Tiger King

[BadLady]

I finished watching Tiger King last night, so I'm a bit behind all of the initial hype.

I must say, I was absolutely shocked and disgusted by the misogynistic and aggressive displayed by Joe Exotic and his gang towards Carole. I can't actually believe that people are defending Joe! He's on video threatening to violently kill Carole?

What's worse is that the hype around the show has ignored this aspect of it.

Joe Exotic and his pals are misogynists and animal abusers. How on earth does he have any fans?

Him and the other big cat guys are predators plain and simple.

I’ve not quite finished it, but yes I agree with you.

Honestly I think they are all as bad as each other including Carole.
Plainly people with a need to collect big cats should be avoided at all costs.

They're all awful. And that includes Carole. Not sure why you're surprised though.

Carole was the only one not trying to groom young men and women.

However, all of their attitudes toward animals and vulnerable people are shit.
I wouldn't say that Joe Exotic's misogyny is ignored, as it's quite obvious that he only went after Carole so vociferously because she was a woman who dared to criticise him. The footage of him attacking the sex doll dressed up as her speaks for itself and doesn't need commenting on imo.
Many will ignore it though.

Are people defending him? I've not heard anyone I know who's watched it, who thinks he is innocent or anything less than a predatory sociopath.

Most of the people in it are selfish, deluded fantasists.

Yeah, I also found the 'there're as bad as each other' tone the programe makers took to be disturbingly misognystic.
They seemed to think a sexually preditory man who tortured and killed animals was on a par with a woman who was a bit annoying and vain.

Tbh I haven't watched it and won't watch it purely because seeing thick people talk about 'that bitch Carole Baskin' told me it was going to be a misogynistic shitfest.

And the cruelty to animals was a massive NoNo as well for me.

I agree BadLady. I read this piece in the independent, that I thought was interesting

www.independent.co.uk/voices/tiger-king-carole-baskin-joe-exotic-netflix-sexist-misogyny-don-lewis-a9438451.html

Thanks op this has been niggling at me.

"Carole Baskin" is becoming a punchline & a meme in a way that completely ignores the misogyny. She might be awful but it is far from a level playing field. Joe exotic is celebrated in an ironic way which I would have been totally cool with once upon a time. But I've started to see that ironic sexism is often just sexism exhibited by people who identify as progressive. Those particular people have really helped endanger women's rights of late so I'm feeling much less cool about their humour now.

I agree! I saw a meme on reddit I think which said something like that. He was truly dreadful- obsessively violent and threatening towards her. It was a campaign of harassment! All the men were trash - Joe, that peculiar doc antle and his tiger sex cult, that awful jeff person. Bleugh. I can't believe carole is the one that has come out of it as the "bad guy"!

Carole Baskin" is becoming a punchline & a meme in a way that completely ignores the misogyny. She might be awful but it is far from a level playing field. Joe exotic is celebrated in an ironic way which I would have been totally cool with once upon a time. But I've started to see that ironic sexism is often just sexism exhibited by people who identify as progressive.

Yes, I agree completely. Like when he had that blow up doll that he said was Carole and was shooting at it in the first episode.

I agree with you Op, and thank goodness for that tv producer who started filming it all and has all the evidence.

I have watched the whole series, won’t give anything away but will say I’m very pleased with the outcome.

Poor Carole! Being unlikeable to some is not a death sentence crime. This adulation of tiger king dude is absolutely mysogynistic. Did people see a few weeks ago Trump said he would look into pardoning this dangerous abuser?

Yes, I saw Trump had said that. Would expect nothing less from that woman hating chump.

I'm glad to see that others have noticed this. I'm not really a fan of Carole, but her feud with Joe Exotic and the others was far from a level playing field. All she ever did was defend herself.

It is the most misogynistic thing I have seen in a long time.

They are not even remotely all as bad as each other.

