Tiger King: When the Fascination Fades, What Can We Learn from Joe Exotic et al?

This chapter explores the proliferation of Carole Baskin memes following the viral success of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness during lockdown for Covid-19 in spring 2020. Though Tiger King is a docuseries ostensibly seeking to expose the exploitative tiger industry in the US, it side-lines an animal rights focus in favor of a dramatic spectacle of rivalries between its eccentric characters. In particular, the series documents, but also fuels, a longstanding dispute between Joe Exotic, the star and ‘Tiger King’ of the series, and his nemesis, big cats tiger activist, Carole Baskin. I argue that, despite its claims for a stance of neutrality, the series creates the conditions for a sympathetic response to Joe Exotic and for the corresponding vilification of Carole Baskin. Although Tiger King is described as a true crime docuseries that explores the various crimes and misdemeanors of Joe Exotic – including the attempted murder-for-hire of Carole Baskin (for which he is currently serving 22 years in prison) – the real “true crime” mystery being offered up for cultural delectation is Exotic’s allegation that Baskin murdered her second husband, Don Lewis (who has been missing since 1997). It is this allegation that has since turned into a viral meme, where, for example, over 36.6 million and counting Tik Tok users, dance and lip sync to the lyrics: “Carole Baskin. Killed her husband, whacked him. Can’t convince me that it didn’t happen. Fed him to Tigers, they snackin’. What’s happening’. Carole Baskin.” It is impossible to say whether or not Carole Baskin killed her husband, but this chapter argues that part of the series’ success as ultimate lockdown viewing derives from how it encourages viewers to revel in the accusation. As a result, Joe Exotic’s pathological and misogynistic hatred of Baskin, as depicted to exuberant effect in the docuseries, has seeped into networked popular responses, and become a central, if problematic element, of the ‘feel-good’ vibe surrounding Tiger King as the perfect pandemic entertainment.

On its surface Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness might seem to be an escapist series about the world of murderous and feuding zoo owners who operate outside the law, however, the documentary and the world of big cat exhibitions merely spectacularizes uneven economic development and common forms of labor exploitation. The worlds of Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin and Doc Antle embrace a superficially carnivalesque atmosphere. The “carnivalesque,” as derived from literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, describes a literary mode that, like a carnival itself, temporarily upends cultural hierarchies and norms. To varying degrees these big cat exhibitors have created their own moral universes, worlds that permanently shirk societal conventions such as monogamous marriage and disregard acknowledged standards of care for animals and compensation for employees often in service of the celebrity of the zoo owners. Rather than constructing a liberated environment, these zoos operate under their own rules and systems of control that mirror many of the labor conditions and inequities of late capitalism. Although many viewers watched Tiger King with shock and awe, this chapter considers the unremarkable qualities of performance and capitalized labor in the series.

This article examines the disputed status of narratives in the Netflix documentary Tiger King (2020—2021), and the ways in which the series’ actors use media to bolster their particular version of a narrative. While classic studies of intermediality have productively analyzed the relations between the multiple semiotic resources employed in narrative forms, I offer an approach to intermediality in documentary art that enriches the structuralist paradigm insofar as it calls additional attention to the various human actors that put the worldmaking power of media to use. Assuming that in filmmaking the creation of a storyworld is a fundamentally cooperative, while also potentially conflictive, endeavor, I examine the Netflix hit show as a documentary in which narrative co-construction is particularly significant. The series introduces its audience to the strange world of ‘big cat owners’ in the United States — a world which is populated by dubious storytellers and full of conflicts of interests. Tiger King’s ‘hyperreal’ world is saturated with media and images that are employed by its actors for storytelling purposes on a contested narrative territory. I argue that the actors’ ‘struggle for the narrative’ resonates with the show’s Darwinian themes and its interests in documenting a world in which the true predators are not the tigers but the human ‘storytelling animals.’ By examining how the various actors boost their own narratives while discrediting those of other players, I aim to illuminate the fine line between narrative co-construction and conflict in the show’s intermedial storyworld.

