Review I have attached Essay I want you to Review it comment if I am missing anything base on the rubric I have attached.

Overcoming “the blindness” in Game of Thrones

Disability has been represented in an erroneous way on movies or tv programs. In his book Disability Rhetoric, Jay Dolmage defines the myth of ‘Overcoming or Compensation’ as where “the person with a disability overcomes their impairment through hard work or has some special talent that offsets their deficiencies” (39). The Myth of “Overcoming or compensation” will be explained using one of the main characters, Arya from the tv program of 2011 Game Of Thrones highlighting the idea that people are considered pathetic. When they are disabled to the point where they achieve being heroes when they overcome their Disability.

Arya Stark is the daughter of a marriage between Ned Stark and Lady Catelyn. She has two oldest brothers: Sansa and Robb, and two youngest brothers: Rickon and Bran. She had to escape from her house when she was pretty young because she had some trouble with the current king that was there. Running away from her hometown gives her some new abilities and how to be independent. After a long journey, she arrives in Braavos. Braavos is the city where the “Black And White House” is located and she gets accepted. During her stay at the house, she learned to perfectly lie. Furthermore, she got a job where she had to murder a corrupt person; however, when she was about to kill him, she found a person that was releated to her father’s death and she decided to kill him instead of the man that she was supposed to. As soon as she got back to the house where she was staying, as a punishment for not killing the corrupt person and acting with revenge, the owner of the house poisoned her. As a consequence she becomes blind.

Trying to demonstrate that disability is a punishment that people get when they act in the way that they are not supposed to. The next couple of weeks, she had to beg for money on the streets. Her life was miserable. The director in these sequences of scenes portrays that blindness is the opposite of being blessed. Trying to show the audience that blindness is a consequence of erroneous actions that have to be a punishment. Nevertheless, the story starts to change when she decides to learn to fight. Amazingly, she learned how to defend herself in an extraordinary way. Here, the myth of compensation comes after she got blind, she learned how to fight with her other senses. She got the power of being invincible. This is the moment when she “overcomes'' her disability because she learned to be an awesome fighter even though she was blind.

Blind people are seen as pathetic because in the way that movies portray them, they are constantly finding a way of surviving the trammels in their life. Making a comparison between Arya’s disability and the stage that the author proposed, we can see that in Game of Thrones as soon as she lost her vision, she lost everything. She became a beggar. A little girl that is blind represented nothing because she couldn’t do much either. She didn’t have any money, not even to eat. People started looking at her as a pitiful girl, so they started giving her a couple of cents every time they saw her on the streets.

Based on the article “The Representation of People with Visual Impairment in Films” the authors Marta Badia Corbella and Fernando Sanchez-Guido help us understand the wrong labels that society is giving to blind people in the movies or tv shows. The authors talk about different stages in how blind people are portrayed on tv. Badia and Sanchez proposed that the blind person is always represented as miserable. Adding to this demonstration that even though blind people are pathetic, they could be criminals as well. When she becomes blind, she has to start stealing because she didn’t have anything to eat.

This myth has been exposed from decades ago in the movies trying to make sense Disabilities in a world where people think that being disabled is not being “normal”. It has been focusing on finding a compensation for why people are disabled. The consequences of this approach is feeling sorry or pity. Shapiro argues that the assumption of disabled people as superheroes is as hurtful as pitying them since “it implies that a disabled person is presumed deserving of pity – instead of respect – until he or she proves capable of overcoming a physical or mental limitation through extraordinary feats” (16).

Blind personage often becomes the hero of their story, which is another example of how the overcoming/compensation gets worked into their character and actions. For this, she has to complete a whole process to become a perfect fighter. She fought with really mean people that were trying to hurt her. The best example is when a girl was trying to kill her, it was at the last minute that Arya decided to fight with her demonstrating that her abilities were incredibly high to fight with no light at all. The accomplishment of overcoming her blindness comes with abilities such as becoming an incredible listener. She is able to listen to conversation from really far away or when she has to fight, she can determine where the opponent people are coming from. She gets an improvement on her sense of touch. She develops toleration of different poisons that made her sick before. Also, she has the ability to fight with a perfect sense of stability. Before, she had a lack of orientation due to the fact that she was too young. Now she is capable of dominating the people that she is fighting with. Once she obtained all these different skills, she was able to demonstrate herself as an invincible woman.

