Alienation effect
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The alienation effect (from the German Verfremdungseffekt) is a theatrical and cinematic device "which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer."[1] The term was coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht to describe the aesthetics of epic theatre.
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[edit] Origin
The term of Verfremdungseffekt is rooted in the Russian Formalist notion of the device of making strange or "priem ostranenie"[2], which literary critic Viktor Shklovsky claims is the essence of all art. Not long after seeing a performance by Mei Lanfang's company in Moscow in the spring of 1935[3], Brecht coined the German term to label an approach to theater that discouraged involving the audience in an illusory narrative world and in the emotions of the characters. Brecht thought the audience required an emotional distance to reflect on what is being presented in critical and objective ways, rather than being taken out of themselves as conventional entertainment attempts to do.
The proper English translation of Verfremdungseffekt is a matter of controversy. The word is sometimes rendered as defamiliarization effect, estrangement effect, distantiation, distancing effect or alienation effect. Fredric Jameson, in his book Brecht and Method, translates it as "the V-effect", and many scholars simply leave the word untranslated.
The alienation effect aims to make the familiar seem strange, to show everything in a fresh and unfamiliar light. This enables the spectator to be brought to look critically at everything even if they have already taken something for granted.
[edit] Techniques
The Alienation-effect is achieved by the way the "artist never acts as if there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him [...] The audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place." [4] The use of direct audience-address disrupts stage illusion and generates the A-effect. In performance the performer "observes himself"; his object "to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work." [5] Musical and pantomimic effects also are used as barriers to empathy.
[edit] Cinema
The alienation effect can also be found in the cinema. Several filmmakers influenced by Brecht have used the effect often in their films. Some of the more influential filmmakers include Lars von Trier, Jean-Luc Godard, Nagisa Oshima and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. These filmmakers have used several "unconventional" film techniques to alienate the viewer.[citation needed]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Brecht, Bertolt "Brecht on Theater", page 91. Hill and Wang, 1957
- ^ Brecht, Bertolt "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting", page 99. Hill and Wang, 1964
- ^ ibid
- ^ ibid, 91
- ^ ibid, 92
