alienation effect

alienation effect

also called  a-effect or distancing effect , German  Verfremdungseffekt or V-effekt 
 idea central to the dramatic theory of the German dramatist-director Bertolt Brecht (Brecht, Bertolt). It involves the use of techniques designed to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance.

      Examples of such techniques include explanatory captions or illustrations projected on a screen; actors stepping out of character to lecture, summarize, or sing songs; and stage designs that do not represent any locality but that, by exposing the lights and ropes, keep the spectators aware of being in a theatre. The audience's degree of identification with characters and events is presumably thus controlled, and it can more clearly perceive the “real” world reflected in the drama.

      Brecht conceived the alienation effect not only as a specific aesthetic program but also as a political mission of the theatre. Inspired by the philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel (Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) and Karl Marx (Marx, Karl) and by Viktor Shklovsky (Shklovsky, Viktor Borisovich)'s theory of ostranenie (“making it strange,” or defamiliarization), Brecht regarded his method as a way of helping spectators understand the complex nexuses of historical development and societal relationships. By creating stage effects that were strange or unusual, Brecht intended to assign the audience an active role in the production by forcing them to ask questions about the artificial environment and how each individual element related to real-life events. In doing so, it was hoped that viewers would distance themselves emotionally from problems that demanded intellectual solutions.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • alienation effect — ● alien …   Useful english dictionary

  • Alienation — may refer to:*Alienation (property law), the legal transfer of title of ownership to another party * Alienation , the medical term for splitting apart of the faculties of the mind *Social alienation, the individual subject s estrangement from its …   Wikipedia

  • alienation — n. 1 the act or result of alienating. 2 (Theatr. alienation effect) a dramatic effect whereby an audience remains objective, not identifying with the characters or action of a play …   Useful english dictionary

  • alienation — noun 1》 the state or experience of being alienated.     ↘Psychiatry a state of depersonalization or loss of identity in which the self seems unreal. 2》 Theatre an effect, sought by some dramatists, whereby the audience remains objective and does… …   English new terms dictionary

  • alienation office — The public office in London where the fees called the primer fine and the post fine were collected from those who employed the procedure of fine and recovery to effect transfers of land titles …   Ballentine's law dictionary

  • Distancing effect — The distancing effect, commonly mistranslated as the alienation effect[dubious – discuss] (German: Verfremdungseffekt), is a performing arts concept coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and… …   Wikipedia

  • Marx's theory of alienation — Part of a series on Marxism …   Wikipedia

  • Parental alienation syndrome — is a term coined by Richard A. Gardner to describe what he referred to as a disturbance in which children are obsessively preoccupied with depreciation and/or criticism of a parent. In other words, denigration that is unjustified and or… …   Wikipedia

  • Western alienation — Western alienation, in Canadian politics, is the concept of the Western provinces, namely British Columbia (B.C.), Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, being alienated, and in extreme cases excluded, from mainstream political affairs within the… …   Wikipedia

  • Zone of alienation — The Zone of Alienation, which is variously referred to as The Chernobyl Zone, The 30 Kilometer Zone, The Zone of Exclusion, The Fourth Zone, or simply The Zone (Ukrainian official designation: Зона відчуження Чорнобильської АЕС, zona… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”