The New York Times. April 04, 2020

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020 N C5

OF ALL THE SHOCKSin the new Netflix true-
crime series “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem
and Madness” — and they are myriad —
few are more singular, more head-tiltingly
odd than the scenes in which the show’s pro-
tagonists, particularly the sideshow zoo
captain Joe Exotic, interact with animals.
It’s a disorienting, disquieting sort of nor-
malcy. As if the television in your living
room started lining up perfectly with the
weather system outside your house. As if
the Instagram filter on a selfie you posted
leapt out of the phone and stuck to your ac-
tual face. Seeing a tiger in the passenger
seat of a pickup truck, or watching Exotic
pose for photos surrounded by dangerous
big cats — something isn’t where it’s sup-
posed to be.
Two timelines that are ordinarily parallel
are instead intersecting. It is magical real-
ism, but real.
The seven-part “Tiger King,” a runaway
hit on Netflix since it debuted almost two
weeks ago, is a cascade of jaw-dropping mo-
ments, sui generis self-made characters,
and plot turns that are sometimes fanciful,
sometimes criminal, sometimes gruesome.
It is filmed plainly, often with improbable in-
timacy, and buffeted with a rather astonish-
ing amount of contemporaneous video doc-
umentation. It depicts behavior of dubious
ethics, sometimes gleefully.
It is also, because of its commingling of
human and animal realities, a steady fount
of radical, startling aesthetics. Practically
all of the interview subjects are outland-
ishly decorative in their self-presentation.
Practically every surface is covered in ani-
mal print. Thanks to its singular, uncompro-
mised, primal-verging-on-lurid style, “Ti-
ger King” has become the raw material for
oodles of memes, inspo for a thousand fit
pics. It is never visually stable — almost ev-
ery scene is a fresh shock.
The protagonists’ absorption of animal
aesthetics — indeed, they seem to be re-
making themselves in the image of their an-
imal compatriots — is central to the show’s
titillation. Yes, the behavior the show docu-
ments is wild, but the way its characters
present themselves while engaging in this
behavior is the glue, a seemingly limitless
pool of excess that telegraphs a capacity for
unfathomable choices.
The root is the luscious regality of these

big cats — it is difficult not to be transfixed

by them. “Tiger King” loves a languorous

shot of an animal stalking its cage purpose-

fully, muscularly. The cats are coveted — by

late-night hosts looking for an attention-

grabbing frolic, by Hollywood film and tele-

vision productions, by regular folks willing

to pay a few hundred bucks for a bit of pet-

ting and private playtime. Throughout the

show, humans and fearsome animals inter-

act intimately, intensely and, sort of, lov-

ingly, if that is possible given the general

horror of keeping wild animals in captivity.

The cats are a proxy, too — for power, for

sex, for independence. Jeff Lowe, a self-

styled mogul who partners with Exotic and

later turns on him, discusses using cubs as a

tool to pick up sex partners for him and his

wife; the cats are an aphrodisiac, making

their owners more sexually appetizing.

Bhagavan Antle, who runs a private zoo in

South Carolina, rides an elephant that he

raised around his compound and conscripts

the women who work for him into a suffo-

cating romantic-professional tangle.

In the case of Exotic and the animal

rights activist Carole Baskin — dedicated

enemies with many uncanny similarities —

both seem to enjoy becoming animal-esque

themselves. Baskin, painted in the series as

something of a do-gooder villain, dresses al-

most exclusively in animal print clothing.

(Every now and again, she intersects with

au courant style.) It scans as an act of sym-

pathy for the cats at her sanctuary, as mar-

keting savvy, and also as a bit of delusion, a

sort of cross-species passing.

Exotic is something more creature-like —

and is also streamlining an haute-redneck

approach to style. He wears sequined shirts

tucked into crisp denim, has a phalanx of

hoop earrings, has bullet holes tattooed on

his torso. When he gets married, to two men

at once, all three wear the same hot pink

Western shirt. At one point he wears a hood-

ie with airbrushed tiger stripes on the arms.

