Chernobyl is a cautionary tale disguised as a thriller, and created by Craig Mazin.Handout
I keep hearing this: “I know Chernobyl is supposed to be great, but I just can’t watch it,” referring to the five-hour HBO limited series about the 1986 nuclear accident in the USSR. I’ve heard people say the same thing about The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s four-part Netflix series about the Central Park Five, kids coerced by police and lawyers into serving long, childhood-stealing sentences for a brutal rape they did not commit.
This idea of a well-made series or film being too tough to watch is anathema to me. Especially if it’s based on a true story. It’s not that I’m a glutton for punishment (although my sister does razz me that all the books, films and series I recommend to her should bear the tagline, “Depressing, but Prize-Worthy”). I’d much rather not watch, say, beheadings on Game of Thrones, where cruelty is posited as entertainment and the violence is there to thrill. Yes, bodies are blistered on Chernobyl, pets are shot, babies die. But it’s handled sensitively, so you feel the full weight of the sorrow.
More important, it happened, and unless we’re careful, it will happen again. I believe in bearing witness, that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So not only do I urge you to watch, I’d argue that you must. Because Chernobyl and When They See Us are not period pieces, and The Handmaid’s Tale is not pure fantasy. Everything they warn against is happening right now.
Although, on Chernobyl, bodies are blistered, pets are shot and babies die, it’s handled sensitively, so you feel the full weight of the sorrow.
Chernobyl is a cautionary tale disguised as a thriller. Created by Craig Mazin – making an unlikely but welcome leap into drama from writing comedies such as Identity Thief and The Hangover Parts II and III – it stars a raft of European thespians, including Jared Harris and Emily Watson as scientists racing to contain the nuclear fallout before it wipes out Asia (followed by the world), and Stellan Skarsgard as a political apparatchik who comes to understand the gravity of the situation.
It’s riveting TV, grave as well as pulse-pounding. The stakes could not be higher. Mazin hews as close to the true events as possible, and where he doesn’t, he explains why in a companion podcast that 6.5 million people have already listened to.
But here’s why you have to watch: We are right back there again. The accident at Chernobyl was caused partly by human error, but mainly by a political system designed to obscure the truth. Mikhail Gorbachev ruled by fear; he wanted to hear only good news; no one wanted to risk their own careers to contradict him; scientists were demonized; and unhappy facts were excised from the record.
Substitute Donald Trump for Gorbachev, and climate change for nuclear fission, and the scenario is equally apocalyptic. Here is another leader who wants to be a dictator, who rules by subverting truth and facts until no one trusts the words, who ignores science, who surrounds himself with yes men. Worldwide disaster is narrowly averted in Chernobyl – will we be that lucky next (this!) time?
“There are historical events that are interesting, just not that relevant,” Mazin told the Los Angeles Times. Chernobyl “is interesting and relevant. It has greater implications for how we move through our lives and how we relate to government and to the truth. … There was nothing that happened in the Soviet Union that couldn’t happen anywhere else.”
When They See Us is equally urgent. In 1989, I was well aware of the attack on Trisha Meili in Central Park, and I swallowed the media party line that the five boys, aged 14 to 16, were out “wilding.” In 2001, the real rapist confessed; in 2002 the men’s convictions were vacated. A 2012 documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon finally showed the case for what it was: a miscarriage of justice based on racial prejudice.
DuVernay’s series amplifies that by turning “the five” into individuals – scared boys swept under by a rigged system. She takes us into their lives before, during and after the case, and shows us the personal, and cultural, ripple effect of the wrongs done to them. Yes, it’s tough to watch. It’s supposed to be. Yeah, you’ll cry, and yell at the TV. Because you should.
All over YouTube and Twitter, we can see how little has changed: white women phoning the police on black people for no reason; police holding guns on innocent people of colour; black men murdered in custody; those who protest turned into villains. The lead prosecutor of the Central Park Five, Linda Fairstein (played by Felicity Huffman in When They See Us), who clearly ignored vital evidence, is getting a comeuppance: She’s been dropped by her publisher and speakers’ bureau. Yet CNN and The Washington Post gave her time and space to charge DuVernay with “defaming” her.
And again, Trump is at the centre of the hate-mongering. In 1989, he took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the death penalty for the Five. This week he was asked if, faced with the overwhelming exonerating information – facts – he’d changed his mind. Briskly, he replied he has not.
As for The Handmaid’s Tale, I and plenty of others have pointed out how the U.S. Republicans’ current war on women’s autonomy edges closer to the patriarchal theocracy of Gilead with every episode. Series such as The Night Of, American Crime and Seven Seconds are equally crucial, because they point out the gaping wounds in our justice systems. Imagine if watching that wasn’t difficult?
I wonder if people shy away from series such as these, not because they’re too tough to take, but because they’re too hard to turn off and forget. You’ve seen it. You’ve been moved by it. Sometimes you had to pause it, to catch your breath. You’ve been shown, in detail, how things go wrong and why. Now what?
These hard-to-watch series don’t just provide a chance to bear witness, they issue a challenge: What can we do to prevent this? What will you do to change it?
Johanna Schneller