Tiger King
There are a lot of unintended consequences stemming from this Covid 19 time and the lock-down measures. One of them is that a show called “The Tiger King” is trending on Netflix. At least I think it is. I cannot see this show trending or me watching it during another time. Usually I am limited to one or two shows a week, forcing me to be very picky. Now I have time to browse through Netflix and experiment a little. Tiger King was such an experiment…as it was to many who got sucked into it.
What is it that makes one resent and love this show simultaneously and paradoxically? Why the urge to watch the next and then one more episode? I feel compelled to explore these questions. Or perhaps just have enough extra Covid time on my hands to do it.
For those who haven’t seen the series, without any spoilers here is a summary. The series is all about Joe Schreibvogel. As a young man he came out as gay and experienced rejection by family. He attempted suicide and didn’t succeed so I decided to try his hand at living. He discovered a love for exotic animals, especially big cats like tigers and lions. He eventually started his own private zoo and changed his name to Joe Exotic. Quite an impressive zoo, with merchandise, tours, family events and some trading in cats on the side. He obsessively recorded his daily adventures with these animals on video. He took in ex-convict type of characters to work for him and ended up marrying two of his employees, apparently straight guys whom he somehow manage to manipulate into thinking they were gay for a few years. One was 19 and eventually committed suicide.
Joe had his own recording studio and found a very special enemy in the person of Carol Baskin. She runs a Cat rescue sanctuary and is on a mission to stop breeding and captivity practices for big cats in North America, the exact same kind of place Joe runs. Joe started making programs in which he vented about Carol. It went from bad to worse. He started insulting, vilifying and accusing her of all kinds of nasty things…like that she killed her former husband and fed him to her cats. Without spoiling to much…Joe continued on this downward spiral and ended up in jail. Various workers, lovers, business partners, other cat breeders and Carol Baskin herself gets interviewed extensively. It is as if the series wants you to form your own opinion based on a myriad of perspectives. Episodes are more cleverly put together to keep interest than it might seem. I’ve never experimented with hard drugs but I imagine taking LSD very similar to watching this series…you feel guilty for even trying it out but your curiosity and the urge to escape some of the realities you are dealing with makes you go for one more episode!
So, what’s going on here? First of all, I think we like to look down on people. Not people that are aware of their lower status and are unhappy about it. That would be too blatant. No, we like to look down on people who looks like they are unaware of and happy with their state. On the one hand it makes us feel better about ourselves when we look down on such people and then soothingly think to ourselves: at least I am not that ugly, dumb, mullet loving etc. On the other hand, it eases our anxiety. The fact that these people seem happy and ok, soothes us with the message that should we be unable to maintain our social status, income or good looks that makes us acceptable and slip to a perceived lower level of existence; we would still be ok. Joe, being an oddball who is not only gay but dress up weirdly, has a mullet and a “wife beater” moustache but also brims with passion for cats, could hardly be a better candidate to look down at. He ticks every box. As does almost every supporting actor in this bizarre reality play. It is this that hooks us to Joe and company.
But we are not only hooked, we are also reeled in. And for this you need something even deeper. Joe gives us a field trip through the human psyche. He has a lack of self reflection bar perhaps only Donald Trump. Paradoxically this makes Joe with all his oddities also the ultimate stereotype. He grows up, discovers something about himself that others reject. He almost dies because of the pain stemming from this rejection. He then discovers a passion, a driving force and a reason to keep on living in his love for animals. With this he seems to receive the affirmation, acceptance and even admiration he so craves. But it is bottomless pit and he needs to build an empire in which he entraps and subtly enslaves people to surround him and attend to his whims. He also develops the need to find someone to hate. Not the family that rejected him. We always tend to defend or deny the real sources of our pain as if to spare them the rejection they bestowed upon us. Carol Baskin, who threatens his kingdom becomes the sole object of his hate. And poor Joe becomes the classic idiot masochist that burns down his house in order to kill a suspected rat in the basement in a very literal way. As he used some people manipulatively as pawns in his own sick game, he becomes a pawn in the selfish games of others. We are reeled in by all this because as much as Joe is different than us and in our minds worse than us, he is very much like any one of us. We might not record all the details as thoroughly as him, we might not get noticed as much and for most of us the downward spiral is much less steep and illegal…but Joe is all of us.
In one of the later episodes Joe as a moment of theological reflection. I cannot recall the exact words, but it is something along the lines of: “God knows and God will either get me through this or He will not”. Joe used this to convey that he is someone that believes in God and therefore good. This brief glimpse into his understanding of God betrays a deistic rather than a theistic understanding of God. To him God is an impersonal force that brutally lays down the laws and folds his arms as he watches some people being crushed by them and others gaining from them. God to him is not one that directs, guides and cares about people on both ends of a divide. God is transcendent but not immanent.
So, as I watched the final episode, I find myself longing that another character will show up. Jesus. I realized that what this flamboyant Tiger King needs most, is to step off his throne and bow down to the Real King of all creation. This gentle King that rides on a Donkey rather than a Tiger. This King who serves and hide behind all beauty and passions and desires that drives us. This King that have that acceptance and love our souls so crave for in abundance. Should Joe meet this King, even while he sits in the darkness of a prison cage like the cats he once profited from, he will be free. Joe longs to be loved. If only can know that he is already.
Only Jesus could save this story. Only Jesus can save my story. I am done laughing at Joe. I now pray for him.
Gabriel J Snyman
March 30th 2020