With online declarations such as “Harambe lives,” the Ohio zoo gorilla shot and killed after a three-year-old boy got into his enclosure has taken on life after death.
The late 17-year-old great ape has shown up in tongue-in-cheek petitions to rename the hometown Cincinnati Bengals, to add his face to Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial, and to put him on the US dollar bill. He has grown the angel wings and halo of a deity in social media memorials. He has even been mock-nominated for president.
The Harambe phenomenon is fed by genuine sadness over his death, continued controversy over the circumstances that led to it and the penchant of many social media users for satire — which sometimes turns offensive.
hoto: Reuters
“There is a word we like to use in our discipline, in pop culture studies, and that is ‘polysemic’: has many meanings,” said Jeremy Wallach, a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “Harambe definitely is that, a sign that possesses many different interpretations.”
Harambe remembrances began soberly, with a legitimate “Justice for Harambe” petition seeking to hold the boy’s mother responsible in his May 28 death.
The Hamilton county prosecutor ruled there was no cause for charges. The zoo reopened its gorilla exhibit with a higher, reinforced barrier and urged support for gorilla conservation efforts.
However, the zoo’s hopes of moving on have been countered by all the continued reminders.
“We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe,” Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard said by e-mail. “Our zoo family is still healing and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us. We are honoring Harambe by redoubling our gorilla conservation efforts and encouraging others to join us.”
Esther Clinton, who also specializes in popular culture at Bowling Green, said the Kong-like proportions of the craze reflect lingering questions.
“There are a lot of people who really do feel bad about what happened to him,” she said. “There’s a sense of here’s this poor guy, just in his cage imprisoned by humans, minding his own business; a kid climbs into his cage and he gets shot. It brings up all sorts of questions: about the zoo model, about the rights of non-human primates, about parenting.”
The Harambe phenomenon turned ugly in June, when images were posted on a Facebook page likening Adam Goodes, a retired Australian soccer player, to the ape. They were pulled down and the page apologized.
Twitter got caught in a similar controversy after racial posts about Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones, who is black, included a Harambe comparison. The social media site recently announced two new settings aimed at curbing harassment.
Social media users like to satirize controversies. “Never Forget #Harambe,” read posts accompanying Harambe’s photo superimposed on sculptures, above cityscapes, among famous dead people such as Muhammad Ali or John F. Kennedy. Some Twitter users routinely add the hashtag #RIPHarambe even to posts that have nothing to do with him.
He has surfaced in rewritten song lyrics, comedians’ acts, at sports events and in rap songs.
On Change.org, a recent search turned up 253 references to Harambe. They include the early “Justice for Harambe” petition and the recent petition to rename the Cincinnati Bengals the Harambes, which has received more than 21,000 signatures. Other petitions want a Harambe emoji, a Harambe character in Pokemon Go, to clone Harambe, even to canonize him.
WCPO-TV Web editor James Leggate recently said that enough was enough by starting an online petition to end the Harambe online petitions.
“At first, the petitioners had good intentions,” he wrote. “But then the goofuses of the Internet hopped on the Harambe train for their jollies and it has gotten out of control.”
Animal rights activist Anthony Seta, who organized a Cincinnati vigil in tribute to Harambe soon after his death, thinks much of the attention in terms of memorials has been a positive.
“For the most part, I’m very happy with it. It shows people are remembering what a wonderful being he was,” he said. “The ones that are mocking and making light of the death of this being, I find incredibly offensive.”
Ashley Byrne, an associate director at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said trolls poking fun at animal-rights activists seem to be in a “distinct minority” when it comes to Harambe.
“This tragic incident really did start a new conversation,” she said. “Most people who saw the video came away with a great degree of empathy for animals forced to live in captivity.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS