It is one of Rotten Tomatoes’ most popular (mini) series to date, with a positive review score of 98 percent and an audience acceptance score of 93 percent, according to Business Insider.

The Netflix docuseries, which exposes animal abuse (especially of cats in private zoos) is so rich in nuances that it would take many articles to analyze everything we see on screen. Tiger King began filming in 2014 and ended in 2019, and its premiere was on March 20th of this year.

What is it about?

Joe Exotic is the main character of the series. His real name is Joseph Allen Schreibvogel, although he modified it to Joseph Maldonado-Passage in honor of his partners.

Joe ran the Great Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. He has a great fondness for guns, country music, and athletic youth. At the beginning of the series, he appears to be an animal lover, but over time, his self-centeredness will lead him to make a series of bad decisions. 

The parodic tone changes color very fast when we meet Carole Baskin. Carole is Joe’s nemesis, and she has spent years reporting Joe Exotic for animal abuse with the support of the PETA organization. However, Baskin also has her own animal reserve, Big Cat Rescue, located in Tampa, Florida, where she resides.

Why you should be watching it

Unlike other docuseries available on Netflix, like Wild Wild Country or Making a Murderer—which makes use of refined audiovisual techniques, such as the music of the composer Gustavo Santaolalla, historical recreation, and artistic plans—Rebbeca Chalkin and Eric Gode are fully aware of the particular story in their hands, so they add songs that were composed by Joe Exotic himself in different chapters, which highlights the egocentricity of the main character and reminds us of mockumentaries like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).

The secondary characters round out the plot of the series as they are quite peculiar. For example, we meet other zoo owners, like Bhagavan Antle, who recruits beautiful women to exploit them, have them run the business with him, and live with them (as if he was running a cult). His actual name is Doc Antle, but the name was changed to give an air of Hindu spirituality to his company, The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.). Doc Antle has been such a high-profile wildlife personality for decades.

He still works at his zoo. Everyone can chat with Doc Antle about their pet cats or any other topics on Payphone X. You can even ask him to record a shout out, and if you’re lucky, the tigers may also be there!

Repercussions

The notoriety of the series has set the eyes of Congress on a law to protect these wild animals. They never imagined that, in order to achieve this, they needed to show a documentary stranger than fiction. The producers of the show said, “If we had presented it to Hollywood, they would have rejected it as not credible.”

That feeling of implausibility is further multiplied in the perspectives of those who live outside the borders of the United States and are unaware of some of its peculiar laws, such as the one that allows having a tiger as a pet, taking it out of its natural habitat, and putting it in your backyard by simply taking out a license for $40, and that gives rise to all this bizarre history.

Images courtesy of Netflix

The post Tiger King: Netflix’s Miniseries and Why You Should Watch It appeared first on Fanzine by Payphone.