenage daughter. Both characters succumb to their desires, leading to their tragic downfall—Aguirre is killed, and the father in Ek Betuke... slashes his wrist in despair.

These tragedies echo those in Subarnarekha and Devi. Sita kills herself with an axe, leaving her brother Ishwar in emotional paralysis, while Kalikinker Roy is left bewildered as Doyamoyee, the woman he deified, walks into the horizon. The common threads linking these films are colonialism, feudalism, and the rise of fascism and capitalism in post-colonial societies.

Few filmmakers fully portray incestuous desire as fulfilled. Instead, characters often grapple with the tension between their primal "id" and the moral constraints of the "superego," as Freud theorized. Even Alfred Hitchcock, whose films are rife with Oedipal undercurrents, never crossed this line. His films—Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963)—feature controlling mothers who antagonize their sons' romantic interests.

In Pushkar, Rajasthan, a lake is believed to have sheltered Saraswati from Brahma’s pursuit. The only temple dedicated to Brahma stands there, and pilgrims are required to cleanse themselves in the lake before entering. Visiting Pushkar recently brought to mind Kamal Swaroop’s Pushkar Puraan, which masterfully weaves mythology, incest, and cinema in today’s polarized world.