From "GOT" to "Chernobyl": when "urgent" power disputes do not leave time for what counts

By PEDRO GARAY

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"Game of Thrones" left a considerable void among viewers, but the seriefila tribe quickly found a replacement, albeit fleeting: "Chernobyl", published without too much trouble five weeks ago on the screen. the HBO channel, when "GOT" was shown by the same screen his latest episodes, and he captivated the audience.

An audience surprised at being trapped by an English political thriller about a Soviet event that happened more than 30 years ago, as well as HBO, who quickly understood the trail generated by the series on the networks and launched a strong promotion campaign: the result is that "Chernobyl" became the most talked about series of June, which triggered the discussions. Is it a portrait adjusted to what has really happened, or a tendentious story, a capitalist propaganda in full resurgence of the cold war? Is it an excellent mini-series, one of the best of the year, or is it swollen by the channel and enthusiasm 2.0, who never knows the moderation, the gray and who easily fanatises? It's almost an irony, a reflection of what happened during this nuclear disaster, these discussions are moving away from what beats the center of the series: the logic of power always, urgency, the small, quarrel, do not leave the important time.

One point that "Chernobyl" shared with other political thrillers such as "The Honorable Woman" or "The Card Game", but also, oddly enough, a common point with the medieval fantasy and one of the reasons that made the two fictions resonate so far from our reality: whether they are radioactive atoms or white walkers, Winterfell or Chernobyl, the magnetism and horror that these emissions provoked did not come not so much of a fear built up in the badembly, but of the raw revelation (and tools of the suggestion) of the cinema of the terror rather than the speeches and the shots of scenario), the implacable result of the power and its mechanisms , descendants and ambitious, who are not the exception, but the rule.

It is not a question then of "Chernobyl" of the Soviet authoritarianism and ignorance, which pushed the people to sacrifice themselves to avoid a nuclear apocalypse, but of the way the power always works, and it is this suspicion is familiar with the methods. of the politics in this story that occurred in an extinct country, which generates astonishment of the public; in the same way, it was not "GOT" a story of spaditas and struggling houses, but a warning about how political quarrels, the little one who sees who has the biggest crumbs, could become a global disaster: the winter, the global "cooling". Jon Snow, desperate, has tried to make humanity listen to him and focus on what is important, but the urgency of power could always be greater.

The fantastic series has truncated these arguments on the end, solving the great battle, the war of humanity against death and extinction, in one episode. It does not matter The germ of the message already planted: it is not only a question of how power resides and perpetuates peoples in useless battles, but also in what way the peoples, the fanatics of Daenerys, subjects of the Soviet Union, encourage these lies, an urgent message in the times that follow the truth, where politicians appeal to feelings rather than arguments and conceal lies with speeches magnetic; moments when public debates in the cracks and underlying issues only seem to be multiplying.

"We wanted to make a story about the cost of lying," said Craig Mazin, the creator of "Chernobyl," referring to the phrase that opens and closes the miniseries. "We wanted to know how people lie and choose to believe in. They are all part of a sort of pbadive conspiracy to promote lies about the truth, and they can get away with it for a while. .. but that really does not matter, it is important. "And when the truth inevitably explodes and breaks with the walls of unsustainable lies," it is the people who suffer. " To be taken into account in October.