The Problem With Alienation

I have no objection to techniques of alienation, in themselves. They are perfectly valid. I believe, however, that their proliferation in many of the Modernist/Postmodernist (particularly postmodernist) works that I have read or seen over the years is entirely out of proportion to the specificity of their aims. It seems as if most Modernists, and every Postmodernist, decided at some point that alienation was a pre-requisite for all new artworks. Like a council building code. As if, before even starting to write, they felt they had to put out a disclaimer that it would not in fact be real, and that they were making it all up, just in case someone slipped over on their narrative pavework and decided to sue.

The standard defense of alienation, verfremdungs-effekt, call it what you will, is that its purpose is self-contained. That is, we are allowed to see the elements of construction, in order that we might see them- or more specifically, not not see them, and thus that we might be made aware that we undergo a process of manipulation in viewing an artwork.

That is all very well and good. But that has been done again, and again, and again.

It also pre-supposes that we forgot it in the first place. The plays of Classical antiquity contain constant in-jokes, out of character references, and conventions that make it perfectly obvious that their audience was very aware of what a play was and how it worked. So does Shakespeare, so does Tristram Shandy, and on, and on. Perhaps around the time of Austen, when the narrator suddenly all but disappeared, and we lost a bit of our sense of meta-humour, things got more confusing. And indeed, there are subtleties of which we are not naturally aware in literature of most kinds.

But this is not a constant confusion, and it does not require a hundred years of artists proclaiming loudly from the rooftops that all is not what we think it is, and look at how I'm doing this, and this, and this, and giving away all of the magician's bag of tricks to people who- let's face it- don't actually want it.

But as I said, I have no objection to alienation. I have only an objection to this sort of misuse of it, that, once it has been seen or read in any form once by a person, loses all point and originality. Where it is useful, and where it is well used, it is often among the greatest acheivements of Modernism.

Take, for instance, Brecht. The standard example of alienation. All of his plays rely upon the manner in which they distance the audience from involvement with the standard construction of theatre. But they do not do this merely to point out that it is a play, and that there are lights, and a narrative, and so on. It has multiple practical purposes. They audience is distanced not only from the artistry, but from the narrative also- we know that it is false, we don't bother to suspend our disbelief, as we see Mother Courage is standing in front of a large spotlight, and the actor playing her has told us that she is not real.

And this, in its original purpose, was to strive for something more pure- less transitory than empathy for a single twisted soul, more objective- a philosophical meditation on death, on struggle, on the value of war, of life. The scale of human suffering unobscured by emotion, the absurdity of our actions, seen from an immense distance. That is alienation.

The lights on the stage are not there to distract from the narrative. They are to remove the distraction that is the narrative.

When Brecht alienates his audience, it is for a purpose, or multiple purposes. But when in the majority of cases, alienation is used for alienation's sake, it is irritating. That is what I mean by the misuse of alienation. And when that forms the substance of an artwork- and this is how I saw Rose Hobart- I find it immature, and unoriginal. Now, in the light of Cornell's boxes, and other deeper things, I will not proceed to trash the film. But I would note that it is only in the light of these, and not for the unitiated, that Rose Hobart's deeper themes are communicated at all.

Expressing my Frustrations

Don't expect these to be too evidentially based. They will also be generalisations. But that's generally how frustration is expressed, and it would be a shame to trifle with tradition.

Introduction

Welcome.

I was very tempted to add Serge Gainsbourg, just playing in the background, to this blog. But I've restrained myself. Nobody likes internet pages that play music to you. New age assessments are dangerous for the easily distracted, I'm afraid, as I believe the entire look of this thing demonstrates. If you can't gain some idea of my nature from that, I'm afraid no introductory note that I might write could hope to do more.

As regards the Cornell film:

Both the white morning coats and broad cut linen trousers were hugely impressive. Why is it that no one wears linen in Australia? Period films: new insight into the death of natural fibres. Of course, no one but a turbaned Raj type could really pull that particular look off, and certainly not anywhere but a country 'east of Borneo'; but it has a wonderfully '30s Subcontinental Cambridge Man feel to it.

Did anybody else have an indefinable sense that she must be English? It was hardly established from the film, but she just seemed so very British. Perhaps that, again, was the proliferation of white morning coats, determining my reactions.

Her dialogue with the monkey was very endearing. Prior to that, I didn't have any particular interpretation of her character at all. Animals are very humanising.

Was she considering seducing the Prince, while taking off that dressing gown? How far would she go to rescue her husband? Or, indeed, since we hadn't particularly seen the husband, perhaps she just felt that wearing a woollen dressing gown in a tropical climate was uncomfortable. Maybe the removal of all context induces us to indulge our judgemental natures.

Trance or inattention? Are they the same thing?