EDIT: Hey everyone: I've been seeing a lot of comments saying "but I didn't get the idea that Joe was a hero, they're all equally bad". While that may be true for you, there are still many many other people who came away rooting for Joe, thinking he was framed! And leaving with the take that they are "equally bad" is just as harmful - since Joe is actually MUCH worse than they present - but we don't get a sense of that from watching. Maybe if he wasn't portrayed as "equally" or less bad than the others as people seem to be purporting, we wouldn't be getting stuff like this: www.change.org/p/donald-j-trump-donald-trump-free-the-tiger-king
Insider just made a comprehensive article about what the show got wrong about BCR: www.insider.com/tiger-king-truth-carole-baskin-big-cat-rescue-2020-4 (Thank you for adding your voice)
Incredible video. I don't even have a strong opinion about the show, I was just amazed by your writing. As someone who watches lot of video essays I can't wait to see more from this channel.
You are 100% incorrect about most of these details there are many many links showing that a Carroll does make a profit and does charge money for people to see the cats
Charging money for entry doesn't mean she's making profit. Big cats are very expensive to care for and feed, the money has to come from somewhere and charging an entry fee is anything but immoral. Also, what links disprove her claims and what are your sources on these details?
the worst part is that the suffering of the animals is largely ignored. And because of the show's success, we can expect similar businesses to gain more traction, either by fans wanting to be part of the experience, or by networks looking to cover another Joe Exotic. We can also expect many more poorly done documentaries coming out soon. This won't just hurt the people and animals involved, but countless more.
Sofia Baldini I got super bored with the documentary because I thought it was going to be more about the tigers and animals and when I saw it was all maniacal human drama I was like “what is this? Is no one going to talk about the big cats or is Joe’s country music more important??”
I couldn't watch it after that first snow leopard in the van. I said nope and shut it off. Tigers and polar bears are my favorites and I just can't even get into the human drama that overshadows the real injustice because animals don't have voices and personalities for TV. They're just props. It's hard enough to watch this, but at least I trust Broey to be talking about some real issues, not just "damn, you see this show?"
It definitely has caused more people to go to these kind of places. Two people I have added on Snapchat have posted pictures and videos of themselves going to joe’s place (I have no idea what it’s called haven’t watched the show). I live in Texas.
Well, there are shit ton of vegans now in the world. They are gonna fucking wreak havoc if these businesses get traction... and PETA gets shit ton of millions of dollars of donations which gives them power to shut down this kinda shit. They already shut down thousands of labs and farms. So don't worry. It's gonna be a very short-lived trend.
I think this really fell into the "Both sides are equal" problem that America has, and it seems terminal. There are two groups, both have some level of crazy out of 100, but it's too hard to draw a distinction what OK crazy and NOT OK crazy are, so the media says "Yea, they're both crazy! Wow." and leaves it at that. Rather than "They're both crazy, but here's the facts that explain why Crazy party A is doing more harm than crazy party B, while B is still crazy and bad." Basically, whether true or not, the media seems to think every audience is too dumb to understand any nuance. There is either a winner and a loser, or "it's too close to call". That's the only outcome available. I see this multiple times a day in American discourse... I have no idea if this is how it works outside of this terrible place. News, Politicians, Twitter fights, reality TV, people I talk to IRL, Facebook walls... this inability to accept reality (which is frequently shades of gray, without even a single example of pure good or evil to use as a base, since there is no such thing. Just various perspectives) permeates every problem facing the world.
The more that I read up on the Baskin case, the more I become frustrated at just how much stuff the show left out. Anything that puts any doubt on her is not shown at all. The fact that her husband was a runner with the Mexican mafia, that he sometimes piloted airplanes and helicopters drunk, made frequent unannounced trips. Not to mention that he wasn't rich until he and Carole began their business, so the fortune the ex wife was trying to get wasn't even theirs. Like, so much stuff was redacted to make Carole seem like more of a monster.
Fat agree lol. She's obviously not a complete saint or anything like that, and she is certainly suspicious, but to say she definitely killed her husband with shaky evidence at best and no trial is ridiculous.
I've seen people on social media """stan""" Joe Exotic. I dont think that people realized that he lured and manipulated teenage boys into working for him by fueling their drug addictions. He is an evil person and I dont understand how anyone could watch the show and root for him knowing all the bad things he's done.
People, especially the most mediocre Joe schmucks, hace a tendency to glorify evil. I guess they imagine themselves living of decadente and infamous exploits instead of the pai fully boring existences the live.
The disproportionate public hatred of Carole is unbelievably frustrating to me. IF she killed her husband, she should be charged, yes, but I simply cannot comprehend how people GENUINELY think they can determine her guilt based on an inherently biased documentary, but then claim that people like Joe who have been CONVICTED of serious crimes should be let free.
I dislike her not because she might have killed her husband, but by the way she presents herself as being the morally better person and yet she still has all those animals trapped. She prentends she has an animal shelter but she's a breeder and the conditions of her "shelter" are horrible. Hell, my dog lives in better conditions than those poor animals.
@@Proto-Martyr the conditions of her shelter are not "horrible". Tiger King manipulated you into thinking they were. Hers is one of the few GFAS accredited sanctuaries in America for big cats, for which they have to submit to periodical site visits. Tiger King showed feeding cages attached to bigger enclosures portraying them as the actual living space. Big Cat Rescue houses those animals which can't be returned to the wild, and those that can be, they have done so, like bobcats. They don't breed or conduct petting tours. Audited records show they got only 37% of their revenue from tours and merch. The only other option would be to kill the big cats that cannot be acclimatised in the wild. Which many conservationists disagree with.
orangesky My sister made me watch the show and she was genuinely surprised when I said I didn’t see why she despised Carole but liked Joe. I told her that Joe is just as egotistical as the rest of them and that they all use animals to their own benefit. My sis didn’t come around but she did admit that she was influenced by Joe’s oddness and “wacky charm”. I don’t get it. I don’t like Carole and I think she’s very two sided but at least she knows that Tigers shouldn’t be bred and sold and that Joe’s zoo is unethical.
you forgot to mention how the show producer is in the exotic animals' trade himself too, he is in the turtles trafficking market and Carole's bill threatens his business.
Could you give more info? I'm a reptile hobbyist, I know a lot a lot a lot of people with turtles and tortoises who keep them as pets and or breed them
Something curls inside me in anger and frustration every time I see a part of that “documentary” by Shane Dawson. Being RUclips famous doesn’t mean you can make a documentary, especially when it’s clear you haven’t opened a book on the subject. Bland and sensationalist.
Check this out: The people behind the documentary purposely put a giant industrial meat grinder on screen when talking about Carole Baskin's grinder ----- which in reality , was a tiny normal kitchen meat grinder. Carole's former husband had ties with criminal groups in Costa Rica, and was a notoriously bad AND reckless air pilot. Like, it was widely known that he was bad and made a ton of bad decisions when flying. Him crashing his plane or being murdered overseas is far from farfetched. Also, the tiny cages that get a ton of focus at her sanctuary place are to facilitate the introduction of newly acquired animals to their new enclosure and to ease feeding.
The most heartbreaking part of the documentary was the footage of Travis’ mother at his funeral having to watch as Joe made the whole event about himself. In a meta way this is kind of the way that the documentary behaves. Using the tragic suicide of an abused individual to add to its own spectacle.
it was so disrespectful seeing joe talk about his balls in the eulogy for travis, especially when he only got travis to “love” him with intense, nonstop drug highs. then singing awfully in front of everyone.. it looked more like a mini church meet up than a funeral. it was all so disgusting.
Mischa Romo who cares about Travis’s family? They let him go to that zoo in the first place and suffer that abuse but they wanna cry now because of a show? Screw their feelings
i didnt find it particularly shocking, and oh boo hoo some people i didnt know existed before this might be hurt by it. though, i have a pretty tough stomach and asperger’s, so usually im not a very good empathy barometer.
it's so amazing to me how a bunch of people can just say casually "that lady killed her husband" based on the word of someone who is Not Great and misrepresented evidence
Did you not see the parts where people other than Joe were calling her out? Multiple people who knew her husband all came out and said they thought things were suspicious about her and the way he disappeared. You do realize it's possible to hate both Joe and Carol right? Of course the typical viewer femtard who watches this channel tends to not be capable of nuanced thought, so. *shrug
@@TRENCHESandTREADS i mean its not at all possible that these other people were lying as well bc they might or might not have an interest in people hating Carole? One thing that was immediately clear when I watched the series was that I can't fully believe anything that is presented there bc the show obviously did not care one bit about objectivity. you're entitled to not like either but I personally find the witch hunt based on a blatantly biased and senstational show disgusting. (also there is a lengthy statement on the BCR website on the show where court documents are provided that prove that Don's ex-wife and daughters were after more money. I do believe court documents more than this show)
@@TRENCHESandTREADS you shouldn't believe anything that the show tiger king presented you. You also shouldn't call people "femtards" makes your argument sound immature.
She's definitely suspicious, but people saying that she "definitely killed her husband" is absolutely ridiculous. Her killing him is a possibility for sure, but it has been in no way proven to me that she definitely killed him.
My friend works for a doco company that is partnered with Nat Geo and let me tell you the angry rants that this show started for her and her co workers. I feel so bad for Big Cat Rescue!
I never got the impression while watching that Joe was a good person. Heck, threatening to kill someone and mock killing them is absolutely horrible and he does many, many other horrible actions. Let's assume that he was completely setup, it does not excuse any of the actions he has shown during the docu-series, even less the action that probably were not shown. For me it was more a show of "look at those crazy big cat owners" and less true crime.
I feel like the creator of this video is taking the "free Joe" movement joke too seriously, tbh. It is a joke. Not a dick. Don't take it so hard. There should have been more focus on the abuse Joe committed, but it was addressed along with Doc and Carole's shady animal abuse claims. The creator also pulled no punches in implying all these people should be arrested for animal abuse crimes as well.
I agree. I never took this show as a serious documentary, and I most certainly didn't think Joe was any better than Baskin or any of the other crazy people on that show.
Getting angry at some one who tries to bankrupt you through the tyranny of the government to the point of hiring a hitman is not only understandable, it is ethical for any government restriction is unethical.
The simple fact that Carole Baskin is considered the vilain of the story against all the men (Joe Exotic first) is mind blowing to me. She ain’t no angel but we spend an entire episode in a supposed purser
It's easier to hate women. Same reason we decided Yoko Ono was the villain and not John Lennon, even though he physically and mentally abused her. Society would rather hate a woman. What else is new
Exactly. We had the guy who used cult tactics to exploit young girls into sex servants and a guy whom attempted to hire an assassin. The show never even brought up the fact that her husbands employee whom pointed the finger at her embezzled money from him and had motives to point finger at her, or there was a reason why Carole wasn’t a suspect in spite of her relationship to the deceased
@@aikikaname6508 Carole was/is a suspect. It's explicitly stated by the Sherrif's department. She's hated because the other characters (despite their faults) offer charisma. They aren't villains, they're anti-heroes. They've done bad things but we're able to relate to them or like them in other ways. Carole doesn't have that. Her mannerisms and behaviours inspire a deep, primal discomfort in people. She's just "not right". It's almost an uncanny valley type of thing. She emanates this aura of wrongness as if she was an alien mimicking human behaviour in a skinsuit. She's also done plenty of bad things but there are no redeeming qualities apparent when watching her. She's not charming or entertaining or amusing, she's just a Karen who embraces her victimhood, encourages it, then uses it as a bludgeon against her opponents.
