An idea pioneered in the theatre by the playwright Bertolt Brecht (probably best known for The Threepenny Opera, and the words to “Mack the Knife” from that work).
The idea was to perform the play in an unnaturalistic style or with interruptions, discussions with the audience, and other things that called attention to the artificiality of the experience, so as to “keep the audience from simply identifying with the characters in the play.” Instead, their actions and ideas are intended to be evaluated consciously by the audience, as opposed to taking place in the unconscious way that theatre normally aims for, in which the audience is encouraged to treat the action as something to passively watch and internalize as a reflection of real life. The kind of “realism” Brecht aimed for was socialist realism and not a willing suspension of disbelief and unquestioning view of the drama as a “realistic” representation of life just as it is.
Brecht was a committed communist (anti-Western and anti-capitalist) and his idea is related to one put forth by the early Soviet Formalist theorist Viktor Shklovsky: “defamiliarization” or “making strange.” The goal of art should be to make us see reality in new and fresh ways that raise our consciousness, rather than to recreate tired versions of “realism” or familiar pop culture fantasies.
Some people suggest that both avant-garde video experimentation with appropriation and much of the seemingly inane or “just for fun” video mashup currently produced for YouTube aims at or ends up creating something like “alienation effects,” making us see in new ways the culture we otherwise just consume semi-consciously, and forcing us to notice things about it we have grown accustomed to never questioning or thinking about.
See also defamiliarization.