THE NEWYORKER, APRIL 13, 2020 81four, five, or nine much younger wives;
and Mario Tabraue, a Cuban man in
late middle age who ran a cocaine ring,
went to prison for racketeering, and is
supposedly the inspiration for Tony
Montana in “Scarface.” (“I sold drugs
to maintain my animal habit,” Tabraue
says at one point.)
The reality show struggled, Kirkham
explains, because Exotic would not re-
linquish control over his own story. (Most
of the footage was lost in a mysterious
fire.) In “Tiger King,” too, Exotic exploits
himself before anyone else can, spinning
his biography—the closeted youth; the
suicide attempt; the flight from home;
the adoption of wild animals as a surro-
gate family—into an affecting queer trag-
edy. Authenticity, for Exotic, is an ouro-
boros of performance. In the second
episode, after we are shown the gruesome
footage that explains that missing fore-
arm, we watch as Exotic, who has found
the time to put on a shiny E.M.S. bomber
jacket, visits the G.W. gift shop. “Ladies
and gentlemen, before you hear it on the
news, I’m gonna tell you myself,” he says
to his customers in the manner of an
m.c., before informing them that an em-
ployee has been mauled.
T
he plot of “Tiger King” centers on
the battle between Exotic and
Baskin. She campaigns for the closure
of the G.W. Zoo; Exotic films himself
shooting at dummies he has named Car-
ole. Exotic is convinced that, in the nine-
ties, Baskin murdered her husband and,
perhaps, fed him to her tigers. She de-
nies the accusations with a bemused grin
while pretending to tolerate her current
husband, Howard, who follows her
around like a needy pet. Unfortunately
for the Baskins, “Tiger King” remains
loyal to its eponymous subject, and foot-
age is mercilessly edited to make her
seem like a hippie murderess. At one
point, on learning that one of Exotic’s
employees might have tried to have him
killed by spraying perfume on his shoes
before he entered a tiger cage, she count-
ers, without missing a beat, that sardine
oil would have been more effective.
Chailkin and Goode are less inter-
ested in getting to the truth of the mat-
ter than in revelling in their subjects’
chintzy vanity projects: Baskin’s YouTube
channel (“Hey, all you cool cats and kit-
tens”), Doc Antle’s videos of women
dancing with primates, and, most mem-
orably, the country-music videos in which
Exotic is shown singing, suspiciously
well, about man and cat. When, in 2016,
Exotic runs for President—the meme I
saw was a clip of a campaign video—he
gives out condoms adorned with the slo-
gan “For Your Protection, Vote Joe Ex-
otic.” The documentary is a kaleidoscope
of terrible taste, and Goode and Chailkin
luxuriate in their subjects’ mullets, bad
cowboy fringes, and acid-blond bleach
jobs, which, these days, in fashion-
forward circles, amount to a kind of
fucked-up glamour. The directors are not
judgmental, guided instead by the plea-
sure principle. Consider the troubling
story of Travis Maldonado, one of the
young men whom Exotic seduces, we’re
told, with the help of weed and meth.
Maldonado was nineteen when he mar-
ried Exotic and twenty-three when he
accidentally shot himself in the head, a
moment witnessed by Exotic’s campaign
manager as captured by security footage
that is included in the fifth episode. This
shocking turn is followed by footage inwhich Exotic, giving a eulogy, describes
a sexual maneuver that Maldonado liked
to perform. Maldonado is not only a vic-
tim of Exotic’s egotism; he is a casualty
of “Tiger King,” too.
But I’m being a downer, aren’t I?
“Tiger King” is prestige trash: narratively
ambitious but self-aware. True crime is
far from journalism. (Exotic’s history was
more thoroughly investigated in a New
York magazine story by Robert Moor.)
In the series’ final episode, Exotic, sen-
tenced to twenty-two years on charges
of animal abuse and attempted murder
for hire, is beamed in from a county jail.
His empire has fallen; he has learned,
he says, that it is wrong to cage a living
thing. Online, viewers have passionately
debated Exotic’s sentencing. Was he
framed? “Tiger King” provides no sense
of closure. After bingeing on the seven
episodes, I felt hoodwinked, hungover.
So what was it all about? I’ve sat with
a few theories—that “Tiger King” is a
takedown of the libertarian ethos, a dis-
patch from the last frontier of white co-
lonialism, a Trumpian fable. (In late
March, Exotic asked the President for
a pardon.) The only observation that
feels true is that “Tiger King” is what
we watched two weeks into our isola-
tion. Comfort television wasn’t working;
we needed something uglier. For the
past four years, we have trained ourselves
not to laugh at the antics of bad men;
our collective embrace of “Tiger King”
speaks of a renewed craving for the crass,
the politically incorrect, the culturally
insensitive—an outlet for the id now
that the ego is under siege. In any case,
very briefly, it was the other thing that
everyone talked about—and for that rea-
son we were grateful to be horrified. THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2020 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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