CINCINNATI (AP) — The Twitter accounts of an Ohio zoo where gorilla Harambe was fatally shot have been disabled.
The Cincinnati Zoo has said it’s not amused by the memes, online petitions and signs about Harambe, a 17-year-old great ape killed in May by a special zoo response team after a 3-year-old boy got into his enclosure. Harambe has been mourned, memorialized and satirized nearly continuously since his death.
Those seeking the Twitter sites Tuesday of the zoo or its director, Thane Maynard, got messages saying, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”
A zoo spokeswoman confirmed without comment Tuesday that it has deactivated its accounts. Maynard recently told The Associated Press by email that the zoo family is “still healing.”
In addition to genuine expressions of sadness or outrage, Harare’s life-after-death online has spawned 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 the penchant of many social media users for satire that 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.
But the zoo’s hopes of moving on have been countered by all the continued reminders.
The Harambe phenomenon turned ugly in June, when images were posted on a Facebook page likening Adam Goodes, a retired Australian football player of indigenous ancestry, 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.
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.”
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Carr Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio. Follow her at http://twitter.com/jcarrsmyth . Follow Dan Sewell at http://twitter.com/dansewell For some of their other recent stories: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/julie-carr-smyth or http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-sewell
