The fascination with 'Tiger King' Joe Exotic is a damning indictment of our culture of distraction and escapism
Dr. Anthony Fauci's face is a mood we all probably identified with when a New York Post reporter asked President Donald Trump during a pandemic presser if Joe Exotic would be pardoned. As Trump took the question seriously and asked CNN's Jim Acosta to weigh in, we reached critical mass when it came to our current culture of distracting ourselves to forget our problems.
The 'Tiger King' phenomenon is a child of the pandemic. As the world goes through the quarantine apocalypse, Netflix's true-crime series distracted us. We escaped the too-big crisis of the coronavirus waging war on humankind as we hunkered down in our homes.
Instead, we focussed on the small-potato crises of a 57-year-old "gun-toting gay redneck", who had a polyamorous marriage, did drugs and was a former private zoo operator and seller and abuser of big cats. Joe Exotic with his crazy, meme-able antics and his mullet became our spirit animal because he entertained us in our homes during a particularly vulnerable period.
But he also symbolizes a worrying cultural trend of focussing on distractions whenever the real-world problems become too big and too scary to be solved. At best, it is a way to deal with our collective anxiety as the planet goes from bad to worse and there are no brakes going downhill. At worst, he is a symbol of our collective apathy and childishness. Calls for his pardon can also be seen through this lens -- since we can't solve the world's problems, let's solve the problems of Joe Exotic.
Celebrity culture of late, hooked to the reality TV genre, from 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' to 'Real Housewives' shows, has paved the way for Joe Exotic and the sympathy he has garnered. Reality TV celebs can do whatever they want as long as they are entertaining; in fact, the worse they behave the better because that's "good TV". We will give them our money, sign their petitions, and hit subscribe because their petty problems are a way to escape our own problems.
Anti-heroes who become folk legends are a staple of American culture -- look at the way we regard 'Joker' or how serial killers become instant celebrities. We are fascinated by evil, especially aestheticized evil, packaged for our consumption by media and popular culture offerings.
But what is troublesome is how this once 'distanced love' has become an uncomfortably close one in these times of oversharing, constant tweeting and Instagramming. Celebs, who were once distant figures, are allowing a sort of access never seen before. This is again a fall-out of the reality TV culture.
And as we chase entertainment-based escapism, this access has meant that we think we know the people we are venerating based on what we see of them in manufactured content. At the same time, they are not entirely real people to us because we interact with their lives through a screen. Thus, we can discuss them and analyze them endlessly because they have no real-life bearing on our immediate lives.
Netflix's 'Tiger King' also cleverly avoids showing the extent of Joe Exotic's criminal behavior from him grooming his underage boyfriends to his well-established cruelty to animals in his care to his violent death threats. Instead, they focus on the distractions of his mannerisms, his entertaining songs and his feud with Carole Baskins, another equally sketchy and controversial figure.
In the line up of not very good people, the Netflix series casts Joe Exotic as the outcast hero. And we fell for it. We shower our sympathy on Joe Exotic instead of the people and animals on whom he wrecked tremendous pain and suffering.
Just like how the 'prestige' portion of a magic act distracts us from what is really going on, we were too distracted by his antics to notice his crimes. The alternative is to be adults for once and not fall for such "magic tricks" and trade the "reality" of escapist TV for the actual reality.
'Tiger King' is streaming on Netflix.