Amélie
Nothomb’s Acide sulfurique (2005)
provoked divisive controversy at its release as a result of the way it
translated the Nazi concentration camps into a dystopian reality television franchise.
Supporters of the novel, however, celebrated the author’s attention to modern
voyeuristic culture as a sinister threat to complacent belief in human equality
and compassionate reaction. In this paper, I suggest that Acide, despite its oversimplification of moral choices and values,
offers a critique of contemporary bystander behaviour by questioning the
socio-political responsibilities of the intra-textual viewer as a reflection of
the genuine ethical demands placed upon viewers of suffering in everyday life. Reframing
the Holocaust through reality television provides an uncomfortable viewpoint
from which to consider contemporary attitudes to ongoing events of genocide,
displacement and mass racism across the world, particularly where these events
are, in the majority, mediated by screens and by temporal or spatial distances
that dilute our ethical relations between self and other. This paper begins by
tracing the roots of Nothomb’s simulated concentration camp in European – and international – reality television programmes
and considers how this genre establishes a sense of spectacle that separates
those who are viewed from those who are viewing. Through discussion of Stanley Cohen’s definition
of moral panic and Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle, I argue that Acide demonstrates the transformation of
the viewer into a bystander who is complicit in the murders committed by others
but whose physical and psychological distance from the events provides a moral
acquittal. Ultimately,
Acide
challenges us – as readers and potential viewers – to question our ethical
responsibilities as co-participants in the memory of the Holocaust and ongoing
suffering of others.