Submitted by [deleted] t3_10yazjh in television
_laoc00n_ t1_j7x56q3 wrote
Reply to comment by MissDiem in Is Chernobyl the scariest TV show ever made? by [deleted]
I’ve got to disagree with you, I think the potential was maximized by using artistic licenses when it made sense and provided a more impactful narrative. If you want to watch a documentary, watch a documentary. There’s validity to that being a better educational choice. But to make a dramatic television show or movie, there are choices a writer and director have to make in order to make the story flow better and drive home the emotional points that are important to the storyteller. There is a good podcast that accompanied the show where they discuss the differences between the historical facts and the storytelling on the show, and why they made those choices.
At some point, there is personal responsibility for the viewer to seek out the historical record rather than repeating what they saw on a TV show as historical fact and spreading some misinformation.
MissDiem t1_j7x7d9c wrote
> I think the potential was maximized by using artistic licenses
That's the opposite of true. You don't maximize educational potential by lying to young viewers. That's destroying the educational potential.
We already agree, 50 out of 50 on entertainment. But imagine my proposed version, with 50/50 entertainer plus an extra 50/50 on legitimacy.
> when it made sense and provided a more impactful narrative.
It did neither. Lots of it didn't make sense, and by being untruthful, it was less impactful.
There's just lots of people who don't know that. When they learn, people end up being disappointed he lied so much. Some die hard fans use justification, but you can tell they kind of wish he hadn't cheated them either.
> If you want to watch a documentary, watch a documentary.
Why not have something that's doubly good? And in fact the non-fictionalized is better than the one you've been told anyway.
> There’s validity to that being a better educational choice.
> But to make a dramatic television show or movie, there are choices a writer and director have to make
Only if that writer first makes the decision that they're going to abandon integrity and assume the audience is too dumb or lacks discernment.
> in order to make the story flow better and drive home the emotional points
Again, there were no cheats that made the story "flow" better or drove emotion better.
> There is a good podcast that accompanied the show
The podcast was self-indulgent tripe in which he made feeble excuses for disrespecting the viewers and fictionalizing so much.
What's most surprising (but perhaps shouldn't be) is how redditors, who normally reject such inauthenticity and infantilization, just gobbled him up with a spoon. Even today, as you are, they argue that by watering it down it's actually more concentrated, which is course false.
It's telling when fans look at something and refuse to see even a speck of improvement being possible.
> At some point, there is personal responsibility for the viewer to seek out the historical record rather than repeating what they saw on a TV show
Why?
Why make something deliberately flawed and then force viewers to go learn that you've bent the truth?
Imagine if Chernobyl used a principle of being only truthful. No injections of bull. It would have been more powerful because it would gave been true. No need for the handful of the intellectually curious to eventually wander off and find out what was wring with it. Just make it a solid gut punch of strictly true events and explanations. No hyperbole. No fakery. Just brutal, horrifying truth.
The way you're explaining it sounds like adding more ghosts and car chases would have been welcomed.
_laoc00n_ t1_j7x8fzf wrote
Some of these things I’m not sure how to respond to, but I’ll try.
I think you are assuming that the purpose of the show was to maximize educational potential, I don’t think that’s true. I think the purpose was to tell a story of a crazy event that happened in an entertaining way that hopefully gets people more interested in the event to learn more about it.
I think you are in a very small minority of people who watched the show who thinks the show didn’t make sense or was not very impactful. It’s one of the most acclaimed shows of all time, universally beloved. I get that appreciation of art is subjective, but you are writing those statements as if they are objective fact.
As I stated in my original comment to the OP (not my original reply to you), I’m reading Midnight in Chernobyl right now, which maybe you have read? As I read through it, there is nothing about the way the book deviates from the story the show told that makes me disappointed in the artistic choices the writers and director took. Certainly not enough for me to continuously refer to them as lies.
I don’t think a straight factual telling of the events would be as good as what we got, so I don’t think it would be doubly as good. You seem to be very aggressive in the attacks against the show creators, continually calling their version lies and saying they abandoned integrity. This is pretty interesting, and I’m definitely curious why you feel so strongly. War movies, biopics, really anything that is dramatic that tells the story of a historical incident does this. Why are you so upset about this particular story?
MissDiem t1_j7xbxxu wrote
> you are assuming that the purpose of the show was to maximize educational potential,
You're assuming wrong. But why should a work only have one limited purpose, to the extent that worshippers are violently opposed to it having multiple purposes?
Why do they dictate that the good has to come with bad? Why not good plus good plus good?
> think the purpose was to tell a story of a crazy event that happened
On your definition then, it failed, because it didn't tell the story of "what happened".
> that hopefully gets people more interested in the event to learn more about it.
The better way to do that is not to lie. Tell the truth. Those who decide to dig deeper will be further amazed as they learn that what you've told them is actually true.
> I think you are in a very small minority of people who watched the show who thinks the show didn’t make sense
That's not what I said.
> or was not very impactful.
Ok, that's a second mistruth, and kind of a big lie considering I've said the opposite.
