Did 'Tiger King' makers use Carole Baskin footage 'creatively' to make Big Cat Rescue seem worse than it is?
Netflix's 'Tiger King' series meant for gawk-and-talk consumption has already been criticized for ignoring the real issue -- of big cats being abused and worse by "private" zoo owners. The focus was never on the miserable lives of the animals and the breeding of cubs for money, or even how visitors to such "roadside attraction" could be encouraging the further degradation and abuse of these animals. They only formed the backdrop to a more sensational angle of the feud between Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue.
Baskin has since posted a lengthy rebuttal on her site and spoken about how her life had changed for the worse since 'Tiger King' aired in her first interview. However, there is also the question of whether the docu-series creators have used the footage 'creatively', to deliberately misrepresent her.
Baskin's first point of contention has been the documentary's claim that Big Cat Rescue’s enclosures were tiny. According to her, the footage of her talking to the camera in front of a lion hunched in a small enclosure misrepresents the actual situation. According to her, the lion, Joseph, had wandered from his 4,000-square-foot enclosure into the narrow feeding chute and was free to wander back out.
The smallest enclosures in Big Cat Rescue are supposedly 1,200 square feet in size, while the largest ones are around 2.5 acres. They also have bushes, trees, and water features to mimic the natural environment that the animals would ideally live in the wild -- a claim supported by Animal Defenders International and PETA Foundation lawyer, Brittany Peet.
Peet speaking to Hollywood Reporter said: "I do think Carole's part of the story was exaggerated. Her cages were not accurately represented. There's a scene where hoards of people are standing outside of this facility, which is a clip from an annual event where Big Cat Rescue raises funds for the conservation of big cats in the wild. They normally have a few tour groups of less than 20 people per day. Viewers were made to believe that there are crowds and hordes of people rampaging through this sanctuary every day, and that's simply not accurate"
She also added: "They're accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, which is the gold standard accrediting body for sanctuaries around the world. They provide the best standards for captive wildlife care, largest minimum cage size, best enrichment standards."
The documentary genre is always highly subjective, depending significantly on how footage is used and cut together by the makers, depending on what they want to say. 'Tiger King' shows Baskin to be equally complicit in abusing big cats as Joe Exotic.
While Carole Baskin doesn't seem to be a 100 percent innocent given that she has bred cats in captivity and it is worth investigating some of the claims being made against her, but 'Tiger King' seems to have misrepresented at least some aspects of her work.
'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness' is streaming on Netflix.