TIGER KING IS A REALITY SHOW DISGUISED AS A DOCUMENTARY

Netflix's juggernaut doesn't deliver on anything more than mayhem and memes.

About a week into our collective mandated isolation period, we were all looking for something shiny to stare at for seven hours. Anything would do. Described as the perfect tonic of “murder, mayhem and madness” Tiger King gave us exactly what we had hoped for - a mindless and engulfing world for us to fall into as a reprieve from inhaling our third box of Girl Scout cookies, and refreshing our Twitter feeds yet again. Netflix delivered the shiniest, albeit, the most grimy and depressing distraction it could in the form of the seven part "docuseries". If your isolation bunker doesn’t get WiFi and you happened to miss the boat on Tiger King, it’s a show about an Oklahoma man known as Joe Exotic who houses and exploits hundreds of exotic animals, and a few dozen people as well. Of course, this is only partially what the show is about, but you couldn't glean its deeper implications from the various memes floating around the web. Everyone has seen it, and everyone has thoughts. 

I was fully prepared for a mindblowing who-dunnit featuring some kooky and memorable figures. What I wasn’t prepared for was a deeply sadistic ruse designed for us to engage in yet another take on “hurt people hurt people” (and also animals) without any actual perspective. Think a TLC program with a touch more sophistication and a lot more tigers. To be clear - I finished this series and I’ve spent more time in conversation about it than I care to admit. But that doesn’t change the fact that it left me feeling duped, and a little bit pissed. There are two issues with this series; one concerns what the filmmakers chose to present and the other in how they presented it. If it set out to be a true crime show, it didn't deliver on solving anything. If it was aiming to be some sort of National Geographic series, it fell short there too. It certainly didn't deliver on character exploration, and the moral message is muddy. So what the fuck did we just watch?

From the very beginning, it's abundantly clear that the reality we’ve hurled ourselves into is a strange one. The filmmakers, Eric Goode and Rebecca Chailkin, set out to make a documentary about the venomous snake trade before Joe lands in their laps. In the first minute, the series warns us that “Animal people are nuts, man.” And more specifically, “Big cat people are...backstabbing pieces of shit,” according to James Garretson, who plays his part in Joe’s arrest when he acts as an informant for the FBI. 

The first person we meet is Rick Kirkham, a journalist turned reality TV producer who filmed hours of Joe Exotic and his band of misfits in an attempt to piece together a reality show he could sell and retire off of. Kirkham is noticeably weathered, and he might be the most impartial witness to Exotic’s behavior. The filmmakers use Kirkham though, to position themselves as the superior documentarians, taking his lowly associations with reality TV to prop themselves up as prestige. By interviewing him, they situate themselves as something else and by default, something better. They use his stories, his remorse and even the title of his would-be television series so that we (and they) can luxuriate in the spoils of his dirty work.  

The G.W. Zoo is indeed a kingdom, but the king is not well. Joe Exotic, born Joseph Schreibvogel, posits that he has an emotional connection with his animals, and yet he breeds and subsequently kills them for profit. He expects loyalty and hard work of his employees, and yet he pays them less than $150 a week and houses them in infested trailers with no running water. He presents as a devoted and generous spouse and still his lovers feel captive with little to no control of their own lives (resulting in a horrendous accidental suicide of one of his young, drug adled husbands). 

Now imagine what kind of person might threaten someone like Joe Exotic. If you’re picturing a daffy, enigmatic and very wealthy animal rights activist who wears flowers in her hair and cheetah print clothing almost exclusively, ding ding ding! Winner, winner, expired Walmart meat dinner! Enter Carole Baskin, a Floridian blonde whose life mission is to end the private ownership, captivity, and breeding of big cats. The series briefly delves into the disappearance of Baskin’s second husband, Don Lewis, who is kind of a shit in his own way. This backstory has brought an onslaught of speculation and fan theories about Baskin’s alleged involvement in his disappearance. I don’t know what the truth is there, and the series doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned either. That case, although interesting in its own right (her alibi of being at Albertson’s at 2:00AM after catching up with her brother who happens to be a local cop is pretty epic), is kind of irrelevant to the narrative unfolding throughout the episodes, which is a heated legal dispute between Exotic and Baskin. It’s hard to tell whether Goode and Chailkin dedicated an entire episode to her life because they want to give her a fair shake against Exotic, or because they want us to guffaw at the plain absurdity of her. Maybe it’s both. It’s notable however, that they have no problem asking Carole about her questionable past (and practices) but show no attempt to interrogate Joe about his questionable present (or Doc, or any of the dubious zookeepers). I guess it's much easier to confront a woman than a man.