> one of the most acclaimed shows of all time,
That's a common logic fallacy. Popular doesn't mean right. Or true. Or good. It just means popular.
> universally beloved.
Also false.
> that makes me disappointed in the artistic choices
That's common among the die hard fans. They won't accept any room for improvement, and thus to uphold that, they have to eschew any admission of disappointment.
> I don’t think a straight factual telling of the events would be as good as what we got,
No, it would have been better.
> You seem to be very aggressive in the attacks
No. The facts are what are aggressive. You just can't really refute them so you're demonizing them. You opened with that same projection.
> saying they abandoned integrity.
It doesn't matter whether I'm saying it or not, they did. At inception, a moral choice was made: do I tell the truth or do I not?
Consider your own life. You make choices. Will I be violent to my spouse or is that off the table? Will I steal from my employer or is that a red line I don't cross? Whether a person finds these choices hard or not isn't the main point. The main point is that breaking these lines is a choice. Some choices are akin to breaking glass. Once done, you can't undo it.
> Why are you so upset about this particular story?
Yours is an astute question.
Nuclear disinformation and false propaganda is on track to causing early destruction of society as we know it. An incredibly popular and influential piece of media like this is planting false beliefs in younger generations who won't know they've been duped until it's too late, if ever.
There's existentially dangerous hubris in thinking "oh this can only happen if a moustachioed comic villain does a bad thing, so as long as watch out for that guy, nuclear is safe and clean" or "nuclear accidents only happen when crooked Russia cheaps out on their graphite rods, so we should be good". It's a message saying "Who needs a scientific community when all we need is that one heroic (and non-existent) beautiful woman to save the day?"
It's harmful oversimplification to the point of falsehood. And it lets people handwave risks and support fatally misguided priority setting.
If "I, Tonya" wants to be a fun quasi-fiction, who cares? That won't hasten global suffering. Works like Chernobyl might. Or they have the potential to help, but don't.
_laoc00n_ t1_j7xef0n wrote
This will be my last response because I swear to god I feel like I’m arguing with Donald Trump.
> You’re assuming wrong.
You said:
> You don’t maximize educational potential by lying to young viewers.
Why would you say that if you did not intend that the purpose should be to educate viewers?
> That’s not what I said.
You said:
> It did neither. Lots of it didn’t make sense, and by being untruthful, it was less impactful….that’s a second mistruth, and kind of a big lie considering I’ve said the opposite.
Are you going to be so pedantic as to say, “Well I didn’t say all of it didn’t make sense and I only said less impactful”?
> That’s a common logical fallacy. Popular doesn’t mean right. Or true. Or good. It just means popular.
Okay, I said ‘acclaimed’, not any of the other adjectives you used. I might use those, but I didn’t, so I don’t know what you are arguing against. Acclaimed means publicly praised and celebrated. Chernobyl has an 82 on Metacritic, meaning ‘universal acclaim’. It has a 9.0 user score on Metacritic, meaning ‘universal acclaim’. It has a 9.4 on IMDB which is 5th highest TV show of all time. A logical fallacy is faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument. My argument was as follows: 1. Most people think the show makes sense and is impactful. 2. This is made evident by the fact it gets such acclaim, as seen in the above user scores and critic scores. Where is the fallacy in that argument?
> Universally beloved. Also false.
See above. Unless you are going to be pedantic again and say that because you don’t like it, it’s not universally beloved.
> They won’t accept any improvement.
That’s not true at all, everyone loves improvement. The disagreement lies in that the things you think are necessary, I don’t think will improve the show.
> The facts are what is aggressive.
Well, again, that’s not what I have ever argued against. I have admitted that there are deviations from the factual account in the telling of the story, and that those deviations made the show better as a narrative story. You have a subjective opinion that is opposed to that, which is fine. What I opened my initial argument with is that I just disagree, and I stated the reasons for that disagreement.
I’m tired of hitting the quote button, but you are calling lies what I am calling artistic choices because they actively made the decision to not make a documentary and instead making a drama. You are arguing things I’m not arguing, and you are lying about what you are saying as shown above. I can’t tell if you’re just an angry person when it comes to this subject, or if you just don’t know how to debate honestly.
Anyways, cheers. I bear no ill will towards you, though this was pretty unpleasant. In the spirit of the people who now live in this region, Slava Ukraini.
FreyrFreyja t1_j7xb4nc wrote
Why not share with us some of the factual changes you'd have made that would have kept it a 50/50 entertainment-wise also? It's hard to agree or disagree with you without hearing anything of your vision, and I'm interested in what changes you'd make given the clear passion you have, but with your outright dismissal of the creatives' due-diligence through the podcast its difficult to see.
I'm not saying you're right or wrong but I tend to feel the changes made for dramatization kept the emotional weight of the issue intact in a way that clinical factual presentation sometimes fails to account for. I'm curious as to how you envision the emotive weight to be fostered outside out the simple weight of the facts, and it would probably help others discuss this as well if there were more direct reference to your intent.
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