The cinema of cruelty in streaming: elements of perversity in Chernobyl and years and years

ABSTRACT This study aims to diagnose how the cinema of cruelty has been inserted into mainstream culture through the current streaming series, analysing the elements of the eroticism of perversity and the cinema of cruelty in the series Chernobyl and Years and Years (HBO: 2019). This is done with the design of a content analysis sheet based on the interpretation of theoretical constructs, validated by expert judgement. The results diagnose an excess of trivialised cruelty, evidencing the spectator’s desensitisation to the images, as well as their fascination with them. In this sense, the growing audiovisual success of misanthropic, entertaining, and pornographic narratives is evident. It is concluded that discomfort, fun, horror pornography, and their respective prestige, are installed in contemporary popular television culture, reproducing a relationship between the depressing and the entertainment.