The alienation effect – or at least the attempt to create it – is a very new way of thinking about looking at / depicting the world for me. Rather than trying to imitate life and the attitudes we have about it like pretty much every movie I have ever seen, this technique looks at situations from a viewpoint that most might overlook. In this way, an attempt to achieve the alienation effect is an attempt to defamiliarize. By defamiliarizing everyday life, we can bring about political discourse from a myriad of angles, from “the man” looming over head to the little things that tick us off on our way to work. When we take a second look at everything, even the the mundane, we can bring about discussions that have been swept under the rug or have never even seen the light of day. 

The way Brecht described the alienation effect, I understood a large aspect of it to be looking at the world with an unfamiliar eye. When talking about social change, I think this aspect is very important. This forces us out of complacency. It reminds us to look at our society from (for lack of a better term) an outsider’s point of view. This forces us to see the things we put up with regularly as they truly are, worms and all. 

I understood “the old art of poetry” to be a kind of call to action. The book invites people to start looking at the world through the eyes of people such as the Chinese actors, Brecht and Schumann. This is done by discussing the silence of puppetry in parallel with political complacency. The reader must look at their own views on the world and if they are the views they really want to have.