Defamiliarize the technique

In his essay "Art as a Technique," Viktor Shklovsky writes, "The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar'" (Rivkin 18).

Sounds a bit like William Wordsworth's in the Preface of his 1878 book Lyrical Ballads: defamiliarize the familiar.

Shklovsky, however, uses Leo Tolstoy as an example with his character Kholstomer: a talking horse. Though it is unlikely that a human being will come across a mare with an English (or Russian for that matter) vocabulary, Tolstoy's creates and tells a story from a horse's point of view. For example, the horse narrates, "In life people are guided by words, not by deeds" (Rivkin 17). What a striking sentence to come from a horse’s mouth. The horse understands his identity and position in his world (the horse literally is guided by words), and in this mere phrase he points out that so are human beings.

I could not get away with writing a blog post on formalism without using Daft Punk as an example. Daft Punk is the French Electronic duo Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. The music, or art, that they create consistently uses the technique of "defamiliarization" (Rivkin 16). The French musicians dress only in space-like costumes with face covering helmets. Their persona are out of this world which is reflective of their intentionally unusual music.

The music video for Da Funk depicts an ironic story about a talking dog (dressed in clothing and standing on two legs) walking amongst human beings in New York City. While the dog partakes in normal human activities, the people around him are un-accepting. For example, in loud and roaring New York City, the dog walks around with a boom-box blasting Da Funk and is told to turn it off. Another example is a (typically obnoxious) street solicitor rejects his the dog’s offer to indulge in her survey. None of the people around him react to the fact that a Dog is walking and talking, but they seem to mind him doing things of the norm. The way in which Daft Punk (and director Spike Jones) portray the creature, it is hard enough not to fixate on the fact that a dog is walking and talking let alone his unlawful rejections amongst the crowd!

Daft Punk thrives on the abnormal byway of depicting quests for identity. The group typically creates a social commentary using abnormal constructs to highlight society's limited points of view.