For those of us involved in the adoption community, we often
find ourselves riveted when adoption plots enter the small screen. The second
season of Shonda Rhimes’ How to Get Away
with Murder (HTGAWM) captured me
this fall as it introduced viewers to the case of Caleb Hapstall (Kendrick Sampson)
and Catherine Hapstall (Amy Okurda), adopted siblings accused of torturing and
murdering their adoptive parents, Grant and Ursula Hapstall. Four episodes into
the season, it’s clear that not only will this adoptive family storyline
continue to operate as a B-level plot, but viewers also will need to grapple with
understandings of race, kinship, and incest. WARNING: Spoilers concerning this
particular storyline will appear in this post.
The Hapstall family embodies the 20th century
transracial, and perhaps even international, adoptive family. Wealthy parents
from Philadelphia’s Main Line, Grant and Ursula Hapstall operated a pharmaceutical company,
valued in billions, prior to their deaths. In many ways the Hapstalls represent
all adoptive parents – scions of privilege and wealth that rescued their
adopted children from lives of poverty – or at least adoptive parents commonly highlighted in the media in the most sensationalized form.
Their Black adopted son, Caleb, and Asian adopted daughter, Catherine, should
(according to popular understandings of adoption) be grateful for the love and
privilege adoption granted them. Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) captures this
sentiment in Episode 1, “It’s Time to Move On” as she seeks to obtain the Hapstall children as
her clients. Keating states: “Rich, spoiled, and ungrateful for the privilege
that you were born into…sorry, adopted into… You don’t deserve the money.
You’re not their real children, you
felt that growing up and it made you resentful, angry. And then, you decided
enough. Let’s shoot mommy and daddy in the head.” Keating clearly articulates
what the jury’s perception of them will be upon their trial.
As an adoptive parent, Shonda Rhimes is most likely aware of the dichotomy
that positions adoptees as either “happy, grateful” or “unhappy, angry”
individuals. By invoking these stereotypes in the first moments we meet the
adult adoptees, I suggest that she nods to her viewers that this will not be
just a simplistic understanding of adoption. This assertion is rooted in
Rhimes’ production of Scandal. In
Season 4, Episode 14, “The Lawn Chair,” the show deftly explores the unlawful
killing of a Black youth and policy brutality and in Season 5, Episode 4, “Dog Whistle Politics” viewers witness the critical examination of why racially coded language is used by the media to describe Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington).
Rhimes continues to prove that a one-dimensional understanding of race will not
be seen on her shows. Remember the complexity of Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy.
To return to how HTGAWM,
the invocation of adoption as a seemingly less than form of kinship directly
speaks to the historical understanding of adoptive families as a mere facsimile
of biologically related families. Meeting with Keating in their family’s home,
we see Caleb and Catherine sitting across from their lawyer under a family
portrait – mother, father, son, and daughter – gazing down on them. With slight
resignation, Catherine states, “We loved our parents. Not because of all this,
but because they loved us.” It’s clear that for Caleb and Catherine this may be
the first time that their family is challenged as less than.
Nevertheless, the belief that adoptees are capable of murder
is rooted in notions of their perceived deviancy. In many ways Keating seems to
be operating an “if you can’t beat them, join them,” defense as she dictates to
her associates, “The prosecution will argue its because of the billion dollar
inheritance…and then there’s the outsider theory. They felt so alone and
resentful that they tied up, tortured, and shot their parents execution style.
Bonnie test psychological defenses based on adopted child syndrome,
oppositional defiant disorder, selective mutism, primal wound theory” (Episode 3, “It’s Called the Octopus”). This stance accepts the narratives of
adoptees as pathological capable of abnormal behavior including murder.
Yet it would not be sensationalized television if we did not
further venture into the tawdry.[1] This is why, as the storyline progressed,
colleagues who watch HTGAWM and know
of my research on adoption, incest, and kinship waited with bated breath to see
whether or not Rhimes and her writers would go there – sibling incest. And sure
enough, sibling incest became the focal point of how we understand the Hapstall
adoptees in Episode
3, “It’s Called the Octopus.” Marching into the Hapstall house clutching a
Windows tablet with a tabloid magazine cover with the headline “SIBCEST” and
tagline “Haskell heirs red hot loves?,” Keating proclaims that now Caleb and
Catherine are being viewed by society as “sick, incestuous freaks.” Incest
becomes the motive for why they allegedly killed their parents.
Yet to focus on whether or not incest occurred is a red
herring. In fact, the focus should be on why incest seems like a possibility. We
cannot understand the alleged incestuous relationship between Caleb and
Catherine without an interrogation of the role race plays in the perception of
the siblings. Meek, passive, and shy, Catherine embodies the submissive Asian
stereotype. By virtue of her buttoned-up demeanor, Catherine exists in a double
bind whereby an illicit sexuality could exist, simmering under the surface.
After all, as an Asian woman, she is potentially full of erotic possibilities.
At the same time, the attractive, fit, and assertive Caleb exists within
stereotypes of virile Black masculinity whereby Black male sexuality is also
uncontainable. Because of the way in which these racialized, sexualized
stereotypes operates the belief of sibling incest becomes more real than if they were biologically related. As adoptees with
no genetic connection to one another, attraction is an obvious possibility. Or
at least that’s what the sibling incest rumor preys upon – the underlying
belief individuals may have concerning adoption and adoptive sibling
relationships.
