(upbeat music)
-What’s up Wisecrack? Jared here. During these highly-unstable times, one of the few
things we can know for certain is that you have recently seen Tiger King. Another certainty
is that you can’t stop thinking about Joe Exotic’s music videos.
This Netflix show about feuding owners of janky zoos has dominated our brain space,
consumed our weekly all-staff meetings and even resulted in the occasional Carole-Baskin-themed
nightmare. The show is addicting, baffling and far juicier than any expired Walmart meat.
Much of the media attention surrounding Tiger
King has, appropriately, focused on Joe Exotic, the endlessly-fascinating, gun-toting, polyamorous,
red-neck, now incarcerated, big cat owner. Unsurprisingly, he’s become something of
a cultural icon in his own right. Similarly, his fellow big cat dealer Doc Antle has claimed
that he’s received a wild influx of male and female applicants eager to join his sprawling
harem of scantily-clad tiger trainers. Keep in mind: These folks live and labor in squalor,
earn somewhere between zero dollars and way less than minimum wage, and still behave like
they have the best damn jobs in the world.
-I run tiger shows!
-And while I certainly understand the appeal of becoming besties with a cat that might
murder me - I still have so many questions like ... what? Why? How?
Luckily, one of our other side obsessions can answer the question of what makes someone
like Joe Exotic or Doc Antle so addicting, to Netflix audiences and wayward teenagers
alike. Specifically … cults. Now, the word “cult” might stir images of barefoot Manson
chicks rather than pro bono tiger trainers.
But even if the subjects of Tiger King are not running full-fledged cults, the psychology
of cults can do a whole lot to explain how perfectly ordinary people become unflinchingly
loyal to a guy with a soul patch or someone who changed their last name to “Exotic”.
And above all, it poses the question: could YOU, dear viewer, ever wind up training tigers
for zero dollars an hour? After all, are we not all susceptible to cult-like behaviors?
Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on Tiger King. As always, spoilers ahead for
the most bananas TV show you’ve seen since going into quarantine.
If you somehow haven’t seen it: Tiger King immerses us in the very weird world of big
cat owners, primarily Joe Exotic, a Kansasmanman-cum-Oklahoman who operates a small zoo for lions, tigers
and other animals that definitely don’t belong in cages. The narrative, which becomes
exponentially more bonkers by the minute, details a growing feud between Joe and Carole
Baskin, a devoted lover of animal prints who operates Big Cat Rescue, a sanctuary apparently
dedicated to ending the selling, breeding, and commercial cuddling of this adorable tiger
cub.
The feud escalates to the point where Senor
Exotic apparently hires someone to murder Carole, an act that, combined with his big
cat industrial complex, lands him over two decades in prison. Along the way, he acquires
three young male husbands, one of whom dies tragically. Oh and also, Carole’s millionaire
second husband vanishes into thin air. Also, Joe runs the world’s weirdest presidential
campaign,
-And this is all paid for by the committee of Joe Exotic speaks for America.
-Carole runs the world’s weirdest Facebook livestream and again, Doc runs a literal harem.
Also the music videos. SO MANY MUSIC VIDEOS, some of which honestly, and please don’t
roast me for this … are maybe not that bad?
Most of the Tiger King cultural discourse has dealt with meme-ifying Joe Exotic and
the other cast of absurd characters. What we found most interesting though wasn’t
Joe’s political aspirations, or even Carole’s potentially murderous streak. Rather, we’re
finding ourselves obsessed with the way two of the central characters - Joe Exotic and
Doc Antle, build and maintain their avid followings of low-to-no-paid workers and fans. That is
to say, how did these two borderline lunatics effectively become … kind of culty?
Before we can prove that Joe Exotic is actually
Oklahoma’s finest cultist ever to cult, we need to look at what defines a cult in
the first place. As is the case with most complicated and fascinating things, the definition
of the word “cult” is notoriously slippery, which is why people have written entire academic
papers debating said definition. In summation: For a long time, the word “cult” was a
relatively neutral term associated with conventional religious or spiritual groups, such as a cult
of a Roman god. In the 19th century, the word began to develop a pejorative streak, being
used to describe “excessive devotion.” As cults became more common in the 70s, anti-cult
fervor also rose, and cultural fascination surrounding cults has remained strong since.
For ease of understanding, we’re going to define cults by their common characteristics,
as defined by psychiatrist and Harvard professor Robert Jay Lifton in his paper Cult Formation.
In it, he delineated the three central characteristics of a destructive cult. These were 1. A charismatic
leader 2. Coercive persuasion or thought reform, i.e. brainwashing and 3. Economic, sexual,
and other exploitation of group members by the leader. and their inner circle. We’d
argue that the organizations of Joe Exotic and Doc Antle both exhibit some level of these
three characteristics.
