The death of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe was met with a wave of social media backlash. Within this reaction, the event shouldn’t go to waste as an opportunity to examine the landscape of trophy hunting as a whole, its vilification from Western media and all of the nuanced ironies that come with it.

Cecil the Lion was murdered, skinned and beheaded in early July by Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota who was hunting in Zimbabwe. The public backlash has been continuous and aggressive. As of August 28, protesters were still gathered outside of his dental office. The exact whereabouts of Palmer remain unknown.

It’s important to note, from the get-go, that trophy hunting is both cruel and unnecessary. Any perceived glory or machismo gained on behalf of the hunter is misguided, a disappointing reflection of the vanity stemming from popular masculinity. For this, there is nothing wrong, at face value, of the aggressive online bombardment received by Palmer for his actions. There is nothing inherently wrong about “liking” your friend’s post about this killing, or even taking the time to comment on it through various social media channels. But there is certainly more to the story than mainstream media lets on, and much more to consider.

“The only consistency in the way humans think about animals is inconsistency,” notes Hal Herzog, a prominent anthrozoologist in his book “Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals.” Sentient beings are killed in droves, every day, in much worse ways than being gunned down in the wild. For the most part, nobody says a word. There is nothing “trend-worthy” about the Internet exploding with outrage over factory farming.

“Cecil the Lion” is a majestic name for an undoubtedly majestic creature. It has got such a ring to it, that it seems natural to wonder why we don’t try to give all animals names. At face value, attaching a name to an animal seems harmless, but its significance is highlighted when juxtaposed with those animals that remain nameless. It’s no coincidence that, out of all of the similar incidents environmental and animal rights groups try to bring to the public’s attention, this was both the story that gained the most traction and the story where the dead animal had a name.

“By giving an individual name to animal, we are singling them out from the great swath of animals who we don’t name. Just naming them is a way to say they’re special. Cecil the Lion had a name; the millions of cattle and pigs or billions of chickens we slaughter each year do not,” explained Robert Wilson, an SU geography professor with a specialty in animal geography, in an email to The Daily Orange.

The last major wrinkles left mostly untouched by mainstream Western media were the sweeping generalizations of Zimbabwe that accompanied the story.

“Reading about a ‘famous’ and ‘much-loved’ Zimbabwean lion in the international news, I was surprised that I did not know Cecil or that he was famous,” noted Alex Magaisa, a Zimbabwe native, in an August 2 op-ed for Al Jazeera America. “So I did a quick poll in my friends and family in Zimbabwe and around the world. None of them knew Cecil, who was supposedly ‘a symbol of Zimbabwe,’ as one British paper put it.”

This sentiment reflects the representation of an international situation skewed to pull at the heartstrings of a removed, Western audience.

For a country seldom featured in the Western news cycle, this narrow portrayal of an issue is unfortunate. When coupled with its perpetuation of hypocritical, speciesist outrage, it becomes more important than ever to fully dissect and learn from this unfortunate event so if it happens again, there can be a deeper, more encompassing discussion surrounding the multifaceted issues at play.

Azor Cole is a senior public relations major and geography minor. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at azcole@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @azor_cole.

Published on August 31, 2015 at 12:36 am