“Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things”: Functional Diversity and Intersectionality in “Game of Thrones”

Abstract

In recent years we have witnessed the proliferation of academic analyzes and essays based on powerful television fictions; philosophical books and scientific articles on certain series (considered already of cult) are notorious examples of audiovisual productions of great impact in a very high percentage of population that, due to their philosophical, ideological and political connotations, deserve reflections from different fields (ethnoliterary, political , anthropological ...), clearly comparable to studies on other types of more classical materials (literary works, more canonical philosophy essays, etc.).

This proposal focuses on the series “Game of Thrones” to use as a pretext to discuss from / with the intersectionality theory, with emphasis on the transversal axes of feminisms, the performativity of gender and, especially, functional diversity as a paradigm. The phrase pronounced by one of the key characters of this work, Tyrion Lannister (with obvious functional diversity), and which gives rise to the name of one of the chapters: “I have a sensitive place in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things”, magnificently sums up the orientation of this proposal.

Thus, from the perspective of the “crippled policies” of Melania Moscoso, we propose an analysis of the functional diversity that the series goes through since its inception and in its more radical approaches, but also with / from intersectionality in general: dissenting masculinities and femininities, minorities, radical alterities, monstrosities that become, (almost) all and in different ways, paths of learning, of discovery, of initiation, of acquisition of a moral sense through, in many cases, of the apprehension of the radical vulnerability of the human being.