The Chris Moeller Archives

The Mighty Harambe

A very tragic story this tale of the 3-year-old boy who climbed into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, causing the great ape, Harambe, to alternately shield the boy and drag him rather inelegantly (from a Hominini's perspective) from place to place. Since you are reading this on the internet, you have no doubt heard the conclusion of the story. Zoo officials shot and killed the western lowland silverback for fear that a tranquilizer dart would be ineffective and cause the animal to panic. The event has touched off a firestorm of debate on social media, combining, and pitting against one another, the issues of animal cruelty, zoological ethics, and child neglect. An online petition aimed at holding the child's parents criminally-responsible gained more than 100,000 signatures in its first 48 hours. The family is black so naturally it was incumbent upon the media to investigate the father's criminal record even though he wasn't at the zoo at the time, is gainfully employed, and appears to be a loving, engaged father in the many photos posted online.

I believe in compassion towards all living things, and Harambe is a magnificently-beautiful organism (gorillas-- literally our cousins-- are my favorite part of any zoo, and yes, I support the existence of zoos). But I am shocked at the people that cry over the fate of the gorilla, yet can’t get a good lather built up over a police officer killing an unarmed child or the Pentagon robot-bombing a wedding ceremony on the Arabian peninsula.

I liked this great ape story better the first time I saw it-- when it was called King Kong, that 1933 classic film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and starring Fay Wray as Megaprimatus kong's fragile victim.

Like Kong, Harambe is an innocent. For all his thumping around, he behaves the complete gentleman. Yet he’s so big, and we are so small. Our minds become hyper-aware of the possibilities, and those potential outcomes are real. The key difference in today’s tale from Kong is that there’s no uneasy romantic implication in the story nor a conclusion drawn in stop-motion animation. And I really used Wikipedia a lot for this post.

posted by CM @ 10:32 PM