CINCINNATI—With online declarations such as “Harambe Lives!” the Ohio zoo gorilla shot and killed after a 3-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 dollar bill. He has grown the angel wings and halo of a deity in social media memorials.
He’s 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.
“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 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.