@@duchessravenwaves it's all about the perspective in which you view the situation. With the Beatles as a foursome making music, yoko ono turning up and "breaking up" the band and putting in some objectively awful musical influences she is the villain. If you view having a bunch of tigers and doing meth as the norm, which tiger King premises as normal for these people; the woman who (may have) fed her husband to tigers is the villain. From the view of a normal person John Lennon was an awful person and Joe Exotic is the real criminal and Carole Baskin killing her husband is a wild conspiracy theory.
@@duchessravenwaves it's all about the perspective in which you view the situation. With the Beatles as a foursome making music, yoko ono turning up and "breaking up" the band and putting in some objectively awful musical influences she is the villain. If you view having a bunch of tigers and doing meth as the norm, which tiger King premises as normal for these people; the woman who (may have) fed her husband to tigers is the villain. From the view of a normal person John Lennon was an awful person and Joe Exotic is the real criminal and Carole Baskin killing her husband is a wild conspiracy theory.
I thought Tiger King was super entertaining, but I was just seeing it as a documentary about weird, WEIRD big cat people. I never thought of it as true crime, even though that's what it's technically listed as. This is a really great video and it got me to think differently of the show (though I still enjoy it). Btw, I never imagined there would be video essays on Tiger King, but I'm not complaining!
I guess the problem was with the labelling of the show? I also didn't think of it as true crime, only watched it because people were saying that this is an entertaining show about insane people who might as well be GTA sidequest characters, and I love my share of watching crazy hillbillies.
@@BroeyDeschanel oh that's wonderful. The comment is thoroughly appreciated. Wonderful video by the way. You have a loyal subscriber in me. Keep it up!
Amazing video! My doc editing professor was just discussing how there is a trend in "documentary" filmmaking that exploits the series form by dragging out unnecessary storylines for the sake of sensationalism.
I was just thinking about how I wish this show had come out while I was still in college and taking doc courses! One of the first things we learned was how, regardless of who they are, there are manipulative tactics that documentarians use to express their bias. Knowing now that they left out how racist Joe was is a great example of that.
Tbh i was so shocked from the scene of travis’ accidental suicide. I couldnt believe they wouldnt show any warning signs or any kind of notice that they were going to show such images. I know there is no blood but i pay very much attention to peoples expression and i know instant trauma when i see it. Disrespectful from every perspective.
Candela Mattera i was so glad that i had watched it with a friend who told me to turn off the sound and look away until he told me the scene was over. But then I still accidentally saw it because someone put the clip in a RUclips video, ALSO without a trigger warning! I can't believe why people think its okay to just show it to everyone. It's grueling enough even if it doesn't show the person itself and I wish I would have had the choice to never have seen it
Didn't they include it without the permission of his family too? They didn't even know the footage existed. Either way, that's a disgusting thing to include
I honestly stopped watching a little bit after that and I haven't been able to finish. It's just,,, so unnecessary to include. I would describe the literal footage of someone shooting themselves and the reaction of the person in the room with them as a little bit more than shocking to me.
There was a lot of material kept in TK that felt like filler and ultimately led to no satisfying conclusion. The series throws around this idea that these "rescue center's" act as cults with charasmatic yet deeply flawed people at the helm, with this in mind why wouldn't you expose Joe Exotic as a racist? They had no problem dedicating 2 hours airing Carole Baskin's dirty laundry but draw the line at Exotic being unlikeable. I knew there was something odd about the way the series was edited but this video really puts it all together.
I always wondered why I left the documentary feeling like I didnt like the creators. For some reason I was just mad at them and this video really articulated why!
I feel like adding in the racism would have been overkill. I mean, they spend 8 episodes airing Joes dirty laundry. They show him making death threats, abusing his animals and his husbands, make an absolute fool of himself through the election campaign and the music videos, commiting arson and hiring a hitman. The „and also he‘s racist“ would have been a huge additional can of worms and might have become a major focal point of the show, considering how important the discussion of racism is, these days. When I read that he said the n-word, I wasn‘t surprised at all, just thought „yup, sounds like Joe“
I mean, at least with their editing, they draw a direct comparison between Carole's sanctuary having volunteer staff (who get color-coded t-shirts based on length of time participating) and Doc's & Joe's creepy exploitative way of keeping desperate people isolated and stuck on-site.
@Millennial Leftist This is so confusing to me. Like, I kinda get the "Carol killed her husband" stuff but how anyone could watch this show and think Joe Exotic is anything less than a madman who abuses and exploits everything he can find is beyond me. Nothing he does in the entire show is even remotely acceptable, why do people think he doesn't deserve his punishment???
The inclusion of the "Carol killed her husband" subplot was DEFINITELY just for sensationalism, and had nothing to do with the supposed "mission" of the piece. But this was done completely at the direction of Joe, because he devoted his life to fucking with her, which is what lost him his freedom.
Yea I don’t like Carol but if you look into it a lot of the people accusing her have reasons to lie like embezzlement and lawsuits. Also people choose to cut out stuff about Joe like him being a massive racist so they can appeal to a wider audience.
@@polaroidandroidjeff6383 I didn’t like Carol because she acted like she was better than Joe and Doc - like she was this faultless saint. When I’m reality, she’s just as shitty as the rest of them
even though i liked watching tiger king, after the show i was left feeling like if at any point you were to turn the camera around at the ppl making the show, they would fit right in with the subjects of the show. it's kind of unsettling. also they seem to have omitted a lot of relevant information. i don't know how to word it, but both the creators and the subjects of the show seem eerily similar, like they're just as capable of manipulation and exploitation, just in different ways. idk.
Oh, yeah, reading up on Eric Goode and his Turtle Conservatory, he definitely seems like a bit of a Tiger King character, just with turtles instead. He talks in an interview about his gotta-catch-em-all mindset with his turtles, going to great lengths to get any types that he doesn't possess yet. He's talked extensively in interviews about how wildlife sanctuaries should just kill all the animals so they're not in captivity, and that the message of the show is to give to wildlife conservationists (you know, like him) instead of animal sanctuaries. There's an old photoshoot of him sitting on a live tortoise and an article from a buddy of his about going to his Turtle Conservatory and being invited to ride them around. Turtle Conservatory's social media pages and website shows a bunch of photos of people manhandling exotic animals for a cool photo. They also they sell the "excess," turtles and tortoises, including endangered species, as pets. They also rely on volunteers and full-time unpaid interns - and unlike the BCR interns, his don't even get a food stipend, and may not even get housing. Just to be clear, such internships are arguably exploitative but seem to be pretty normal for reputable wildlife facilities; people use them to get experience for competitive paid positions in the field. It's just that his show then argues that using volunteer labour and full-time internships makes you a fucking cult. Additionally, I'm not necessarily saying that Goode's conservatory doesn't do good work for species conservation, but unnecessarily handling, riding, and selling off exotic animals makes me think that he isn't nearly so devoted to their welfare and happiness as individuals.
Tiger King was both a great drama and a bad show. The real victims of the show WERE the Tigers, and the show just does not tell you that. It felt more like accusations to all of the people involved, even if they felt half-asses. (Carol is suspicious, however, I am knowledgable in her acts to know that she's not as shitty as the rest.) The show really wants you to feel sympathetic to Joe and hate everyone else when Joe deserves just as much hate that he was charged with. The memes about the show always felt like Joe was made a martyr when he is in fact, an animal abuser. I didn't like Carol's work with PETA and wish that the was not supported by them, but I can't compare her to Joe when she stopped breeding. Tl;dr Fuck Joe, fuck the myrtle beach guy, and carol baskin isnt as bad as we think she is.
@@807D14M0ND5 No clearly it wasn’t. How many individuals posted on the #FreeJoeExotic ? Pretty disgusting to me one could even enjoy or even honestly stomach this show. The victims were actually not just tigers, if one pauses to read the humane society report. Many, many, many animals were abused and killed. If the show was originally supposed to be about the exotic animal trade why WOULDN’T they tell their audience about the horrific abuse committed against not just tigers but other animals UNLESS they wanted to manipulate the way the audience felt about Joe and Carol? TLDR; the people who made this show suck as well.
4 года назад+170
I watched it all in one sitting. I was horrified by it and yet I couldn’t stop. It was like I was being held hostage by the show and I didn’t like that one bit. I felt extreme discomfort watching the animal abuse and the grooming play out but just couldn’t look away. Loved your essay, though.
Letícia Evelyn i agree! i didn’t like it but kept watching. it wasn’t what i wanted or expected and the lack of address to animal abuse was wildly ignorant
I think it's interesting that a lot of people find the "leveling up", 0 payment, and required time per month of volunteers odd or unethical, that's what nearly every kind of rescue does. A horse rescue in my area does that exact thing, city zoos do that, shelters do that.. like why is it confusing to people that volunteers need to be committed and reliable? No one is forcing them to dedicate their time for free.
"Because everyone else does it makes it okay" This is a form of fallacious reasoning that no adult should be making. You say a horse rescue does that in your area? Then that place is in need of criticizing just as much as Carol's then. The fact of the matter is Carol is running a business first, and a rescue shelter second. It's absurd and reductionist to claim that she's only in it for the well being of animals when you can see the wealth her business brings in. If you're making money as a business then it goes without saying that you should be paying your employees instead of tricking people into working for you because you're "a charity" when that's clearly not the case. As an example, no one expects to get paid when they volunteer at a soup kitchen, but then again, the soup kitchen doesn't rake in large sums of cash from visitors. Carol's zoo (and that's what it is) absolutely does. Joe, Antle, and Carol are all pulling the same scam just with different optics, if you wouldn't give Joe or Antle a pass then you shouldn't be giving Carol either.
@@TRENCHESandTREADS you obviously have no idea what accreditation is or how it works. You clearly have an agenda against the "femtards", judging from your previous comment. Get a life....
@@TRENCHESandTREADS bruh she does it so that the people handling the animals have experience. I've followed big cat rescue (independent of Carol baskin) for a while. If you leave a new volunteer to feed a tiger, they probably will end up setting it free. Big Cat Rescue rlly doesn't bring in that much money??? They said everyone does it because that it is the norm. Police arrest people; that's the norm. It isn't fallacious thinking bruv
@@vudi2103 One of the filmmakers had the gall to say any animal in a cage should be euthanised when asked about how they depicted Big Cat Rescue. I'd like to see him get out that needle and do it himself - demonstrates what uneducated fools made this thing.
@@TRENCHESandTREADS I don't know the details of Baskins "business" and I can only assume you know as much as I do when I say that Big Cat Rescue is a non profit organization. That means that any profit gained by admission fees or donations goes toward the upkeep of the organization, and not into Baskin's pocket. It would have to generate a lot of wealth simply because keeping an operation like that running is insanely expensive. Saying that Joe's zoo and Big Cat Rescue are the same, like I've seen a lot of people do, is absolutely ridiculous. However, if you know more about the specifics of the money generated and how it is spent, please enlighten us.
