Netflix presents a new docuseries, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. Eric Goode, a known conservationist, directs this series. The docuseries premiered March 20. It tells the story of a person who likes big cats to the point of obsession and his ways to exploit it.
Salon describes the docuseries as a humane look at a person who has an "obsession" with big cats, most especially the tiger. Despite that he breeds tigers, he also do some exploitations just to make income for himself.
Who Is the Tiger King?
Goode, together with co-director Rebecca Chaiklin, met with one of the most notorious tiger owners in the US, Joe Maldonado-Passage, who goes by the alias, Joe Exotic. Passage runs a 16-acre zoo in Wynne Wood, OK. The zoo houses dozens of tigers, lions, bears, and even alligators.
The Guardian describes Joe as an attention-loving eccentric with piercings, bleached mullet, and leopard-themed outfits. Meanwhile, Vox mentions that Joe Exotic tried to run for governor in Oklahoma in 2016 and 2018. He is also a member of the LGBT Community. He has many husbands added by Guardian.
The Villain
Joe's antagonist is Carole Baskin, the head of Big Cat Rescue, an organization that rescues big cat species like tigers from exploitative people or organizations like Passage. The group is based in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Baskin targets Joe and Bhagavan Antle, owner of Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina, and one of the animal trainers often cast in Hollywood projects.
Baskin says that the business model of Joe and Bhagavan has elements of animal cruelty. The two breed big cats, some of which are even endangered. The intention is for the cats to live with them forever, so they could make "cash cows" of the cats, which are turned into entertainers for spectators who visit their respective zoos.
The Tension and Murder Plot
Joe hates Baskin, whom he accuses of feeding her husband to the tigers and petitioning malls nationwide to ban his shows. In the early episodes, Joe mocks Baskin and threatens her to deliver snakes, and even shooting a dummy version of her in the head.
However, the most extreme case presented in the documentary is that in 2018, Joe was arrested due to the threats he made on Baskin and for hiring hitmen to kill her. In January of this year, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the Baskin killing plot and animal cruelty.
Tiger King is not just a unique mixture of documentary and reality. It shows problems in enforcing laws. It also shows how some people can defy laws by going to extremes like murder or blackmail. It also creates awareness about how animals care exploited by some people for profit. For now, the arrest of Passage is set to be a warning for people who uses animals for profit even in nefarious ways.
On the other it is time to make strict rules against animal exploitation and cruelty so that the likes of Joe Exotic will never happen again.
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