Access to "truth" through the "fiction" in Chernobyl. The delirium of the story in hypermodernity

Abstract

Shortly before humanity was embroiled in a global social and health crisis (beginning of 2020), the television series Chernobyl (2019) arrives on the international audiovisual market, as a fatalistic premonition. A document that, far from representing exclusively historical events, stands as a specular reality of the current moment, in which the consequences of government decisions inevitably trace the destiny of citizens. Chernobyl, the award-winning television miniseries co-produced by HBO and Sky, is inspired by the historical drama caused by the explosion of a reactor at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant of the same name in April 1986 and rebuilds practically minute by minute, under a particular gaze, the causes that led to the accident. The purpose of this article is to determine to what extent a fiction based on real facts can alter, or not respect, proven historical events in favour of the construction of an audiovisual story. To this end, a documentary examination of "real" events is carried out on the basis of published journalistic and historical sources. The aim is to analyse how deviations from reality, which we have defined as "delusions of the story", affect true history in some way. The formula for the construction of the story, "based on real events", mixing two different formats (five chapters of fiction plus an epilogue in the form of a documentary with archive images) is intended to make what is told seem true by means of the way it is told.