That's why American Vandal is so great. It's all the good of True Crime without making you feel guilty for being entertained by other people's misery, because it's not true at all.
"When you think about it, the show is guilty of the very thing it accuses Joe of doing: abandoning its initial cause for... the spectacle" -- wow! Great video, all around. You have a new subscriber.
I haven't seen Tiger King. After watching this video, I'd saying branding it as a "docuseries" doesn't change the fact that it's everything wrong with exploitative reality television. It exploits the cast members' personal and interpersonal struggles for entertainment, and it exploits the audience by using deceptive editing to heighten the entertainment. Add to that: it exploits the animals who depend on these people for survival and quality of life. I think watching this show would just infuriate me. Watching this video was entertaining, though!
Great video, and also thanks for clearing up the bit about how Big Cat Rescue isn't a MLM. Not many people would have made that correction. Something that tipped me off to the inaccuracy of the series when I first watched it was the claim that Joe got 20% of the vote when he ran for governor of Oklahoma. Having lived there at the time, I knew that seemed off, so I looked into it and found that he only got 20% of the Libertarian primary vote. Which was only about 600 people.
Doc Antle also scared me. Dude's a groomer, yo. I... am also in the small band camp that thinks Carol didn't do it. With how much money the dude had? he could disappear whenever he wants. But I like this dive into 'true crime' as a whole and was upset that not more spotlight was on the actual exotic animal trade and the importance of wild tigers and conservation.
Ugh thank you. I hate how everyone is hating on Carole when shes not nearly as bad as everyone else in the show. It's honestly insulting. These people are all sheep that dont seem to think for themselves and take the documentary for face-value.
Well, I didn't question the documentary (or reality show, let's be real) from a journalistic point of view as an analysis of big cat trade, but I just felt insulted by how they manipulated it into a story. Because A LOT of details would've seemed different if they had stated everything up front. Like Joe grooming young men and him & antle just running cults, as well as leaving out the reality of how much all Joe's staff hates him and how he conned his parents into bailing him out, or how his trolling of Baskins was disturbing, regardless of whether she killed her husband.Jñ Joe only cared about her trying to shut him down, not go on a crusade to solve that murder. EVERYONE who worked at his Zoo said hes a monster and deserves to be in jail. Just from what Kirkham said, that the tigers Joe hung out with were always sedated cause he's terrified of animals, or how the staff knew FOR A FACT he killed tigers. The doc made it seem like it's something that might happen instead of something that 100% took place regularly
But Joe exotic apparently would have killed about 10 tigers whereas the doc was killing hundreds of them in gas chambers... why isn't the doc in jail ?
I really don't get what people find so bizarre about Carole's volunteers. I worked with a charity that helped to build houses for impoverished people and I obviously did it for free, and they too had different levels of helpers (the lowest level was going to the streets to get donations, higher levels meant helping build the house itself). And in that charity, just like Carole's, the higher level supervisors did get paid for their work. If they hadn't added the wacky music and the people saying they worked on Christmas (which, btw, I have many Catholic friends who volunteer in Christmas for different charities too), would it really seem so weird?
You kind of have to work on Christmas and every other holiday when you are caring for animals, right? A relative has been a volunteer at BCR for 15+ years, and they do have tiered system. They require extensive training (provided for free, by them) to advance up to each level of caring for the cats. It's a safety thing for the volunteers, and an assurance that the cats are getting experienced caregivers. It's a win for all, and because of their excellent training, volunteers get hired to work in well paid positions when they leave BCR. Many people are aware of the quality of their program.
Most of the people making this criticism don't actually know anything about zoos or animal sanctuaries beyond what they heard in Tiger King. Non-profit animal facilities (whether they're zoos or sanctuaries) NEED volunteers to get by. Those places are very expensive to run, and if people want to donate their time and work to a worthy cause, what's wrong with letting them?
This was really good and interesting! I haven't watched tiger king myself cause animal abuse makes me really uncomfortable, but this was a really cool video
i had to stop watching after the second ep because someone (don’t remember who) said that “people shouldn’t be mad we’re breeding tigers because it’s making more tigers!!!” but. they’re being held in captivity. so there’s no point in breeding if they’re not going out into the wild. like what.
I must have not been paying attention, because I certainly didn’t have the “Joe was framed” take away. Edit: “Joe’s too stupid to pull this off”. Yes, he’s in jail. He didn’t pull it off.
the basis of claims that carole is a hypocrite are on manipulative editing. carole wrote a statement about it on her site; her shelter is accreditted, and she has thousands of acres of land that the animals are freely able to explore. they didn't shoot down carole's credibility so much as manipulate the perception of it.
When you mentioned shane and his "documentaries" I quickly looked up your uploads to see if you discussed it. I hope you can make one for that as well because you've raised so many good points in this video!
Hi first time watcher here! Loved the video. One thing I feel like a lot of people aren't really talking about is when they talk to "animal rights activists" in Tiger King, they don't talk to more reputable organizations in regards to the welfare of animals, Nor any veterinarians who might specialize in exotic medicine. They Interview someone from PETA, A controversial organization in and of itself. In my opinion, I feel like that also takes away a lot of credibility with the film.
They had 5 years worth of access to Dr. Borstein at Big Cat Rescue. They probably had many hours of video of the veterinary care he provided and interviews. Did they use any of it? Nope.
I didn’t feel like the show wanted me to think”Joe Exotic should be released.” I thought he should stay in prison after I watched the whole thing. I also felt a call to action where sanctions need to be placed to limit the ownership of wild cats. For example, the government won’t allow you to own a big cat unless you go though some verified training and prove you have a capable facility. And current big cats would be fathered ion as long as they’re documented by a certain date. I agree about the footage of travis’s death; it shouldn’t have been shown. Overall, great video!
I think your comments on Carole Baskin are unfair in regards to her volunteers. The people who get the t-shirts and volunteer are aware that they won’t get paid. They aren’t workers, they are giving up their time willingly and aren’t asking for money in return. If they were in a financially difficult position they would be able to stop. However, if these people are getting paid $150 a week, then that work they do can not be easily given up. If Carole Baskin was making hired workers do unpaid work then it would be deeply exploitative but she isn’t. They choose to give up their time and know they won’t get paid. There is nothing immoral about people volunteering and knowing they won’t get paid. Otherwise, this is an excellent video about why Tiger King is a good piece of entertainment but not good journalism.
Yea it would be wrong if the people who work there are given shelter (and can't afford a room elsewhere), given substance (whether food or drugs etc), or threatened/forced to work there. As far as I've seen, none of this applies to big cat rescue. It's a non profit for the betterment of captured big cats.
Not as bad as Joe Exitic but it's still very wrong. If she profits from it and the work has value to her, then she should pay them. Otherwise it's abuse. She's not running a non-profit organisation, but a business.
@@ladyYeniel Having a paid position doesn't mean that it's a business. Most non-profit organizations will have some paid positions, nothing inherently wrong with that. Places like BCR are extremely expensive to run, they need volunteers. Hell, even the nicest zoos you've been to need volunteers.
@@StarlightPrism Not sure if you understood what I said. She is running a business, therefore making money and profiting from the work -> therefore she should pay. Different story with non profits, which some zoos are.
Hahaha "So, is Tiger King a passionate call-to-action for the mistreatment of endangered animals?" she asks lol NO, Tiger King is a passionate call-to-action for the mistreatment of Joe Exotic! 🤣 And anyone trying to defend him is arguably JUST as egregious a human being. (If not more so.) Edit; "Abandoning it's initial cause for the spectacle." 👍 That's profound Especially to the particular subject matter. And a perfect sum-up line to end with.
As much as I love tigers, the story of Travis is really heartbreaking. It was hard to watch, It was definitely no accident. The things Joe talked about in his eulogy truly showed what a delusional narcissist he was... I can forgive crazy but talking about balls dragging on your face in front of the mother whose son clearly killed himself because of how unhappy he was......... I can't fully blame Travis' suicide pn Joe, I think the ultimate power was in Travis' hands and he made his choice. But holy fuck that was depraved. Trying to kill carol baskin is understandable.... but that was beyond redeemable.
If you love tigers you would see that people and places like that aren't good. You can't just shut them down these animals need somewhere to go. But we need to ban and restrict the breeding and selling of these animals on the private market. This goes way beyond just big cats, but also many many other exotic species. I have worked at places like this. Non profit private zoos. Its all shady business.
Is it just me or does it feel like people talking about tiger king saw a different show than I did. Joe Exotic never seemed framed like a sympathetic character to me if not out right a monster. To me the show seemed more like a true crime version of breaking bad where we fallow several horrible people get worse. Good video btw, this was a separate rant from that
This sounds weird to me because when you watch the show it clearly portrays Joe as lunatic, but a misunderstood lunatic and one who doesn't deserve to be in prison. It dedicates entire episodes to show how he was framed, and yet you claim that isn't happening? It dedicates episodes framing Carol Baskin instead as if to show Joe off as being better than her, and therefore again being more "innocent" than he actually is. I feel like you must have shut your eyes during 60% of this show, or just not wanted to see it honestly.
@@TheSilverwing999 When I said ‘framed’ I meant framed narratively, not framed as in legally framed. I saw the same show, I didn’t mean it to sound like I was challenging what happened in it
What you presented here, I was expecting from the show when I watched the trailer. I don't like and want to see animal being abused & people being manipulated hence I avoid to watch it. Amazing video.
Tbh the thing that really irritated me about the show and left me not only shocked but disgusted and disappointed, was the handling of Travis' story. The clip of his death was completely unnecessary and triggering. His story of drug abuse and dependence on Joe was sad, but very realistic- it could really happen to anyone. His story wasn't shown correctly, the abuse he was suffering was not shown in the light it should've been shown. He was a victim but was simply shown as an addict with problems.
I think you developed this video essay brilliantly. You don't just list off the various traits/aspects/whatever of a documentary, but before you analyze what it does wrong, you give examples of where it's done right.
This! All my friends told me to finally watch it, but after the first episode I was just not feeling it. I've seen lots of awesome True Crime documentaries and this just wasn't what I expected at all.
there's a line jeff lowe says in the last episode (i think? might be the second last) that i fully believe was constructed out of about 5 or 6 separate clips.
I feel like Old Gods of Appalachia is the anti-Tiger King. Different genre (cryptid horror/superstition instead of true crime), but it actually is about addressing the problems in this area especially opioid epidemic
Great video. Would love some more critique videos like this from female perspectives on various true crime. It's far too male dominated, which is very disturbing considering the vast majority of victims are women at the hands of males.
I love this video, TY! I do want it pointed out however that there is a /very big difference/ between animal *rights* activism and animal *welfare* activism. I haven’t watched the series so I don’t know the context, but as far as I was aware, BCR was focused on animal welfare, not animal rights.