Released in the midst of a global pandemic, Netflix’s mega-hit Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is described in press materials as an American true crime documentary miniseries about the life of the eccentric zookeeper and big cat enthusiast Joe Exotic. Often touted as must-see escapism in quarantine, this oversimplification of the series’ genre as “true crime” escapism, conceals its ideological complexity. This chapter uses Tiger King as a case study to examine Netflix’s house style for docuseries: a style that relies on what we call “generic chaos,” with closer ties to reality television than feature documentary production practices, and a resultant emphasis on affective characterization and viewer reactions over intellectual engagement or investigation. Partially a product of Netflix’s commercial mandate, this house style results in a tendency for Netflix’s docuseries in general, and Tiger King in particular, to other its main characters by framing them in an affective mode that forecloses the empathy promised by documentary’s frequent positioning as edifying or socially and politically engaged.

While big cats are largely a backdrop to the human drama that unfolds throughout the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness (2020), the fascination with exotic animals and the debate over their treatment in the United States has a history dating back centuries. Lost among the spectacle of the human characters in the series are the narratives of the big cats and the issues affecting them at large—both in captivity and in the wild; what are the biographies of the estimated 5,000-7,000 tigers currently living in captivity in the US? Big cats who live in zoos, homes, and roadside attractions across the country have continuously been decontextualized both genetically and conceptually from their exotic wild origins and recast as pets and entertainment. Tiger King documents how animals in captivity continue to be subjected to the consequences of our ever-changing conceptualization of them by exposing the struggle between the extreme commoditization of big cats in recent decades and attempts to reclaim an understanding of them as wild animals. This chapter provides historical and species-specific perspectives on exotic animals in captivity, demonstrating how past tendencies of collecting, displaying, and breeding animals can inform our reading of the docuseries and the world of big cat ownership.

The origin and release date of environmental plutonium have been assessed by the measurement of plutonium and americium isotopic composition. The applicability and sensitivity of different plutonium isotope ratios, (240)Pu/(239)Pu and (241)Pu/(239)Pu measured by inductively coupled plasma sector field mass spectrometry and (238)Pu/(239)Pu analysed by alpha spectrometry, have been evaluated for origin determination in several types of environmental samples. With use of mixing models the contribution of different sources (e.g. global fallout or Chernobyl) can be calculated. By the measurement of the (241)Am/(241)Pu isotope ratio, the release date (i.e. formation of (241)Pu by irradiation) can be estimated in environmental samples, which is an important parameter to distinguish recent plutonium release from previous (e.g. Chernobyl) emissions.

Steelhead trout (Onchorhynchus mykiss) smolts suffer high mortality rates during their rapid migration through the Salish Sea. Among‐population variability in mortality rates may reflect (1) genetic fitness variation among populations, (2) freshwater environmental effects on fish condition, or (3) differences in local marine conditions upon seawater entry. A reciprocal transplant experiment was conducted to separate the influence of freshwater effects (combined effects of population and freshwater environment) from effects of local marine conditions on survival of two Puget Sound steelhead populations. Steelhead smolts from the Green River in Central Puget Sound (urbanized and hatchery‐influenced) and the Nisqually River in South Puget Sound (less urbanized; no hatchery influence) were tagged with acoustic telemetry transmitters and released back into their natal river or transported and released into the other river. Population of origin had little influence on probability of surviving the migration through Puget Sound. However, smolts released into the Green River had higher survival through Puget Sound (17%) than smolts released into the Nisqually River (6%); the extra 64‐km migration segment for the Nisqually‐released fish accounted for most of the difference between the two release locations. Neither fork length nor translocation influenced survival, though release date did affect survival of Nisqually population smolts regardless of their release location. Residence time and behavior in the two estuaries were similar, and no effects of population of origin or release date were evident. Marine travel rates also did not differ between populations, release dates, or release locations. This study indicates that mortality occurring in the Salish Sea is likely driven by processes in inland marine environments, more so than intrinsic effects of population or freshwater‐rearing environments.

