The film is titled Tiger King (literally "Tiger King"), and it seems to tell the story of the tiger breeder "Joe Exotic" (Joe Exotic) and his tigers, but it is not. I thought it was just a story about how the Animal Protection Association banned private tiger breeding. It was in line with mainstream values. Who knew it was not.
After watching the seven episodes in one breath, I found that the film started with "private tiger breeding", telling the story of how businessmen used to raise tigers to attract eyeballs and gain profits, and they were fighting each other driven by profits.
The story began a few years ago, in Oklahoma in the south-central United States, there was a wild animal lover named "Joe Exotic".
There is not much space in the film about how his "love" for wild animals is manifested, only that he likes tigers, so he built a zoo, where tigers and various rare animals are concentrated here, so that they can continue to reproduce. For tourists to buy tickets to watch.
None of the managers of his zoo, including breeders, trainers, etc., are zoologists, biologists, or nutritionists.
Most of them are homeless people across the United States, desperate people with criminal records, and out-of-group people.
Most people didn't mention how they found Joe's zoo, but 100% of them said that Joe took them in. A group of "alien" gathered in this zoo, and under the leadership of "Wild Joe", they began to get along with the animals.
Among these people, two boys met "Wild Joe" when they were 19 years old, and they were married to Joe. The three had lived a very happy life in Joe's zoo.
Having said that, it is not uncommon for people like "Wild Joe" to also like rare animals and want to treat them as pets. In the film, Jeff Lowe, Tim, James, and Dr. Antle are all such people.
These people try their best to accumulate more rare animals to satisfy their hobbies. After they have animals, some of them open zoos to make money, and some just put them on their own manor as pets.
This seems to be a status symbol, a high-level hobby.
There are links of interest between these people, such as buying animals from each other, and competition (such as being the largest rare zoo area in the United States).
But in addition to all competing interests, they have a common enemy, living in Carole Baskin, Florida, in the southeastern United States.
She is the founder of Big Cat Rescue, an organization known to protect wild animals. She promotes the prohibition of private raising of rare animals, taking "Wild Joe" as an example.
As a result, Joe hated her deeply, and from time to time he said "Kill Carole".
Carole is not a female classmate without a story.
She said that she loved animals since she was a child. At the age of 15, she left home because of disagreements with her parents and married and had children alone.
When she was 21 years old, she threw down her child after a fight with her husband and ran away again. As night fell, when Carole was sitting on the side of the road crying, she was "picked up" by the wealthy businessman Don Lewis who drove by. Immediately after she divorced her husband, Don also divorced his wife at the time, and they lived together.
Because of the common preference for rare animals, Carole and Don continued to go to various places in the United States to collect and purchase animals after their marriage, and to keep these animals by constantly buying land.
The laws of each state in the United States are different. With more and more animals, Don slowly realized that it would be better to raise these dozens of large animals in Costa Rica, and it would be more beneficial to the long-term planning of the future, so he was born to put them in The idea of Lorida's animals moving to Costa Rica. But this idea was firmly opposed by Carole, and because of some undisclosed reasons in other films, they began to quarrel.
Realizing that life could not continue, Don had the idea of divorce.
Soon, the quarrel escalated, and Don kept receiving verbal threats from Carole to kill him. He was so frightened that he found the district court to apply for a protection order. However, the court held that “the verbal dispute between husband and wife cannot be used as actual evidence” and rejected Don’s application. Don was still afraid, and even quietly made a will and put it in the company safe.
And just at this time, Don suddenly disappeared one day strangely.
After that, all of Carole's performance directed the finger at her, including forcibly breaking into Don's company, grabbing the will, and "processing" the will on her own. After that, starting in 1997, Carole “legally” took possession of all Don’s property (some guessed it was tens of millions, and some guessed it was at least five million dollars).
From then on, Carole began to build a zoo under the banner of protecting rare animals. Unlike "Wild Joe", her zoo managers are volunteers from all over the country, and they provide free services, but the zoo tickets are still not cheap.
It seems that she is better at doing business than "Wild Joe".
Because of Don's disappearance, the struggle between "Wild Joe" and Carole began to escalate to another level.
"Wild Joe" wants to get Carole into jail by finding evidence of her husband killing. He tried to find evidence through TV rewards, and on the Internet called on everyone to recognize Carole's true face. Unfortunately, his technique is far from Carole's cleverness, and he has not found any evidence. Instead, he was accused by Carole of trademark infringement. In court, he was fined 1 million U.S. dollars.
"Wild Joe", a person who only knows about enjoyment every day, has no money to save. He soon discovered that his zoo might be swallowed by Carole.
In desperation, "Wild Joe" really started to act. He asked around who could help him kill this lunatic woman, and who could help him protect his tiger and zoo.
It was at this time that the FBI focused on "Wild Joe".
He has an attempt, he has a motive, but the FBI needs a tangible evidence to confirm the "buying of murder" so that he can really go to jail.
The turning point of the story also appeared at this time.
A businessman who also wanted to annex "Wild Joe" Zoo, Jeff Lowe, introduced Joe to a person (Allen), and said that this person might be able to help him kill Carole.
Under Jeff's instructions, Allen set up a bureau to let "Wild Joe" transfer him $3,000, thereby providing the police with tangible evidence of "homicide", and finally let "Wild Joe" go to jail.
Puzzled.
Do the police believe that in this day and age, 3,000 yuan can buy homicide?
In this film, the police did not answer directly.
But in the end, the police used this evidence to send "Wild Joe" to prison and sentenced to 22 years. After 22 years, Joe will be 79 years old.
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After the documentary was broadcast in the United States, it caused a lot of repercussions in a short time.
The latest news report is that "Wild Joe" is going to sue and want to reduce his sentence by exposing the chain of private raising of rare animals.
Carole also issued a statement that she believes that Netflix uses stories to defraud clicks.
Netflix refuted her statement, saying that Carole was not coerced, and she volunteered to talk about her past, including her three husbands, including her disappeared ex-husband Don.
The title of the film is Tiger King. It seems to tell the story of the tiger breeder "Wild Joe" and his tigers, but it is not. I thought it was just a story about how the Animal Protection Association banned private tiger breeding. It was in line with mainstream values. Who knew it was not.
Which one of them cares what these wild animals look like in nature?
Who advocates returning animals to their original habitat?
Even Carole, who called on everyone to "rescue the animals", got everyone's attention by raising tigers in captivity. What is the difference between her and the person she opposes?
The poor thing is that those who once were kings of the forest are still locked in cages, weak tigers.
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