23:30 I thought the editors gave a nod to your final point at the very end of the series, where the person least invested in the animals, the campaign manager, is shown thinking out loud about what was all of this for and pointing out how no animals were helped despite all the money and time... I took it as a meta comment within the show about how the producers set out to report on exotic animal trade but got lost in the drama and personality cults and in the end are pretty sure they did nothing to help the animals.
The problem with almost all true-crime television is what David Lynch coined “consumable TV violence”. The horrors of people’s personal tragedy are voyeuristically consumed and forgotten, week by week, episode by episode. I experienced this phenomenon once. I was halfway through a true crime show about a brutally murdered woman when I realized I had already seen it before. I had forgotten everything about the victim after watching the terrifying ordeal just months before. This was Lynch’s inspiration for Twin Peaks, a show that was meant to make the viewer obsess over the victim rather than the killer.
I used to work in conservation, so a lot of friends really wanted to talk Tiger King. The question I had most was "what does the conservation community think of Carol Baskins?" I guess because she was presented as a more responsible animal care professional than Joe. To be clear, they're both incredibly bad! Roadside zoos are never good. If they can't get AZA accredited, they don't have the capacity to take care of wild animals. AZA zoos are conservation organizations that do the actual work of saving species while taking care of ambassador animals who cannot be released to the wild for various reasons (lack of habitat or danger to the species in the habitat being most common). Zoos aren't bad. Roadside zoos are.
Most of the time I was watching this video, I felt like an outlier. For most of the documentary I felt like Joe was cast in a pretty negative light. But you mentioned briefly the closing moments of the series. Where Joe laments how he deprived the two chimpanzees of a happy life. Even though I was suspicious of Joe throughout, those closing words stuck out in my mind. I think a lot of my negative feelings towards Joe got softened by those last few seconds of the show. Placing those words at the end was clearly a calculated move. I didn't realise how much of an effect that one piece of editing had on me until I watched this.
I thought replace chimpanzees with 'young men', 'Travis', 'John', it just shows how much Joe destroys what he likes (can I say 'loves'? Not sure. I guess ' is attached to' is more accurate)
I listened to the podcast, I didn't really like it. I tried to watch the show, I didn't like it. All of them seemed to lack any sense of ethics. This video was great :)
I remember how uneasy i felt seeing everyone on the internet idealise this terrible abusive man and how they defended him while rallying up on that poor woman
I listened to a podcast (EDIT: it was the one shown @15:14) about Joe Exotic sometime in late 2019 before Tiger King came out, and while it still more about the spectacle, it definitely portrayed Carole in a better light than the docu-series. When I finally sat down to watch Tiger King with my family, I saw how fast my parents glommed onto the idea that Carole was this terrible person. It was insane the amount of times I had to remind them that Joe is not a good guy and that this is entertainment, not journalism.
a lot of people didn’t even know Carole and Big Cats Rescue before this... turns out people I know have been supporting her for years. she’s made some mistakes in the past but I find her strength very admirable and I greatly respect her work with big cats. also, it’s not weird not to pay volunteers, they’re volunteers for a reason - they enjoy helping out the cause. the money goes into the cats! Carole is an abuse survivor and her past husband was very unavailable and would leave unexpectedly a lot. I think he packed up and left, probably going under a different identity. Joe is a reprehensible human being and the stuff he’s done to animals disgusts me, so I just... cannot understand why people are calling to free him.
I loved watching it but throughout I was really bothered by the fact that basically none of what was shown got any kind of "expert framing". For example explain what a Liger is and why breeding them is f'ing horrible. The "advocacy" at the end felt like a lazy last minute realization that the rest of the show was just attention grabbing sensationalism (which I enjoyed, I'm not gonna lie, but it could have been so much better and bigger than just that).
This was amazing to watch. My friends have been telling me to watch this series, and I only got through 15 minutes of the first episode before I was disgusted by the abuse. Thank you for putting this all in one place, it’s easier for me to defend my hatred for it now that I’ve had it all broken down. I appreciate you, and Adam did a fantastic job with editing. Keep it up!
Omg. THANK! YOU! I was getting so triggered by friends telling me how Tiger King is such a great show while for me it just left a really bad aftertaste. Yes, I watched it, it's well produced and captivating, but afterwards I was like "Uhm... wait. What happend to the docuseries about big cats in captivity that I signed up for and how did this turn out to be trash tv that wants to be true crime?!" Your remark on the ironic ending of the show with everyone loosing focus on the original topic represents my thoughts on this perfectly. Well... most people I know watched it and said they finally understand how Trump could get into office. So I guess as an entertaining showcase of the worst aspects of American society/culture (and that includes production) it serves it's purpose perfectly for the European viewer.
THANK YOU, for making this. Too many people seem to think this documentary is beyond reproach and seeing them go on crusades based on what is little more than a reality show is terrifying.
I've not seen the show but I know of both big cat rescue and Joe exotic. For me it's all in how they handle the animals. Big cats are hands off, regimented and health focused. Joe wrestles with them and palms them off on to tourists.
This is a fantastic analysis that has provided stellar insight into the rules of documentaries and provides legitimate, well-argued assertions about the show. I was obsessed with the documentary when it came out, and I feel like you articulated so many of the reasons why I found the "documentary" so fascinating. It wasn't the show itself, although it was incredibly entertaining, but the public's reaction to the show. Unmitigated sensationalism and the repercussions of that in our culture. Fantastic job!
Now I finally get why I routed for Carol ... Having been manipulated in the past something about her portrayal just did not sit right with me but weirdly enough I didn't even realize it was the very obvious music and cutting choices.
Excellent essay - I would like to hear others thoughts on my view of the show. My takeaway from the narrative was less trying to make a hero out of Joe Exotic and more "everyone here is crazy" but missing the mark due to misogyny, perhaps? Maybe it's just me personally, but I and the people I've talked to felt "they were all equally bad". I disagree with them, however, that Carole didn't seem nearly as bad as the others but was lumped in as just the same. I thought the third episode focusing so much on "well she MAY have killed her husband" while brushing past the blatant misogyny of Doc Antle (?) to be odd. I remember watching that and at the part where Carole admits on camera she was a victim of sexual assault, my mom who I was watching with rolled her eyes and said "of course she was." I think it's another example of how men can get off the hook ("boys will be boys") while women are demonised for the slightest bit of antagonism.
Great point..."abandoning the initial cause for the spectacle". I'm starting to see a turnaround on the hatred of Carole. #FreeJoeExotic memes are much less frequent. During this Covid19 fiasco, I've made it my mission to respond to two people per day (nicely) to try to educate them about Big Cat Rescue, the inaccuracies in Tiger King and the truth about conservation. I think many others have done the same, yourself included, so we will sleep tonight knowing many have seen the light. Thank you for doing this!
Since you seem knowledgeable on this, my understanding is that an animal sanctuary was a place for animals to live as the best approximation to the wild IE., given a large area to roam undisturbed. The show makes BCR to look like a zoo, where animals are kept in enclosures to be shown off to visitors. Is there a difference?
@@JebeckyGranjola Yes, there is a huge difference! There is a page here with link to several videos. Carole posted that top video recently. She addresses most of the issues in it. bigcatrescue.org/cages
Just watched your video 2 years after its release, love your aproach on the topic. I live in Portugal and never realized how Tiger King was marketed on the US as True crime. Here it was essentially another reality show that for some reason, everybody was talking about. Anyway, love your videos, keep up the good work.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
EDIT: Hey everyone: I've been seeing a lot of comments saying "but I didn't get the idea that Joe was a hero, they're all equally bad". While that may be true for you, there are still many many other people who came away rooting for Joe, thinking he was framed! And leaving with the take that they are "equally bad" is just as harmful - since Joe is actually MUCH worse than they present - but we don't get a sense of that from watching. Maybe if he wasn't portrayed as "equally" or less bad than the others as people seem to be purporting, we wouldn't be getting stuff like this: www.change.org/p/donald-j-trump-donald-trump-free-the-tiger-king
Broey Deschanel big cat rescue is dope, cant blame carole for cashing out on her dead drug runner husband
Insider just made a comprehensive article about what the show got wrong about BCR: www.insider.com/tiger-king-truth-carole-baskin-big-cat-rescue-2020-4
(Thank you for adding your voice)
Incredible video. I don't even have a strong opinion about the show, I was just amazed by your writing. As someone who watches lot of video essays I can't wait to see more from this channel.
You are 100% incorrect about most of these details there are many many links showing that a Carroll does make a profit and does charge money for people to see the cats
Charging money for entry doesn't mean she's making profit. Big cats are very expensive to care for and feed, the money has to come from somewhere and charging an entry fee is anything but immoral. Also, what links disprove her claims and what are your sources on these details?
the worst part is that the suffering of the animals is largely ignored. And because of the show's success, we can expect similar businesses to gain more traction, either by fans wanting to be part of the experience, or by networks looking to cover another Joe Exotic. We can also expect many more poorly done documentaries coming out soon. This won't just hurt the people and animals involved, but countless more.
Sofia Baldini I got super bored with the documentary because I thought it was going to be more about the tigers and animals and when I saw it was all maniacal human drama I was like “what is this? Is no one going to talk about the big cats or is Joe’s country music more important??”
I couldn't watch it after that first snow leopard in the van. I said nope and shut it off. Tigers and polar bears are my favorites and I just can't even get into the human drama that overshadows the real injustice because animals don't have voices and personalities for TV. They're just props. It's hard enough to watch this, but at least I trust Broey to be talking about some real issues, not just "damn, you see this show?"
@@SabrinaRina The tigers were heartbreaking. They're one of my favorite animals, too. And the tone-deafness of the documentary was pretty incredible.
It definitely has caused more people to go to these kind of places. Two people I have added on Snapchat have posted pictures and videos of themselves going to joe’s place (I have no idea what it’s called haven’t watched the show). I live in Texas.
Well, there are shit ton of vegans now in the world. They are gonna fucking wreak havoc if these businesses get traction... and PETA gets shit ton of millions of dollars of donations which gives them power to shut down this kinda shit. They already shut down thousands of labs and farms. So don't worry. It's gonna be a very short-lived trend.
Lol, It was edited in Joe's favour and still managed to make him seem so unlikable. I can only imagine, how much worse he is in reality.
Shooting a horse dead minutes after telling the previous owner he'd take good care of her horse is pretty goddamn evil man
I think this really fell into the "Both sides are equal" problem that America has, and it seems terminal. There are two groups, both have some level of crazy out of 100, but it's too hard to draw a distinction what OK crazy and NOT OK crazy are, so the media says "Yea, they're both crazy! Wow." and leaves it at that. Rather than "They're both crazy, but here's the facts that explain why Crazy party A is doing more harm than crazy party B, while B is still crazy and bad."
Basically, whether true or not, the media seems to think every audience is too dumb to understand any nuance. There is either a winner and a loser, or "it's too close to call". That's the only outcome available. I see this multiple times a day in American discourse... I have no idea if this is how it works outside of this terrible place. News, Politicians, Twitter fights, reality TV, people I talk to IRL, Facebook walls... this inability to accept reality (which is frequently shades of gray, without even a single example of pure good or evil to use as a base, since there is no such thing. Just various perspectives) permeates every problem facing the world.
