Dicks Out for Harambe: A modern revival of post WWI Dadaism

Harambe is without a doubt a modern day tragedy.  A child at a zoo climbs into a gorilla cage in May of 2016.  In fact the child climbed a three-foot-tall fence, crawled through four feet of bushes, and then fell fifteen feet into a moat of shallow water. "Where were the parents?" became an oft recited line as many were left to wonder how a small child could go unnoticed as they slowly overcame a veritable obstacle course to personally meet the gorillas.  The male silverback gorilla grabs and drags the boy.  A guard fearing for the child's life fatally shoots the gorilla.  

That tragedy became an overwhelming force through a massive media blitz.  Harambe stories could be found on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, and all the major networks.  In large part because of that media blitz the internet reacted with an equal and opposite force.  Harambe memes have spread across the internet.  It was bad enough that the Cincinnati Zoo asked people to stop making Harambe memes as one might expect when dealing with teh internetz that didn't go as expected.  The zoo instead shut down it's twitter account after a new flurry of memes were generated.

Now, some of that is normal internet behavior.  And frankly the next section here seems on the surface to be pretty typical sophomoric humor from the internet.  As the story continues to grow a slogan and a rallying cry develops.  The call is "Dicks out for Harambe!" or DO4H or DOFH.  The original line came from these twitter user here: Who tweeted with an image with him with a gun and the tagline "We coming with them dick's out to avenge Harambe."  From there the comedian Brandon Wardel posted the first known line of "Dicks out for Harambe"

Now, I admit.  At first glance this whole thing is pretty ridiculous.  The explanation of the start though is that the true meaning of "dick" in this case is actually a reference to gun a la the controversial rapper Young Thug.  So, when the original poster posing with his gun says "dicks out"he means something akin to "guns blazing."  He's talking about violent revenge for Harambe.  That said, the majority of people in the world aren't Young Thug fans and the meaning of "dick" was lost on them.  The majority of the internet took to believing it meant to pull ones penis out in honor of Harambe.

So, you've gotten here.  What does any of this have to do with WWI?  For that matter what is Dadaism?

Dadaism was a style of performance art primarily practiced during and immediately after WWI.  The Avante Guarde artform originated in Europe, but quickly spread to New York.  The performance often had absurd and sexually oriented material in it that was extreme for the time.  Performers would operate in black box theaters, lock the doors, and masturbate.  While the sexual portions of the performance were often the most over-the-top the whole theme of the material was often anti-war and anti-bourgeois.  The artists and many of the attendees often shared a profound distaste for the state violence and intellectual conformity that allowed violent transgressions by the state.  Traditional art aims to making lasting positive impressions.  Dadaism as a true anti-art was designed to offend the senses and break the monotony of thought that permitted the atrocities.  Some performances have in and of themselves caused riots!

What I take from all of this is a current reemergence of Dadism in the face of endless war, idiotic news coverage, and a gross distaste for the state of the nation.  Iraq and Afghanistan now stand at trillions of dollars of money spent with what appears to the common voter to be no improvement in regional stability.  The pentagon can't account for $6.5T it spent.  Thousands of US soldiers, and hundreds of thousands innocent bystanders are dead.  America is faced with a vote for two of the most disliked politicians in history.  But those aren't the headline stories.  Harambe is/was.  It's no wonder the internet went crazy for him.

I guess my point is that Harambe's death wasn't in vain.  It's highlighting a tradition of lambasting the status quo with the absurd in a desperate attempt to wake the sleeping public that accepts the propaganda from the state that endless wars are necessary and good.  And to that I say "Dicks Out!"

Please toss your favorite Harambe meme in the comments below in honor of our fallen friend and be sure to send one over to the Cincinnati Zoo.