Review of HBO's Chernobyl

1378 Reviews of HBO’s Chernobyl Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future [2019]), ing for all six wardmates—no obligatory Soviet hero- and Adam Higginbotham (Midnight in Chernobyl: The ism, but a desperate reach for agency, normalcy, and Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster humanity (Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer,12). [2019]). Not the German-made series Dark,asci-fi Televisual mass culture has long played a role in thriller premiering in 2017 about a number of small- shaping memories, fracturing or merging them, and town generations warped by the moral transgressions galvanizing them for political aims. Just a decade ago, that are inseparable from a local nuclear power sta- optimism about its potential was ascendant. Disaster- tion’s construction and its radioactive waste depot in a film scholars prophesied a future for the genre’s “new Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/124/4/1378/5581179 by Harvard Library user on 01 April 2020 crypt turned time-travel tunnel. responsibilities”: involvement instead of seduction, In contrast to Dark, which overwhelms with tangled empathy instead of entertainment, and awareness in- timelines (1953, 1986, 2019, and beyond—and before) stead of escapism (see, for instance, Stephen Keane, and insinuates that Chernobyls lurk anywhere, Cher- Disaster Movies: The Cinema of Catastrophe [2006], nobyl beckons with a simpler plot and a palatable So- 107). Memory scholars ventured that screen fictions viet flavor. Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the pregnant wife of bring private ordeals into the public consciousness, the dying liquidator Vasily Ignatenko (her story is bor- upending the traditional modes of historical knowledge rowed from Alexievich), becomes a quintessential ro- production, forging “unexpected alliances across mance heroine retrofitted for really existing socialism. chasms of difference,” and kindling new forms of self- To reunite with her husband, she navigates the loveless awareness and solidarity (Alison Landsberg, Pros- corridors of Soviet institutions, sneaking past their thetic Memory: The Transformation of American Re- emotion-deprived human pillars. Yet Lyudmilla’sorigi- membrance in the Age of Mass Culture [2004], 3). nal account in Alexievich is less black and white; her Such enthusiasm has since grown quieter. Will fiction journey to her husband’s ward is paved with the kind- shame in the age of grift cause it to rise—or to fall de- ness of strangers and friends: “You poor, poor thing,” finitively? she hears often, and her reunion with Vasily is not YULIYA KOMSKA strictly accomplished by the twosome. The original Dartmouth College story touchingly details her dogged dedication to cook- Since it aired, starting in May 2019, HBO’s Chernobyl it are highly misleading: at best they reflectwhatpeo- series has been subjected to a lot of scrutiny regarding ple were told, or remembered, but, as historians well its accuracy. There’smuchtobecriticalof.The“fear know, there can be a gap between perceptions and of the bullet” atmosphere it invokes is more appropri- reality. One could, in a very charitable mode, read the ate for the Stalin era than the Gorbachev; its depiction “radioactive fireman” narrative as being a reflection of of accident hazards is often dramatically exaggerated a subjective experience, but that isn’t really how it is (there was never any risk of a multiple-megaton explo- shown. Nobody who lacked a sufficient understanding sion); and while high levels of radiation exposure can of how radioactivity works would be expected to think indeed produce some nasty effects (including “sun- that the show was not trying to indicate that the mother burns” and blistering), it doesn’t make people so radio- had not in fact had a fatal dose of radiation on account active that, once cleaned and decontaminated, they can of her post-accident time spent with her husband, “but “contagiously” spread radiation to those around them the baby absorbed it instead.” (Birth defects and spon- (much less have that radiation be selectively absorbed taneous abortions are indeed well-documented side- by a fetus, to save the mother). effects of radioactive exposures, though it is not be- This is just to name a few of the basic factual cause they selectively absorb radioactivity to “save the “howlers,” ignoring a lot of the more subtle technical mother,” but because developing and rapidly growing errors, and not to even get into whether the “blame cells are particularly vulnerable to the cellular and ge- Dyatlov” line of argumentation (not coincidentally, the netic damage caused by ionizing radiation. They can same approach taken by the Soviet Union itself!) is a also occur naturally as well, which is why it is difficult poor way to think about the cause(s) of the accident. to attribute causality in individual cases, as opposed to Some of these errors