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Tiger King - Netflix - Spoilers Here In


Jaxom 1974

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I realize the world has some serious issues right now, but how is there not a thread about this bonkers documentary to brighten our lives?

Watching the show, I came away wanting a tiger, but at least I learned why I shouldn't do that...

And I'm not saying Carole didn't kill her one husband, but she's certainly part of some shady stuff as much as the others...

And let's be honest, would this show have the traction it has gotten if we weren't all on lock down?

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What an insane documentary. This is easily the wildest doc Netflix has put out to date when you consider the characters and content of the story. Who woulda guessed the personal zoo world would be like the wild west?

Though they all have their levels of charisma, all four of the big personalities in the show are dodgy people to put it nicely (Joe, Bhagadan Antle, Jeff Lowe and Carole). The ep that focused on Carole and her husband was eye-opening, because up to that point she certainly appeared, even if a little distorted, as the champion of all big cat rescue, and a decent person. Not only does it seem likely that she at least had a had in her husband's disappearance, but she pays her employees shit and thought it highly amusing that she doesn't know their names unless they've been with her for 5 years or so. Also, with millions of views on social media, she's clearly making some dough off her own cat park. 

I thought the Travis scene from the cctv was one of the craziest things. Can't remember the politic kids name but his expression when he pulled the trigger was crazy. 

Here kitty kitty! :pimp:

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watched this trash with room mate last week. Sheer and total trash that everyone involved in. from the characters to the producers to the camera people, should be mortally ashamed of. The animal cruelty barely gets a mention because we're supposed to be sooo fascinated with the mentally ill in our society. Fuck that.  This show makes you want to exterminate the human species. 

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I enjoyed this like crazy, but I have to admit the novelty wore off a bit in the last episodes. I think after 

Spoiler

Travis blew his brains out that really was the last straw, because then it becomes really evident that our Tiger King really is a piece of shit.

Up until that point, I feel like the show does an excellent job of making him seem more benign than the others. Sure, we know already that what he's doing is rather awful to the animals, but in comparison to the others he's not a cultist or murderer.

In the first few episodes it is a bit of a false flag operation where they present him as this lovable eccentric, who is a guntoting, queer, country-music performing tiger aficionado. He's far darker than that though. The show obviously did a lot of that by design which is a bit exploitative.

It is powerful to see how fucked up the world we live in is though. I would have loved for the Tiger King to have not been guilty, but no, he just got played by people who are even more evil. Like, nothing really changes for the better. And all the while Jef Lowe is getting a baby and Carol is fucking eating Champagne and brie.

I'd say that what made me the saddest were the regular people left destitute by all of this. You can clearly see that the manager and the head animal care taker were really fucked up by all of this. I felt even more sorry for them then the tigers to be honest (unpopular opinion I know, animals didn't get to choose bla bla bla) 

 

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4 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I enjoyed this like crazy, but I have to admit the novelty wore off a bit in the last episodes. I think after 

  Hide contents

 

Up until that point, I feel like the show does an excellent job of making him seem more benign than the others. Sure, we know already that what he's doing is rather awful to the animals, but in comparison to the others he's not a cultist or murderer.

In the first few episodes it is a bit of a false flag operation where they present him as this lovable eccentric, who is a guntoting, queer, country-music performing tiger aficionado. He's far darker than that though. The show obviously did a lot of that by design which is a bit exploitative.

 

 

Spoiler

I agree Travis was a turning point and the show suddenly got darker, but I think it was pretty clear that Joe was just as terrible from the beginning, he was just different in his way...he and his people were also as much of a cult, just in a different setting.

Gonna add spoiler tags to the title to make conversation easier if people want...

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5 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:
  Hide contents

I agree Travis was a turning point and the show suddenly got darker, but I think it was pretty clear that Joe was just as terrible from the beginning, he was just different in his way...he and his people were also as much of a cult, just in a different setting.

Gonna add spoiler tags to the title to make conversation easier if people want...

Adding spoilers to the title is probably for the best!

As to your point, I think are viewpoints are not that far apart, so let me rephrase it

Spoiler

For me, the Joe they presented in the beginning, had a bit of a Mighty Duck vibe going in his relationship with his people. He seemed to have collected a band of misfits around him to create a sort of makeshift family and this surrogate tiger family seemed to genuinely care for each other and what they were doing.

Joe's people formed a very stark contrast with the other major groupings presented in the first episodes. They were not as rich and entitled as Carol and her cronies, nor were they as seemingly polished and sophisticated as Doc Antle and his yoga gang.  

On the contrary, Joe and his crew were clearly the outcasts in their world. They lived in crappy shacks, they were ugly (missing teeth, legs, sporting mullets and just displaying signs of hard living all around) and they fed themselves with stuff dumped by local Wall marts. That's about as faraway from glamorous as you can get.

 The show clearly positioned Team Joe as the proverbial underdogs in the first episodes, worthy of our support. Sure, they might not have always been 100% ethical, but they did the best they could with limited resources against quite fiendish opposition.

As the lovable eccentric at the heart of it all, that made you root for the Tiger King. Perhaps because it is so rare to find an underdog winning in real life, it is an enticing fantasy to us (e.g. the enduring popularity of something like Rocky) and you wanted Joe to be that guy in real life.

