Tiger King star Joe Exotic is no hero – Carole Baskin just might be

Tiger King’s flamboyant star is no loveable rogue. He’s a truly horrible person – and yet somehow, he is not the villain of this series.

OPINION

Oh to have been in the room, when directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin told Netflix honchos that the animal rights doco about big cats in suburban America which they had sold them on had, uh, pivoted.

Sure, there were still tigers in cages and unpleasant scenes of the animals mauling carcasses.

Yes, they had plenty of footage of humans in terrifying proximity to tigers and lions to really wow the punters.

But now, what was meant to be a far more straightforward offering featured Joe Exotic, a self-described “redneck” queer and zoo owner, a possible murder, suicide, a botched assassination plot and a polyamorous tiger print-clad sorta cult. National Geographic territory, this was clearly not.

Understanding the wild, frenzied success of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is simple. It has the sort of wild, only-in-America plot and a cabal of characters of Jerry Spring-esque cartoonish characters whose wide-eyed zealotry makes for totally addictive, binge-viewing. Compounding the popularity is the simple fact if there was ever a time when there is a nearly pathological need for distraction, it is now.

All of which is to say it’s easy to see how Exotic (real name Joe Maldonado-Passage) and his 200-plus poor, caged cats have wholesale captured the global imagination at this particularly horrifying juncture in time.

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Joe Exotic’s mugshot. Picture: Santa Rosa County Jail via AP, File

However, what really sticks in the throat is the galling fact that Exotic is being hailed as some sort of cult hero for our dystopian age.

A petition for Donald Trump to pardon Exotic has more than 50,000 signatures. Rapper Cardi B has tweeted to her 11 million followers that she plans to set up a GoFundMe account, grandiosely posting: “He shall be free.”

Elsewhere, Joe fans can snap up myriad “Free Joe Exotic” T-shirts and other merchandise to declare their allegiance for the convicted felon.

However Exotic is far from one of 46,000 (minimum) Americans who have been falsely imprisoned. This is a man was found guilty of trying to hire a hitman to murder a rival and for killing five tigers; who allegedly plied vulnerable men with guns and drugs in order to have sex with them and who, according to one of the series’ directors, is a categorical racist. Let’s not forget, Exotic had no qualms about serving expired meat, donated to be fed to the cats, in his pizza restaurant for human consumption.

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Joe is no hero. Picture: Netflix US / AFP

Even more details of Exotic’s behaviour have come to light since the series dropped on the streaming platform last month.

Series director Eric Good told the Washington Post, “He would shoot animals randomly in front of me. He shot a chicken just because it crowed too much.”

Meanwhile his niece Chealsi Putman, who worked on and off for Exotic for 18 years, has claimed that he froze tiger cubs for taxidermists and pried a baby monkey out its sedated mother’s arms to sell. “You can see glimpses of his evil persona but in the real-life Joe is 100 times worse,” she told the Daily Mail last week.

Unlike Adnan Syed whose conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee was called into question in the global podcast sensation Serial, there is no ambiguity or lingering question of guilt or innocence here.

Travis Maldonado Joe Exotic and John Finlay's wedding. Picture: Netflix

Exotic is no loveable rogue. He is not a flawed antihero in need of saving. He’s a truly horrible a***hole.

And yet somehow he is not the villain of the series. That title goes to Carole Baskin, the woman that Exotic set out to hire someone to murder.

Baskin runs a big cat sanctuary in Florida and for years worked tirelessly to scupper Exotic’s lucrative business running touring animal shows at shopping centres around the country.

One episode explores Exotic’s allegation that Baskin was involved in the 1997 disappearance of her husband Don Lewis, killing him and feeding him to tigers. Yet there is no credible evidence that Baskin was in any way involved with Lewis’ disappearance and has never been charged.

Carole Baskin is portrayed as the ‘villain’ of Tiger King. Picture: Netflix

The fact that Exotic, a demonstrably cruel and violent man, has become a celebrity and quasi style icon while Baskin has been cast as an evil figure betrays the inherent sexism here.

No woman, accused of even a portion of Exotic’s multitudinous and genuinely terrifying sins, would have been given a shred of the benefit of doubt or moral leniency that he has.

Essentially, we are prone to forgive men for certain sins yet immediately condemn women for similar behaviour. (Women, bringing down guileless men since the Garden of Eden!)

This week it was reported that Baskin says she is now getting death threats. Exotic, meanwhile, is reportedly revelling in his new-found global fame behind bars.

Exotic is undoubtedly a charismatic, compelling character but the level of sympathy that this series has engendered for him truly rankles. His cartoonish quality and propensity for sequinned shirts somehow reduce his crimes and behaviour to something more benign and palatable, while Baskin’s zealotry renders her as something of a modern day harpy.

Whether on purpose or not, Tiger King wheels out the tired but persistent trope of a misguided man brought down by a shrill woman.

As journalist Rob Moor, who has spent five years writing about Exotic, has said, “There is a very clear parallel to be drawn between Joe and Trump and Carole and Hillary Clinton.

“They have similar ways of communicating and presenting themselves. Carole, she’s so calculating, she has this affect where she’s so desperate to be liked, but it makes you come away from her and be very suspicious of her. She has more money, more organisation, and her whole thing feels more professional. And people are suspicious of that, too.”

The issue here is how we as a culture have responded to two imperfect people and the sad fact that women are judged on their likability or lack thereof.

Four years on since Hillary Clinton lost the race for the White House, “Nasty Women” are still being crucified for far lesser evils than their male opponents.

This is a time when we desperately need heroes and cult figures to rally around and to unify us. We need something to believe in right now but the truth is that Joe Exotic should never have been allowed to fill that role.