Where to Stream: Tiger King

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Netflix’s Tiger King is full of characters. There’s Joe Exotic, the country “singing” homosexual hillbilly who owns a massive compound full of tigers, lions, and crocodiles in Oklahoma, Carole Baskin, the animal rights activist who might have murdered her ex-husband and fed him to her cats, and “Doc” Antle, another exotic pet hoarder who also lords over a harem of employees. However there’s one character from the show that truly haunts me and that’s Joshua Dial, the relatively normal Oklahoma man who found himself caught up in this circus. As the lone voice of reason in Tiger King, his aguish makes him a big 2020 mood.

Tiger King is a documentary series on Netflix looking at the bonkers world of exotic pet ownership. As director Eric Goode explains up top, he was more curious in making a film about the underbelly of reptile sales. While interviewing subjects, someone came to purchase a rare snake and boasted about having a snow leopard in the back of his van. Goode captures this beautiful creature, cowed and with sorrow in its eyes, in the man’s van, which is parked in the Florida heat. This interaction led Goode on a wild adventure into the world of big cat owners, sellers, and breeders.

The most flamboyant character in the big cat world is Joseph Maldondo-Passage, aka “Joe Exotic.” Rocking a bleached mullet, multiple piercings, and the world’s wildest strain of extroversion, Joe Exotic ruled as the “Tiger King” over his zoo, aka the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park. At odd with Exotic was Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist working to end the breeding and private ownership of big cats. Ironically, though, Baskin’s own refuge, Big Cat Rescue, operates as its own big cat zoo. The war between Baskin and Exotic includes allegations of murder, arson, and copyright infringement.

Wandering into this strange world was Joshua Dial, a young gay libertarian whom Joe Exotic met at an Oklahoma Walmart. When Joe made a ridiculous bid for the U.S. Presidency, Joshua became his campaign manager. In Tiger King Episode 5, “Make America Exotic Again,” Joshua Dial introduced himself and then said, “Uh, it was the worst experience of my life.” He then took a beleaguered hit off of a vape pen and stole my heart.

Part of the allure of Tiger King is that normal folks like you or me get to tiptoe into the extremely unusual world of big cat owners. The titans of this world are larger-than-life personalities in polyamorous relationships, who battle over assets and raise baby tigers in toddler cribs. There’s also, apparently, a lot of meth. As Tiger King trudges on, it takes us into some super dark places that include assassination plots, Federal investigations, and one horrific suicide. Joshua Dial was embedded in this world at the peak of the madness and inadvertently acts as the everyman in the tale. He also manages to be the lone voice of reason onscreen.

Joshua’s own trauma, disbelief, and sheer disgust at what he witnessed is cathartic on two levels. Not only does it ground the wildest chapters of the Joe Exotic saga in some form of reality, but it feels like Joshua is speaking to the emotional experience many of us are having right now. I’m not saying living through a pandemic is as bonkers as working as Joe Exotic’s campaign manager, but there is a similar thread of surreality. The tragic and strange things that we are seeing in the news and with our own eyes are hard to fathom. Seeing how Dial dealt with all the horrors he witnessed felt like looking into a mirror.

Tiger King is the troubling tale of people living — and sadly dying — in a world that feels far from our own. It is as good an escape from reality as we could hope for, and Joshua Dial’s incredulous despair feels like a reflection of what it feels like to be alive in 2020.

Watch Tiger King on Netflix