The new Netflix docuseries Tiger King denounces an increasingly flourishing market: tigers and wild animals exploited for money.
Caged tigers, snow leopards living in confined spaces with 38 degrees in the shade. Animals that are bargaining chips and status symbols of opulence and power. The new Netflix docuseries Tiger King, points straight to the heart of the problem: wild animals exploited for money.
Tigers who are treated like cats, cuddled, picked up by puppies but who in the next scene are able to tear a hundred kilos of meat to pieces as if nothing had happened and could take your arm off at any moment. The docuseries is dedicated to Joe exotic (Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage), musician, politician and tycoon who with his Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park has set up a business linked to wild animals. In the park in Oklahoma he raises snow leopards, ocelots, lions, Canadian lynxes, Siberian tigers, Indochinese tigers and black panthers and then sells them to a network of tycoons and billionaires who will keep them at home as pets.
The environment oozes trash, the theme is the exploitation of big cats and often their abuse, since in many American states the possession of wildlife is banned. In Oklahoma, however, it is allowed and the eccentric and arrogant Joe Exotic knows something about it. On his shoulders a sentence a twenty-two years in prison for the attempted murder of the animalist Carol Baskin and various violations on the purchase and sale of protected species (in fact he is currently in prison).
Tiger King has already bewitched everyone. Feelings are a mix of curiosity and indignation. Joe Exotic with blonde highlights and a Far West look defines himself: mayor, prosecutor, policeman and executioner at the same time. In the docuseries you can see his daily scenes: visitors on tour playing with tigers, taking pictures together. Wild animals far from their natural habitat that live in tiny cages and eat food for 10 thousand dollars a year. Tigers recluse and protagonists of shows that then become living museum pieces in the homes of rich and lustful people. Basically, the series by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaikli investigates the legal battle, between Joe Exotic and the founder of the Big Cat Rescue that is the animal activist Carole Baskin who would like to see animals free. Behind this story, the protagonists will also narrate the difference between a zoo and a sanctuary to protect the big cats.
In the seven episodes, Joe Exotic thus becomes the symbol of a desperate humanity. Perpetually tanned, armed to the teeth, he is the king of his empire and he contains all that undergrowth that we have been documenting for years: the violence against animals deprived of their freedom and their well-being. A lively and thriving market that feeds illicit trafficking and discomfort.
Source: Netflix
Read also:
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- Tigers and lions released after years of captivity in a circus trample the grass for the first time (VIDEO)