Joey exotic is in prison for attempting to arrange the murder of Carole Baskin. He was also convicted of various animal cruelty charges. He also manipulated young people with serious drug problems in order to sexually exploit them.

Carole Baskin has not been accused of any crime and runs a not for profit accredited animal sanctuary organisation.

The show has deliberately tried to make the victim as reprehensible as the man planning to kill her. But that’s misogyny 101.

Interestingly the director wanted to make a show about animal abuse, and it was Netflix who pressured him to turn it into a show about a ‘feud.’

That’s why the ending- where Joey discusses how he kept those two chimps isolated in separate cages for a decade, and when they were removed from him and put in a sanctuary they hugged each other, feels like the ending to a totally different show. Because that is the show the director wanted, which we never got to see.

I actually feel that me and everyone else who watched it are complicit in animal abuse and misogyny. It treated vulnerable abused people as freaks and the animals as props.

I stopped watching at the point they were removing newborn tigers with a stick froM the mother directly after birth - I couldn’t watch the abuse anymore and up to that point I had laughed out loud at some parts.

He is being made into a folk hero but everyone I’ve spoken to has talked about the animal abuse as well.

I can’t overwhelmingly feel sorry for Carol Baskin, I’m sure she was hoodwinked into thinking she was participating in a tv show to expose animal abuse but there is a big question mark on the disappearance of her husband.

I'm amazed that the police took no action when Joe Exotic was ranting on camera about how he was going to kill Carole. He even had effigies of her. It was sinister. She was really quite brave to not back down.

As for Carole's husband, a lot of people online have speculated that he was drug smuggling for Colombian cartels. Would explain his wealth and sudden disappearance if he pissed them off. Carole wouldn't be able to say this of course, because not only would the police be looking to link her to the crimes, they could seize all the money inherited from her late husband.

Interestingly the director wanted to make a show about animal abuse, and it was Netflix who pressured him to turn it into a show about a ‘feud.’

If you've seen the earlier Louis Theroux documentary he does focus on the animals more.

I'm quite sensitive to animal abuse, but I was able to watch the whole series. There's only a few bits of animal abuse that are explicitly shown, the rest is all implied. (I'm not saying that it didn't happen though; it obviously did!)

Well he is in prison for trying to kill her so it didn’t come as much of a surprise . I was more concerned about the guy who wanted to shag the nanny. Does he have fans as such ? Or are they just fans of the documentary, which was certainly entertaining?

It's misogyny, same as it ever was, just amplified by the internet. In order to be "bad" a man has to be a convicted criminal, and even then people will try to make excuses for him. All a woman has to do in order to be "bad" is annoy someone. Doesn't matter if the man she annoys is a raging nutbag, people still assume that he was probably right about her.

I haven't watched Tiger King, however I have seen the film Cat Dancers which is all about a menage-a-trois of people who keep and perform with a menagerie of big cats. That ended tragically as one might have expected.

One thing I have noticed in studying cults is that dodgy, lucrative zoos and scammy wildlife conservation businesses, are often used as a revenue source and as camouflage by con men and women.

One such example is Colin Garland, a sexual predator involved with the notorious Deer Tribe cult, who used wildlife conservation as a cover for sexually abusing young women and girls.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200502140516/www.huffpost.com/entry/he-led-students-on-trips-abroad-then-he-introduced-sex-ceremonies_n_5b8ea15be4b0162f472759c8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200502140516/www.huffpost.com/entry/he-led-students-on-trips-abroad-then-he-introduced-sex-ceremonies_n_5b8ea15be4b0162f472759c8

There are others also, although very often just using animals as a cover for fraud. It is not uncommon for such people to raise funds to support the conservation of "rare" white lions, white buffalo and white tigers, whereas these creatures are simply genetic mutations and not, therefore "rare" in terms of species.

As far as I could see all of the male tiger owners used the animals to manipulate people into having sex with them.

Carole seemed to manipulate people into giving her free labour.