Four episodes in, the human equivalent of a pubic hair named Jeff Lowe poses as a guardian angel for Exotic. In a moment when Baskin and her third husband seem to have Exotic cornered, Lowe steps in to save the day. Little does Exotic realize, Lowe is actually saving the zoo for him and his wife to steal. I suppose we are meant to feel sorry for Joe; he’s depleted financially, and eventually booted out of his own business, but it’s hard to feel compassion for someone who treats everyone and everything as disposable. Parts of Joe’s past are sprinkled throughout the doc to give him some humanity, like his brother’s death and a possible suicide attempt, but again, it’s hard to tell if the series is interested in exploring the truth about, or rather, the real Joe. These tidbits are only meant to get us to stay in the story longer, but never offer substantial exposition or even a firm position from the filmmakers. The problem with humanizing someone like Joe Exotic is the danger of encouraging another damaged person to cut him some slack, which seems to be the currency of his whole life, and thus the docuseries. 

And therein lies the challenge of Tiger King - what is essentially presented as a stylish romp with the promise of crime solving and nature documenting is actually a depressing window into a stunning cycle of not just animal abuse, but human abuse as well, inflicted by scores of well-meaning yet narcissistic men (and yes, women too) who feel owed. But, Goode and Chailkin aren’t really interested in solving anything or digging into hard truths, they’d rather marvel at the animals in the zoo of their own making. They basically stopped at stylish romp, offering nuggets of substance but then covering them with country music videos. We don’t know what actually happened to Carole’s husband, we aren’t sure if Joe Exotic was framed by Jeff Lowe and his failed hitman flunkey Allen Glover, we never find out who set fire to Joe’s studio/alligator menagerie. All these questions just hang in the negative space between John Finlay’s teeth (which have been fixed since last year and were asked by the filmmakers to be removed, along with his shirt during his interviews). If Goode and Chailkin are subtly puppeteering this whole thing, than what makes them different from their subjects who exploit vulnerable animals?

Perhaps the greatest fault of the series is its unwillingness to handle the animal abuse in any real way. The argument is made many times by Exotic and his band of misfits that nobody’s ever physically hurt the animals in the G.W. Zoo. Nobody seems to realize that a systemic problem has been created by the very existence of a roadside zoo, but instead focus on the fact that the species are extinct, or that tigers aren’t getting hurt or that kids gain valuable education by being able to hold or take a picture with a cub. It’s truly bizarre. Not to mention Jeff Lowe's heinous hobby of stuffing cubs into suitcases as orgy bait in Vegas. The only semblance of direct pedagogy or perspective on the matter is a final slate of text, stating that more exotic cats live in captivity in the U.S. than in the wild worldwide. Why didn’t Goode and Chailkin ask any of the cat owners they followed for weeks about this? Why is it a footnote? Would you have guessed this show was made by a conservationist? Because it was.

The less apparent forms of abuse come creeping forth in tiny increments. Joe’s patterns of predatory behavior towards teenage male drug addicts, the financial abuse he inflicts upon his parents. Carole’s leveraging of free labor, inherited money and the unwavering loyalty of her current husband. And maybe most compellingly, Doc Antle’s harem of women and exotic animals who have sponsored his lifestyle for decades. An obvious common thread woven throughout the show is an unrestrained entitlement to hard-won bodies. Bodies of straight teenage boys in the case of Joe, bodies of beautiful young women in the case of Jeff & Doc, bodies of magnificent big cats in everyone’s case. To study these people by only the context of their upbringing or their allegiances or even their enemies, without considering the menace of their actions is the gap that Goode and Chailkin decline to bridge. If you’re going to highlight the absurdity of the circus performers rather than the plight of the circus animals, at least do it with the courage of your own convictions. But again, Goode and Chailkin don’t really offer much perspective, just a series of bricks that stack to make a pyramid of general zaniness and fuckery. 

The show is undoubtedly intoxicating, but I don’t think it’s benign. Its virality and the exalting of Exotic makes it more egregious than the average reality show (which is what it is, by the way). Joe Exotic is not just a kooky guy - he’s dangerous and to consider him and his plight with unquestioned empathy feels wrong. I don’t yet have the bandwidth to get into his political aspirations.

It’s funny to me that this series found fiery fandom in the midst of us all being held captive. Did we collectively commiserate with the animals as we watched, feeling trapped, bored and a little aggressive when provoked? Or is it the escapism we found when transported to a world even worse than the one we’re living through now? I don’t know whether to write Netflix a thank you or a fuck you.