Description
In Don’t scream, stupid, a frightened woman confronts a monstrous apparition, her response giving the fantastic figure a powerful hold over the scene. Francisco Goya’s Don’t Scream, Stupid sets a mocking command beneath an encounter of fear. The contrast makes the woman’s distress seem both immediate and vulnerable to the judgment of someone standing outside it.
Plate 74 of Los Caprichos, published in 1799, uses etching and burnished aquatint to make superstition a bodily experience rather than an abstract belief. Goya’s caption may question the fear without making the apparition visually harmless. The image remains unsettling through that double perspective. What can be dismissed in words still possesses force in the imagination, and the print makes clear how easily a person caught in that force can also become the object of ridicule.
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