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Debarati Roy

Dr. Tapan Basu

Semester One: Presentation LH3

21 October 2013

Bertolt Brecht’s debate against Lukacs forms the crux of his argument towards a new

kind of realism, one that is experimental and responsible towards the needs of a society that has

evolved to its present point. For Lukacs, realism works when it has an objective, totalising

impulse. He critically argues in his ‘Realism in the Balance’ against the modernist schools of art,

specifically Expressionism and Surrealism and dismisses fragmented narratives. He sees such

kinds of artistic innovations as merely experimental without being socially pertinent. He points

out that the ‘montage’ form of writing, which these forms of art usually deploy shows chaos

without a critical view of social reality. According to Lukacs, realism of the kind that Thomas

Mann employs tries to show “how experiences and emotions are parts of the total complex of

reality”. Thus, he says, art requires a movement back to traditional objective realism. Now,

Brecht in response to Lukacs does not intend to discount his realism. However, he does question

it; in as much as how can one look at “objective” reality, in a world where the “objective” is part

of a particular discourse? Who decides the objective standards? Are they ever innocent?

Brecht seems to think not. Reality cannot be objective. Anything that becomes the norm,

the objective is simply the perpetuation of a particular reality, one which is convenient to the

existing ruling class. To prevent this, the depiction of realities must evolve as societies evolve

and art must be true to this change. In order to do so art must innovate. Innovations can be set up

for success or failure, but engaging with social realities is of prime importance. Using realities as

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contextual backgrounds, no longer qualifies. These are not the means anymore, they are the end.

They need scrutiny and understanding for art to be able to effect social change and an updated

view of reality. This paves way for Brecht’s innovative theatre-the epic theatre, where the term

‘epic’ is used to portray a complete break from traditional Aristotelian theatre and brings about

formal innovations. If one were to turn to Brecht’s own work, A Short Organum for the Theatre

clearly espouses his intentions. He wants to create a ‘dialectical’ theatre. One that by way of

contradictory entry points into the same narrative deliberately fractures it, in order to hold up the

fact that the reality portrayed is a construct. There is no universal right or wrong. It is the

bourgeois man’s particular ideals that have been universalised to form the common, natural way

of life. It is a specific discourse that can be changed. In order to depict this, he makes use of

Verfremdungseffekt, the distancing effect, alienating the audience from the play. In doing so,

Brecht tears down Aristotelian theatre’s need for the audience to identify and empathise with the

play. He has no intention to evoke catharsis. For as he mentions in A Short Organum for the

Theatre, all it does is create an illusion of similarity by way of which

The one important point for the spectators in these houses is that they should be able to

swap a contradictory world for a consistent one, one that they scarcely know for one of

which they can dream. That is the sort of theatre which we face in our operations, and so

far it has been fully able to transmute our optimistic friends, whom we have called the

children of the scientific era, into a cowed, credulous, hypnotized mass.

This hypnosis needs to be avoided. The Alienation effect helps that. It presents a

narrative that is mostly of common knowledge. The audience recognises it. But now he

fragments the narrative and introduces contradictory approaches. Repeatedly, one course of

action is interrupted and another introduced. The idea is to portray as Walter Benjamin discusses

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in his essay ‘What is Epic Theatre?’ that “It can happen this way, but it can also happen quite a

different way”. What this does is that it breaks down the idea of a singular way of looking at a

problem that one thinks one knows and shows it in a completely new and different way, thus

making social problems the subject for the audience’s critical analysis. The defamiliarisation

creates, not empathy but a distance, allowing the audience to look at what they think is normal

and make a realisation that what is normal is also ‘queer’. It is not a situation beneficial to them.

Moreover it is not one they can empathise with. Having arrived at this understanding, the

audience now engages with the art critically. This is helped by the role of the actors who again

do not associate with or imitate their characters. What is portrayed is the various possible ways

in which the character can be played out. So there is the writer’s version, which might have been

met with shock or surprise by the actor. This response is also retained in the latter’s performance

and is portrayed as one of the many attitudes engaged with and played by the actor. The actor

brings his judgement and opinion into the playing. Again, one goes back to A Short Organum for

the Theatre where Brecht says

Without opinions and objectives one can represent nothing at all. Without knowledge one

can show nothing; how could one know what would be worth knowing? Unless the actor

is satisfied to be a parrot or a monkey he must master our period’s knowledge of human

social life by himself joining in the war of the classes.

This tendency to have different versions of attitudes towards performance is the ‘Gest’ as

Brecht calls it – any idea that can be explained as the many versions of an attitude that can be

portrayed by the actor, with the interruption of one by another totally different portrayal. Brecht

says

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The actor must show an event, and he must show himself. He naturally shows the event

by showing himself; and he shows himself by showing the event. Although these coincide, they

must not coincide in such a way that the difference between the two tasks is lost.

The Alienation effect is supported by use of music which ceases to be the creator of

atmosphere or facilitator for the hypnosis of the masses. It ceases to be a weapon of the ruling

class’s ideology and becomes that which can cause interruptions in action, facilitating gests.

Benjamin in ‘What is Epic Theatre?’ observes that for Brecht, the theatre also needs ‘literarising’

as by introduction of placards, captions, subtitles etc. which will “make what is shown on the

stage unsensational”1. The audiences who, as Benjamin mentions “do not think unless they have

a reason to” are forced to bring to the performance, their critical opinions. They are forced to

realise that reality itself is a discourse created by the ruling class and that it can be changed. It

can be engaged with in a sphere where art has been made political. Thus there is direct dialectical

engagement in theatre with what have been known and accepted as standards of judgement,

putting them up as constructed by the ruling class and leading the masses on to an understanding

of realities regarding social conditions and of a tangible need for change.

1 The concept of an “unsensational” theatre was one that Brecht borrowed from Chinese theatre.

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Discussion:

Ratnakar Kumar: My question is for discussion that when Brecht’s plays are

performed it loses its claimed alienation effect and somehow arouses pity and fear. How

this arousal is different from traditional? Also since Brecht is very often adapted in Indian

context, I would like to make a point that in Indian context his conception of alienation

effect fails to larger extent. And so whether his ideas are significant in Indian context, and

so his politics?