Chernobyl and the Anthropology of Sacrifice

Chernobyl and the anthropology of sacrifice

Alberto N. García (Universidad de Navarra)

From the very beginning, Chernobyl is packed with scenes of sacrifice. It is no coincidence that the narrative opens with Legasov’s immolation, underlining the centrality of sacrifice in the series. In this sense, the various sacrificial events presented in the story may be broadly grouped into three types: the one voluntarily assumed by multiple characters throughout the series (heroic); the animal sacrifice perpetrated by the authorities or forced by the toxic radioactive situation, where immolation adopts a literal as well as figurative value (symbolic); and finally, the offering of another innocent human being, releasing others from their hardships and adversities (redemptive).

1. “A thousand years of sacrifice in our veins” and the heroic immolation

Chernobyl avoids Manichaeism in its recreation of the nuclear disaster. In its dramatic structure, many characters may be considered heroic, no matter their specific ideological affiliation. Some are brave for confronting Soviet secrecy (Legasov, Ulana Khomyuk), while others are commendable precisely for following orders: firemen, miners, soldiers, or scientists who, in an abrasive way, pay with their lives, trying to mitigate the damage of the explosion. This elasticity of heroism in the face of tragedy runs parallel with the omnipresence of sacrifice in the series. In other words, the heroes in Chernobylare described as such because of their personal sacrifices. As Lankford states, sacrificial heroism is not about mere generosity or good Samaritanism, but “requires the risk of something highly valued; and the attempt to achieve a directly morally positive result”.

Scherbina’s speech explicitly reinforces this notion in a quasi-religious tenor. Faced with Legasov’s inability to find volunteers – although he offers them money and promotions – the Council of Ministers’ deputy chairman resorts to national grandeur by way of immolation for the sake of the political community:

The series, then, acknowledges the price paid by all those brave men who died for others. It does so visually, singling out minor characters who vindicate the sacrificial face using a profusion of close-ups.

2. “Don’t let them suffer” and the symbolic sacrifice

As René Girard states, one of the critical elements of modern sacrifice lies in its vicarious capacity: “Society is seeking to deflect upon a relatively indifferent victim, a ‘sacrificeable’ victim, the violence that would otherwise be vented on its own members, the people it most desires to protect.” In Chernobyl, animals adopt this role of vicarious sacrifice. In this sense, unsurprisingly, the first image in the series is of a cat lying on a sofa stamped with drawings of deer wandering peacefully through a meadow. The preponderance of animals becomes recurrent throughout the narrative. From this moment on, a symbolic iteration is set through the on-screen appearance of several creatures, including cows, dogs, crows, and even a caterpillar. In all cases, these animals are associated with the idea of sacrifice, establishing a link with their traditional role in sacrificial rites (originating from a religious or magical substratum, ritual slaughter existed in all ancient cultures).

Beyond the different moral statuses that society attributes to humans and fauna, the subplot of the fourth episode is disturbing because of its symbolism: pets –metonymies of their owners – are slayed. Pavel, Bacho and Garo whistle, and the companions meekly approach to be shot. The pets’ docility ties in with the paternalism expressed by Zharkov in the first episode, possibly referring to the idea that the state elite always knows what is best for its citizens. The analogy is thus definite: the citizens’ obedience to their leaders is similar to the dogs’ submission to the soldiers. It is highlighted by Pavel’s fear before pulling the trigger, Bacho’s warnings about not making the pets suffer, as well as the Soviet motto that Garo sarcastically recites during the meal (“Our goal is the happiness of all mankind”). Beyond regret for killing the animals, the interactions of these three characters with the dogs certify their symbolic relevance. The animals are scapegoats who pay for their masters’ wrongdoings. Pets –domestic creatures – bear the most remarkable resemblance to those forced into exile. As people cannot be purified by annihilation, Chernobyl portrays a substitute victim.

The beginning of the same episode begins with a digression, a sequence characterized by its metaphorical disposition rather than its narrative advance. The protagonists include a young Soviet soldier, an old Ukrainian peasant, and the cow she is milking. The soldier commands the woman to leave her house because they are evacuating the area. She firmly refuses. However, the interpretive key to the sequence is found in the cow. Because of their nutritional capacity to produce milk, cows are traditionally associated with maternity and fertility. Therefore, a parallel may be drawn between this babushka and the motherland, a metaphor often employed in Soviet artistic propaganda. Tellingly, one of the symbolic objects most strongly associated with Russian popular culture is the matryoshka. The opening digression reinforces this popular imagery by employing the cow as a symbol. By showing the babushka milking, the scene serves as a metaphor for the cycle of life: an elderly woman close to death may be seen an emblem of fertility, rebirth and growth (milk). Thus, when she is ordered to evacuate – a new sacrifice for the motherland – the old woman recalls the many detriments her family has already suffered: the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Holodomor famine, the Second World War... When the soldier kills the cow, the audience reads it symbolically: the wasteland holds no future. All the previous sacrifices and suffering seem useless.

