Did The Pandemic Force us to LOVE "Tiger King"?

Is the fame and success of the Netflix Docuseries “Tiger King” really warranted, or is it a love we were given no choice but to jump into?

In the first few months of the Pandemic, Tiger King exploded on social media. Memes, video reactions, video essays, and just being this day’s water cooler conversation. The first question would have to be what is “Tiger King”?

“Tiger King” is a 2020 docuseries following the lives of people in the world of big cat obsession, whether that would be people having tigers as pets, or running private zoos. The series focusing mainly on the latter, and how all these zoos in one way or another, compete with each other. The main subject of the series, or star of the show, for lack of a better word, is a man by name of Joe Exotic, who is the former owner of the G.W. Zoo, a place started in dedication to Exotic’s late brother, who was killed by a drunk driver. What started as a traveling show to teach kids about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, turned into something much bigger; first by adding animals, then magic, traveling to different malls across the country, all with the purpose of educating people about drug and alcohol abuse, and the education of preserving the animals at risk of going extinct. Pretty simple, right? Nothing to lose one’s mind over, right? Not so. When you see Joe Exotic, he’s something out of a book. The kind of person you’d expect to see in the pages of a wild Hunter S. Thompson drug trip, a blonde mullet, a gun belt around his hips, and a huge personality, makes this something different right off the bat.

I remember seeing images through my Netflix feeds, but never watched the trailer, thinking “well okay, some guy obsessed with tigers, no big deal. I’ll get around to it eventually” but not much more. At least until I started seeing people talking about it, though not in great detail, and decided to give it a watch. I had taken a leave of absence from work due to the anxieties of working in this Pandemic, so I had some time. So I watched it, and was, like everyone else, sucked in. What I didn’t expect were all the twists and turns that came with the series.

You have murder for hire plots, missing husbands who are presumed dead without anyone prosecuted, polyamory, possible cult like activity, and animal cruelty. You name it, this series has it.

Now the questions remain, how the hell did this become so damn popular, and would it have been so popular without everyone being at home with not much to do other than watch their streaming services?

First off, I’ll say what I personally thought upon first watching the series. I loved the series. It was everything I needed in that moment, grabbed my attention. I love a series, real or fiction, where there are interesting people, and as an animal lover, the tigers were an added bonus. What also struck me was how big the story seemed to grow with each episode, almost the way a love novel with a large cast of characters get introduced one by one, adding their own piece to the puzzle of this crazy story. I’ll be upfront and also say, I’m not a huge supporter of zoos, for the reason being the want of working to preserve the natural habitats these animals come from. However, I can understand that’s a much easier thing to say, than do, though hasn’t stopped the passion for it. Even with the truth much of the lands where these tigers come from, are gone, and the animals who have been born in captivity wouldn’t survive. This docuseries presented a lot of these questions, though I’d say they don’t present them enough.

I’ve watched the series several times now, once with my boyfriend, who hates the series with a passion and doesn’t understand the hype. This led us to have numerous conversations about whether or not this should have, or would have gotten all of this attention if not for the current circumstances beyond our control.

From my perspective, this series would have definitely received a decent level of attention. It would have still had all the memes, and video reactions, but it would have faded pretty quickly. However, with the pandemic, where the world is more reliant on their streaming services as entertainment than ever, there was no way it wouldn’t get noticed. With people spending much of their time at home, people need to be stimulated, entertained, with new stimuli, constantly. For many, this series is just one of the many that will fall into their lap through Netflix. It all makes sense, when you consider how many people use Netflix, and how everyone has been forced to stay home within reason. We’re months, cruising towards a year into this pandemic, and “Tiger King” has started to lose some of the steam it had when it first premiered, though not all of it.

Carol Baskin for example, Joe Exotic’s rival, has been announced as a competitor for the show “Dancing with the Stars”, a smart move on the show’s part, to gain their own ratings, while also a pathetic one, when you consider the Carol Baskin as a person, especially as she was presented in the series.

The debates that will continue will be how real the series actually is, and how much is editing to make its subjects look worse than they are, but that’s an issue for a whole other essay. Today it’s just the question of did it deserve this much attention.

I would say on some level it did. It grabs you, even if you want to look away, and it does its job of telling a good story. It’s simply a story that came to us at the right time, a time that will be considered down the line, the hardest time in history. A time where humanity, has become the ones locked in cages due to something that could have been avoided. Maybe it all comes from a subconscious realization that they now share a level of sympathy with these beautiful animals.