Presenters
Abstract
The television series Game of Thrones has long had a complicated relationship with disability. Scholars have written about the connections in the series between “Cripple, Bastards, and Broken Things” to highlight the way that disability is often linked to other “outsider” identities in both Martin’s novels and the television adaptations (Ellis 2014). Such scholarship tends to highlight the trope-breaking aspects of disability representations in the series that: reformulate relationships between disability and sexuality or disability and authority (Ellis 2014, Harvey and Nelles 2014); challenge traditional narrative plotlines that link disabled bodies to monstrosity and able-bodiedness to heroism (Lamber 2015); or rework connections between disability and fractured masculinities (Dearman 2016, Kaufman 2012). However, few critics have considered connections between childhood and disability in this series, and in particular the way that representations of disabled childhood and representations of disabled adulthood in the series differ. This paper will explore links between disability, youth, and the supernatural in the Game of Thrones television series. It will ask why disability in adulthood is rarely linked to supernatural forces (i.e. through characters like Jamie, Theon, The Mad King, Lysa, Illyn Payne, the Hound, or Tyrion), while connections between magic and disability for child characters continue to drive the narrative heft of the overall plot (via Bran, Shireen, or Ayra). While some adult characters’ disabilities are linked to magic for a short time (as we see with Khal Drogo, Lord Beric, or arguably Jon Snow), the ties to magic in these cases have strong negative repercussions. However, the ties between disabled child characters and magic may have more optimistic overtones. This paper will explore connections between disability and the supernatural in the series, making connections to historical trajectories that have long problematically connected impairment to magic.