Super Wukongo Didn’t he also use a ton of racial slurs that they had to edit out or sum
@@lilyp396 You're correct, the makers did an interview where they said this point blank
The fact they edged out of actually addressing the fact he burned a building with alive crocodiles in it. Actual proof.
The more that I read up on the Baskin case, the more I become frustrated at just how much stuff the show left out. Anything that puts any doubt on her is not shown at all. The fact that her husband was a runner with the Mexican mafia, that he sometimes piloted airplanes and helicopters drunk, made frequent unannounced trips. Not to mention that he wasn't rich until he and Carole began their business, so the fortune the ex wife was trying to get wasn't even theirs. Like, so much stuff was redacted to make Carole seem like more of a monster.
Ikr! Also how they make Big Cat Rescue seem just as bad as Joe's zoo when BCR is an actually accredited sanctuary. It's such a bad show.
@@nycto5335 a good show but a bad documentary. Within a couple years all documentarys will be like this and that makes me genuinely sad.
Fat agree lol. She's obviously not a complete saint or anything like that, and she is certainly suspicious, but to say she definitely killed her husband with shaky evidence at best and no trial is ridiculous.
I'd say: Don't pick any sides.
We don't know the truths, but it's quite obvious that none of them are angels, to put it ikke that.
@@darby3228 Completely agreed!!!
I've seen people on social media """stan""" Joe Exotic. I dont think that people realized that he lured and manipulated teenage boys into working for him by fueling their drug addictions. He is an evil person and I dont understand how anyone could watch the show and root for him knowing all the bad things he's done.
I even saw shirts for sale with "Free Joe Exotic" on them. Like he is being unfairly imprisoned.
Charisma is a hell'va thing.
@@lakriz116 i dont want him free. but a lot of other people involved should be imprisoned as well.
@@theeternalchronicler3072 is that even charisma tho? Someone blabbering and not treating the BS they utter as BS is having charisma?
People, especially the most mediocre Joe schmucks, hace a tendency to glorify evil. I guess they imagine themselves living of decadente and infamous exploits instead of the pai fully boring existences the live.
The disproportionate public hatred of Carole is unbelievably frustrating to me. IF she killed her husband, she should be charged, yes, but I simply cannot comprehend how people GENUINELY think they can determine her guilt based on an inherently biased documentary, but then claim that people like Joe who have been CONVICTED of serious crimes should be let free.
The evidence that Carol killed her husband was around before the show, however the show its self is heavily bias
I dislike her not because she might have killed her husband, but by the way she presents herself as being the morally better person and yet she still has all those animals trapped. She prentends she has an animal shelter but she's a breeder and the conditions of her "shelter" are horrible. Hell, my dog lives in better conditions than those poor animals.
That Bitch
@@Proto-Martyr the conditions of her shelter are not "horrible". Tiger King manipulated you into thinking they were. Hers is one of the few GFAS accredited sanctuaries in America for big cats, for which they have to submit to periodical site visits. Tiger King showed feeding cages attached to bigger enclosures portraying them as the actual living space. Big Cat Rescue houses those animals which can't be returned to the wild, and those that can be, they have done so, like bobcats. They don't breed or conduct petting tours. Audited records show they got only 37% of their revenue from tours and merch. The only other option would be to kill the big cats that cannot be acclimatised in the wild. Which many conservationists disagree with.
orangesky My sister made me watch the show and she was genuinely surprised when I said I didn’t see why she despised Carole but liked Joe. I told her that Joe is just as egotistical as the rest of them and that they all use animals to their own benefit. My sis didn’t come around but she did admit that she was influenced by Joe’s oddness and “wacky charm”. I don’t get it. I don’t like Carole and I think she’s very two sided but at least she knows that Tigers shouldn’t be bred and sold and that Joe’s zoo is unethical.
you forgot to mention how the show producer is in the exotic animals' trade himself too, he is in the turtles trafficking market and Carole's bill threatens his business.
Who is that?
@@jaybee4118 Eric Goode and he has what he calls turtle conservancy where he breeds and trades turtles basically.
Lucky turtle omg that’s crazy
He basically finessed this case for his own benefit
@@worrywirt exactly :)
Could you give more info? I'm a reptile hobbyist, I know a lot a lot a lot of people with turtles and tortoises who keep them as pets and or breed them
Something curls inside me in anger and frustration every time I see a part of that “documentary” by Shane Dawson. Being RUclips famous doesn’t mean you can make a documentary, especially when it’s clear you haven’t opened a book on the subject. Bland and sensationalist.
I think the RUclips video "existencial horror of Shane Dawson" sums it pretty good.
I agree. So pretentious
Yep. It was over-the-top and boring as shit at the same time.
I agree with you. Especially his Logan Paul one.
Stfu
The creators of Tiger King had an obvious agenda and people ate it right up. Scary.
Check this out:
The people behind the documentary purposely put a giant industrial meat grinder on screen when talking about Carole Baskin's grinder ----- which in reality , was a tiny normal kitchen meat grinder.
Carole's former husband had ties with criminal groups in Costa Rica, and was a notoriously bad AND reckless air pilot. Like, it was widely known that he was bad and made a ton of bad decisions when flying.
Him crashing his plane or being murdered overseas is far from farfetched.
Also, the tiny cages that get a ton of focus at her sanctuary place are to facilitate the introduction of newly acquired animals to their new enclosure and to ease feeding.
party pooper
See I didn't know any of this, thank you!!
The most heartbreaking part of the documentary was the footage of Travis’ mother at his funeral having to watch as Joe made the whole event about himself.
In a meta way this is kind of the way that the documentary behaves. Using the tragic suicide of an abused individual to add to its own spectacle.
it was so disrespectful seeing joe talk about his balls in the eulogy for travis, especially when he only got travis to “love” him with intense, nonstop drug highs. then singing awfully in front of everyone.. it looked more like a mini church meet up than a funeral. it was all so disgusting.
She was tweaking she barely knew wtf was going on much less what was being said. She shouldn’t have been geeked at her kids funeral.
I appreciate you bringing up Travis' death. I didn't like the way they covered it. Horrific to think of the family having to see the footage.
Mischa Romo who cares about Travis’s family? They let him go to that zoo in the first place and suffer that abuse but they wanna cry now because of a show? Screw their feelings
Klown fitting name. You should learn some empathy .
@@klown463 Travis is a fucking adult, there wasn't much they can do.
i didnt find it particularly shocking, and oh boo hoo some people i didnt know existed before this might be hurt by it. though, i have a pretty tough stomach and
asperger’s, so usually im not a very good empathy barometer.
The family did NOT have to watch it
it's so amazing to me how a bunch of people can just say casually "that lady killed her husband" based on the word of someone who is Not Great and misrepresented evidence
Thats how humans are
Did you not see the parts where people other than Joe were calling her out? Multiple people who knew her husband all came out and said they thought things were suspicious about her and the way he disappeared. You do realize it's possible to hate both Joe and Carol right? Of course the typical viewer femtard who watches this channel tends to not be capable of nuanced thought, so. *shrug
@@TRENCHESandTREADS i mean its not at all possible that these other people were lying as well bc they might or might not have an interest in people hating Carole? One thing that was immediately clear when I watched the series was that I can't fully believe anything that is presented there bc the show obviously did not care one bit about objectivity. you're entitled to not like either but I personally find the witch hunt based on a blatantly biased and senstational show disgusting.
(also there is a lengthy statement on the BCR website on the show where court documents are provided that prove that Don's ex-wife and daughters were after more money. I do believe court documents more than this show)
@@TRENCHESandTREADS you shouldn't believe anything that the show tiger king presented you. You also shouldn't call people "femtards" makes your argument sound immature.
She's definitely suspicious, but people saying that she "definitely killed her husband" is absolutely ridiculous. Her killing him is a possibility for sure, but it has been in no way proven to me that she definitely killed him.
No one involved in making Tiger King paid attention in ethics in journalism 101 lol
Because no such concept exists in journalism
We just came for the shitshow
Cause this isn’t journalism it’s entertainment.
No one involved in Tiger King paid any attention to ethics
My friend works for a doco company that is partnered with Nat Geo and let me tell you the angry rants that this show started for her and her co workers. I feel so bad for Big Cat Rescue!
I never got the impression while watching that Joe was a good person. Heck, threatening to kill someone and mock killing them is absolutely horrible and he does many, many other horrible actions. Let's assume that he was completely setup, it does not excuse any of the actions he has shown during the docu-series, even less the action that probably were not shown.
For me it was more a show of "look at those crazy big cat owners" and less true crime.
Ghi102 but a lot of people see Joe do that kind of stuff and go “man I wish I could act like that!”
Well there is a reason mock executions are listed when war crimes and torture are being discussed
I feel like the creator of this video is taking the "free Joe" movement joke too seriously, tbh. It is a joke. Not a dick. Don't take it so hard. There should have been more focus on the abuse Joe committed, but it was addressed along with Doc and Carole's shady animal abuse claims. The creator also pulled no punches in implying all these people should be arrested for animal abuse crimes as well.
I agree. I never took this show as a serious documentary, and I most certainly didn't think Joe was any better than Baskin or any of the other crazy people on that show.
Getting angry at some one who tries to bankrupt you through the tyranny of the government to the point of hiring a hitman is not only understandable, it is ethical for any government restriction is unethical.
The simple fact that Carole Baskin is considered the vilain of the story against all the men (Joe Exotic first) is mind blowing to me. She ain’t no angel but we spend an entire episode in a supposed purser
It's easier to hate women. Same reason we decided Yoko Ono was the villain and not John Lennon, even though he physically and mentally abused her. Society would rather hate a woman. What else is new
Exactly. We had the guy who used cult tactics to exploit young girls into sex servants and a guy whom attempted to hire an assassin. The show never even brought up the fact that her husbands employee whom pointed the finger at her embezzled money from him and had motives to point finger at her, or there was a reason why Carole wasn’t a suspect in spite of her relationship to the deceased
@@aikikaname6508 Carole was/is a suspect. It's explicitly stated by the Sherrif's department.
She's hated because the other characters (despite their faults) offer charisma. They aren't villains, they're anti-heroes. They've done bad things but we're able to relate to them or like them in other ways. Carole doesn't have that. Her mannerisms and behaviours inspire a deep, primal discomfort in people. She's just "not right". It's almost an uncanny valley type of thing. She emanates this aura of wrongness as if she was an alien mimicking human behaviour in a skinsuit. She's also done plenty of bad things but there are no redeeming qualities apparent when watching her. She's not charming or entertaining or amusing, she's just a Karen who embraces her victimhood, encourages it, then uses it as a bludgeon against her opponents.
@@duchessravenwaves it's all about the perspective in which you view the situation. With the Beatles as a foursome making music, yoko ono turning up and "breaking up" the band and putting in some objectively awful musical influences she is the villain. If you view having a bunch of tigers and doing meth as the norm, which tiger King premises as normal for these people; the woman who (may have) fed her husband to tigers is the villain. From the view of a normal person John Lennon was an awful person and Joe Exotic is the real criminal and Carole Baskin killing her husband is a wild conspiracy theory.
