“And a More Offensive Spectacle I Cannot Recall”: Humour in … No Other Symptoms: Time Travelling with Rosalind Brodsky (1999) by Suzanne Treister

Julius, Chloe

Abstract

This chapter circles around a joke made in … No Other Symptoms: Time Travelling with Rosalind Brodsky—a CD ROM artwork by Suzanne Treister in 1999—in which the titular character attempts to time travel to the Holocaust in order to save her grandparents but mistakenly arrives on the set of Schindler’s List in 1993. In this joke, Treister points to the potency of Spielberg’s representation in the 1990s imaginary, such that it would supplant memory of the Holocaust itself—or, indeed, impede time travel. Gillian Rose’s 1995 essay ‘Beginnings of the Day: Fascism and Representation’ characterises Schindler’s List in terms of ‘Holocaust Piety’, a tendency she observed in 1990s representations of the Holocaust that sought to render it a moral imperative rather than an historical event. The stakes in such an approach for Rose are clear: posing that the Holocaust was emblematic for the breakdown history, rather than continuous with it, delegitimised its aesthetic representation, thus diminishing the possibilities for overcoming its legacy. By following the humorous exploits of Rosalind Brodsky—the protagonist in … No Other Symptoms and also Treister’s alter ego—this chapter contends that the work offers a model for an unsentimental engagement with the Holocaust that situates it within representation and in history.

• Acceptance Date: Sep 4, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 14, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 2, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 15, 2025
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 35-55
• Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Comedy
• Book Title: Comedy in Crisis: Weaponising Humour in Contemporary Art
• ISBN: 9783031189609
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18961-6_3
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/25670091
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-18961-6_3