Making a Meme

It began in Holland.

In the spring of 2016, Dutch sculptor Margriet van Brifort created Homunculus Loxodontus (Latin for something like “elephant in human form”), a sculpture placed at the Leiden Academic Hospital that was inspired by people she saw sitting in the queue to see their doctors.

Part blob, part sea elephant, in January of this year, the Homunculus burst into Russian meme-dom and has been making Forrest Gump-like appearances in everything from fine art to government meetings. And it has been given the Russian name Zhdun (from ждать – to wait). In Ukraine it has also been called Pochekun.

Zhdun has since morphed into a symbol not only for people who wait, but for mother-in-laws, train conductors, and those who are incompetent with computers.

In a piece he wrote for Vedomosti, Russian journalist and political scientist Dmitry Travin said he long thought that Russia’s national animal was Cheburashka, but now he realized it is Zhdun. In his opinion, Zhdun is “sad, lazy and sluggish, but also likable and optimistic. He is overcome with fat, and has hung his nose and crossed his arms atop the fatty layers of his stomach, because the country has long been ruled by stagnation and there are no conditions for either political, civic, or investor activity. But Zhdun is an optimist. He does not despair. He hid himself away and waits. For now, he is waiting for the 2018 presidential elections.... Zhdun is our everything. Not Pushkin, but Zhdun.”