3. The redemptive sacrifice: “Children have to die to save their mothers”

The mysterious babushka strongly relates to Vasily Ignatenko’s widow. So, if the fourth episode starts with a metaphorical allusion to motherhood, symbolized by the cow, the producer, Craig Mazin, seems to opt for a circular structure. The installment ends, visually connecting with the beginning, where Lyudmila Ignatenko is shown in hospital after giving birth to a daughter who died to save her.

The mise-en-scène enhances the concept of sacrifice running through the whole episode. A long camera movement shows us a maternity room in the hospital. We hear babies crying and see mothers nursing their newborns. However, the panning concludes with footage of Lyudmila next to an empty crib. This mise-en-scène also highlights the classical notion of the sacrificial lamb. According to Christian symbolism (built on Hebrew tradition), St. John the Baptist established the semantic contiguity between Jesus and one of the usual animals used in religious offerings: “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Since then, the concept has been applied to any innocent who accepts death to purge others of their guilt. Thus, Lyudmila’s baby would become a sacrificial lamb which, in this case, has saved her mother’s life. Ulana Khomyuk remarks this in her “someone has to start telling the truth” speech: “She gave birth to the child. The baby survived for four hours. They say the radiation would have killed the mother, but it was absorbed by the baby. Her baby. We live in a country where children die to save their mothers.”

The sacrificial condition of the baby is enhanced by how Lyudmila is presented in her last shot. Sitting on the bed, her hair covered with a scarf, her head turned slightly to the right, and her face expressing quiet grief, Lyudmila clearly resembles the figure of the Pietà.

Popularized by Michelangelo’s Pietà in the Vatican, the Pietà figure is an artistic composition, usually sculptural, depicting the Virgin Mary’s grief after the death of Christ, her son, on the cross. Girard wrote, “We have learned to identify our innocent victims only by putting them in Christ’s place.” By engaging in visual contiguity between Lyudmila’s devastation over her dead daughter and the Virgin’s grief over Christ, the story implicitly assumes a sacrificial reading of biblical resonance – a universal theme in the Girardian sense. The death of Lyudmila’s baby eventually precipitates Legasov’s daring decision to speak the truth. The immolation of the sacrificial lamb spurs on this decisive change in the protagonist, who will offer himself up as a sacrifice that would unveil the truth.

4. Conclusion: Legasov as paradigm

The three types of sacrifice converge in Legasov’s suicide, presented in the first sequence of Chernobyl. These represent both the moral framework of the story and the importance of sacrifice in the narrated story. Firstly, his death has characteristics of a heroic sacrifice: his physical deterioration due to the radiation he received in his professional line of work makes his death imminent. Yet, secondly, Legasov chooses to use his own body as a scapegoat. As Tom Douglas wrote, “Someone has to take the blame to allow the rest of us to continue our normal functions, nominally at least, free of guilt or responsibility for past events.” Thus, instead of blame-shifting, Legasov takes the opposite route: akin to Lyudmila’s baby, he absorbs collective guilt to redeem society. This, thirdly and finally, is what relates Legasov’s figure to that of the sacrificial lamb: figuratively speaking, he dies to remedy the sins of others. Thus, Legasov’s death aspires to repair a crisis within a community through atoning substitution, where loss transforms into regeneration, and the end becomes a new beginning.

Biography

Alberto N. García is an Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the School of Communication, Universidad de Navarra (Spain). During 2018, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Queensland (Australia). He has also been Visiting Scholar at George Washington University (Washington D.C.), and Visiting Professor at the University of Stirling (United Kingdom). He has published his work in journals such as Continuum, International Journal of Communication, Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Horror Studies. He has edited the books Landscapes of the Self. The Cinema of Ross McElwee (2007) and Emotions in Contemporary TV-Series (Palgrave, 2016). He is currently researching on Television Aesthetics, and is member of the “Bonds, Creativity and Culture” research group.