Social distancing has proven to Americans that Netflix is worth the $9 per month subscription fee. One of the most notable pieces of content to come out of this quarantine filled with binge-watching is the hit docuseries “Tiger King.”
“Tiger King” follows Joe Exotic, a private zoo owner who falls from grace and ultimately lands in prison. However, many viewers have walked away from the series with the wrong idea, praising Joe as a better person than he actually is.
Supporters of Joe Exotic have even started the hashtag “#FreeJoeExotic,” referencing his prison sentence. Although I agree that other people in the series deserve jail time too, it doesn’t minimize the fact that Joe should stay where he is now.
It’s ironic to go on social media platforms and see people poking fun at antagonist Carole Baskin while glorifying Joe Exotic at the same time. By no means is Carole Baskin a good person, but Joe is just as bad as her and the other animal exploiters shown in the documentary.
A part of the series focuses on Joe’s love life, a.k.a. his master manipulation of young and impressionable straight men via the obtaining and abuse of drugs. Not only does he bribe them with things like meth and marijuana, but he also maintains a tight leash on their lives outside the zoo, even refusing to let them leave the premises.
His treatment of his employees is equally abusive. After the famous scene where a worker gets their arm torn off by a tiger, the camera follows Joe to his office, where he immediately says that he will never financially recover from the incident, more worried about money than a severely injured person. The series also revealed that Joe paid employees only $150 a week, so they had to resort to stealing the expired meat that was given to the animals in order to feed themselves.
The footage in the series also alluded to Joe burning down his own office and crocodile enclosure, letting the animals die in an attempt to get rid of incriminating videos. This goes hand in hand with his sentence for mercilessly shooting his tigers and burying them on his land.
In the final scenes of “Tiger King,” Joe himself even admits to the mistreatment of animals in captivity. He shares that when his two chimpanzees were freed from their cages for the first time in 10 years, they hugged each other for an entire day.
In the end, the majority of viewers got fooled by a master manipulator who ultimately orchestrated another human being’s potential death. He may be very eccentric and charismatic, but he is also extremely abusive and deserves his place in prison. The way Joe tricked thousands of people into taking his side after everything he’s done isn’t a great sign for popular societal culture as a whole.
Gabrielle Martinez is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Gonzales, Louisiana.