His hair is feral, too — sandy beige on the

shaved-tight sides, and bleached yellow on

the top and down to the end of his wispy

mullet. Exotic — born Joe Schreibvogel, lat-

er Joe Maldonado-Passage, but never any-

thing other than Exotic — is also a charac-

ter actor, a set designer, a country singer, a

firearms enthusiast, a ramshackle political

candidate, husband to at least three differ-

ent men and more. He paid for one of his

husbands to get a tattoo that reads “Pri-

vately Owned Joe Exotic” — branded, in a

way. His life is a marvel of self-invention.

Inspired by the cats they revere, these

enthusiasts mark themselves for external

appraisal. Even the secondary characters

do so — the zoo manager John Reinke and

his loudly decorated, Ed Hardy-style pros-

thetic legs; Lowe’s awkwardly fitting biker

chic, all leather and gauche fonts. Even Rick

Kirkham, the ostensible neutral observer

who produced an abandoned reality show

about Exotic, wears a safari hat, as if a lion

might creep up at any moment.

The show also makes clear the astonish-

ing range of products you can procure with

an animal print: mugs, towels, curtains,

dressers, paper bowls, campaign lawn-post

signs, handguns and much, much more.

That is useful when you are building your

own reality. These animal preserves —

whether Exotic’s zoo in Oklahoma, or Bask-

in’s rescue facility in Florida, or Antle’s com-

pound in South Carolina — are stand-alone

ecosystems, or try to be. (Exotic’s animals,

and his employees, rely on regular deliver-

ies of just-expired meat from Walmart for

feeding time.)

Even the people on the show aren’t totally

certain where Exotic’s reality ends and

theirs begins: In one scene, a tiger grabs

hold of his leg and begins to drag him

around its cage. But the co-workers who are

filming Exotic don’t step in, or even seem to

sense that things are amiss — maybe in his

reality, that’s normal? — until Exotic pulls

out a gun and fires a couple of warning

shots.

Such disruption is rare, because rarely

does Exotic break character. At one point,

he invokes the Waco disaster in discussing

what might happen if local authorities inter-

fered with his zoo. He has built a world to his

taste, on his terms, and he can’t fathom any

intrusion into his reality.

In essence, “Tiger King” is a legal saga:

Exotic is in jail, having been convicted of a

plot (unsuccessful) to murder Baskin,

whom he long had quarreled with. But so

much of the back-and-forth takes place far

from any courtroom. Both Exotic and

Baskin are proficient in warfare on the in-

ternet, deploying highly stylized videos in

which they are the champions — battle-

fields of their own making. Exotic — a local

hero, sort of, and a hero in his mind, defi-

nitely — sells shirts, hats, underwear, per-

sonal lubricant; he is a lifestyle brand. In

Baskin’s world, everything is feline, down to

the fans she addresses at the top of each of

her videos: “Hey, all you cool cats and kit-

tens.”

What a peculiar vicarious pleasure this

all provides — the visual self-invention, the

unfettered self-promotion, the melding of

two realities, human and animal, into one.

It’s a raw jolt. If only actual reality wouldn’t

interfere.

In the second half of the series, for Exotic,

it does. (As it has in the real world subse-

quent to the show’s release, with the leaking

of footage of Exotic making racially insensi-

tive statements.) His legal battles with

Baskin drain him financially, his potentially

criminal activities grow in scope, one of his

husbands kills himself (it’s described as ac-

cidental), and another leaves him. He loses

control of his zoo, the fief of which he was

king.

Throughout the series, Exotic calls the

show’s directors from jail, generally indig-

nant, but sometimes tearful. His reality has

been taken from him, and he’s not sure if he

can function in the one everyone else lives

in.

The Alternate Aesthetic Realities of ‘Tiger King’

Clockwise from top left: Joe

Maldonado-Passage, known as

Joe Exotic, who sports an

haute-redneck style; Jeff Lowe

used wildcat cubs as a kind of

aphrodisiac to lure new sex

partners; and Carole Baskin,

painted as something of a

do-gooder villain.

PHOTOGRAPHS VIA NETFLIX

The stars of Netflix’s hit true-crime series seem to

remake themselves in the image of their kept animals.

If only these attempts at

stand-alone ecosystems

could keep the real

world out.

