2015 King Mango Strut parade in Coconut Grove

The King Mango Strut takes place each year in Coconut Grove, Miami, and 2015 marked the 34th such event. The theme for this year’s parade was “The Farce Awakens”, a homonym of the recently released Star Wars 7 movie “The Force Awakens”, which in itself is humorous enough.

At the parade, which focuses on using surrealist drama and dressing up to ridicule current events, any topic is fair game. It will come as no surprise then that the up-and-coming 2016 US presidential election was of course a major topic at the event, most noticeably the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, and Republican candidate Donald Trump – the recent US-Cuba thaw was another hot topic appearing in the parade.

Another interesting sight was the groups of parade goers dressed up as a variety of bears, while indiscriminately shooting toy guns. The reason for this is that at the start of October 2015, the government of Florida announced it was opening bear hunting for the first time in 20 years, causing resentment among many animal right’s groups.

The government’s move was prompted by the fact that the total number of wild bears existing in Florida now exceeds three thousand and in the past two years four people have been killed in bear attacks. The ultimate goal of King Mango Strut is to bring a wide range of groups together at the end of each year to defuse serious news issues through a combination of humor and satire, thereby allowing everyone to greet the new year with a smile.

2015 King Mango Strut parade in Coconut Grove

URL：http://www.peopo.org/news/297111

(以下為中文對照)

美國椰林2015芒果王嘲諷遊行

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King Mango Strut「芒果王嘲諷遊行」每年都在美國邁阿密椰林〈Coconut Grove〉舉辦，2015年已經是第34屆了，主題是The farce awaken〈鬧劇覺醒〉，取星際大戰原力覺醒 The Force Awakens的諧音，配合電影〈星際大戰七部曲：原力覺醒〉上映，光是主題就非常的幽默風趣。

遊行主要是用狀況劇或是打扮來嘲諷時事，任何議題都可以拿來幽默化一番。2016年的美國總統選舉，當然成為遊行的重點話題之一，最聚焦的就是民主黨的參選人希拉蕊，和共和黨的參選人川普。美國和古巴解凍新聞議題也出現在今年隊伍當中。

也有遊行團體打扮成各種熊類，持著玩具槍到處發射，起因為2015年10月開始，是20多年來佛州第一次開放獵熊，因為佛州現有的野生熊總數超過三千多頭，過去的兩年間，有四名民眾被熊攻擊而死亡，所以佛州政府宣布開放一周獵熊，引起了許多愛護動物組織的不滿。各式各樣的團體，用幽默的態度去化解嚴肅的新聞議題，每年年底，以芒果王嘲諷遊行做為結尾，笑著迎接新的一年開始，就是這個遊行最終的目的。