Colin Barnes points out “the disabled person [is often] assigned super human almost magical abilities. Blind people are portrayed as visionaries with a sixth sense or extremely sensitive hearing.” For better understanding, he compares this phenomenon to the way that black people are often portrayed “as having ‘super’ qualities in order to elicit respect from white people” (6) These representations, especially with women, make the audience think that disabled people need power or extraordinary strength to obtain the respect from their families or the town where they live.

Arya’s disability disappears at the end of a couple of the episodes as if her superpowers as a blind woman gave her skills to bring those who wronged her family to justice. The end of these episodes portrays Arya with no disabilities. With this source we can embrace the idea that the goal that she had to achieve at the end was this overcoming. For this, she has to complete a whole process to become a perfect fighter. The director decides to make her see again because the punishment that she had to suffer was over. Showing to the audience that the blindness that she had is a penalty for not achieving what she is supposed to do. For this, the color tone that the director uses for this scene is blue. The characters are wearing black. When she gets back to the “Black and White House” a man administers her water from a pit. The water that comes from the pit has the power to overcome the disability that she has. Arya accomplishes to get her vision back. The director with this last scene is trying to bring relief to the audience because all the “punishment” and the sad days for Arya are finally gone.

Based on the author Jennifer Vineyard in the article “Though She’s No Longer a Beggar, Arya Stark’s Training Is Far From Complete” we can portray an Arya with no Disabilities, after her “overcoming”. With this source we can embrace the idea that the goal that she had to achieve at the end was this overcoming. For this, she has to complete a whole process to become a perfect fighter. The accomplishment of overcoming her blindness comes with abilities such as becoming an incredible listener, an improvement on her sense of touch, toleration of different poisons that made her sick before, ability to fight with a perfect sense of stability. Once she obtained all these different skills, she was able to demonstrate herself as an invincible woman.

After reviewing all the different phases of a little girl that becomes blind going through being completely miserable and homeless, to a strict training to become a great fighter, to finally overcome the Disability. We can conclude that there are several stereotypes of how blind women are represented in tv shows or movies. In this case, the Tv show “Game of Thrones” makes the audience see that having a disability is a punishment for having unacceptable behavior in society. Also, they want the audience to feel pity when she is disable because she is useless as a person. And finally, the overcome that gives her the ability to fight to compensate for the fact that she was blind. The most important achievement of this is opening people's eyes and showing them that we’ve been living in a society where we are used to ignoring what we don’t know. Furthermore, people don’t get an accurate education about people with disabilities and they end up with a completely wrong idea of the actual meaning of this concept, and that’s when people start with stereotypes.

Works Cited

Barnes, Colin. “An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People.” The British Council of Organizations of Disabled People, 1992.

Corbella, Marta Badia, and Ferando Sanchez-Guijo Acevedo. “The Representation of People with Visual Impairment in Films.” J .Med Mov. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, Vol 6. No. 2, 2010. pp. 69-77.

HBO Entertainment, co-executive producers, George R.R. Martin, Vince Gerardis, Ralph Vicinanza, Guymon Casady, Carolyn Strauss; producers, Mark Huffam, Frank Doelger; executive producers David Benioff, D.B Weiss; created by David Benioff & D.B Weiss; Television 360; Grok! Television; Generator Entertainment; Bighead Littlehead. Game of Thrones. The complete First Season. New York: HBO Home Entertainment, 2012.

Shapiro, Joseph P. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. Times Books, 1994.

Vineyard, Jennifer. “Though She’s No Longer a Beggar, Arya Stark’s Training Is Far From Complete” Vulture. New York. May 2, 2016,

https://www.vulture.com/2016/05/arya-lessons-faceless-men-game-of-thrones.html