SHADOWHUNTERS AND DOWNWORLDERS

The Exception


It’s interesting to note that the opposite outcome is true when the person in love with her best friend is a girl instead of a boy. In literature and film, the girl always seems to get the guy, even if the girl is shy, geeky, or dare I say average looking. We only need to look to one ’80s film to see how this scenario plays out because it’s always the same; the girl is in love with her best friend, who chases some unattainable girl until he finally gets her and realizes it was his best friend he was in love with all along.

In John Hughes’ 1987 film Some Kind of Wonderful, Keith’s best friend, Watts (a girl), is secretly in love with him. Keith has no idea, in part because he is completely fixated on Amanda Jones, a girl who is way out of his league. Watts buries her feelings and agrees to help him with an elaborate plan to win Amanda’s heart, which tears Watts’ heart to shreds in the process. Unbelievably, as it always seems to happen when a girl is in love with her male best friend, the boy (Keith, in this case) manages to get the fantasy girl. The difference? At the last minute, Keith suddenly realizes he’s really in love with Watts and chases her down the street to give her the diamond earrings he planned to give to Amanda.

So what gives? Why do the girls end up with their best friends? Why aren’t they Duckies too? The message seems to be that guys don’t always know what they want—or who is right for them—until a resourceful young woman finds a way to show them. While this portrait of literary and cinematic boys in general is less than flattering, is it any less flattering than the portrait of girls who undergo some sort of chemical reaction the minute they meet an emotionally unavailable bad boy? Unless the bad boy in question isn’t really bad at all (like Jace). What if these fictional girls empower a few of us who are more Watts than Amanda Jones to go after our own Jace Waylands anyway, off the screen and the page? Girls going after what they want in literature, and life, always get my vote.

Couldn’t ending up with a Duckie be just as empowering? Unfortunately, most film and literature heroines will never find out, though more than a few real girls know the truth: Sometimes your best friend also happens to be the best choice.

Until then, like crop circles, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, and ESP, the Duckie effect is an unexplained phenomenon. Only one thing is certain: Even if he’s an adorable Jewish vampire, the best friend never gets the girl.



Kami Garcia is the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and international bestselling coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures novels. Beautiful Creatures releases in theaters in 2013 from Warner Brothers and Alcon Entertainment, starring Viola Davis, Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenrich, and Emmy Rossum. Kami is also the author of Unbreakable, the first book in her solo series, The Legion (Little, Brown, 2013), which is currently being developed as a major motion picture. You can find out more about Kami and her books at www.kamigarcia.com or follow her on Twitter at @kamigarcia.





KENDARE BLAKE

I’ve caused a lot of consternation among fans with the Jace/ Clary sibling plotline. I know this because of the amount of AUGH and ICK that have come my way over time. But isn’t that what we want from a story? For it to make our hair stand on end? For it to make us question our assumptions about what sort of love is acceptable to us, and why?

You can probably tell that I’ve written about this too much already, as evidenced in my language having devolved to “AUGH” and “ICK,” which is why I’m so glad Kendare has swooped in with this articulate essay, rescuing me from any further embarrassment.


BROTHERLY LOVE

JACE, CLARY, AND THE FUNCTION OF TABOO



There’s a reason that stories end at Happily Ever After. Happy couples are boring. Bo-ring. It’s all kissy faces and “honey-bear this” and “snuggle-pie that.” It’s sweet, and deep, and meaningful. And it makes us want to close the book. As readers, we’re drawn in by the struggle, by the drama, by the desires of the characters. There are few things in literature more enthralling to read than the tale of two people who yearn to be together. The great love stories tell us that to be truly engaging, couples should yearn against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The more a couple has to overcome, the more forbidden the romance, the more we root for them. The young lovers of Romeo and Juliet defied a family feud and married in secret. Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar fought against societal constraints and shame in Brokeback Mountain. Lancelot and Guinevere overcame the constraints of common sense and decency. In Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, Jace Wayland and Clary Fray overcome the taboo of sibling incest, and they do it without ever crossing the gross-out line.





Taboo as Titillation


Taboo (noun): a custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing

When Jace is shown to be Clary’s brother, the two have been falling in love for the better part of a book. The reader has invested in them. But the introduction of incest still should throw up a significant barrier for romantic enjoyment. It should stop us in our tracks, turn us 180 degrees, give us that slimy feeling we get when we remember that time we accidentally watched Flowers in the Attic on TV.

This is not the reader response it evoked. Readers wanted Jace and Clary together anyway. The question is: Why? And the answer lies in the very fact that they aren’t supposed to be.

Everyone loves a good taboo. Tell a person they can’t or shouldn’t do something, and well, you know what happens. As many people as the taboo discourages, it seems to encourage that many more. Even when it’s incest. If you need evidence, just Google “incest stories” and watch the hits roll in.

But what is it about taboo that makes it so appealing? Why are we so much more desperate for Jace and Clary to be together simply because they can’t be? The simple (probably oversimple) answer is human nature. People have a tendency to want what they can’t have and to want to do what people tell them they shouldn’t. It’s the old Pandora’s Box problem. “Don’t open that,” someone says, and instantly, a box you might never have looked twice at becomes much more interesting. Why can’t we open it? What would happen if we did? What’s in there? It’s curiosity, and the need to learn for ourselves, and before we know it, the box is wide open. Or maybe humans just have a deep-seated need for suffering and strife. The impact of taboo is complicated, and mired in layers of psychology.

