Aesthetic distance is the emotional involvement of the audience in a story. Skilled storytellers can increase engagement through various techniques, while some deliberately increase distance to focus on other aspects. Early on, it was observed that audiences identify with characters to be emotionally invested in a story. Techniques for decreasing distance include having an “everyman” character or using a first-person narrative. Violating aesthetic distance reminds the audience that the story isn’t real. Bertolt Brecht pioneered verfremdungseffekt, or the estrangement effect, which allows the audience to analyze what they are seeing and reveal social problems underlying the story.
Aesthetic distance is a literary term that describes the audience’s emotional involvement in a story. It can refer to stories in any media, including novels, plays, movies, comic books, and even video games with strong narrative content. Skilled storytellers can increase audience engagement in a story through various techniques that will cause them to identify with or sympathize with the characters. Understanding these techniques is important for anyone aspiring to successful storytelling. Some writers will deliberately increase the aesthetic distance between the audience and the characters, as a means of focusing the audience’s attention on other aspects of the story.
The psychology and techniques of dramatic structure have been studied for centuries. Early on, it was observed that audiences will be more emotionally invested in a story if there is at least one character they can identify with. When an audience strongly identifies with one or more characters, they experience the emotional ups and downs of the story as if they were experiencing them. This is considered a close aesthetic distance. For many types of stories, this is ideal, and writers will spend significant energy and time creating this effect.
There are a number of techniques for decreasing the aesthetic distance between an audience and a given character. One way is to have the character come from a background that naturally elicits sympathy, such as poverty or loss; for example, making the character an orphan. A character with aspects shared by a large segment of a given population is called an “everyman.” A first-person narrative is also an effective means of drawing an audience into a story. It conveys a sense of immediacy to the audience, allowing them to experience the events of the story just as the point of view character does.
Anything that reminds the audience that the story isn’t real is said to violate aesthetic distance. This is usually unintentional, due to problems such as unrealistic dialogue in a novel or low-budget special effects in a film. The ability to tell a compelling story under any circumstances is the hallmark of a good storyteller. In fact, many successful directors have stood out for their ability to involve the public and bridge the aesthetic gap, despite working on a small budget. Sometimes, however, a storyteller will have a deliberate reason to increase aesthetic distance.
Famed German playwright Bertolt Brecht pioneered a process he called verfremdungseffekt, or the estrangement effect. For example, actors might address the audience directly, in character, so that the audience can no longer play the role of impartial observer. Brecht believed this effect would allow the audience to analyze what they were seeing, rather than getting lost in the story, as most writers intended. His hope was that this would reveal the social problems underlying his story and perhaps motivate audiences to seek real-world solutions. In modern times, the effect of having a character address the audience is known in film, television and stage production as “breaking the fourth wall.”
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