VERfrEmDungsEffekt
art
<<The distancing effect (German: Verfremdungseffekt) is a theatrical
and cinematic device coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht "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." Brecht's term
describes the aesthetics of his epic theatre.
The term of Verfremdungseffekt is rooted in the Russian Formalist
notion of the device of making strange or "priem ostranenie", 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, 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, alienation effect, or
distancing effect. In Brecht and Method, Fredric Jameson abbreviates
Verfremdungseffekt as "the V-effekt"; many scholars similarly leave
the word untranslated.
Verfremdungseffekt is also commonly translated as alienation effect.
Though this is not a direct translation, as the German word
Verfremdungseffekt does not have a literal English equivalent. Its
closest literal translation into English, making (the familiar)
strange, signifies estrangement, or alienation from the familiar.
In German, Verfremdungseffekt signifies both alienation and distancing
in a theatrical context; thus, "theatrical alienation" and "theatrical
distancing". Brecht wanted to "distance" or to "alienate" his audience
from the characters and the action and, by dint of that, render them
observers who would not become involved in or to sympathize
emotionally or to empathize by identifying individually with the
characters psychologically; rather, he wanted the audience to
understand intellectually the characters' dilemmas and the wrongdoing
producing these dilemmas exposed in his dramatic plots. By being thus
"distanced" emotionally from the characters and the action on stage,
the audience could be able to reach such an intellectual level of
understanding (or intellectual empathy); in theory, while alienated
emotionally from the action and the characters, they would be
empowered on an intellectual level both to analyze and perhaps even to
try to change the world, which was Brecht's social and political goal
as a playwright and the driving force behind his dramaturgy.
The distancing 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." The use of direct
audience-address is one way of disrupting stage illusion and
generating the distancing effect. In performance, as the performer
"observes himself", his or her objective is "to appear strange and
even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely
at himself and his work." Whether Brecht intended the distancing
effect to refer to the audience or to the actor or to both audience
and actor is still controversial among teachers and scholars of "Epic
Acting" and Brechtian theatre.
By disclosing and making obvious the manipulative contrivances and
"fictive" qualities of the medium, the viewer is alienated from any
passive acceptance and enjoyment of the film as mere "entertainment."
Instead, the viewer is forced into a critical, analytical frame of
mind that serves to disabuse him or her of the notion that what he or
she is watching is necessarily an inviolable, self-contained
narrative. This effect of making the familiar strange serves a
didactic function insofar as it teaches the viewer not to take the
style and content for granted, since the medium itself is highly
constructed and contingent upon many cultural and economic
conditions.>>