It’s impossible to watch what he does - and what some of the other interviewees do and say - without laughing. Joe is a volatile, flamboyant narcissist who does things that are patently ridiculous.
TIM STARK NOW SERIES
For that reason, the series inevitably ends up with a bit of a lowbrow reality vibe: a hint of Honey Boo Boo and a faint whisper of Duck Dynasty. Tiger King is an attempt to make a documentary about a guy who, as we learn from the seven episodes, has always wanted to be a reality star. The WTF-ery became Tiger King’s entire reason for being. Goode, a businessman and conservationist, says he originally intended to focus the docuseries on the exploitation of exotic animals, but the final product suggests that the insane drama and quirky people in this world superseded that plan. Where other docuseries and documentaries come upon their jaw-dropping plot twists in a manner that feels organic, the storytelling in Tiger King seems to be guided by them. But there’s something about Tiger King that doesn’t sit well, that feels ookier than other recent WTF docs, and I think it comes down to this: Tiger King is very aware of its own WTF-ness. “So we knew that there would be an appetite for it.” They were right. “It had all the ingredients that one finds salacious,” Eric Goode, who co-directed Tiger King with Rebecca Chaiklin, told the New York Times. It’s a wild, wild story, and the filmmakers embraced that. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the abundance of bizarro in Tiger King, but if you’ve seen it, you already know about it, and if you haven’t, well, you get the idea. Joe Exotic is basically what the acronym “WTF” would look like if it were turned into a person.
Before going to jail, Joe mounts two failed political campaigns, one for president and one for governor of Oklahoma. The protagonist, roadside zoo owner Joe Exotic, is, to quote a description of him from the docuseries, a “redneck, gun-toting, mullet-sporting, tiger-tackling, gay polygamist.” He winds up in jail for his involvement in a murder-for-hire plot to kill Carole Baskin, an animal-rights advocate who shares his passion for large jungle cats and has been accused, with no definitive evidence, of killing her second husband and feeding his remains to her tigers. It’s got lions, and tigers, and bears - already an “oh my!” - but also chimpanzees, a monkey that appears to live exclusively inside the shirt of Wildlife in Need owner Tim Stark, and tons of expired meat from Walmart that is fed to many of these animals. Even documentaries that tackle comparatively lighter subjects, like McMillions or last year’s two Fyre Festival movies, fit into this subgenre because they also are rife with unexpected, outlandish moments. “You’ve gotta see this,” we tell our friends after watching one of these documentaries. Certain revisitations of historical events or scandals - Wild Wild Country, Leaving Neverland - do, too. A lot of true-crime shows fit into this category. Let’s call them WTF docs.Īs that title would suggest, WTF docs are documentary series or films with so many jaw-dropping twists that they make you blurt out, “What the f-?” at least once, and usually multiple times. It’s an extreme, flawed example of the types of docuseries and documentaries that have generated the most attention over the past five years. The docuseries - part work of true crime, part graphic nature documentary, and part trashy reality show - has become must-see television for anyone who wants to remain pop-culturally conversant, or at least have something to talk about besides the coronavirus. In a time of global pandemic, when people are shut in their homes and more vulnerable than ever to the siren song of Netflix, everyone in America has simultaneously become obsessed with Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.Īt least it feels that way. Joe Exotic with one of his tiger pals in Tiger King.
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