@@duchessravenwaves it's all about the perspective in which you view the situation. With the Beatles as a foursome making music, yoko ono turning up and "breaking up" the band and putting in some objectively awful musical influences she is the villain. If you view having a bunch of tigers and doing meth as the norm, which tiger King premises as normal for these people; the woman who (may have) fed her husband to tigers is the villain. From the view of a normal person John Lennon was an awful person and Joe Exotic is the real criminal and Carole Baskin killing her husband is a wild conspiracy theory.
I thought Tiger King was super entertaining, but I was just seeing it as a documentary about weird, WEIRD big cat people. I never thought of it as true crime, even though that's what it's technically listed as. This is a really great video and it got me to think differently of the show (though I still enjoy it).
Btw, I never imagined there would be video essays on Tiger King, but I'm not complaining!
I guess the problem was with the labelling of the show? I also didn't think of it as true crime, only watched it because people were saying that this is an entertaining show about insane people who might as well be GTA sidequest characters, and I love my share of watching crazy hillbillies.
Carol does have paid employees and most non-profits have volunteers. Those comments about it being like an MLM were disappointing.
Hi there, I just corrected this in my pinned comment! Let me know if there's anything else I should add.
@@BroeyDeschanel oh that's wonderful. The comment is thoroughly appreciated.
Wonderful video by the way. You have a loyal subscriber in me. Keep it up!
Which demonstrates the ignorance and lack of education from filmmakers who are supposed to know their subject matter smh
@@BroeyDeschanel in the top pinned comments cause I don't see it
Yes they do, you're right. The volunteer program is run in an unethical manner though regardless of whether it's the standards.
Amazing video! My doc editing professor was just discussing how there is a trend in "documentary" filmmaking that exploits the series form by dragging out unnecessary storylines for the sake of sensationalism.
It's good to hear that at least some of the people teaching this craft are talking about at least some of the ethical issues involved with it!
I was just thinking about how I wish this show had come out while I was still in college and taking doc courses! One of the first things we learned was how, regardless of who they are, there are manipulative tactics that documentarians use to express their bias. Knowing now that they left out how racist Joe was is a great example of that.
We gotta come up with a word for this kinda sensationalist documtary trend...shockumentary??
Tbh i was so shocked from the scene of travis’ accidental suicide. I couldnt believe they wouldnt show any warning signs or any kind of notice that they were going to show such images. I know there is no blood but i pay very much attention to peoples expression and i know instant trauma when i see it. Disrespectful from every perspective.
Yes, that scene was truly stomach-churning and sickening. It was unnecessary.
Candela Mattera i was so glad that i had watched it with a friend who told me to turn off the sound and look away until he told me the scene was over. But then I still accidentally saw it because someone put the clip in a RUclips video, ALSO without a trigger warning! I can't believe why people think its okay to just show it to everyone. It's grueling enough even if it doesn't show the person itself and I wish I would have had the choice to never have seen it
Didn't they include it without the permission of his family too? They didn't even know the footage existed. Either way, that's a disgusting thing to include
I honestly stopped watching a little bit after that and I haven't been able to finish. It's just,,, so unnecessary to include. I would describe the literal footage of someone shooting themselves and the reaction of the person in the room with them as a little bit more than shocking to me.
@@kelegdn Wasn't it just the sound of the gun and the other person's reaction? That's all I saw.
There was a lot of material kept in TK that felt like filler and ultimately led to no satisfying conclusion.
The series throws around this idea that these "rescue center's" act as cults with charasmatic yet deeply flawed people at the helm, with this in mind why wouldn't you expose Joe Exotic as a racist? They had no problem dedicating 2 hours airing Carole Baskin's dirty laundry but draw the line at Exotic being unlikeable.
I knew there was something odd about the way the series was edited but this video really puts it all together.
I always wondered why I left the documentary feeling like I didnt like the creators. For some reason I was just mad at them and this video really articulated why!
I feel like adding in the racism would have been overkill. I mean, they spend 8 episodes airing Joes dirty laundry. They show him making death threats, abusing his animals and his husbands, make an absolute fool of himself through the election campaign and the music videos, commiting arson and hiring a hitman. The „and also he‘s racist“ would have been a huge additional can of worms and might have become a major focal point of the show, considering how important the discussion of racism is, these days. When I read that he said the n-word, I wasn‘t surprised at all, just thought „yup, sounds like Joe“
I mean, at least with their editing, they draw a direct comparison between Carole's sanctuary having volunteer staff (who get color-coded t-shirts based on length of time participating) and Doc's & Joe's creepy exploitative way of keeping desperate people isolated and stuck on-site.
@Millennial Leftist This is so confusing to me. Like, I kinda get the "Carol killed her husband" stuff but how anyone could watch this show and think Joe Exotic is anything less than a madman who abuses and exploits everything he can find is beyond me. Nothing he does in the entire show is even remotely acceptable, why do people think he doesn't deserve his punishment???
That's because the shows producer is in the exotic animal industry himself and trades turtles, and caroles bill could put his business in danger...
The inclusion of the "Carol killed her husband" subplot was DEFINITELY just for sensationalism, and had nothing to do with the supposed "mission" of the piece. But this was done completely at the direction of Joe, because he devoted his life to fucking with her, which is what lost him his freedom.
Yea I don’t like Carol but if you look into it a lot of the people accusing her have reasons to lie like embezzlement and lawsuits. Also people choose to cut out stuff about Joe like him being a massive racist so they can appeal to a wider audience.
Why don't you like her? I've not watched tiger king but she came across pretty well in the Louie Theroux documentary
@@polaroidandroidjeff6383 I didn’t like Carol because she acted like she was better than Joe and Doc - like she was this faultless saint. When I’m reality, she’s just as shitty as the rest of them
even though i liked watching tiger king, after the show i was left feeling like if at any point you were to turn the camera around at the ppl making the show, they would fit right in with the subjects of the show. it's kind of unsettling. also they seem to have omitted a lot of relevant information. i don't know how to word it, but both the creators and the subjects of the show seem eerily similar, like they're just as capable of manipulation and exploitation, just in different ways. idk.
Oh, yeah, reading up on Eric Goode and his Turtle Conservatory, he definitely seems like a bit of a Tiger King character, just with turtles instead.
He talks in an interview about his gotta-catch-em-all mindset with his turtles, going to great lengths to get any types that he doesn't possess yet.
He's talked extensively in interviews about how wildlife sanctuaries should just kill all the animals so they're not in captivity, and that the message of the show is to give to wildlife conservationists (you know, like him) instead of animal sanctuaries.
There's an old photoshoot of him sitting on a live tortoise and an article from a buddy of his about going to his Turtle Conservatory and being invited to ride them around.
Turtle Conservatory's social media pages and website shows a bunch of photos of people manhandling exotic animals for a cool photo. They also they sell the "excess," turtles and tortoises, including endangered species, as pets. They also rely on volunteers and full-time unpaid interns - and unlike the BCR interns, his don't even get a food stipend, and may not even get housing.
Just to be clear, such internships are arguably exploitative but seem to be pretty normal for reputable wildlife facilities; people use them to get experience for competitive paid positions in the field. It's just that his show then argues that using volunteer labour and full-time internships makes you a fucking cult. Additionally, I'm not necessarily saying that Goode's conservatory doesn't do good work for species conservation, but unnecessarily handling, riding, and selling off exotic animals makes me think that he isn't nearly so devoted to their welfare and happiness as individuals.
Tiger King was both a great drama and a bad show. The real victims of the show WERE the Tigers, and the show just does not tell you that. It felt more like accusations to all of the people involved, even if they felt half-asses. (Carol is suspicious, however, I am knowledgable in her acts to know that she's not as shitty as the rest.) The show really wants you to feel sympathetic to Joe and hate everyone else when Joe deserves just as much hate that he was charged with. The memes about the show always felt like Joe was made a martyr when he is in fact, an animal abuser. I didn't like Carol's work with PETA and wish that the was not supported by them, but I can't compare her to Joe when she stopped breeding.
Tl;dr Fuck Joe, fuck the myrtle beach guy, and carol baskin isnt as bad as we think she is.
Does the show need to tell us? Isn't it plainly obvious to almost all watching that this is not ok for the animals?
@@807D14M0ND5 No clearly it wasn’t. How many individuals posted on the #FreeJoeExotic ? Pretty disgusting to me one could even enjoy or even honestly stomach this show. The victims were actually not just tigers, if one pauses to read the humane society report. Many, many, many animals were abused and killed. If the show was originally supposed to be about the exotic animal trade why WOULDN’T they tell their audience about the horrific abuse committed against not just tigers but other animals UNLESS they wanted to manipulate the way the audience felt about Joe and Carol?
TLDR; the people who made this show suck as well.
I watched it all in one sitting. I was horrified by it and yet I couldn’t stop. It was like I was being held hostage by the show and I didn’t like that one bit. I felt extreme discomfort watching the animal abuse and the grooming play out but just couldn’t look away. Loved your essay, though.
Letícia Evelyn i agree! i didn’t like it but kept watching. it wasn’t what i wanted or expected and the lack of address to animal abuse was wildly ignorant
I think it's interesting that a lot of people find the "leveling up", 0 payment, and required time per month of volunteers odd or unethical, that's what nearly every kind of rescue does. A horse rescue in my area does that exact thing, city zoos do that, shelters do that.. like why is it confusing to people that volunteers need to be committed and reliable? No one is forcing them to dedicate their time for free.
"Because everyone else does it makes it okay" This is a form of fallacious reasoning that no adult should be making. You say a horse rescue does that in your area? Then that place is in need of criticizing just as much as Carol's then. The fact of the matter is Carol is running a business first, and a rescue shelter second. It's absurd and reductionist to claim that she's only in it for the well being of animals when you can see the wealth her business brings in. If you're making money as a business then it goes without saying that you should be paying your employees instead of tricking people into working for you because you're "a charity" when that's clearly not the case.
As an example, no one expects to get paid when they volunteer at a soup kitchen, but then again, the soup kitchen doesn't rake in large sums of cash from visitors. Carol's zoo (and that's what it is) absolutely does. Joe, Antle, and Carol are all pulling the same scam just with different optics, if you wouldn't give Joe or Antle a pass then you shouldn't be giving Carol either.
@@TRENCHESandTREADS you obviously have no idea what accreditation is or how it works. You clearly have an agenda against the "femtards", judging from your previous comment. Get a life....
@@TRENCHESandTREADS bruh she does it so that the people handling the animals have experience. I've followed big cat rescue (independent of Carol baskin) for a while. If you leave a new volunteer to feed a tiger, they probably will end up setting it free. Big Cat Rescue rlly doesn't bring in that much money??? They said everyone does it because that it is the norm. Police arrest people; that's the norm. It isn't fallacious thinking bruv
@@vudi2103 One of the filmmakers had the gall to say any animal in a cage should be euthanised when asked about how they depicted Big Cat Rescue. I'd like to see him get out that needle and do it himself - demonstrates what uneducated fools made this thing.
