The German playwright, Bertolt Brecht coined the term Alienation effect (verfrumdungseffekt). This term can be translated as Distancing effect or Estrangement effect.
He coined this term by adapting Russian concept of 'defamilarization'.
He wanted to create an alien effect by ensuring the distance between the characters and their action with the audience.
The aim is to create the critical distance so that audience should not get involved with the play.
In this way audience will be able to criticize the social reality presented in the play. That's all about the alienation effect.
Explanation:
Guys!!! We already have done affective fallacy which refers to the emotional effect of the poem on reader. Now, we are going to consider the effects of drama on viewers.
Often this happens with us that we weep with hero/heroine or we laugh with them. So, we try to identify ourselves with them. Like in childhood, we identify ourselves with Shaktiman, our hero. While identifying with the hero or the plot, we won't be able to critique it. So, there is a need of distancing with the play so that identification cannot be possible. There should be alienation with the play. We need to be strange in order not to feel connected, so that we may analyze it.
We are talking about alienation effect or estrangement effect or distancing effect. In German, we call it Verfrumdungseffekt. This term is coined by Bertolt Brecht.
His aim is to enable viewers to criticize the social reality shown in the play. Audience is hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play.
Stage directions told by playwright in between, arrangement of stage in front of audience etc create distancing so that audience always gets realization that they are watching a play. They cannot be transported with the plot.
The term 'alienation effect' has come from 'defamilarization', given by Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky in his work Art as technique. According to him, prose is an ordinary speech but poetry is quite different.
Defamiliarization means familiarity would be removed because the language of poetry and prose is quite different. In prose, normal words are there and in poetry, we just make those words artistic. This creates defamiliarization. This is what Victor Shklovsky meant.
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