But where else can they go? Not the wild, too much inbreeding and human interaction. A lot of zoos won’t take them.
At least the big cat lady doesn’t breed them. To me, that’s a enough a difference for me not to feel guilty about watching big cat rescue.
People have been convicted of murder even when no body is found. I suppose the cops don’t have enough evidence to arrest her or anyone else for the murder.
I thought in the series it showed that she used to breed them, mostly when with her late (and possibly now tiger meat) husband. So she used to do almost all the things she now fights against. I thought she was a bit hypocritical but I agree with her mostly. I met a tiger handler about 20 years ago and got to spend time with a 4 month cub & some tinier cubs plus saw the adults at the distance. He did not breed, he said he got all of his from rescue because he had a reputation for raising cubs and there was always someone in over their head. Spent about an hour at the place, especially around the 4 month old- who was the size of a pitbull with bigger teeth and about 10 times the energy, and really saw first hand the difference between domestic and wild animals. Tigers are obviously wild but its hard to realize what that means until you see it up close.
I understand you have to do some things to make them easier to handle for vetting and other stuff but really, you just got this feeling that keeping them caged was an obscenity. I generally side on the animal welfare side , not an “animal rights” supporter at all but it just felt wrong and this was a fairly ethical tiger owner that was no where near the level of exploiting his animals like Joe or Carol.
A good documentary about exotic pet owners (one in particular): The Elephant in the Living Room.
Netfilx sure seems to think it has a hit on its hands. You can’t watch a movie without a Tiger King promo popping up during the credits. I watched the first episode. Unpleasant viewing - I think what got to me most was several scenes of tiger cubs being passed around for park visitors to pose with. Plus the disingenuous self-justification of these people that they are raising public awareness by what they do. They may have mixed motives, but public service ain’t one of them.
At least, she has stopped breeding, whether it’s because she learned better or because she went to a different business model…
I’m not an animal rights supporter at all. But as a cat lover, there’s no other choices here. Once these big cats are born, they have to be kept in cages or killed. If you want to keep them alive, then into cages they go. Killing might be kinder, but it’ll be a bigger PR problem.
I cancelled Netflix a couple years ago, after more than 10 years, because I just wasn’t using it any more. Last night, I reactivated it just so I could watch this.
I just finished watching the first episode, and THAT was a doozy.
Mrs. Cups and I binged the whole series and I thought it was…ok.
Yeah it was funny to see how weird he is, but there honestly wasn’t enough information there to fill a full seven episodes. The first three were great, but after that the story seemed to meander about and belabor the point. It was a seven-part series that could have easily been done in five.
Glad to see other people on this board are noticing Carole Baskin’s hypocrisy. Joe was weird AF, but his cages looked WAY bigger and better maintained than hers, at least in the beginning, once he started losing money you could see it go downhill.
It was a fun waste of an evening, and the memes have been spectacular, but overall I’d rate it a 6 or 7 out of 10
I’d have to agree; while I really enjoyed it, they could easily have made it five episodes and really not lost any content that mattered.
There are no scenes of animal cruelty that I recall, except one tiger getting hit with a cane while attacking a man. The animals are really secondary to the plot. Maybe even lower down the list than that.
He was her second husband. And I’m not so sure.
I’ve stated it before. That’s the problem with the Netflix documentary model. It promotes bloat. I haven’t seen one documentary series yet that couldn’t have tightened up the editing and dropped an episode or two.
One interesting note about Carole. Yes she totally killed her husband and fed him to the tigers. Not that.
They made a point to say her dead husband picked her up on Nebraska Ave. They even mentioned it again later. Nebraska Ave is notorious for being a market for prostitution.
That would explain why he kept rolling around and trying to pick her up again and again. It was a perfectly normal activity from the perspective of a John picking up a streetwalker. It would also explain her apparent willingness to approach his truck and talk to him.
In the short term, it would seem to have paid off for him. He did, after all, get the girl.
We’ve just finished episode 5, and it’s pretty captivating. So many wild characters. It reminds us of Don’t F*ck with Cats but with a much more compelling story arc.
Sorry, you’re right. Howard is Husband 3.
I’ll tell you what; if I were a juror I don’t yet have enough to convict her, but I’d feel pretty gross acquitting her. Her blog post refuting “Tigert King” is, with regards to Don Lewis, really unconvincing.
We finished the series tonight, it could have been done two episodes ago. But still, a compelling series and a fascinating story.
Just today, I was thinking about how similar Joe Exotic is to Donald Trump. I was on a bike ride, just thinking, and I thought how all the Christians that rallied around Trump would also probably rally around someone like Joe Exotic if he ran for President and threw together a few right-wing beliefs.
Tonight, we watched the fifth episode, called Make America Exotic Again and I could not stop laughing at the whole thing. My wife told me she had also already thought about how similar Trump and Exotic were and the whole thing was hilarious.
I can not tell you how enjoyable this whole thing is. We’ve known about Joe for years ever since Louis Theroux met him years ago.
‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic files $94 million civil rights lawsuit from prison
from article:
According to court documents, Maldonado-Passage, who is representing himself, wants $78.8 million for 18 years of research, loss of personal property and the care for 200 generic tigers.
The former zookeeper also wants $15 million for false arrest, false imprisonment, discrimination, malicious prosecution, selective enforcement and death of his mother, Shirley Schreibvogel.
I haven’t seen the show (yet), but I read an in-depth article somewhere a while ago about this whole saga.
The primary overarching lesson was that the people who are attracted to the big cat business are seemingly all just psychologically fucked up.
And con artists.
That’s probably the primary overarching lesson of the show as well.