Sympathy for the Scream

By Kevin Somers

In 1893, Edvard Munch, Oscar Wilde with a paint brush, gave us The Scream, and it keeps getting better.  The popular endurance of piece has a lot to do with its visceral impact; one shares an immediate sense of partnership with the screamer.  The screamer is a solitary figure, but he’s not alone with his (her?) anguish and its release.  We look at the willowy screamer, and taste life’s frustrations, too.  Munch captures – loud and clear - the sentiments of anyone who’s fed up and isn’t going to take it anymore. 

To his friends, Munch was dark and tormented, but a great wit, as well.  In an early self-portrait we the two sides of the artist.  Painted with precision, half of Munch’s face is brightly illuminated.  There is a mischievous look in one eye, and his lips are forming the scarcely perceptible smirk of a satirist.  The left half of the artist’s face, however, is invisibly dark.  In Munch’s The Scream, there is morbid quality in the skull-headed, pale shrieking subject that makes one think of death.  The screamer looks like Grim Reaper without a hood and sickle.  There is also an amusing quality to the painting.  Like its creator, The Scream is dark, but the swirling, bold, maniacal hyperbole make it funny, too. 

The screamer is on a wooden pier. The fiery sky, shifting and aggressive lines give the painting’s background an epic uneasiness Van Gogh would appreciate.  Something of Shakespearean proportion is wrong.  Dead centre of the work is the screamer, a man (or woman) who, for whatever reason, has temporarily gone insane, and their anguish impacts heaven and earth.  Who hasn’t been that mad at least once?  The Scream is an enduring, universal, and potent symbol of anguish.  Edvard Munch is considered amongst Norway’s greatest artists and The Scream is his best known work.  I wonder at the catalyst for such a piece of work.

What could have driven Munch or his subject so thoroughly insane?  Perhaps the screamer has seen the future, and it’s been explained to him that the most powerful man ever is George W. Bush.  I scream when I think about it.  Maybe he’s a Leaf fan.  I scream about that, too.

Perhaps she’s screaming for ice cream.  I do.  You do.  We all scream for ice cream.  Residents of Ontario were screaming about the cost of hydro, recently.  Ernie Eves took care of the bill, however, and we stopped screaming.  Then the power went off and our ice cream melted, so we started screaming again.  I’ll bet Dalton McGuinty screams when he sees the debt Ernie and the boys left behind.  Ernie’s mentor, Mike Harris, might be our next prime minister.  Cue scream.

Maybe the screamer has just stepped on a nail and the pain is distorting.  Maybe she has just broken a nail, and is distortedly vain.  Maybe she’s been all day in a government office filling out forms.  Maybe he works for the government and banality has driven him mad.  Her boss is a nitwit, perhaps, and this is how she spends many lunch hours.  Maybe the screamer overheard the couple on the pier talking enthusiastically about reality TV.  That makes me scream.

Whenever a conversation turns to music, or I have an opportunity to talk, I bring up Fred Eaglesmith.  The response is often, “Who’s that?” and I want to scream.  The shame of the 407 highway makes me scream.  Perhaps it’s more personal, and the screamer is in the midst of a marital spat.  The amount of gear my wife packs for a weekend makes me scream.  Fair enough, I’m not perfect either.  She likes telling stories about screaming at me. 

The beauty of art is its ability to capture significance; even that of a tormented, solitary figure on a blustery pier 120 years ago, and make it magical.   Much like Mona Lisa, the screamer touches a nerve in many of us;The Scream is amongst world’s most known paintings.  The universal appeal of The Scream makes it more interesting.  I scream, you scream.  We all scream.  It’s inevitable.