In one of the more garish episodes of the critically acclaimed HBO series Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), an “dwarf”, is humiliated by being made to sit through a play that is almost entirely made up of little people. Disability activist Rebecca Cokley told NPR: "When I read that in the book, I had never seen my own experience in life reflected so accurately, so vividly, so viscerally. Some of my friends who don't have disabilities, called me—to make sure I was fine. They were like, wow, is that really what it's like? And I said, yeah.”
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In a nutshell, that defines the TV show, which had recently entered the seventh year of its existence. At the first glance, the show seems nothing more than the sum total of its naked body parts, blazing dragon fire and flying limbs, to mention nothing of incests, rapes and brutalities portrayed by the makers with a downright dark glee. But it is within this mare’s nest of unspeakable taboos, too 'politically incorrect' even by the standards of the coarsest sub-reddits, that the show elevates itself into a rarified orbit, refusing to pander to the audience. In its representation of women, the handicapped, the eunuchs, the show was nothing short of revolutionary. It was the oldest trick in the book—you came for the nudity, but stayed for the plot. The writer of the series of books, George R.R. Martin, smoothly deconstructed all dominant notions about disabled characters, empowering them fearlessly. Tyrion Lannister, disparagingly referred to as the 'imp', needs nobody’s help to pee off the edge of The Wall. He has out-survived most others in the series, swilling his way through copious amounts of liquor enough to knock out a Sanjay Dutt in his prime.
Jon Snow, may the old gods and the new bless his gorgeous hair and behind, is a bastard after all our hearts. He was destined to become ‘The King in the North’, not because he is a Kapoor...sorry, Targaryen-Stark born. And that perpetually brooding expression does help.
For many in the show, disability is just a hurdle to overcome—Bran Stark became the three-eyed raven and Jamie Lannister went full on Anakin Skywalker, replete with the golden hand. “Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you,” as the wise Tyrion would say.
While other sanskaari shows waxed eloquent about women empowerment, Game of Thrones walked the talk. Almost all the female characters are strong and independent. While the show commenced with the typical testosterone-fuelled hack-and-slash showdown between men, the series slowly transitioned to the cold, calculating and immensely more entertaining battle of queens; in her conquest of Essos and voyage to Westeros, Daenerys Targaryen stood alone.
However, not all early reviews took kindly to the show. “How much misogyny and racism are we expected to put up with in the name of entertainment?” asked The Guardian in 2014. “We’re back to the familiar favorites of the infantile, eg spurting blood and gore, bastard sons, evil vixens, blond nymphets, quasi-lesbian action, crude talk among men about their private parts, incest, rough couplings, and more random bare breasts than any other contender in the adolescent-boy-action-show contest this month,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. “Game of Thrones is boy fiction patronisingly turned out to reach the population’s other half,” according to a review in The New York Times.
But the reaction from millennial audience stunned. Game of Thrones became ubiquitous, one of the memefied icons in pop culture history. But what was the reason for such a groundbreaking success? A cursory viewership pattern of Gen Z would show that they laugh louder at scenes of Mac and Dennis hunting a hobo for sport in It is Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or the crazy, violent antics of a serial killer boyfriend and his manic depressed girlfriend in The End of The Fucking World, than Ross and Rachel going on a break in Friends. We are a generation that enjoyed flouting the speed limits in Roadrash, sending police officers flying through the Pacific Highway, before getting pulled in by the siren call of a life of crime in Grand Theft Auto (who among us hasn't gone on an hour-long rampage with a cheatcode-enabled bazooka)? We like our TV shows exactly like the outside world—dark, bitter and unapologetically chaotic. A plea to Benioff and Weiss (writers of the show): As long as The Walls keep crumbling down, we promise to Netflix and chill.