In case you missed it on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and pretty much anywhere else on the internet, here’s what happened to our lord and savior Harambe: On May 27th, Harambe celebrated his 17th birthday in the Cincinnati Zoo. On May 28, he was shot dead, as zoo officials wanted to protect a child who climbed into the gorilla enclosure and fell into the moat. His death had many results; international debates, outrage and, most notably, memes. This fabulous journey from being a live gorilla to a controversial meme is what this article is all about. We don’t know about you, but we are sure Harambe would have loved it.
What is key in this story is that instead of shooting a tranquilizer dart, Harambe was shot with a regular bullet, killing him instantly. This sparked a global debate on zoo policy and animal rights. Many people blamed the children’s parents for his death, as they found that they should have paid more attention to the safety of their child. Others were more concerned with the fate of the boy and praised the zoo’s quick decision to end the dangerous situation.
The very same day, social media already picked up on the story and quickly hashtags like #RIPHarambe and #JusticeForHarambe started circulating. This is when the parodies and memes started flooding in. People took images of Harambe and created ironically sincere tributes. The origin of the immensely popular saying #DicksOutForHarambe remains elusive to this day. Both twitter user ‘sexualjumanji’ and comedian Brandon Wardell claim to have come up with the joke. When they tried to fight it out on Twitter, the discussion ended with the former saying ‘take me to court daddy’. But not only internet-based jokes arrived. There are petitions asking to put Harambe on the 50-dollar bill, people campaigning to erect a statue of him outside the White House and more shirt designs than you can count.
So the question remains: why Harambe? Why did this incident, and not any other, become such a popular meme? The joke carries some remnants of Cecil the Lion, but it became so much bigger than that. Many newspapers and serious opinion pieces argue that it is because Harambe is not just a gorilla. At the time, he represented a real issue in animal welfare and because it was so large, it was easy to parodize. Harambe is indeed not just a gorilla; he became a martyr for a cause. The Internet then also took him up as hero, but milked out his status for humorous posts. As the Washington Post described it ‘The idea is, the more intense and more sincere-seeming the expression of mourning is, the funnier the joke.’
The meme doesn’t show any signs of stopping. The Cincinnati Zoo has expressed their dislike of the memeification of Harambe, but no one took any notice. People continue to write songs, create tributes and excuse their behavior by saying that Harambe would have wanted them to do it. And he would have wanted us to keep living our life to the most. Harambe, the noble animal he was, deserved so much more than being shot, even as he was dragging a small human child over a concrete rock, and we must never let his legacy die.
Hitanshi Shah, Class of 2018, is a Law, Politics and Anthropology major from Bangkok, Thailand.
Maaike Oosterling, Class of 2016, is a Cognitive Science and Psychology major from Zwijndrecht, the Netherlands.
