The Verfremdungseffekt device and its functions in

Bertolt Brecht‟s dramatic theory

Emblem and main device of Brecht‟s theatrical system, the V-effekt is placed at the core of a
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continuously changing system of overlapping categories, which shapes it and is reshaped by it.

Dynamic and intertextual, the Verfremdung effekt not only coagulates Brecht‟s theatrical theory,

but also crystallises a general effort to trigger an innovation regarding the audiences‟ response in

particular and „changing the world‟ (the implied social repercussions) in general.

The notion of Verfremdung is problematic first of all because of its multilayered translation into

English; „alienation‟, rendered by Marxism as „dehumanisation‟ in the sense of the annihilation

of consciousness as an outcome of capitalism, is only partially appropriate; in this context, „de-

alienation‟ could in fact serve the purpose more accurately. „Estrangement‟ on the other hand is a

coined term for Shklovsky‟s ostranenie, an aesthetic concept focused on the renewal of

perception; Brecht‟s Verfremdung relies on a distinct intention, a conscious motivation which

offers alternatives to social and historical realities.1 Secondly, the V-effekt is controversial due to

its permanent mutations within Brecht‟s theoretic endeavours. In the environment saturated by

psychoanalysis and behaviourism of the 1930s, the early „epic theatre‟ definitions have been

highly influenced by Erwin Piscator and the Russian ex-Futurists: the theatre of illusion had to

1
Stanley Mitchell, “From Shklovsky to Brecht: Some preliminary remarks towards a history of the politicisation of
Russian Formalism”, Screen v.15, no. 2, 1974), 74-81
<http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/2/74.full.pdf+html?sid=5576801e-9ded-4d0a-b6d1-e0a44e607972,
Accessed: 29/11/2010>:74

1
 be annihilated in order to aggressively state the opposition to bourgeoisie, a ruling class

advantaged by its constant historical presence; proletarianism acted towards what Formalists

referred to as „to lay bare the device‟, which would transform art in a form of production instead

of an inexplicable wonder.2 In this sense, the V-effekt extracts the spectators from the trance of

„living‟ the play and imposes a distance which activates the capacity for analysis, criticism and

decision – allowing for a double perspective: uncovering the contradictory nature of events and
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the historical cause of social mechanisms (thus making them appear rationally changeable). The

emotional and instinctive responses resulting unconsciously from the Aristotelian cathartic

experiences of the „mob‟ (similar to Eisenstein‟s proletarian audience3) are replaced by

awareness, judgement and recognition removed from affects; thus, the „collective individual‟

becomes a „collection of individuals‟ which models the individual agency.4 As an

acknowledgement of one‟s social experience and situation, the V-effekt is meant to stop people

from passively accepting the established reality as desired by the ruling class and authoritarian

manipulation brought upon by the fascist counter-revolution.

Elements like text, music, setting and audience permanently express attitudes and opinions

toward the content of the play, functioning in a similar way as Bakhtin‟s dialogic imagination. In

this initial and exclusive stage, emotion (resulting from suggestion) and thought (redirected into

argument) are artificially incorporated into unconscious and conscious, completely removed

from each other. As long as all the elements of a play indistinctively form a unity, the spectator‟s

individuality dissolves in an audience already blended in the play itself; Brecht‟s solution is the

2
Stanley Mitchell, introduction to Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. by Anna Bostock (London: Verso,
1998) xv
3
Darren Gobert, “Cognitive Catharsis in The Caucasian Chalk Circle”, Modern Drama, v. 49, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 12-
40
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_drama/summary/v049/49.1gobert.html, Accessed: 28/11/2010>: 14
4
ibid.,14

2
 use of the Verfremdung device, which guarantees the autonomy of each distinct form of art used

in the play (text, music, visual art as represented by the setting), as well as restoring the

individuality of each spectator.

A further stage of theoretical development (1933-1947, including A short organum for the

theatre) refines the epic into a „dialectical‟ theatre, in a quest for a productive realism influenced

by Russian avant-garde (emphasising the production) and realism („socialist‟, accentuates the
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reflection);5 initially divorced by any emotion, the V-effekt now becomes aware of it, as long as it

employs a response different to the one represented on stage: worry might provoke a feeling of

joy in the spectator, while anger could trigger a disgusted reaction.6 The new type of recognition

becomes an educative device different for every individual, either spectator or actor, which does

not require identification with the character‟s feelings. This Brechtian approach is in line with a

new definition given in 1940 in the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon, which adds a

further denotation for “katharsis” – “clarification”;7 the emotional experience is acceptable as

long as it is enriched by an intellectual insight obtained by inductive methods of judgement. In

definitions of the epic theatre ulterior to A Short organum for the theatre, Brecht emphasises the

importance of emotions such as sense of justice, need for freedom or justified anger – thus

anticipating the cognitive perspective of emotions based on beliefs. 8 The double function of

clarification is that it allows individuals to understand the factors which inform their emotions

whilst refining the moral attitudes Brecht is attempting to alter; the latter function facilitates a

5
Mitchell, 78
6
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on theatre: the development of an aesthetic, ed. and trans. by John Willett (London:
Methuen, c1964), 94
7
Gobert, 16; ‘katharsis’ in the original text is italicised
8
ibid., 18

3
 collective harmony based on individual emotional quests, a process which the dialectical theatre

is expecting to translate into another “public domain”,9 the contemporary society.

If the V-effekt is correctly employed, the content of the play and the actors‟ manner of

performing (natural, realistic in a literal sense) will determine the spectator to become the agent

of reception, regardless any repercussions. At the same time, this permanently required approval

of the audience qualifies the play as a dynamic process, especially when considering the
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audience not only in the traditional way (a number of spectators who frequent the theatre for

entertainment purposes), but also in a sense of a rehearsal where the actors themselves are

allowed to voice their opinions on different stages of the production. As a didactic play, it also

allows for interchangeability between actors and audience and vice versa. 10 The attitude towards

the character (as an abstract unity of meaning) moves from the subconscious to the conscious

level and it implies awareness towards the artifice which allows the actor as well as the spectator

to originate their own emotional output – necessarily different from the represented „feelings‟.11

Essentially, the technique of estrangement individualises the spectators in space and time (“this

particular individual in this particular moment”‟12) by making them aware of the „real‟ in relation

to the „represented‟ realm of the stage: the actor and the event are real, whilst the character and

the performance are representations.

The spectators of the epic theatre who experience the V-effekt are extracted from the social order

subordinated to political domination (the “motive forces” of society) and industrial serialisation

(symbolised, to a certain extent, by the audience taken as a whole in the traditional theatre) and

9
Sidney Homan, The audience as actor and character: the modern theatre of Beckett, Brecht, Genet, Ionesco,
Pinter, Stoppard, and Williams (Lewisburg [Pa.]: Bucknell University Press; London; Toronto: Associated University
Presses, c1989), 105
10
Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. by Anna Bostock (London: Verso, 1998), 20
11
Brecht, Brecht on theatre, 193-194
12
ibid., 195

4
 determined to have a flexible attitude not only towards their particular existence, but also in

relation to the social structure of a certain moment. An equation summarising how the familiar

surrenders its validity implies a transition from obvious to incomprehensible, leading to a level

of accessibility which transcends the automata of acquired experience and „normality‟. This great

potential of remodelling the society has to be sustained by a content which constantly focuses on

human interactions and by innovative means of representation, which can induce new effects
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(estrangement) to an audience already subjected to a permanently changing reality.

Brecht considers “barriers to empathy”13 as essential devices which are translated from classical

and medieval theatre (masks) and from Asiatic performance (music and pantomimic effects);

avoiding the superficial, implied emotion, the object is protected from semantic unravelling,

retaining its autonomy and potentiality for enfolded meanings in the realm of social phenomena.

By opposition to the Asiatic (i.e. Chinese) theatre, traditionally concerned with techniques of

representation, as well as with inner introspection, Brecht is not interested in the “abstract stable

essence”14 of a performance, but exclusively in its effect on the audience (to transform and

instigate ideological reassessments) – implying an ethnocentric perspective. The V-effekt

functions as a guarantee of dynamics – utilising the Marxist dialectical materialism to emphasise

the process-like character of social interactions; the change every object is subjected to stands for

a “disharmony with itself”15 which is ultimately consistent – Eisenstein‟s use of montage is

emblematic in this sense, constructing subtle political associations and becoming, in Brecht‟s

13
ibid., 192
14
Douglas Robinson, “The Spatiotemporal Dialectic of Estrangement”, The Drama Review (Project Muse), v. 51, no.
4 (December 2007), 121-132 <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_drama_review/v051/51.4robinson.pdf, Accessed:
30/11/2010>:122
15
Brecht, Brecht on theatre, 193

5
 theatre, an active allegory which shocks and forces recognition.16 As long as every element of

the performance becomes transparent and is submitted for the audience‟s approval, every social

action is an experiment its participating members have to agree on.

Walter Benjamin‟s scheme for explaining the aim of epic theatre accentuates the necessity for

representing circumstances17 in a manner which would suggest the strangeness and alienation

imposed by an interrupted process. Discontinuity of context can be achieved by quoting a

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cultural text (songs, gestural conventions) – consequently, the epic theatre becomes quotable

through its use of intervals and segmented scenes,18 which draws the spectator‟s attention on

how behaviour is represented (the formal aspects of the play), disabling the eagerness to

empathise and activating the properties of the V-effekt. Music in particular, one of the key

elements in the Theory of „Trennung der Elemente’ (elements of separation), is loaded with

“perspectival commentaries” and has, in Brecht‟s meta-dramatic system, specific functions:

mediating between text and audience, uncovering the meaning and the premises of the text,

assuming a point of view and prescribing rules of conduct.19 Along the lines of other “disjunctive

techniques”20 employed by the V-effekt, music will prevent the spectator from settling for a

single vantage point and thus mode of response.

When extracted from the Brechtian theoretical attempt and tested against the flux of a real

audience, the V-effekt becomes problematic; its mobility primarily depends on a degree of

familiarity of every spectator, which is determined not only by the geographical and cultural

space (the issue of local and foreign, political borders and so on), but also by psychological and

16
Mitchell, introduction to Benjamin, xiii
17
Benjamin, 18
18
ibid., 20
19
Hilda Meldrum Brown, Leitmotiv and drama: Wagner, Brecht, and the limits of 'Epic' theatre, (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991), 81
20
ibid., 98

6
 phenomenological time (convention versus innovation).21 In this sense, the „alienation effect‟

essentially measures the distance between an educated audience‟s background and the devices

used by a play, as well as the means necessary for perpetuating this distance with every

production (in spite of the spectators becoming more familiar with Brechtian theatre for

example). Employing the V-effekt requires a collaborative effort which transcends the life of the

playwright and the cultural trends of the moment; it consists in a permanent attempt to uphold
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the pace of an absurdly kinetic and reflexive society and place the individual in a position

appropriate for active criticism.

21
Robinson, 123

7
 Bibliography

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8
 Baz Kershaw, The radical in performance: between Brecht and Baudrillard, London: Routledge,

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