By positioning the adoptees’ as deviant and emphasizing not
only their racial difference from their parents and one another, but also their
biological unrelatedness, HTGAWM
makes the unspoken spoken. In other words, is it really incest if a sexual relationship occurs between
non-genetically related, adopted siblings?
Yes, it is incest – a broader notion of incest is required. Given
the ways in which the family is constructed through adoption, divorce,
remarriage, and non-normative kinship structures, a limited definition of
incest overlooks the way in which power operates within these uneven sexual
liaisons. Anastasia Toufexis and Andrea Sachs discuss the complications of
defining incest in the postmodern era shaped by divorce, remarriage, and
adoption and ask, “how
does [the traditional stricture of incest] apply to today’s blended and
extended families, where blood ties are often thin or absent?”[2]
This difficulty was seen amongst the law students working for Keating. Laurel
Castillo (Karla Souza) states, “At least they’re not related related,” while
her peer Michaela Pratt (Aja Naomi King) responds, “Mmm… legally they’re
related.” Adoptee status marginalizes and troubles conceptualizations of incest. Incest for many is predicated upon genetic relatedness. Yet this perspective undermines what adoption is – the creation of family. The belief held by Laurel Castillo delegitimizes familial ties and reinforces
outdated understandings of adoptive families as less than.
Preying upon this belief of adoptive families are less than their biological counterparts delegitimizes adoptive family
formations as legible kinship structures. In
making incest a possibility, no matter how remote, Rhimes reveals popular
culture’s unstable understanding of adoptive families. Always striving to prove
their legitimacy regarding that they are in fact “family,” adoptive families
like the Hapstalls are under scrutiny and policed for potential deviancy.
Preparing Caleb for trial in Episode 4, “Skanks Get Shanked,” Michaela asks him a series of questions concerning
the proximity of his room to Catherine’s bedroom and whether they visit each
other in their rooms at night. Obviously irritated, Caleb asks, “Why don’t you
just flat out ask me if I’m screwing her?” In a sarcastic tone, he then states,
“Because the answer is yes. We’re in love. Have been ever since we were kids.
We’re actually planning on getting married as soon as the inheritance comes
in.” His frustration is palpable and quite frankly relatable for many who are
adopted whose relationships with their parents or siblings have ever been
questioned. The notion of a sexual relationship between adoptive family members
is unthinkable. The incest taboo operates in the same exact way in adoptive
families as it does biological. For Caleb, Catherine is his sister regardless
of racial difference. The same understanding of family applies to his parents.
Directly addressing the complexities
of adoption, Caleb asserts, “You understand nothing. I was six when they
adopted me. Everybody wanted babies. Little white babies. But my parents chose
me. And now the whole world thinks I killed them. Why because I look different
than them?” Adoption does not undermine
his conceptualizations of family. For him, adoption is permanent. He also
expresses how the value of black children available for adoption is different than white children.
This last point is of particular salience because of the way in which his
blackness functions in how viewers of the series and potential jury members
within the show locate his body in relation to his sister and the death of his
parents.
Even as the siblings assert that they are in fact siblings
like any other family, the burden of proof that they are not involved in an
incestuous relationship or murderers lies with them. While we will not know
what will happen regarding the latter, to prove the former the episode closes
with Catherine undergoing a doctor’s examination to prove her virginity. This
outdated symbol of patriarchy demonstrates how the burden of proof or in this
case the burden of normalcy is placed on the adoptee. The adoptee of color must
adhere to normative scripts of (white) femininity. Yet there is not real test
to prove one’s virginity. The inclusion of this bunk science should not be
overlooked. By proving her (alleged) innocence, Catherine secures her place as
a “good” daughter. Even as Keating and Michaela recognize that this test is
bogus, it must be done given the primacy placed on virginity as an example of
one’s purity, which may influence a jury’s understanding of whether or not she
could be capable of murder. Good girls don’t kill.
Again, let me reiterate that incest can and does in fact
occur within adoptive families. This post is not meant to marginalize the
experiences of victims of sexual familial violence. Rather, my exploration of
incest and the adoptive family in HTGAWM
is rooted in an investment in understanding why the sibling incest storyline even
seemed like a possibility to members of society that live in the world of HTGAWM and to the show’s viewers.
Perhaps I am a little to hopeful that Rhimes and her writers
will not settle for a reductive storyline of incest and tawdry murder. However,
through this storyline she has interrogated what we mean by family and
presumptions concerning what incest is and is not in the American imaginary.
This particular storyline remains one of the more nuanced portrayals of
adoption on mainstream television, one that does not fall into tropes of rescue
(think the adoption of Zola by Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy) nor as merely a plot
device to advance a narrative of a main character (think Quinn Fabray from Glee).
[1]
Anastasia Toufexis and Andrea
Sachs, “What Is Incest? (Cover Story),” Time 140, no. 9 (August 31,
1992): 57.
[2]
Contemporary examples of incest include Arrested
Development’s flirtation with a relationship between George Michael and
Maeby, Richie and Margot in The Royal
Tenenbaums, the incestuous nature of Cersei and Jamie Lanniester
relationship in Game of Thrones. Yet
one of the most notable examples of potential incest that evokes laughter is
Luke and Leia from Star Wars.
