Verfremdet

Verfremdet is a German term meaning defamiliarized, estranged, or alienated. In the arts it describes deliberate techniques that interrupt naturalistic immediacy to produce critical distance rather than emotional immersion.

The concept is closely associated with Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt (alienation or distancing effect). Brecht argued that theatrical events should prevent the audience from identifying with characters and becoming emotionally absorbed, in order to stimulate reflective judgment and social critique. Techniques include direct address to the audience, actors delivering overt narration or commentary, visible stage machinery and lighting, song interludes that interrupt the plot, sudden placards or captions, and episodic, non-illusionistic staging.

Outside Brecht, the idea of verfremden is used more broadly to describe defamiliarization in literature, film, and other arts. It aligns with the wider modernist technique of ostranenie, or defamiliarization, as developed by Russian formalists, where the aim is to make the familiar world seem strange to renew perception and critical awareness.

In scholarship, verfremdet or verfremdung is typically described as a strategy to foster critical detachment rather than empathy. The term is descriptive rather than tied to a single fixed method: its devices vary by work and medium, but the underlying aim is to interrupt habitual reception and provoke reflection on social or aesthetic norms.