What’s With the Horns?
It began well over fifteen years ago, probably around 1993 when the Irish rock band U2 was on their Zoo T.V. Tour. During this tour, the lead singer Bono invented some personalities for the stage.
The first was The Fly Guy, a black leather clad pop star with huge wrap around bug-eyed sunglasses. There was also the Mirrorball Man (an evangelical-esque performer) and of course the infamous Mr. MacPhisto. Mr. Macphisto is described by Bono as the ageing rock star (perhaps the Fly Guy at the end of his career), the filthy rich, fat-Elvis, Las Vegas entertainer long past his prime. Macphisto was created to be a parody of the devil, after Mephistopheles of the Faust legend.
I was in my early twenties at the time when my good friend Matt was bursting with excitement to give me a birthday present. To my everlasting delight I opened a T-Shirt he had made, hand drawn. A caricature of me. Back then I had a full beard and spiked-hair. When I wore my contacts, I was always seen wearing round-rimmed sunglasses, sometimes purple, sometimes black. And knowing my love for the Punk band The Ramones, their name also made it onto the t-shirt’s t-shirt. The horns reflected Bono’s Macphisto. I was christened Macphisto (no doubt a play on words of my last name - Mac Donald).During the song “The Fly” on this tour, the audience was bombarded by images and phrases that flashed across dozens and dozens of video screens. Most notably:
and most fitting:
“Mock the Devil and he will run.”
I am sure that part of the reason this caricature has horns is that I do have an impish sense of humour and have a bit of the devil inside me as well. But at the end of the day it should be taken as a way to mock the devil.
In the last year or so the picture has evolved once I joined Facebook (or as my brother-in-law likes to call it, FaceCult). Now there is a whole line of images with different hats, backgrounds and the like. I still have the original T-shirt, it is a bit faded and the collar is beginning to wear thin. A suitable symbol just like the washed up version of Bono’s MacPhisto, don’t you think?
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Excellent slideshow of MacPhisto characters! I forgot there were so many!
ReplyDeleteThe horns on the devil figure, I think, is a bastardization of the mythical figure, Pan. The Church, In the Beginning, was busy associating itself every benign pagan feast day and turning darker pagan figures into devils. So, I guess we could say that the Catholic Church is the Microsoft of spirituality -- stealing its whole schtick from others, and just changing the names.