Petra Starke: 2020 officially sucks, but at least it introduced us to Tiger King
In this crazy year, Petra Starke finds hope in a redneck, gun-toting, mullet-sporting, sequin-wearing, gay, polygamist owner of a tiger zoo, called Joe Exotic.
Opinion
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You know your year is going quite badly when Donald Trump almost starting World War III with Iran via Twitter turns out to be the least worrying thing that’s happened.
Let’s face it, 2020 officially sucks.
We kicked it off by mostly being on fire, and now we’re all locked indoors because there’s a virus sweeping the globe that either gives you a bit of a cough or kills you, and no one knows which until you’ve got it.
And a reminder: It’s only April.
History is full of heroes who have led humanity through darkness to the light. Joan of Arc. Gandhi. Nelson Mandela. Olivia Newton John (just try to argue with me, I dare you).
But now the world is permanently concerned, confused and confined to the couch, it seems we nominate our heroes based off what’s good on Netflix at the moment.
Which is why, in 2020, the saviour of humanity is apparently a redneck, gun-toting, mullet-sporting, sequin-wearing, gay, polygamist owner of an Oklahoma tiger zoo called Joe Exotic.
He’s the star of Netflix’s new documentary series Tiger King, which is so insanely popular it would be the very definition of a “watercooler show” – if we all still had watercoolers to stand and discuss TV shows around.
Or offices to stand around in.
Released just a few weeks ago it’s quickly become everyone’s new obsession (which makes a nice change from the toilet paper collecting that’s been most people’s hobby for the last month), and with good reason:
IT IS UTTERLY BONKERS AND COMPLETELY AMAZING AND FRANKLY I DON’T KNOW HOW WE ALL LIVED WITHOUT IT.
Part crime documentary, part reality show, and 100 per cent bizarre, Tiger King tells the story of how Joseph Schreibvogel, an eccentric US zookeeper better known as Joe Exotic, wound up in jail for an attempted murder hit on rival zookeeper and animal activist Carole Baskin. If that sounds insane then strap in, because that’s not even the half of it.
Joe keeps about 280 tigers, lions and other big cats in his “zoo”, which is ostensibly a collection of homemade cages arranged around a gift shop on the side of the road in Oklahoma.
His motley crew of staff, several who are missing limbs (take a guess) and none of whom are trained in veterinary science, feed the tigers expired hot dogs, ham and other random meats donated from a local Walmart. Somehow, tourists find this entertaining and Joe makes a lot of money doing it.
Carole sort of does the same thing, except in Florida, and she calls it a “rescue sanctuary”. And thus a rivalry is born.
Carole dresses solely in “cat print” and flower crowns and makes Youtube videos slagging off Joe’s zoo for animal cruelty.
Joe sports a bleached blonde mullet and sequinned shirts and makes satirical music videos about how Carole murdered her first husband and fed him to her tigers.
Wait, what? Another murder? Yes, that’s just one of the many bizarre twists in this story which somehow gets weirder, and more compelling, every episode.
There are other odd characters too: like Joe’s two husbands, at least one of whom is almost totally toothless.
There’s a guy who makes a living smuggling tiger cubs into Las Vegas hotels through his carry-on luggage, and another big cat zookeeper from South Carolina who has an indeterminate number of wives and also kind of runs a sex cult. And honestly, they’re the most normal seeming people on the show.
I can’t imagine more appropriate viewing for these times than Tiger King.
When real life seems like a surreal, twisted joke, what else can we do but turn to a gay zookeeper murder mystery to lift our spirits?