Tiger King: What is All the Hype About?

All throughout social media in the past month, you might have seen memes about Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. Frankly, they are quite hard to miss with so many celebrities and social media influencers hyping up the show in the most extravagant ways. Tiger King is a 7-episode long crime documentary that involves the greatest number of big cats one anyone has ever seen; from tigers to lions and leopards, it features all types of exotic big cats and animals. The show revolves around Joe Exotic (who was originally named Joseph Maldonado-Passage,) and Carole Baskin competing in an unfathomable number of petty feuds to end the other person’s life. Exotic built the “Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park” (G.W. Zoo) in 1999 to unveil his major obsession with big cats and exotic animals. As a huge believer in his big cats being the best thing to have happened to him, Exotic was constantly breeding them as a way to keep the number of big cats in his zoo in check. Baskin, the owner of “Big Cat Rescue,” a large organization missioned to save mistreated exotic animals in the United States, is an animal rights activist who has brainwashed people into thinking that Exotic abuses the animals in his zoo. Having both Exotic and Baskin grow up as the biggest big cat-lovers, it is hard to understand how Baskin could possibly make Joe look like the most dangerous person to have ever lived. What is even more baffling, is how Exotic used to spend tens of thousands of dollars on his animals every month and care for them like his own children, and yet that same guy is currently sitting in a Texas prison for the murder of five tigers, the selling of lion and tiger cubs, and the attempted murder of Baskin.

Joe Exotic, as pictured on the right, and Carole Baskin on the left Photo courtesy of Entertainment Daily

*Spoilers ahead*

Just by watching the first few seconds of Tiger King, most people would be able to predict that they are in for a whole lot of craziness. The show starts by giving the viewers an inside glimpse of Exotic sitting in a jail cell, foreshadowing what happened to him later on in the show. The plot then moves onto what caused the hatred between Exotic and Baskin to emerge. Around 2006, Exotic started going to different shopping malls and exhibiting his animals as well as doing magic shows with them to earn money for his G.W. Zoo. Baskin would then indoctrinate her large following of people that the animals that Exotic owned were being abused regularly and were kept in cages when they should be able to freely roam around. This led to thousands of protest emails being sent to these malls, resulting in none of them wanting to welcome Exotic back.

Joe Exotic expressing his love for big cats Photo courtesy of The Cinemaholic

All throughout the show, Exotic showed just how much he loathed Baskin through a number of creatively wicked ways, such as putting snakes in her mailbox on her birthday, acquiring a doll of her and shooting it too many times to count, and exposing her by reading her diary to the entire world on Exotic’s live stream TV. Worst of all, Exotic seems to have gotten revenge on Baskin spreading rumors about her by spreading a rumor himself on what she did to her second husband. On 18 August 1997, Don Lewis, millionaire husband to Baskin disappeared without leaving any trace, and he still has not been found. Exotic, along with many others, have come up with three speculations as to Lewis’s disappearance, with all of them leading back to the conclusion that Baskin killed him in order to obtain all of his money. The three predictions comprise Baskin putting Lewis’s body through a meat grinder, hiding it in an underground septic tank, and the most infamous one being feeding him to her tigers. Exotic definitely had a lot of fun with this theory, as shown through his legendary music video “Here Kitty Kitty,” where he had a Baskin lookalike feed meat to a tiger, mimicking Baskin feeding the remains of her husband to tigers.

A meme of Carole Baskin and a widespread idea of her killing her own husband Photo courtesy of Ruin My Week

Tweets of Joe Exotic’s piercings and two husbands, two important takeaways of the show Photo courtesy of The Tab

From Exotic’s atrociously amusing revenge tactics, to the list of messed up stories surrounding Baskin’s life, Tiger King is a show that one simply cannot miss out on. Despite having explicit language and a few instances of graphic content, this show leaves you wondering how Exotic is currently doing in his jail cell, and some might even feel bad for him. There is also a chance that it could make you want to get a cat of your own and start an illegal exotic animal business somewhere in the world. In simple terms, Tiger King would most likely be the weirdest show you will ever watch, but Exotic’s story is nothing like anyone has heard of before.

Featured Image — Joe Exotic posing with one of his big cats Courtesy of Cheat Sheet

By Sara Tee