A Pop Cultural History of the Scream

Of all the vocalizations that humans make, screams are likely the rarest. An expression of pure terror, the scream is also capable of provoking fear. Its distinguishing feature, acoustic “roughness,” activates the amygdala, which regulates our feelings of fear. Scientists believe that the scream, as a warning system, was the precursor to other human vocalization. It is primal, and thus a source of universal fascination.

Because of its unusual qualities and relative rarity, the scream has been given tremendous salience in cultural expression. It exists as its own character, a unifying symbol or meme, and as an auditory cue. Let’s take a look at some of the scream’s biggest moments in popular culture.

The Scream as a Symbol: Edvard Munch’s The Scream

Few paintings have been parodied as much as Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream, originally titled Skrik (Shriek) in Norwegian and Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature) in German. Munch said that he was walking along a bridge when the sky suddenly turned an angry orange-red. He considered it to be the mundane world emitting a terrific shriek. While the painting depicts the bridge and colorful sky that Munch described, he gave the scream to a humanoid character who seems to be looking at something just out of frame.