When we see Jace and Clary struggling with their urge to be together despite knowing that it’s “wrong” and that they shouldn’t feel that way, we identify with it on a basic level. We want to know what is in them. We want to know what would happen if they were together. But the function of taboo when it comes to Jace and Clary’s romance is more complex than just that. Every literary relationship has to have conflict. The incest taboo heightens this conflict, introducing a new dimension that wouldn’t be present if the characters were grappling only with inner demons and neuroses—say, a fear of commitment or a fear of intimacy. The obstacle that Jace and Clary face is outside of themselves, something they believe they cannot change. Incest is no minor taboo. It’s a genetic imperative to avoid disease and defects due to inbreeding. It’s illegal in most countries and carries a hefty prison term, and rules against it have been in place in some shape or form for the entirety of recorded history. Historically, people have been executed for it. It’s a real hurdle, one that can’t be overcome by a heart-to-heart or a good cry.

Okay, so the incest taboo functions as an effective romantic obstacle. But really, it’s not just that incest is forbidden that matters here. It’s the reason that incest is forbidden. It comes down to the nature of love and—prepare to be titillated—the nature of sex.

Sex is like the mother sauce of taboo. So many taboos find roots in sex and manage to grow so many interesting branches. Think about it: Sex in itself is a complicated thing in our culture (and in most), twisted through with guilt and consequences as well as ideals and passion. On one hand it is held as necessary and exalted, something to be celebrated, but on the other it is introduced to us as something whispered about behind closed doors, something denied to us until we are older, wiser, and not biologically related. “You’re going to do it, but not until you’re older.” “You can do it, but not until you’re married.” “You’re doing it, but don’t talk about it!” The limits placed on sex increase our curiosity about it tenfold! And sex wouldn’t be half so appealing if this weren’t the case. Filmmakers, artists, and writers have delighted in breaking down barriers of the sexually and romantically forbidden practically since the invention of film, art, and writing. If sex and love were simple, straightforward concepts, why would we care to explore them, in art or in life? They would be completely uninteresting. And so the incest taboo works to complicate and elevate Jace and Clary’s relationship in this respect as well. The two dance around feelings of what should and shouldn’t be, alternately standing firm against the taboo and giving in to their desires, until it seems that the pair will be doomed to yearn indefinitely. Luckily, they’re granted a last-minute reprieve, but by then the taboo has already done its work, investing the reader in them completely by keeping them apart for so long.

It’s worth noting that Cassandra Clare uses the incest taboo as intrigue only. There is no real transgression between Jace and Clary, since they don’t engage in a (voluntary) physical relationship while thinking of each other as siblings. This doesn’t mean that the taboo is less relevant; rather, it breaks the taboo down to its purest form. It’s not an act, it’s an idea. It’s an impression of utter wrongness, an ever-present invisible barrier that attracts at the same time that it repels.





To Incest or Not to Incest? Depends on Whether You Left the Nest


But why doesn’t it repel, in Jace and Clary’s case, any more than it does? Speaking as a reader myself, when it seemed that Jace was Clary’s brother, I blinked a moment, then thought, “So what? You’re in love, and it’s not like you grew up together. Shack up already, and what the heck, have little babies who will be superstrong Shadowhunters with an uncanny talent for the banjo.” It might seem a strange reaction, and indeed it would be easy to become desensitized to the theme of sibling incest with the growing frequency that it is presented in pop culture, most notably cable television. Dexter and Boardwalk Empire both recently introduced incest plots. Showtime’s The Borgias hints at it pretty heavily between brother Cesare and little sister Lucrezia. Perhaps we’re all watching too much Game of Thrones, where sibling incest between Jaime and Cersei Lannister, twins who have been lovers since reaching sexual maturity, is treated largely as a love affair.

Wait, nope. That’s still gross.

So why is watching Jaime Lannister make googly eyes at Cersei so much creepier than seeing Luke and Leia kiss in The Empire Strikes Back? The key is in the phrase “grew up together.” Jace and Clary didn’t. Time to introduce some science.

Sexual aversion to our siblings is often attributed to something called the Westermarck effect, which states that humans are unlikely to view individuals with whom they are raised from a young age as sexually attractive. Whatever it might be called, this knowledge is intuitive to most people. You don’t lust for someone who broke your toys and vied with you for your parents’ attention. Jace and Clary didn’t break each other’s toys. They met as young adults, as strangers. Hearing Isabelle tell Clary that Jace is “damn sexy” and then refer to him as her brother is far more disturbing than an entire book of Jace and Clary’s tortured pseudo-incestuous longing, because they were raised together in the same house as siblings.

Jace and Jonathan have shared an upbringing. Both were raised by the same father, and this is why Jace feels more sibling empathy for Jonathan than for Clary. It’s also why the pseudo-incest that keeps Jace and Clary apart in the first three books can serve as a romantic obstacle rather than being a creepy bucket of yuck.