ABSTRACT
The attempt to “alienate” the events being presented from the audience was made in a primitive way in the theatrical and pictorial displays of old fairs. We also find it in the circus clown’s manner of speech and in the way in which socalled “panoramas”1 are painted. The reproduction of the painting The Flight of Charles the Bold After the Battle of Murten, often to be found on German fairgrounds, was always inadequately painted. Yet the copyist achieved an alienation effect not to be found in the original; and one can scarcely blame this on his inadequacy. The fleeing general, his horse, his retinue, and the landscape are quite consciously painted to give the impression of an extra-ordinary occasion, a forbidding catastrophe. Despite his inadequacy the painter admirably produces the effect of the unexpected; astonishment guides his brash. This effect of estrangement is also known to the Chinese actor, who uses it in a very subtle manner.
