Nuclear Blast
Jan. 12th, 2022 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarSo. . .
Just completed "Chernobyl". It's brilliant and gripping and heart-breaking and more than a little disingenuous.
The Chernobyl disaster happened for many reasons, each one of them caused by the very system itself. A society where no one can tell the truth to anyone else, or where rules don't apply to power, is not a good place to build nuclear power plants.
Even a casual viewer will pick up on this message. It's clear that however villainous the plant directors may have been, even they would not have been so reckless had certain scientific papers not been censored. Also notice how our heroes can't get the equipment they need because the State won't admit how high the radiation levels actually are. No one's told what's going on, no one's allowed to know what's going on, lies and secrecy compound radiation as much as the fission.
But television being television, they can't help creating new myths. We get heroes and villains. We get grand confrontations and noble speeches as morally upright characters say everything we hope they do - but probably wouldn't, and almost certainly didn't.
Most importantly, Emily Watson's noble Ulyana Khomyuk, a central character, never existed. They made her up. Supposedly, she's a composite, made to represent the dozens of other scientists who were there but don't appear (presumably not enough screen time to go around). She did seem a bit too good to be true, in every sense of the word. Not sure how those scientists would feel about this "representation": seems an odd tribute to their contributions to erase their presence.
TV will do what it does and fiction does what it must. But in a series so much about truth and lies, these seem great liberties to take.
"What's the cost of lies?" asks Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) in the beginning.
"It's not that we mistake them for the truth. The real danger is if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth."
Indeed.
Just completed "Chernobyl". It's brilliant and gripping and heart-breaking and more than a little disingenuous.
The Chernobyl disaster happened for many reasons, each one of them caused by the very system itself. A society where no one can tell the truth to anyone else, or where rules don't apply to power, is not a good place to build nuclear power plants.
Even a casual viewer will pick up on this message. It's clear that however villainous the plant directors may have been, even they would not have been so reckless had certain scientific papers not been censored. Also notice how our heroes can't get the equipment they need because the State won't admit how high the radiation levels actually are. No one's told what's going on, no one's allowed to know what's going on, lies and secrecy compound radiation as much as the fission.
But television being television, they can't help creating new myths. We get heroes and villains. We get grand confrontations and noble speeches as morally upright characters say everything we hope they do - but probably wouldn't, and almost certainly didn't.
Most importantly, Emily Watson's noble Ulyana Khomyuk, a central character, never existed. They made her up. Supposedly, she's a composite, made to represent the dozens of other scientists who were there but don't appear (presumably not enough screen time to go around). She did seem a bit too good to be true, in every sense of the word. Not sure how those scientists would feel about this "representation": seems an odd tribute to their contributions to erase their presence.
TV will do what it does and fiction does what it must. But in a series so much about truth and lies, these seem great liberties to take.
"What's the cost of lies?" asks Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) in the beginning.
"It's not that we mistake them for the truth. The real danger is if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth."
Indeed.
