Tiger King: In defence of Carole Baskin
***SPOILER ALERT***
We can all agree that the Netflix series Tiger King was a gift from above, sent down when we were all still coming to terms with being cooped-up, filling our screens with feuds, scandal, arson, big cats and country music. Everything about the show is OTT, wild, confrontational and outlandish. A perfect foil against the mundanities of isolation.
The show centres around Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, aka Joe Exotic, the Oklahoman zoo-owner with a peroxide mullet, handlebar moustache and a penchant for sequins. Tiger King maps the story of a decade-long feud between Joe’s long-term nemesis Big Cat Rescue owner, Carole Baskin, which begun with the pair slinging mud over animal welfare and culminated in Joe Exotic hiring a hit-man to have Baskin murdered, ultimately leading to his 22-year prison sentence.
Image: Netflix
The number of unlikable characters most definitely outweigh the likeable in Tiger King, but by far the most publicly abhorred is Carole Baskin. The backlash against the Big Cat Rescue owner has been widespread and vehement, and has produced libraries full of Twitter and meme content. When watching the seven-part documentary, for the first half of the series at least, I found myself inadvertently routing for Joe and irritated at the sight of Carole. I too wanted her lawsuit to fall through, and I was absolutely convinced that she’d killed her husband. But on reflection, I began to seriously question my justifications for subconsciously swaying towards Team Joe, if there were really any at all, and to try and look at the facts aside from the Netflix documentary’s lens.
What was it about the show, which left progressive, charitably minded audience members around the world cheering a threatening, gun-wielding, roadside zoo owner?
An initial explanation could be that people are drawn to eccentricity. There is something we all secretly admire about good, old-fashioned, authentic eccentricity. Not the I-take-unflattering-photos-and-post-them-on-Instagram-to-be-real kind, but the completely unpredictable and truly un-self-aware kind. For better or for worse, Joe Exotic does have the latter by the bucket load. It’s almost reassuring to know that there are people in the world who are so far from following the mould.
Or it could more accurately be a reaction in opposition to Baskin. Carole herself presents as a fey and softly spoken animal rights advocate, with mild mad-cat-lady vibes, exclusively wearing animal print clothing. She’s repeatedly pictured on her cycle route to work, natural frizzy hair blowing in the wind and a smile plastered on her face – every inch of her portrayal initially typecasts her as a wholesome animal lover. Yet when Exotic as an act of revenge adopts Big Cat Rescue’s name and branding in order to surpass the rival zoo in Google searches, Baskin quickly reacts by initiating a law-suit, suing him for $1million.
Various episodes focus on Baskin doggedly pursuing financial compensation from Exotic, at one point even attempting to reclaim his mother’s house. It is met by Exotic with a torrent of abuse, videos of him firing guns, yelling misogynistic abuse about and threatening to kill Baskin (pre-actual hit-man). Whilst her pursuit of the initial lawsuit is persistent, it doesn’t feel too far away from the actions of hundreds of other Americans every year – particularly in light of modern-day ‘compensation culture’. Yet still, vast swathes of the public seem completely enraged by Carole Baskin, with not a shred of sympathy for her situation. Looking at the facts, Exotic clearly commits trademark infringement in an attempt to jeopardise Baskin’s successful animal protection charity.
Image: Netflix
It appears that a friction arises, between the person we predict Carole to be at the beginning and her actions over the course of the big-cat-related saga. Baskin in the first episode is introduced as dedicating her life to the protection of wild animals, and is shown giving a tour of her walk-in wardrobe stacked wall-to-wall with animal print garments. There seems to be something at odds with Carole’s distant, dazed expression coupled with her calculated legal battle. This disjuncture speaks to how the media pigeon-holes different types of women, as earthy and soft or entrepreneurial and business-savvy, the two rarely overlapping. I think a failure to accept the nature of Carole as both a hard-line businesswoman and a sensitive cat-lover, emotionally moved by the mistreatment of wildlife, is an example of failing to accept women as complex and multi-faceted. Baskin agrees to receive the repayments in instalments over many months, yet the series feeds into the idea of women fiercely protecting their interests in business as greedy and at points, this overshadows the more than problematic behaviour of Exotic.
From speaking to others who have watched the show (which is pretty much everyone I know) it seems something about Carole which left a bitter taste was her use of loyal unpaid workers to carry out the majority of the labour on the park. A level of hypocrisy most definitely arises in Baskin criticising Joe’s establishment when she fails to pay her staff for long days of work – under the guise that they are ‘volunteers’ rather than paid staff.
Big Cat Rescue is a charity, and like many other charities, they often rely on devoted volunteers to minimise spending and keep afloat. The financial situation of the team members at Big Cat Rescue was never fully explored, they may have been economically-comfortable individuals looking to spend time volunteering for a cause close to their heart. The situation of many of the workers at Exotic’s zoo, however, was explored. Often recruited from vulnerable backgrounds, there are scenes showing Joe approaching unemployed and homeless individuals offering work. On the surface, this appears socially-responsible, yet their meagre wages meant that employees were having to eat out-of-date meat from Walmart, donated to feed the animals, locked into poorly paid employment and living in old and decrepit caravans onsite.
Bearing in mind the heinous behaviour of not only Joe but Doc Antle, Jeff Lowe and his business associates Garretson and Glover, over the course of the series, it is difficult to not see the public’s reaction to Baskin as gender-motivated.
Before the climactic court case, there is a smorgasbord of ghastly acts alluded to in the show; Exotic plying his husband with meth; Doc Antle controlling his all-female staff, rarely allowing days off and organising for one employee to get a boob-job; Jeff Lowe cruelly using tiger cubs for financial gain in his Las Vegas party-bus, Exotic sharing violent videos shooting a blow-up-doll-Carole, and a mysterious arson leading to the death of seven healthy alligators. Let’s also take a moment to remember that sickening moment in which Jeff Lowe instructs his wife she needs to return to the gym as soon as she’s given birth to his child to get back in shape… Perhaps on paper not the biggest sin of the show but nevertheless was enough to make anyone’s blood boil.
Taking this all into consideration, the overriding distaste for Carole Baskin seems unjust and intertwined with her position as the only woman featured. There has been no evidential proof that she killed her husband, Don Lewis, so the grand total of her crimes seems to be legally defending her charity and perhaps capitalising on fellow cat-mad volunteers. So all in all, I am a Carole convert and strongly believe she is far from the biggest villain on the show. If you’re still keen for an extra serving of Tiger King content, in case you’ve missed it, there’s a bonus episode out now, which you can find on Netflix.
Words by Ellie Weston
