2019 Needed a Hit as Bleak as Chernobyl

Hey, things could be worse.
Image may contain Human Person Clothing and Apparel
Chernobyl is one of the most beloved shows of the year.Liam Daniel/HBO

Animals are dying in droves across the globe. It's 123 degrees in India. US politics are a garbage fire. Diseases eradicated by science have been reanimated by ignorance. Technology meant to unite people has divided them instead.

But, hey, at least we're not dealing with a nuclear meltdown! On Monday nights for the past 5 weeks, 6 million people cumulatively have tuned in to watch HBO's Chernobyl, which by some estimates is now the highest-rated show ever to air on television. (Though as we know, aggregated online ratings are not exactly unimpeachable.) By any measure, though, Chernobyl is a hit.

It's not a feel-good hit. Faces melt. Babies die. A litter of puppies is murdered. All of Europe and Asia face annihilation. Every tree swaying beautifully in the breeze spreads the invisible seeds of death. It's certainly not the kind of escapism you want to be watching right before bed on a lovely spring night.

And yet, thousands of people did. Sure, many are having nightmares, but they're still watching late at night, and loving it. Including me. When I turn the show off, I weirdly feel better. I might pause to pick up my phones before laying down to make the same joke on Twitter as hundreds of others ("Love to go to bed dreaming of nuclear disaster!"), but then I drift off as my brain digests Soviets handling one of the scariest scenarioses to face humanity, and think, "Wow, my life could really be worse!"

Viewers can't get enough of this massive disaster, this story everyone should know well but doesn't, this horror of bureaucracy and politics and human frailty and science. "I love that Chernobyl makes me feel like absolute shit," wrote a fan on Twitter last week. "Ahh, that feeling of impending doom, I love it," wrote another. It feels like watching a horror film, except it's about real life. And unlike a typical screamer, the terror of Chernobyl is understated, slow moving. It seeps into your retinas quietly, like radiation on the wind. That radiation gives us pleasure.

X content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

This is a great example of what psychologist Paul Rozin has dubbed "benign masochism." According to his theory, humans evolved to enjoy those moments when our bodies believe we're in danger but our brains know we're not. Rozin's research suggests this theory could account for the love of rollercoasters, excruciatingly spicy chilis, painful massages, and scary movies. "This realization that the body has been fooled, and that there is no real danger, leads to pleasure derived from 'mind over body,'" Rozin and his coauthors wrote in a study published in the journal Judgement and Decision Making. That disconnect is a kind of internal dramatic irony, where a part of us knows something another part does not. That can create a kind of delight.

In the case of Chernobyl, this phenomenon plays out thusly: When viewers watch lead scientist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) warn Mikhail Gorbatchev (David Dencik) that the fires are out but the water in Asia and Europe could be contaminated for years, they (hopefully) know that everything will be OK, that such a scenario didn't actually happen. Yet the terror of learning (for the first time in detail, for many people watching the show) and reliving just how close humanity came to such a disaster activates their bodies. There's anxiety; then relief. There but for the grace of ... science go we all. bet365体育赛事 and human sacrifice.

There's schadenfreude at play in that enjoyment, too, of course. But it's schadenfreude at the anguish of people from another time, people we learn through watching the show sacrificed themselves to make the future possible. There's also catharsis. So much talk recently in America centers on the idea that everything is terrible; Chernobyl allows our bodies to feel that feeling, and release it.

American enjoyment may also be rooted in xenophobia and anti-Russian bias, which pervaded the country during the Cold War when Chernobyl happened, and has returned to some extent amid Russia's ongoing attack on US democracy. This is evident in the Twitter commentary, which often boils down to, "Wow, Communist bureaucracy and secrecy nearly killed everyone!" There's a clear sense in these comments that if such a tragedy were to happen in America, our system and way of life would handle it better. America would evacuate sooner; the US wouldn't focus on containing the story ahead of the radiation.

But would that actually be the case? For author Stephen King, the show is actually a warning about modern America and the risks of having ill-informed leaders. "It's impossible to watch HBO's Chernobyl without thinking of Donald Trump; like those in charge of the doomed Russian reactor, he's a man of mediocre intelligence in charge of great power—economic, global—that he does not understand," he wrote after the penultimate episode. (Craig Mazin, who created the show and wrote every episode, endorsed that interpretation of the show's moral. He replied to King, "I am so pleased that you’re smartly watching."

Others see it as an indictment of socialism and in turn the liberal wing of US Democrats. The fact that both interpretations can exist points to another reason the show is so enjoyable despite being so bleak—it can be relevant if you want it to be. It's not so on-the-nose that it can't be escapism. If you want to escape the horrors of now by revisiting the averted horrors of then, it works. If you want to understand the stakes of 2019 by looking back at the stakes of 1986, you can. If you want to be reminded of the bravery and best of humanity, uplifted by the fact that so many people on the ground in Chernobyl put theirs lives on the line, walking into sure death, stripping their clothes to put their bodies in the way of imminent global doom to save us all, it works. If you're just watching so you can wallow in the doom you were already feeling as you mourned the recent end of Game of Thrones, that works too.

No matter why exactly it resonates for you, Chernobyl is the feel-terrible hit everybody needed.

More Great WIRED Stories