are in service of the plot. The epidemiological studies that look at “excess” occur- “radioactive fireman” narrative thread that moves rences from the norm. But once his clothing was through each episode is clearly a key way to humanize stripped from him, and he was washed, her fireman the accident, and is taken wholesale from the prologue husband would not have been sufficiently radioactive to Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl to give his wife any kind of significant dose.) (2005). Alexievich’s collection of oral history inter- There are some errors that are not really in the ser- views has much value, but some of the descriptions in vice of the plot. The “megaton” explosion threatened AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2019 Reviews of HBO’s Chernobyl 1379 is not accurate in the slightest, nor is the description of feel empowered to understand a complex political- the effects of a three- or four-megaton blast (it is exag- technical disaster, even if in some respects it oversim- geratedbyasignificant factor). Why do this? To plified that very complexity. heighten tension, sure. For “good television.” But what The very popularity of Chernobyl has understand- is the cost of “good television”?InaNew York Times ably led to a strong online presence of people wanting review published on June 2, 2019, science writer to ask, or talk, about it. Over the last few months, I’ve Henry Fountain wrote that the errors don’t “really mat- seen many questions related to the series on Reddit, ter,” because they are in the service of getting the “ba- Stack Exchange, Quora, and other online discussion or Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/124/4/1378/5581179 by Harvard Library user on 01 April 2020 sic truth right.” Whether this is accurate depends on question-answering websites. Often these are about whether you think they’ve gotten the “basic truth” cor- dissecting some of the technical assertions: the kinds rect, and on the cost of errors done in the name of a of questions one might ask if one knows a bit about the greater good. technical aspects and is suspicious of the show’s depic- But this is not really meant to be a fact-checking tion (the aforementioned “radioactive fireman” sce- piece; many of those are easy to find. I’m more inter- nario evoked most of these, as did the “megaton” fear, estedinhowChernobyl was watched, because both of which stand out as extremely dubious if you watched it was: according to HBO, over 50 percent of have a little understanding of the underlying technical HBO subscribers watched the series (over eight million aspects). Some of them were asking for clarification viewers), topping even Game of Thrones in terms of (“What does a reading 12,000 Roentgen mean?” asked market penetration, according to Travis Clark’s June one person to the physics board at Stack Exchange); 13, 2019, article on Business Insider.That’simpres- one was pushing back against the idea that all Russians sive for any series, much less one about a nuclear di- hated the series. saster in Ukraine that happened over thirty years ago— Some of these online outpourings were simply lau- the sort of thing that conventional wisdom typically datory. There are several Reddit forums (“subreddits”) says is not what people want to spend their entertain- devoted to the show, many of which are dominated by ment time watching. Chernobyl “memes,” mostly making fun of Dyatlov’s Why did they watch it? Without wanting to specu- authoritarian attitude (“RBMK Reactors Can’tEx- late (was it the advertising campaign, the acting, the plode, Change My Mind,” reads one that riffs off of production values, the lackluster nature of said last sea- another popular “Change My Mind” meme), or his son of Game of Thrones?), let’s just operationally “3.6 [Roentgen]—not great, not terrible” quote. These say that Chernobyl “worked as television,” whatever seem likely to be the product of young people (teen- its relationship with history and technical accuracy. agers, college students), people who were not alive at What did it “do” for its watchers? Entirely non- the time of the accident (and in full disclosure, I was systematically, I tried to ferret this out from friends and five when it happened, and have no memory of it what- colleagues (none of whom study nuclear topics) as soever myself). They are historically removed from it, they told me what it was they found interesting about its fears, and its consequences, and perhaps that is the series. The general gist was along these lines: they what enables its easy translation into humor. knew nothing about Chernobyl except that it was a ter- The most interesting responses I’ve seen are in reac- rible nuclear accident, and the series “brought to life” tion to articles that dispute key aspects of the show. the people involved and explained the technical These seem to generally come in two forms.

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