After looking at the painting the scream in class today I could not help myself from relating it to the masked killer of the movie Scream 1,2 and 3. First of all the name is clearly related and the mask looks a lot like the face of the figure in the painting with some extra distortion. When Munch painted this, he was expressing the feelings of isolation and alienation that one can feel at times or all the time. In its historical context, this painting makes sense and is important. In Scream the movie, the killer is/are characters that feel isolated and alienated which is why they act like they do (which is still ridiculous but I don't make mainstream horror film...). But what I am trying to get to here is the fact that when we watch this film, when I watched it before I honestly never made the connection and that is the problem. As Jameson says it creates a privation of history by making a new representation of something that exists. Also it changes its ideology. In his painting, Munch is trying to express real feelings but by using this in a film it has made it a commodity. We now see kids wearing the scream mask on Halloween for example. By reproducing these objects and selling them it takes away from the original painting its essence and also makes it into something stupid and ridiculous. We no longer see its depth and its ideological meaning.
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