JON CARAMANICA CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

PBS ANNOUNCEDlast summer that it would
be showing “World on Fire,” so it can’t be
accused of capitalizing on current events.
Congratulate it instead on its good timing: a
sweeping drama about people’s responses
to the approach of a potentially world-de-
stroying virus, in this case Nazism.
“World on Fire,” a “Masterpiece” series
(beginning Sunday night) from the BBC,
was written by Peter Bowker, who’s best
known for the 2009 Iraq War mini-series
“Occupation.” His talent here is for orches-
tration more than for texture — the seven-
episode series (six were available for re-
view) is a page-turner of a show, a big can-
vas filled with small, interwoven stories in
the style of Herman Wouk. There’s some
cardboard in the construction, but the nar-
rative tug is strong. A solid success in Brit-
ain last year with close to six million view-
ers an episode, it’s been renewed for a sec-
ond season.
The action stretches across Europe, from
Warsaw to Berlin, Paris, Dunkirk and Man-
chester, as the German blitzkrieg hammers
across Poland and Belgium in 1939. There
are frequent depictions of battle, sometimes
in milieus we haven’t often seen, like the
gallant and doomed Polish defense of the
Danzig post office.
Despite its apocalyptic title, though, and
some time spent on the evacuation at Dun-
kirk, “World on Fire” isn’t about big events.
To paraphrase “Casablanca,” it’s about the

problems of little people and how those

problems amount to more than a hill of

beans. Transformation can come even for

those who are just muddling through and

doing their bit.

To that purpose, Bowker manages to

have his everyday characters bump into

one another here and there around the con-

tinent without setting off too many implau-

sibility alarms. Lois (Julia Brown), who

sings for the British troops, has a brother,

Tom (Ewan Mitchell), who is wounded at

Dunkirk and rescued by the gay American

doctor Webster (Brian J. Smith), whose

lover Albert (Parker Sawyers) is in a Paris

jazz band with Eddie (Ansu Kabia), who

needs to get back to Manchester to be with

his wife, Connie (Yrsa Daley-Ward), who

plays piano for Lois. That sort of thing.

The themes and outlines of “World on

Fire” are firmly middle of the road — you

imagine a good share of the audience

watching it over tea and a biscuit — but

Bowker has worked conscientiously to

make the manifold subplots a little different

from the norm for World War II dramas. No-

tably, none of the major characters are Jew-

ish; the show’s principals deal with other

dangers: being a Polish Catholic, a German

epileptic, a British pacifist or, in a deadly tri-

fecta, a black, gay jazz musician.

Bowker is also notably hard on his men,

who are generally a whiny, callow bunch, at

least until they’re toughened up by the rig-

ors of war. The primary male character,

Harry (Jonah Hauer-King), a wealthy

young Briton posted to Warsaw, marries a

Polish woman while also knocking up Lois

back in Manchester; escaping into the

army, he is made a lieutenant and promptly

freezes up in battle. He’s useless as either

an officer or a gentleman.

The women, meanwhile, are uniformly

tough: Lois, given an appealing doughti-

ness by Brown, quickly sets aside the

wishy-washy Harry; Kasia (Zofia Wich-

lacz), Harry’s wife, joins the Polish resist-

ance; Nancy (Helen Hunt), an American

radio journalist in Berlin, is an Edward

Murrow stand-in, trying to get out the truth

despite the censor sitting outside her booth.

Strongest of all is Harry’s mother, Robina,

a thorough prig and a fan of the British fas-

cist Oswald Mosley, who begins to soften

when she suddenly has to take care of

Kasia’s young refugee brother. (Harry

dumps his schoolboy brother-in-law on her

before heading back to the continent.) And

the best thing about the show is the per-

formance by the great Lesley Manville as

Robina, a believable and craftily comic por-

trayal of a woman who reluctantly lets

down her guard in response to the war —

though she’s farthest from the front, the

changes she undergoes are as profound as

anyone else’s. She’s Bowker’s proof that in a

world on fire, no one escapes the flames.

MIKE HALE TELEVISION REVIEW

A Conflict’s Tidal Waves Wash Over the Little People

Set amid World War II, a series

focuses on those who muddled

through and did their bit.

Zofia Wichlacz and Jonah

Hauer-King in an episode of

“World on Fire,” a PBS series

from the BBC, which follows

the lives of ordinary Europeans

and Americans during the

German blitzkrieg of 1939.

MAMMOTH SCREEN/PBS

World on Fire

Sundays on PBS