I was talking with my brother during the holiday driving about how he wanted to make a variety of pop-cultural stained glass windows.
One of his ideas that I liked a lot was to make a window which depicted Ronald McDonald as sort of a Christ figure, which I though was particularly great. I was just now imagining a crucified Ronald McDonald, blood dripping from his hands and feet, which the children underneath were capturing underneath with opened Happy Meal boxes. Or maybe they would be dipping their fries in his blood. I think that’s particularly apropos.
Anyway, I just want to throw some links together for myself, cause I think this whole thing would make a great article, as well as a stained glass window. I’m particularly looking for imagery of Ronald with kids. There seems to be a lot of it. Probably the main recurring theme actually is Ronald McDonald participating at groundbreaking ceremonies for hospital wings and Ronald McDonald Houses.
One thing I found on a Ronald McDonald House site that strikes me as particularly churchy:
- This is the house where families meet to continue their lives… to eat and sleep… to find their strengths and dry their tears… to look forward with hope tobetter years, this is the house that becomes their home… this is the house that love built.
Here’s a particularly odd RM toy, of him seated in a sort of Buddha-esque pose, one hand raised in friendly greeting. The description says that this toy doubles as a piggybank, I guess with the unstated intention of getting kids used to giving their money to the McDonald’s corporation.
You can download some .eps files of McDonald’s characters here, at the McDonald’s multimedia center. Rest assured that I’ll be putting those to good use.
Ah, here we go, score! It’s Ronald.com, “the internet’s land for fun.” Wow, what an unfun website. This website is leading me to believe that the McDonald’s pantheon consists mainly of Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar, Birdie, Grimace, and those irascible talking Chicken McNuggets. I remember there being more characters. Am I wrong?
I like how on Grimace’s main page, it has a “fun fact” about him that says:
- My favorite drink is a milkshake. I think milkshakes are the best.
And those two words are in bold.
Ahhh… here we go, a more complete history of the Characters from McDonaldland. In addition to the characters delineated above, there is also Mayor McCheese, Captain Crook, Big Mac, and Fry Guy & Fry Girl. Here’s a picture of the whole gang.
So I guess that makes the Hamburglar into some sort of Devil to RM’s Christ. Ronald is all about like charity and giving happiness, but the Hamburglar is all about taking hamburgers that aren’t his. Whereas I guess Grimace represents the flipside of that, where if you follow Ronald blindly and stupidly, you’ll be able to get as fat as you want off of these burgers of happiness.
I just realized how weird the name “Grimace” actually is. I always assumed it was somehow related to smiling, but not in any of the official definitions that I have seen:
- - A sharp contortion of the face expressive of pain, contempt, or disgust.
- a facial expression usually of disgust or disapproval
That’s fucking strange as hell. That really seals the deal that Grimace is actually sad tortured character. Maybe his deep purple color is a sign of depression too. Or maybe it’s the color he turns from choking on one too many hamburgers.
I don’t know how Birdie fits into this, but it’s interesting to note that she’s the only female character in the mix (besides Fry Girl - who doesn’t count, I think, since she’s kinda secondary). Birdie is described on that character history page as being crazy and full of ideas, and that she loves flying, but doesn’t know how to land very well. I think that speaks volumes right there.
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