@@TRENCHESandTREADS I don't know the details of Baskins "business" and I can only assume you know as much as I do when I say that Big Cat Rescue is a non profit organization. That means that any profit gained by admission fees or donations goes toward the upkeep of the organization, and not into Baskin's pocket. It would have to generate a lot of wealth simply because keeping an operation like that running is insanely expensive. Saying that Joe's zoo and Big Cat Rescue are the same, like I've seen a lot of people do, is absolutely ridiculous.
However, if you know more about the specifics of the money generated and how it is spent, please enlighten us.
That's why American Vandal is so great. It's all the good of True Crime without making you feel guilty for being entertained by other people's misery, because it's not true at all.
Wait is American vandal not true?
@@leetripp-cox7623 it is not!
@@leetripp-cox7623 No, because its a parody
@@leetripp-cox7623 Nope, it's a mockumentary.
"When you think about it, the show is guilty of the very thing it accuses Joe of doing: abandoning its initial cause for... the spectacle" -- wow! Great video, all around. You have a new subscriber.
Yes! This! My god, compared to all the other discussions I've seen on Tiger King, I finally feel like I'm breathing fresh air watching this.
I haven't seen Tiger King. After watching this video, I'd saying branding it as a "docuseries" doesn't change the fact that it's everything wrong with exploitative reality television. It exploits the cast members' personal and interpersonal struggles for entertainment, and it exploits the audience by using deceptive editing to heighten the entertainment. Add to that: it exploits the animals who depend on these people for survival and quality of life. I think watching this show would just infuriate me. Watching this video was entertaining, though!
Great video, and also thanks for clearing up the bit about how Big Cat Rescue isn't a MLM. Not many people would have made that correction.
Something that tipped me off to the inaccuracy of the series when I first watched it was the claim that Joe got 20% of the vote when he ran for governor of Oklahoma. Having lived there at the time, I knew that seemed off, so I looked into it and found that he only got 20% of the Libertarian primary vote. Which was only about 600 people.
The Amazing Lee I actually remember it as them showing the libertarian primary votes
Doc Antle also scared me. Dude's a groomer, yo. I... am also in the small band camp that thinks Carol didn't do it. With how much money the dude had? he could disappear whenever he wants. But I like this dive into 'true crime' as a whole and was upset that not more spotlight was on the actual exotic animal trade and the importance of wild tigers and conservation.
He is, he’s horrifying and I didn’t like how they sorta glossed over it
Doc Antle was NOT dragged enough after the documentary came out.
Ugh thank you. I hate how everyone is hating on Carole when shes not nearly as bad as everyone else in the show. It's honestly insulting. These people are all sheep that dont seem to think for themselves and take the documentary for face-value.
I hate how they took carole's husbands line, "my one goal in life is to make this woman happy" and twisted it into something creepy and unnerving...
Well, I didn't question the documentary (or reality show, let's be real) from a journalistic point of view as an analysis of big cat trade, but I just felt insulted by how they manipulated it into a story. Because A LOT of details would've seemed different if they had stated everything up front. Like Joe grooming young men and him & antle just running cults, as well as leaving out the reality of how much all Joe's staff hates him and how he conned his parents into bailing him out, or how his trolling of Baskins was disturbing, regardless of whether she killed her husband.Jñ Joe only cared about her trying to shut him down, not go on a crusade to solve that murder.
EVERYONE who worked at his Zoo said hes a monster and deserves to be in jail.
Just from what Kirkham said, that the tigers Joe hung out with were always sedated cause he's terrified of animals, or how the staff knew FOR A FACT he killed tigers. The doc made it seem like it's something that might happen instead of something that 100% took place regularly
But Joe exotic apparently would have killed about 10 tigers whereas the doc was killing hundreds of them in gas chambers... why isn't the doc in jail ?
@@firenze5317 He is, I think. Don't quote me on this, but I'm certain he got arrested last year and got a ton of charges thrown at him
Fantastic analysis! You hit the nail on the head on why I couldn’t get behind the show while also finding Joe Exotic super compelling. Well done!
I really don't get what people find so bizarre about Carole's volunteers. I worked with a charity that helped to build houses for impoverished people and I obviously did it for free, and they too had different levels of helpers (the lowest level was going to the streets to get donations, higher levels meant helping build the house itself).
And in that charity, just like Carole's, the higher level supervisors did get paid for their work.
If they hadn't added the wacky music and the people saying they worked on Christmas (which, btw, I have many Catholic friends who volunteer in Christmas for different charities too), would it really seem so weird?
Sofía Picasso so it’s ok for a person to get scammed as long as they volunteer? K
@@klown463 they could...not volunteer...?
You kind of have to work on Christmas and every other holiday when you are caring for animals, right? A relative has been a volunteer at BCR for 15+ years, and they do have tiered system. They require extensive training (provided for free, by them) to advance up to each level of caring for the cats. It's a safety thing for the volunteers, and an assurance that the cats are getting experienced caregivers. It's a win for all, and because of their excellent training, volunteers get hired to work in well paid positions when they leave BCR. Many people are aware of the quality of their program.
Most of the people making this criticism don't actually know anything about zoos or animal sanctuaries beyond what they heard in Tiger King. Non-profit animal facilities (whether they're zoos or sanctuaries) NEED volunteers to get by. Those places are very expensive to run, and if people want to donate their time and work to a worthy cause, what's wrong with letting them?
This was really good and interesting! I haven't watched tiger king myself cause animal abuse makes me really uncomfortable, but this was a really cool video
yeah - don't worry, this documentary doesn't care about animal abuse at all!
i had to stop watching after the second ep because someone (don’t remember who) said that “people shouldn’t be mad we’re breeding tigers because it’s making more tigers!!!” but. they’re being held in captivity. so there’s no point in breeding if they’re not going out into the wild. like what.
I must have not been paying attention, because I certainly didn’t have the “Joe was framed” take away.
Edit: “Joe’s too stupid to pull this off”. Yes, he’s in jail. He didn’t pull it off.
This really captures everything that bothered me when I was watching the series and after. Very succinctly put!
Beautiful video! That last sentence kinda tied up everything perfectly. I got chills.
the basis of claims that carole is a hypocrite are on manipulative editing. carole wrote a statement about it on her site; her shelter is accreditted, and she has thousands of acres of land that the animals are freely able to explore. they didn't shoot down carole's credibility so much as manipulate the perception of it.
When you mentioned shane and his "documentaries" I quickly looked up your uploads to see if you discussed it. I hope you can make one for that as well because you've raised so many good points in this video!
Hi first time watcher here! Loved the video. One thing I feel like a lot of people aren't really talking about is when they talk to "animal rights activists" in Tiger King, they don't talk to more reputable organizations in regards to the welfare of animals, Nor any veterinarians who might specialize in exotic medicine. They Interview someone from PETA, A controversial organization in and of itself. In my opinion, I feel like that also takes away a lot of credibility with the film.
They had 5 years worth of access to Dr. Borstein at Big Cat Rescue. They probably had many hours of video of the veterinary care he provided and interviews. Did they use any of it? Nope.
I didn’t feel like the show wanted me to think”Joe Exotic should be released.” I thought he should stay in prison after I watched the whole thing. I also felt a call to action where sanctions need to be placed to limit the ownership of wild cats. For example, the government won’t allow you to own a big cat unless you go though some verified training and prove you have a capable facility. And current big cats would be fathered ion as long as they’re documented by a certain date.
I agree about the footage of travis’s death; it shouldn’t have been shown.
Overall, great video!
I think your comments on Carole Baskin are unfair in regards to her volunteers. The people who get the t-shirts and volunteer are aware that they won’t get paid. They aren’t workers, they are giving up their time willingly and aren’t asking for money in return. If they were in a financially difficult position they would be able to stop. However, if these people are getting paid $150 a week, then that work they do can not be easily given up.
If Carole Baskin was making hired workers do unpaid work then it would be deeply exploitative but she isn’t. They choose to give up their time and know they won’t get paid. There is nothing immoral about people volunteering and knowing they won’t get paid.
Otherwise, this is an excellent video about why Tiger King is a good piece of entertainment but not good journalism.
Yea it would be wrong if the people who work there are given shelter (and can't afford a room elsewhere), given substance (whether food or drugs etc), or threatened/forced to work there.
As far as I've seen, none of this applies to big cat rescue. It's a non profit for the betterment of captured big cats.
Not as bad as Joe Exitic but it's still very wrong. If she profits from it and the work has value to her, then she should pay them. Otherwise it's abuse. She's not running a non-profit organisation, but a business.
@@ladyYeniel Having a paid position doesn't mean that it's a business. Most non-profit organizations will have some paid positions, nothing inherently wrong with that. Places like BCR are extremely expensive to run, they need volunteers. Hell, even the nicest zoos you've been to need volunteers.
@@StarlightPrism Not sure if you understood what I said. She is running a business, therefore making money and profiting from the work -> therefore she should pay. Different story with non profits, which some zoos are.
its a very twisted show, no one should see it as a documentary.
its literally just filming these people's lives how is it not a documentry
@@supervamp78 You can completely change a story through edits.
Unfortunately documentaries don’t have to tell “the truth”, it’s not in the actual definition to do so.
Hahaha "So, is Tiger King a passionate call-to-action for the mistreatment of endangered animals?" she asks lol NO, Tiger King is a passionate call-to-action for the mistreatment of Joe Exotic! 🤣
And anyone trying to defend him is arguably JUST as egregious a human being.
(If not more so.)
Edit; "Abandoning it's initial cause for the spectacle." 👍
That's profound
Especially to the particular subject matter.
And a perfect sum-up line to end with.
Apparently I was here watching this, (and leaving witty, clever comments, despite my lack of memory of doing so,) a year ago. 👍😇
Your video essays are very educational and informative, plus the subject material is relevant which is an added bonus. Good job and good luck.
I think they really just went into do the documentary and at the end were like 'wtf do we call this meth induced nightmare....'
As much as I love tigers, the story of Travis is really heartbreaking. It was hard to watch, It was definitely no accident. The things Joe talked about in his eulogy truly showed what a delusional narcissist he was... I can forgive crazy but talking about balls dragging on your face in front of the mother whose son clearly killed himself because of how unhappy he was......... I can't fully blame Travis' suicide pn Joe, I think the ultimate power was in Travis' hands and he made his choice. But holy fuck that was depraved. Trying to kill carol baskin is understandable.... but that was beyond redeemable.
If you love tigers you would see that people and places like that aren't good.
You can't just shut them down these animals need somewhere to go. But we need to ban and restrict the breeding and selling of these animals on the private market. This goes way beyond just big cats, but also many many other exotic species.
I have worked at places like this. Non profit private zoos. Its all shady business.
💔
Is it just me or does it feel like people talking about tiger king saw a different show than I did. Joe Exotic never seemed framed like a sympathetic character to me if not out right a monster. To me the show seemed more like a true crime version of breaking bad where we fallow several horrible people get worse.
Good video btw, this was a separate rant from that
This sounds weird to me because when you watch the show it clearly portrays Joe as lunatic, but a misunderstood lunatic and one who doesn't deserve to be in prison. It dedicates entire episodes to show how he was framed, and yet you claim that isn't happening?
It dedicates episodes framing Carol Baskin instead as if to show Joe off as being better than her, and therefore again being more "innocent" than he actually is.
