美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Game Of Thrones' Finds Fans Among Disability Rights Activists, Too（在线收听）

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

You don't see many people with disabilities on television unless you're watching a certain popular HBO show that starts its seventh season on Sunday.

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SHAPIRO: "Game Of Thrones" is filled with characters who have special abilities and disabilities. Here's NPR's Neda Ulaby.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: One main character is paralyzed. Another is an amputee.

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PETER DINKLAGE: (As Tyrion Lannister) Your new hand is nicer than the old one.

ULABY: One for a while lost her sight.

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FAYE MARSAY: (As The Waif) Stand and fight, blind girl.

ULABY: We've met characters with skin diseases, with intellectual disabilities.

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KRISTIAN NAIRN: (As Hodor) Hodor, Hodor.

ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT: (As Bran Stark) Hodor, calm down.

NAIRN: (As Hodor) Hodor.

ULABY: Then there's a character so important to the story, the actor who plays him comes first in the credits - Tyrion Lannister.

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DINKLAGE: (As Tyrion Lannister) I am guilty of being a dwarf.

CHARLES DANCE: (As Tywin Lannister) You are not on trial for being a dwarf.

DINKLAGE: (As Tyrion Lannister) Oh, yes I am. I've been on trial for that my entire life.

ULABY: Disability rights activist Rebecca Cokley is also a little person. She says "Game Of Thrones" has been a total game-changer in how non-disabled people talk to her about popular culture.

REBECCA COKLEY: Hey, hey, "Game Of Thrones". And I'm like, yeah, "Game Of Thrones" - not so great on women all the time - but yeah, little people, woo-hoo. We're not elving (ph), right on.

ULABY: "Game Of Thrones," says Cokley, has given average-sized viewers a new set of references for people who look like her. Tyrion Lannister is complicated and sexy. Cokley loved the books by George R.R. Martin, but she did worry that seeing certain scenes might be painful, like a cruel public joke played on Tyrion Lannister by an evil king.

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ULABY: He humiliates him by staging a vulgar play with an all-dwarf cast.

COKLEY: When I read that in the book, I had never seen my own experience in life reflected so accurately, so vividly, so viscerally.

ULABY: After that episode, Rebecca Cokley says her non-disabled friends called her to make sure she was OK.

COKLEY: They were like, wow, is that really what it's like? And I was like, yeah. There are days that that's what it's like. People see me and get down on their knees and mock how I walk.

DAVID PERRY: Every human society is of course packed with disabled people. We know this.

ULABY: David Perry is also a disability activist and "Game Of Thrones" fan with a Ph.D. in medieval history. He says it makes sense to see a lot of people with disabilities in a show set before modern medicine.

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HANNAH MURRAY: (As Gilly) What happened to your face?

KERRY INGRAM: (As Shireen Baratheon) Grayscale.

ULABY: But "Game Of Thrones" still falls into some traps, says Perry, like with a princess who has grayscale, a disease a little like leprosy. Her disability pumps up the pathos.

PERRY: It isn't really about her, right? It's about aw, this poor, physically disfigured girl who was so good and pure and smart. Oh, no, she's going to be killed. Now we have to be really upset. That is the kind of writing that I kind of hate.

ULABY: And Perry takes issue with how quickly a swordsman who loses his hand learns to fight with the other one.

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ULABY: Then there's the paralyzed character whose disability gave him mystical powers. Some activists are concerned that this season he'll be magically cured.

PERRY: There's a lot of talk. Will Bran learn to fly? Will he learn to shapeshift? Is he going to be able to change his body so he's not paralyzed anymore?

ULABY: Even given that "Game Of Thrones" is a full-on fantasy, that's not your goal as a wheelchair user, says Perry.

PERRY: You don't want to learn to fly. You want a ramp built into your castle.

ULABY: Still, Perry admires how "Game Of Thrones" explores such a range of characters with different bodies and minds, how they get shut down, how they persevere.

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DONALD SUMPTER: (As Maester Luwin) The boy has lost the use of his legs.

DINKLAGE: (As Tyrion Lannister) What of it? With the right horse and saddle, even a cripple can ride.

WRIGHT: (As Bran Stark) I'm not a cripple.

DINKLAGE: (As Tyrion Lannister) Then I'm not a dwarf.

RICHARD MADDEN: (As Robb Stark) Why do you want to help him?

DINKLAGE: (As Tyrion Lannister) I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards and broken things.

ULABY: And this is why disability activist Rebecca Cokley is a fan of "Game Of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin.

COKLEY: He obviously hangs out with a rabble-rousing group of disabled people. I know it. I sense it.

ULABY: And, Cokley says, Martin's fantasy universe is far more realistic than lots of other shows when it comes to disability on television. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

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