Today
It's turning up everywhere: on mugs, T-shirts, even blowup dolls. "The Scream," that image of dread painted by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893, has clearly struck a nerve in popular culture. There's a Scream pillow with a built-in shrieking voice, and Pontiac has been exploiting the image to hawk its Sunfire. "'The Scream' is amazingly popular with college-age people," reports Pontiac's Jim Bunnell.
Why does the image still resonate a century after its creation? "It expresses our anguish at what the world has become," suggests Manhattan psychoanalyst Emanuel Hammer, Ph.D. He sees the painting's recent popularity as gallows humor: "We try to laugh when we're on the verge of crying."
New Jersey psychiatrist Jay Cohen, M.D., adds that the figure's androgyny and vague ethnicity mean that "people can see in it what they want. And that makes it accessible." It might also explain the painting's cross-cultural appeal: Off-The-Wall Productions, in St. Louis, says the second leading market for its inflatable Scream doll is, of all places, Japan.