I feel like you must have shut your eyes during 60% of this show, or just not wanted to see it honestly.
@@TheSilverwing999 When I said ‘framed’ I meant framed narratively, not framed as in legally framed. I saw the same show, I didn’t mean it to sound like I was challenging what happened in it
It feels more like a reality show than a documentary
What you presented here, I was expecting from the show when I watched the trailer. I don't like and want to see animal being abused & people being manipulated hence I avoid to watch it. Amazing video.
Tbh the thing that really irritated me about the show and left me not only shocked but disgusted and disappointed, was the handling of Travis' story. The clip of his death was completely unnecessary and triggering. His story of drug abuse and dependence on Joe was sad, but very realistic- it could really happen to anyone. His story wasn't shown correctly, the abuse he was suffering was not shown in the light it should've been shown. He was a victim but was simply shown as an addict with problems.
I think you developed this video essay brilliantly. You don't just list off the various traits/aspects/whatever of a documentary, but before you analyze what it does wrong, you give examples of where it's done right.
Stopped watching the show 1.5 episodes in. It felt off, scandalous, annoying and agenda driven.
This! All my friends told me to finally watch it, but after the first episode I was just not feeling it. I've seen lots of awesome True Crime documentaries and this just wasn't what I expected at all.
If you haven't watched American Vandal yet, you should.
there's a line jeff lowe says in the last episode (i think? might be the second last) that i fully believe was constructed out of about 5 or 6 separate clips.
I feel like Old Gods of Appalachia is the anti-Tiger King. Different genre (cryptid horror/superstition instead of true crime), but it actually is about addressing the problems in this area especially opioid epidemic
If you played that music over a slow-motion shot of ANYONE, they would seem a little unhinged.
Great video. Would love some more critique videos like this from female perspectives on various true crime. It's far too male dominated, which is very disturbing considering the vast majority of victims are women at the hands of males.
I love this video, TY! I do want it pointed out however that there is a /very big difference/ between animal *rights* activism and animal *welfare* activism. I haven’t watched the series so I don’t know the context, but as far as I was aware, BCR was focused on animal welfare, not animal rights.
Love your videos , you can tell you really research it and look into it and the final videos are awesome
23:30 I thought the editors gave a nod to your final point at the very end of the series, where the person least invested in the animals, the campaign manager, is shown thinking out loud about what was all of this for and pointing out how no animals were helped despite all the money and time... I took it as a meta comment within the show about how the producers set out to report on exotic animal trade but got lost in the drama and personality cults and in the end are pretty sure they did nothing to help the animals.
The problem with almost all true-crime television is what David Lynch coined “consumable TV violence”.
The horrors of people’s personal tragedy are voyeuristically consumed and forgotten, week by week, episode by episode.
I experienced this phenomenon once. I was halfway through a true crime show about a brutally murdered woman when I realized I had already seen it before. I had forgotten everything about the victim after watching the terrifying ordeal just months before.
This was Lynch’s inspiration for Twin Peaks, a show that was meant to make the viewer obsess over the victim rather than the killer.
I used to work in conservation, so a lot of friends really wanted to talk Tiger King. The question I had most was "what does the conservation community think of Carol Baskins?" I guess because she was presented as a more responsible animal care professional than Joe. To be clear, they're both incredibly bad! Roadside zoos are never good. If they can't get AZA accredited, they don't have the capacity to take care of wild animals. AZA zoos are conservation organizations that do the actual work of saving species while taking care of ambassador animals who cannot be released to the wild for various reasons (lack of habitat or danger to the species in the habitat being most common). Zoos aren't bad. Roadside zoos are.
Most of the time I was watching this video, I felt like an outlier. For most of the documentary I felt like Joe was cast in a pretty negative light.
But you mentioned briefly the closing moments of the series. Where Joe laments how he deprived the two chimpanzees of a happy life. Even though I was suspicious of Joe throughout, those closing words stuck out in my mind. I think a lot of my negative feelings towards Joe got softened by those last few seconds of the show. Placing those words at the end was clearly a calculated move.
I didn't realise how much of an effect that one piece of editing had on me until I watched this.
I thought replace chimpanzees with 'young men', 'Travis', 'John', it just shows how much Joe destroys what he likes (can I say 'loves'? Not sure. I guess ' is attached to' is more accurate)
Always gotta think about the editing. Esp music in the background imo
I listened to the podcast, I didn't really like it. I tried to watch the show, I didn't like it. All of them seemed to lack any sense of ethics. This video was great :)
Great writing! Really loved the ending: very powerful summation.
Just saw Parasite after your video, probably watch Tiger King after this, probably the wrong order to be doing these things. :)
I remember how uneasy i felt seeing everyone on the internet idealise this terrible abusive man and how they defended him while rallying up on that poor woman
18:25 "What the show runners called the 'Black Fish' of big cats"
That should have been a sign to anyone paying attention.
This is an absolutely brilliant breakdown and holds more journalistic value than the entire tiger king series.
Well done.
I listened to a podcast (EDIT: it was the one shown @15:14) about Joe Exotic sometime in late 2019 before Tiger King came out, and while it still more about the spectacle, it definitely portrayed Carole in a better light than the docu-series. When I finally sat down to watch Tiger King with my family, I saw how fast my parents glommed onto the idea that Carole was this terrible person. It was insane the amount of times I had to remind them that Joe is not a good guy and that this is entertainment, not journalism.
Crazy listening to this now, knowing that they literally found Carole’s husband alive in Costa Rica
Love your videos, especially the ones on perspective in Parasite and the gaze in Portrait. They're very academic and engaging. Keep up the good work!
a lot of people didn’t even know Carole and Big Cats Rescue before this... turns out people I know have been supporting her for years. she’s made some mistakes in the past but I find her strength very admirable and I greatly respect her work with big cats. also, it’s not weird not to pay volunteers, they’re volunteers for a reason - they enjoy helping out the cause. the money goes into the cats! Carole is an abuse survivor and her past husband was very unavailable and would leave unexpectedly a lot. I think he packed up and left, probably going under a different identity. Joe is a reprehensible human being and the stuff he’s done to animals disgusts me, so I just... cannot understand why people are calling to free him.
chloe e. Flawed people relate to other flawed people.
Hello I got this on my main page and it was uploaded 37 seconds ago! first time seeing this channel.
First time watcher. Really enjoyed your analysis ❤️👍🏼
Looking forward to viewing more videos
Stay safe and healthy 💐
This was awesome. Glad someone pointed these out.
What an excellent analysis, and definitely a showcase of why ethics and a lack of bias is important.
I loved watching it but throughout I was really bothered by the fact that basically none of what was shown got any kind of "expert framing". For example explain what a Liger is and why breeding them is f'ing horrible. The "advocacy" at the end felt like a lazy last minute realization that the rest of the show was just attention grabbing sensationalism (which I enjoyed, I'm not gonna lie, but it could have been so much better and bigger than just that).
This was amazing to watch. My friends have been telling me to watch this series, and I only got through 15 minutes of the first episode before I was disgusted by the abuse. Thank you for putting this all in one place, it’s easier for me to defend my hatred for it now that I’ve had it all broken down. I appreciate you, and Adam did a fantastic job with editing. Keep it up!
Omg. THANK! YOU! I was getting so triggered by friends telling me how Tiger King is such a great show while for me it just left a really bad aftertaste. Yes, I watched it, it's well produced and captivating, but afterwards I was like "Uhm... wait. What happend to the docuseries about big cats in captivity that I signed up for and how did this turn out to be trash tv that wants to be true crime?!" Your remark on the ironic ending of the show with everyone loosing focus on the original topic represents my thoughts on this perfectly.
Well... most people I know watched it and said they finally understand how Trump could get into office. So I guess as an entertaining showcase of the worst aspects of American society/culture (and that includes production) it serves it's purpose perfectly for the European viewer.
THANK YOU, for making this. Too many people seem to think this documentary is beyond reproach and seeing them go on crusades based on what is little more than a reality show is terrifying.
I've not seen the show but I know of both big cat rescue and Joe exotic. For me it's all in how they handle the animals. Big cats are hands off, regimented and health focused. Joe wrestles with them and palms them off on to tourists.
This is a fantastic analysis that has provided stellar insight into the rules of documentaries and provides legitimate, well-argued assertions about the show. I was obsessed with the documentary when it came out, and I feel like you articulated so many of the reasons why I found the "documentary" so fascinating. It wasn't the show itself, although it was incredibly entertaining, but the public's reaction to the show. Unmitigated sensationalism and the repercussions of that in our culture. Fantastic job!
I never thought for one second joe was made to look good in the show, I just used common sense. They’re all horrible
Now I finally get why I routed for Carol
... Having been manipulated in the past something about her portrayal just did not sit right with me but weirdly enough I didn't even realize it was the very obvious music and cutting choices.
Excellent essay - I would like to hear others thoughts on my view of the show. My takeaway from the narrative was less trying to make a hero out of Joe Exotic and more "everyone here is crazy" but missing the mark due to misogyny, perhaps? Maybe it's just me personally, but I and the people I've talked to felt "they were all equally bad". I disagree with them, however, that Carole didn't seem nearly as bad as the others but was lumped in as just the same.
I thought the third episode focusing so much on "well she MAY have killed her husband" while brushing past the blatant misogyny of Doc Antle (?) to be odd. I remember watching that and at the part where Carole admits on camera she was a victim of sexual assault, my mom who I was watching with rolled her eyes and said "of course she was." I think it's another example of how men can get off the hook ("boys will be boys") while women are demonised for the slightest bit of antagonism.
Your videos are so well made I’m in complete awe
There is an aspect of true crime, especially in its modern form, that is inherently exploitative.
I only discovered your channel today and have watched every video... amazing work!! Thank you so much!
Great point..."abandoning the initial cause for the spectacle". I'm starting to see a turnaround on the hatred of Carole. #FreeJoeExotic memes are much less frequent. During this Covid19 fiasco, I've made it my mission to respond to two people per day (nicely) to try to educate them about Big Cat Rescue, the inaccuracies in Tiger King and the truth about conservation. I think many others have done the same, yourself included, so we will sleep tonight knowing many have seen the light. Thank you for doing this!
Since you seem knowledgeable on this, my understanding is that an animal sanctuary was a place for animals to live as the best approximation to the wild IE., given a large area to roam undisturbed. The show makes BCR to look like a zoo, where animals are kept in enclosures to be shown off to visitors. Is there a difference?
@@JebeckyGranjola Yes, there is a huge difference! There is a page here with link to several videos. Carole posted that top video recently. She addresses most of the issues in it. bigcatrescue.org/cages
This is the most articulate and well thought-out critical review of Tiger King I've seen. You've got a new subscriber.
Go best friend! She's got smarts and looks. Someone sponsor her!
omg are you Broey's IRL best friend? if so, this is so fricking adorable.
Just watched your video 2 years after its release, love your aproach on the topic. I live in Portugal and never realized how Tiger King was marketed on the US as True crime. Here it was essentially another reality show that for some reason, everybody was talking about. Anyway, love your videos, keep up the good work.