An algorithm for single machine sequencing with release dates to minimize total weighted completion time

Pete Seeger is one of the most recorded artists in American history, and his recording catalog tells us not just the story of his career but the story of our culture and its political and social history. A Pete Seeger Discography: Seventy Years of Recordings is a comprehensive listing of the 45s, 78s, LPs, and CDs recorded by Seeger in his various incarnations: with the Almanac Singers, with the Weavers, as a solo artist, and with other musicians and contributors. David King Dunaway provides information, with easy to use cross-references, on rare recordings and archival collections. The discography offers details on Seeger's recording history, including the album title, song(s), other artists on the recording, the publisher and number, and the year or exact recording date if known, as well as the original release date and the re-releases of each recording. Structured to make locating details easy for readers, the recordings are organized chronologically and categorized by albums, singles, private pressings, and foreign releases. Readers can easily cross-reference through album and song title indexes and a contributing artist index. An appendix listing the unreleased archival holdings of the Smithsonian Folkways collection under Moe Asch completes the volume, and a photospread with more than 30 of Seeger's album covers convey a pictorial recording history of this well-loved artist. The authors gratefully acknowledge Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, for their funding assistance in preparing this discography.

This study derives the economic development effects of sanctuary city (SC) policies at the US county level using data from close to 3,000 counties between 2013 and 2017. A county is taken to provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants if county jails do not accept ICE detainer requests, i.e. do not hold detainees beyond their original release dates. Endogeneity problems and fixed effects in the panel data are fully accounted for by combining coarsened exact matching with the fixed effects instrumental variables method. We can infer that SC policy probably is a significant driver of economic development. The results show that implementing an SC policy for 2.8–3.4 years lowers the unemployment rate by 0.18 percentage points, reduces wages by 1.6%, and increases housing prices by 5.5%, suggesting that these policies have positive effects on the local economy and can contribute to reversing economic declines in some jurisdictions. Highlights The economic development effects of sanctuary city (SC) policies are derived using data from about 3,000 counties between 2013 and 2017. Endogeneity problems and fixed effects are addressed by combining coarsened exact matching with the fixed effects instrumental variables method. Implementing an SC policy for 2.8–3.4 years lowers the unemployment rate by 0.18 percentage points, reduces wages by 1.6%, and increases housing prices by 5.5%. Immigrant-inclusive policies have positive effects on the local economy and can contribute to reversing economic decline.

Novel written by Celeste Ng. New York: Penguin Books, 2017. 352 pp. $12.75. Miniseries written by Liz Tigelaar, Nancy Won, Raamla Mohamed, et al . Directed by Lynn Shelton, Michael Weaver, and Nzingha Stewart. Original Release Date on Hulu: March 18, 2020. As the title suggests, Little Fires

Directed by Lisa Bryant. Original Release Date: May 27, 2020 on Netflix. Based on Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The Shocking Story of Jeffrey Epstein , by James Patterson, John Connolly, Tim Malloy. New York: Penguin

This study examined a cohort of 7,046 men who were released from the Pennsylvania State prison system between 1999 and 2002 to Philadelphia County to assess the relationships between receipt of mental health services in prison and prison exit. Administrative data on prison stays for 7,046 men released from Pennsylvania prisons to Philadelphia locations were analyzed. Of the 7,046 men, 8.7% received ongoing or intensive mental health services and 25.9% received mental health services while incarcerated. Multivariate analyses indicate that use of mental health services was positively associated with increased odds of serving the full prison sentence (as opposed to receiving parole), although the relationship between mental health services received and length of prison episode was inconclusive. Dynamics related to prison release warrant further attention in efforts to reduce the prevalence of mental illness in prisons and to facilitate community reentry for persons so diagnosed.

The 2014 American Thyroid Association (ATA) guidelines on thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer use risk stratification based on patient and disease characteristics, including molecular markers, to inform the strategy for patient treatment and follow-up. Dr. Erik Alexander, a member of the task force, reviewed these changes in an ATA Satellite Symposium at the ICE/AACE Conference in June 2014, emphasizing the differences in the risk stratification systems used based on the type of risk that is assessed. He details the ways in which the AJCC/UICC system can be used to predict disease mortality, the ATA Initial Risk Stratification System to predict recurrence, and the ATA Response to Therapy System to evaluate changes in risk over time. No competing financial interests exist. Runtime of video: 11 mins 51 secs Original date of release on June 20, 2014, at ICE/AACE Conference in Chicago, Illinois.