The People’s Pygmy Princess and Female Rage: Memes featuring Moo-Deng
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2298/GEI2502063ZKeywords:
Moo-Deng, pygmy hippopotamus, memes, female rage, humananimal relationsAbstract
Born in summer 2024 at Khao Kheow open zoo in Thailand, Moo-Deng (eng. “Bouncy pork”) is a female baby pygmy hippopotamus whose photographs and videos have become a viral sensation online. She was chosen by zoo staff to promote awareness of her endangered species, but images of Moo-Deng quickly went viral, and owing to her expressive facial features, took on a life of their own, becoming memes and (more importantly) being turned into fan art by people around the globe. The fact that Moo-Deng is female (or, as the sometimes accompanying text puts it: “just a girl”, fig.1)1 led to a somewhat unexpected association between the pygmy hippo and female rage. This paper will analyze memes and other visual content shared on Instagram, that features Moo-Deng, as ways of articulating female rage which becomes socially acceptable through visual association with a cute animal, as well as delve into the ways in which an animal’s facial expressions become interpretable and interpreted by a global human audience in the wider context of human-animal relations.
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