There was a very distracting moment that lasted around 2 minutes at last night's vice-presidential debate between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. A fly landed indeed on Pence's head and stayed there for two long minutes, enough for people all over the world to star trolling Pence on social media.
The fly was soon trending on Twitter and then it got an account in its name. In the meantime the Biden-Harris campaign launched a very apt fundraising call ("Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly") and put on sale a Biden/Harris fly swatter with the caption "Truth over flies" (the swatter was immediately sold out).
Apart from the fact that Pence looked rather silly with a fly on his head, the symbolism behind the insect wasn't lost. Some wondered if the fly was the final proof he was a zombie rottening; "He's so full of crap, he's attracting flies!" commented Late Show host Stephen Colbert.
In art the fly has often been used as an allegory: while it is not rare to find a fly in paintings to trick the viewer's eye and create illusions, most painters used flies as symbols of the transience of human life, but also as references to death and illnesses (very apt themes considering the Coronavirus outbreak at the White House and President Donald Trump getting infected as well).
At London's National Gallery there is an intriguing painting, the "Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family," (c. 1470) by an artist from the German (Swabian) School.
The woman portrayed wears a white headdress characterised by angular folds. The sculptural piece looks striking on the dark background, but an element distracts us from its perfection, a fly that has landed on the headdress, symbolising the trancience of life (the woman is gesturing towards a sprig of forget-me-nots, so she may be inviting us to remember her after her death). But the site of the National Gallery adds: "As flies could spread disease and were sometimes seen as a symbol of sinfulness, its presence might be intended to ward against evil and illness."
In modern times Damien Hirst literally incorporated flies in his works: in 1997 he created a painting by gluing thousands of flies' bodies onto a canvas and used the same technique in other works, such as "Typhoid", "AIDS", "Genocide", "Holocaust" and "Carnage". In an interview Hirst explained: "I think it was Thomas Hobbes who said people are like flies brushed off a wall. I like that metaphorically. Your whole life could be like points in space, like nearly nothing. If you stand back far enough you think people are just like flies, like the cycle of a fly is like your own life. When you make that connection with the paintings... it is like all the people in the world who die in a hundred years. That amount of death is pretty black."
There is actually a fascinating essay entitled "Insects and Death" about the symbolism between insects, evil and corruption by entomologist Ron Cherry that makes you shiver. The entomologist explains indeed that "The ultimate demon associated with an insect is Beelzebub (...) A popular title for Beelzebub was 'lord of the flies,' and he was worshipped under the form of a fly."
Pence's fly also sparked a Halloween costume that will probably be the most terrifying on the market this year (perfect for that "lord of the flies" moment...), but if you want a more stylish interpretation of the insect look go back in time to the '30s.
In 1938 Schiaparelli launched the insect inspired "Pagan Collection" (that must have inspired Prada's Winter 1999 collection with its coats and skirts covered in leaf motifs and decorated here and there with crystal insects) with its necklace made from clear plastic covered with metallic insects and her straw hat decorated with pink and green flies and beetles. For further insect looks please refer to previous post about the use of insects and in particular or bees, hornets and beetles in fashion or in art and fashion collaborations, such as Prada/Damien Hirst's "Entomology" bags from 2013.
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