'Tiger King' hides a blatant subversion of justice behind its binge-driven success
‘Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness’, a Netflix original, has taken the world by storm since its March 20 release. From time to time, some documentaries or series come online that overtakes the pop culture conversation. ‘Tiger King’ is one of them. Even the directors of the docuseries, Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin could not possibly have thought that their creation would be such a hit, according to The Economist.
The docuseries has a 94 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a review-aggregation website for film and television, whereas according to Netflix (which rarely releases comprehensive viewing figures) it is currently the most-watched show on the streaming platform. Even celebrities, like Cardi B, Dax Shepard, Wiz Khalifa, Chris Brown, Rob Lowe, and Jared Leto have become intrigued by Joe Exotic.
Some of them have even shown interest in playing him. “If I don’t get cast as Joe Exotic in the eventual biopic, Hollywood is broken,” Shepard tweeted, to which Edward Norton replied: “You’re way too young and buff and you know it.”
Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, is an American former zoo operator and convicted felon on which ‘Tiger King’ is based. Currently, he is serving a 22-year sentence for plotting to kill animal rights activist Carole Baskin in 2017 along with umpteen wildlife violations.
However, according to reports, the problem with the documentary, which is undoubtedly brilliant story-telling, is that it has given the infamous zookeeper the fame he always sought despite being a convicted criminal. There is no doubt in saying that before Netflix’s ‘Tiger King’, most people did not know who Exotic was or wondered if his nemesis Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue, killed her husband and fed him to a tiger.
Explaining what made the show so popular in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, Scot Safon, a former executive for CNN and UPtv and former president of HLN, said that the show has all of the elements that can make it a binge-watching obsession. “It's introducing people to this subculture that has its own rituals and language and images," he said.
“Plus, it has these characters you couldn't make up. Fiction could not do it justice. There's a mystery -- several mysteries -- that hover around, and lots of room for speculation. And it's hitting us all at a moment when we're kind of in search of something worth talking about that's not personal or related to the way we're living," he added.
The show has also garnered Exotic so much of sympathy that Cardi plans to start a GoFundMe page to set him free from prison, while Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have lobbied with President Donald Trump for Exotic's release from jail.
Not only this but ‘Tiger King’ has also reportedly turned the tables by making Baskin the culprit and Exotic the victim. Since its release, authorities in Florida have reported receiving a flood of requests to investigate and charge Baskin with murder. The show has painted the 58-year-old as a dragon lady of sorts, and a potentially greedy murderess.
The series has portrayed her as a creepy lady who probably killed her husband and then financially harassed Exotic until he hired someone to kill her. It has made her a genuine reality TV villain, who has not actually been convicted. This is probably because ‘Tiger King’ relies heavily on interviews with Baskin’s wealthy older husband Don Lewis’ handyman, ex-wife, mechanic, colleagues, and group of ex-cons/tiger breeders who hate her.
According to a report by Slate Magazine, ‘Tiger King’ does not make Baskin just like everyone else in the show. It makes her worse by portraying her as a hypocrite and an elitist. There is a class element at play here.
The online magazine further claims that one only has “to look at the show’s treatment of Exotic to see the high level of sympathy it can bring to even the most extreme scuzzbuckets but that it cannot muster for a woman whom this scuzzbucket threatened to kill multiple times.”
