Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness Review (TV Series, 2020)
Content warning: animal abuse, gore, sexism
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is a true-crime documentary series on Netflix. The central figure is Joe Exotic, a convicted felon who ran an exotic animal zoo and illegal breeding program for tigers and other wild cats out of Oklahoma. The series meanders through a lot of other stories that aren’t as interesting or, frankly, factual as Joe Exotic’s story.
The best thing I can say about Tiger King is that it is entertaining television. You couldn’t script a melodrama with a wilder plot than this. The subjects are larger than life, foiled to cartoonish proportions by interviews with lawyers and local law enforcement. The personalities are so over the top that Christopher Guest would tell the actors to pull back if this was a scripted series. You want to see what they say or do next.
As a documentary series, it’s less than successful. I do not believe that Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin had bad intentions when they set out to direct a documentary about keeping and breeding wild cats in captivity in America. I do think that the directors changed their focus multiple times while filming this series, leading to a less than clear thesis.
As the director of a documentary, you get to be the arbiter of who gets a voice in your story. These are real people you’re interviewing discussing their life experiences or their expertise in a subject. You take the information they provide and mold it into a film or series that explains something real to a wide audience.
Goode and Chaiklin put the focus on Joe Exotic, for better or worse. He is the most dynamic personality in the film. He also constantly contradicts himself, demonstrates an incredibly short fuse, and is clearly willing to say anything to get people on his side. Documentaries about figures like Joe Exotic are difficult because you need to be very careful taking and presenting anything they say as the truth.
Tiger King does not have anyone directly connected to Joe Exotic question his claims for the first half of the series. Even when they eventually go against his word, it’s explained away as Joe being Joe and how you can’t really take anything he says or does seriously. He is left unchallenged by anyone except people he labels as “crazy” or “evil” for most of the series. The amount of people interviewed who clearly did business with him or worked for him far outweigh anyone sharing valid criticism of his work or ethics. He’s so charming that people who watch this series are more likely to believe his story as the truth. The most engaging figure in a documentary usually becomes the voice of a documentary, for better or worse.
For some reason, the main villain the series is Carole Baskin. Baskin runs a wild cat rescue designed to end the kind of illegal practices Joe Exotic and his peers deal in. She advocates for legislation that would prevent the sale of exotic animals as pets in the United States. Her facility takes in wild cats rescued from this black market of exotic animal trade and does not permit people to show up and pet the animals, which is a practice that feeds the private sale and trade of exotic animals as pets. If you have any doubt about this being Joe’s perspective on the events in the documentary, watch how the series handles Carole Baskin.
Why is it that the only person in the film dedicated to actual conservation efforts is treated as the villain for the first half of the series? The documentarians knew long before the release that Joe Exotic went to prison for trying to hire someone to murder Carole Baskin. She is the victim in this story, yet the most generous statement on her involvement in the story is calling her a rival to Joe Exotic. His view of her defines the first half of the series. It’s ethically questionable to say the least. Joe’s views on Carole are treated as so key to the narrative that there is an entire episode dedicated to conspiracy theories he pushed that Carole fed her missing husband to tigers to inherit his millions. There is no evidence this happened, yet one out of seven episodes of a true crime series about a convicted felon focuses on a smear campaign against her.
Tiger King has other issues. Carole Baskin is not the only woman profiled in the series, but any woman connected to exotic animals is treated as either cold and calculating, greedy, or completely aloof in comparison to the levity and joy of all the men talking about how much they love to play with the big kitty cats. One former employee of Joe Exotic is misgendered* and deadnamed throughout the series, with his preferred name put in quotation marks as a nickname. The refusal to push the subjects involved on the subject of the illegal breeding and sale of wild animals makes it seem like all zoos, preserves, and refuges are equal. The series does not ask follow up questions about the practices or actions of any of the subjects. Everything anyone says is taken at face value and treated as equally valid. “He violated our copyright and we can prove it” is intellectually and morally equivalent to “she’s a [c-word]” in the eyes of this series.
I’m being picky here because I think the series is good entertainment. Tiger King is meant for the Netflix binge-watching model, where you sit there for six hours and let the episodes roll into each other until the show is done. I know I did. I think Goode and Chiaklin succeeded in making an entertaining true crime series but fell short on good documentary practices. There is a distinction here. Catfish, for example, is a great documentary film turned into a popcorn reality series with questionable ethics and intent. Supersize Me is an entertaining film centered on a gimmick that led to the wonderful documentary series 30 Days.
The true potential of Tiger King is shown in the seventh episode, “Dethroned.” This is the episode about the trial and conviction of Joe Exotic. The episode is just as entertaining as the rest of the series, but actually feels like a balanced documentary. The directors include external sources from news reports on the subject. The prosecutor is interviewed. Court testimony is reread. People like Carole Baskin are suddenly shown as real people with a real story to tell and treated with a modicum of the respect extended to Joe Exotic throughout the whole show. There are silly moments showcasing what people’s daily lives are like, but the focus is clear and supported with evidence for really the first time in the entire series. The whole series could have been like this, but the more investigative tone was saved for the final episode for whatever reason.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness started as a seven episode documentary series. The show now has an eighth episode, “The Tiger King and I,” that features comedian Joel McHale holding a reality TV-style reunion for a true crime documentary series. Good or bad isn’t the question anymore; the series is now being treated as reality TV entertainment instead of the original intended documentary. If this was actually reality TV show, I’d give it a glowing review and recommendation. As it stands, it’s an entertaining story you can pull out of a muddy and unfocused documentary series.
*Saff Saffery says in the reunion episode that being misgendered did not bother him.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is currently streaming on Netflix.
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