Unfortunately, the real world is darker than fiction and the show really did a 360° flip on its moral stance to Joe. No longer the lovable eccentric, giving cons and drifters a shot at redemption through hard work with some of the world's most dangerous animals, instead he was revealed to be a Fagin-character in the flesh. 

The show is quite manipulative in that regard (e.g. only changing the first husband's on-screen title to ex-husband after the reveal that this whole time he wasn't gay), but fair game I guess. Normally I would not fall for this, but I'm a sucker for the whole underdog archetype. Plus, I do think that before the fame got to Joe's head, he was quite a lot closer to the good interpretation the show gives of him in the beginning. Otherwise you wouldn't see such fierce loyalty to his zoo being displayed by the woman losing her arm and Rienus. 

[Note: I do love how all three cults are a good representation of some US stereotypes. Like supposedly all Florida's types, Carol and her gang are vapid and spoilt. And Doc Antle is almost like how you would imagine a Southern planter turned vampire to be  ]

 

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15 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I enjoyed this like crazy, but I have to admit the novelty wore off a bit in the last episodes. I think after 

  Reveal hidden contents

Travis blew his brains out that really was the last straw, because then it becomes really evident that our Tiger King really is a piece of shit.

Up until that point, I feel like the show does an excellent job of making him seem more benign than the others. Sure, we know already that what he's doing is rather awful to the animals, but in comparison to the others he's not a cultist or murderer.

In the first few episodes it is a bit of a false flag operation where they present him as this lovable eccentric, who is a guntoting, queer, country-music performing tiger aficionado. He's far darker than that though. The show obviously did a lot of that by design which is a bit exploitative.

It is powerful to see how fucked up the world we live in is though. I would have loved for the Tiger King to have not been guilty, but no, he just got played by people who are even more evil. Like, nothing really changes for the better. And all the while Jef Lowe is getting a baby and Carol is fucking eating Champagne and brie.

I'd say that what made me the saddest were the regular people left destitute by all of this. You can clearly see that the manager and the head animal care taker were really fucked up by all of this. I felt even more sorry for them then the tigers to be honest (unpopular opinion I know, animals didn't get to choose bla bla bla) 

 

Joe Exotic was fun for a minute, but every layer you peel back makes him worse and worse.

 

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3 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't understand why anyone is watching tiger king, don't people care about animal abuse?  Jesus Christ.  

To be fair, even though it's really down played, it does give people a look into what's really going on in a lot of places like those we saw in the series. 

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7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Joe Exotic was fun for a minute, but every layer you peel back makes him worse and worse.

 

The funny thing here is that he doesn't even say it XD Why make such a fuzz about it and then not use your freedom of speech?

7 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't understand why anyone is watching tiger king, don't people care about animal abuse?  Jesus Christ.  

As Tywin et al. says, it does show you the inside of these things and that opens some eyes.

Think of it this way, the "animal-rights-people" (I'm going to borrow this term from the show and stereotype the hell out of it, as you seem to imply that everyone in this thread who watched the doc doesn't care about animal abuse. Black and white baby!) would never watch this type of doc anyways. On the other hand, the people who are pro these kinds of places or know the case and want to defend Joe will probably check this out.

When checking it out, they'll find out that e.g. Doc Antle gasses baby tigers, they'll find out that Joe burned 6 alligators, that they kept chimpanzees apart from each other for 10 years out of stupidity, that they shot 5 tigers, etc., etc. No longer can those people claim that menageries like this are not a case of serious animal abuse! 

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11 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't understand why anyone is watching tiger king, don't people care about animal abuse?  Jesus Christ.  

 

Anyway, sad fact is that a lot of people see this as an entertaining train wreck. Which is just... gross. 

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4 hours ago, Veltigar said:

The funny thing here is that he doesn't even say it XD Why make such a fuzz about it and then not use your freedom of speech?

The man does want to hold office some day!

I can't believe he got 19% of the vote, even if it was just 19% of a joke third party in a wasteland state.

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3 hours ago, Relic said:

 

Anyway, sad fact is that a lot of people see this as an entertaining train wreck. Which is just... gross. 

It is an entertaining train wreck. It's also completely amoral. But hey, it's still not Faces of Death.

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20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

The man does want to hold office some day!

I can't believe he got 19% of the vote, even if it was just 19% of a joke third party in a wasteland state.

Is Oklahoma that bad?

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It is an entertaining train wreck. It's also completely amoral. But hey, it's still not Faces of Death.

Is it SFW to google that? :p 

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On 3/31/2020 at 7:31 PM, Cas Stark said:

I don't understand why anyone is watching tiger king, don't people care about animal abuse?  Jesus Christ.  

Could this is in some way be similar to Blackfish? I mean that was shot to be what it was and this could simply be a by product about big cat abuse? Could be something positive comes out of it.

I only saw like 3 episodes with some people last weekend and that was enough for me. Unfortunately one of those had the guy shooting himself in it.

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On 4/4/2020 at 4:29 AM, Triskele said:

Andrew Sullivan in his weekly column for NYmag gets into Tiger King.  For anyone that by chance doesn't know Sullivan is openly gay so just mentioning that for context for those of you who do not have the politics disease where you'd know that already.  

 

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing, that was a fascinating read! I had no idea that Crystal Meth was so popular with gay men in the US. We always make jokes about it being a hillbilly drug, so really surprising.

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