Unmasking the Informer?: Memory, Authenticity, and the Politics of Knowledge about the Socialist Past

• In Event: At the Intersection of Narrative and Affect: The Art of Memory in Belarus, Hungary, and Poland

Abstract

The 2022 HBO Max television series The Informer, about a university student coerced by the communist state security into informing upon his classmates in 1985 Hungary, inspired intense public discussion regarding the accuracy of its historical representation and the validity of its political parallels. With its narrative of spy adventure and teenage romance, the series attempts to shift the politics of memory around the issue of the past regime’s informers: from a contentious and unresolved burden in public memory to the source of retro pleasure marketed to transnational and youthful audiences. This article argues for the importance of examining anxieties of authenticity in an era of political polarization and “post-truth” regimes of knowledge. It analyzes how the series’ contested reception indexed current tensions in memory politics and knowledge production in Hungary, as well as how various commentators attempted to respond to and navigate this fraught context.

Author

• Maya Nadkarni, Swarthmore College