This article was first published on the WeChat public account of "Nian Sui Sui Zi Xuan"
When I clicked on Raising Tigers, I had a curious mind. What is the experience of private tiger breeding? In my mind I sketched a scene of a tiger keeper and his beloved tiger falling in love and killing each other.
After watching an episode, I retracted my previous prediction and re-guessed that this is an inspirational history of the animal protection society's struggle against private zoos for the freedom and happiness of animals.
However, I was naive again.
The story of Free America is always a surprise.
This documentary (emphasis added) around "raising tigers" records the almost morbid fanaticism of tiger farmers for big cats. They hug and kiss big cats, hang cat-print clothes in the closet, decorate the corners of the house with everything related to big cats, and even return to the post of raising big cats after being bitten by a big cat and amputating their arms.
However, this kind of love is only the appearance of fooling everyone. Peeling off this sugar-coated shell is the dirty core of crazy money making. The competition and contest between multiple interests at the expense of everything has caused the situation to take a shocking turn for many times, and the multi-dimensional dark elements such as violence, cults, drugs, homosexuality, polygamy, murder and murder are revealed one by one, which makes people look shocked. broken.
The so-called "suffering from raising tigers" is not so much a "tiger" as it is "people's hearts".
one
The protagonist , Joe Exotic (Wild Joe), is a legendary red-neck with a mullet head who likes fancy clothes, guns and men. He runs a large-scale private wildlife park in Oklahoma in the south-central United States, keeping more than 200 liger big cats year-round.
Most of his employees are all kinds of cornered social figures, poor ghosts, drug addicts, and newly released prisoners. As a savior, he took these people who had been driven to a dead end by his side and provided them with food and lodging. The zoo is like a shelter for the marginalized.
He owns his own radio station, directs and acts on talk shows, composes and sings earthy songs, and has accumulated a lot of popularity by giving lectures, performances, and magic tricks. He also asked people to shoot a reality show for him to record the crazy world of "Tiger King". Thanks to his marketing acumen and performative personality, the zoo was once crowded, with a ticket costing as much as $600 in its heyday.
The career is booming, and the love life is sweet. As a polygamist gay, facing two inseparable lovers, he directly chose to marry together, and the three held a wedding under the witness of the pastor and friends. With the muscular man John with tattoos on the left, and the tall and handsome little fresh meat Travis on the right, Joe can be said to be the winner in life.
two
However, there are many people who are popular. Joe's private zoo has long been boycotted by Carloe Baskin , founder of Wildlife Conservation Group Big Cat Rescue . The latter, under the slogan of rescuing big cats from cages, opposes privately raising tigers and profiting from tigers, and lobbies relevant government departments to advance the formulation of relevant regulations.
At first glance, he is a loving person. But this eldest sister Carloe, who loves to wear cat-patterned clothes, is essentially the same kind of person as Joe - the big cat she rescued from the cage, and she was locked in her own cage for tourists to take pictures, watch, and even her The cage is smaller than the Joe Zoo's, and the living conditions for the big cats are worse.
It's just that hers is not called a zoo, but a wildlife education base .
This kind of hypocritical operation of changing the soup without changing the medicine is really eye-rolling. What is even more disgusting is that Carloe skillfully used social media to speak out, and obtained action support and financial assistance from many netizens. Netizens rushed to her education base to become volunteers. By the way, they rua a tiger and enjoyed it, completely unaware that they had been used by Carlo. Isn't this just prostituting labor?
The intention of confrontation gradually surfaced: they were just business rivals.
three
The road to persecution begins here.
Carloe did not miss any opportunity to report Joe's cruelty to animals; Joe also distorted and smeared Carloe's activities, publicly expressed his hatred for Carloe on talk shows many times, and even shot Carloe's doll in the head.
One to two, the battle between the two gradually escalated, splashing all kinds of splashes, and there were all kinds of monsters and ghosts joining in the middle, adding more magical color to the original dispute.
The most noteworthy case is the mysterious disappearance of Carloe's second husband. All the insiders in the tiger circle believe that she fed her husband to tigers in order to obtain her husband's tens of millions of property.
Joe's marriage also took a hit. Both husbands not only admitted that they were straight men, but also left him on the front and back. One made the front desk woman pregnant and eloped with her; the other was under house arrest by Joe with methamphetamine for a long time.
When Joe was at the end of the road because he was sued by Carloe's trademark rights and had to pay millions in compensation, Deff disguised himself as a rich tycoon and stole Joe's zoo after some tricks.
The businessman James, who wanted to get a piece of the pie but was rejected, became an informant for the FBI for self-protection, and provided the FBI with evidence that Joe bought the murder and killed him, resulting in Joe eventually going to jail.
None of the former employees spoke for Joe in court. They're fed up with Joe's unprovoked abuse and mind control, and hope he stays in jail and doesn't come out to harm people again.
After the documentary aired, producer Rick broke the news that Joe was actually particularly afraid of those big cats. In a photo of him and two tigers, one tiger was blind and the other was anesthetized. EXM??
Really drama world ah.
Four
In 2016, Joe, who is an independent, ran for president of the United States (everyone knows who the opponent is), and after losing, he participated in the Oklahoma gubernatorial election, and finally won 19% of the vote. Although he lost the election, the 19% of public opinion represented his charisma.
In this regard, those who voted for him said: Joe dares to tell the truth and do what he wants to do, he will be a good governor.
Others said: Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
A country bumpkin who doesn't understand politics participates in political elections, and a gay who is afraid of tigers eventually becomes the well-known "Tiger King". These absurd-sounding plots are staged passionately in a country that promotes freedom and individuality.
five
The documentary is over, but the story is not over, and the lives of all stakeholders continue.
They may continue to run the zoo, or continue to suppress competitors, or continue to look for business opportunities in the dirty tiger industry chain.
Everything in the world is for profit, and the world is always for profit.
So many people rushing up and down in this murky water are essentially a perverted desire for money and power.
Sadly, the biggest victims of this whole incident, the big cats in the cages, have not yet waited for a law to protect them.
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