- He's got his little cult and Iv'e got my little cult.
-When it comes to #1, charismatic leaders,
Tiger King does not disappoint. Most notably, of course, we have Joe Exotic, a dude with
enough red-neck charm to convince not one, but TWO apparently-straight men young enough
to be his son to enter a three-way marriage with him and his glorious mullet. Cult leaders,
whether they’re Charles Manson or a Kool-Aid slurping Jim Jones, demand to be the center
of attention. Joe Exotic marketed his zoo as his own personal stage. He thrived on being
filmed, even when said filming was of intensely incriminating acts like threatening murder.
(gunshot)
Cult leaders demand adoration, and through a mix of charisma, self-confidence and seductive
tendencies, inspire an almost pathological-devotion in their followers. It’s not surprising
that they often take on a vaguely-religious moniker - from Nxivm leader Keith Reniere
who went by “Vanguard” to The Source Family leader “Father Yod.”
It’s not just about picking a super cool
-and-not-at-all-lame name like Joe Exotic or Bhagavan though.
- Bhagavan means you're a friend of God.
-Cult leaders, according to psychotherapist Daniel Shaw, claim their power vis-a-vis their
“traumatic narcissism,” which he explains as a version of self-centeredness and self-aggrandizing
far more sinister than anything you could accuse your typical “Imagine”-singing
celebrity of. For Shaw, traumatic narcissism can be summarized as “the objectification
of one person in a relationship as the means of enforcing the dominance of the subjectivity
of the other.” That is to say, when you become involved with a traumatically-narcissistic
person, you surrender the right to have your own mind and perspective. You internalize
the narcissist’s doctrine and worldview, and learn to dread thinking for yourself.
That just about sums up a lot of the relationships we see in Tiger King, with both Joe Exotic
and Doc Antle effectively acting as preachers of the sacred gospel of the tiger. They happily
use their charisma and sexual power to take advantage of vulnerable people under the guise
of saving these admittedly amazing animals. As all traumatizing narcissists do, Doc and
Joe think that their emotional needs trump all others.
- He maybe asks me what's wrong, but he only spends five seconds listening and then he'll
walk out on me.
- This brings us to point number two: Coercive
persuasion or thought reform. This point is a little complicated, because for the most
part we don’t really see the indoctrination PROCESS, as the followers already seem pretty
acclimated to hashtag cultlife by the time we meet them. But we do see the IMPLICATIONS
of that indoctrination in the way Joe and Doc expect their employees to sacrifice everything
in order to work towards their designated goal. Whether that goal is actually saving
tigers, or merely improving their downtrodden menageries is almost besides the point. Arguably,
the best evidence of Joe Exotic and Doc Antle’s exquisite hold over their followers comes
in a few specific moments: First, Doc makes his inner circle all change their names, as
to divorce themselves from their prior identities - a common tactic in cults.
- Chyna came right after I came. Her name, was, was Michelle. Moksha was named Meredith.
Rajnee, when I met her, her name was Renee. I had my name legally changed to Bala for
many years. Changing your name is a very quick way to change everything else about you.
- Then there’s when Joe’s employee loses his arm and rather than electing to spend
two years getting reconstructive surgery instead gets it amputated and GOES BACK TO WORK after
5 days so as not to hurt the collective cause of saving tigers.
Now, here’s where things get a little complicated, because lots of non-culty people make sacrifices
for the greater good. Think of a protester putting themselves in front of a tank or a
healthcare worker putting themselves in harms way to help their patients. But there’s
a pretty important difference, that is: the huge discrepancy in who is benefiting from
your sacrifice. Sure, the tigers, but most importantly, Joe and his bank account.
- I'm never going to financially recover from this.
- And this kind of logic will inform a lot more than just cults, but we’ll get there.
Similarly, Doc Antle expects the 24/7 work efforts of those unfortunate enough to be
in his harem -- unless, of course, they’re recovering from a boob job he COERCED them
into getting.
- They were pushing me to get implants!
- But how do they get away with this? It all
comes down to the demographic cult leaders seek out. Typically, people who join cults
are young, isolated, and in transitory moments of their life.
- I am tall, tan and beautiful!
- In fact, psychiatrist John G. Clark Jr notes that cult leaders will “frequent bus stations,
airports, campuses, libraries, rallies, anywhere that unattached persons are likely to be passing
through,” an act that we literally see Joe doing when he recruits this woman into his
tiger cult. In her onscreen interview, Barbara Fisher notes that Doc Antle tended to go for
women who were virgins, that is, uninitiated into the world of sexual relationships, rendering
them far more likely to fall into his orbit.
- There was a certain personality of women that he wanted, they were virgins or close
to virgins.
- What’s more, cult leaders, as traumatic
narcissists, are notoriously mercurial, using their endlessly vacillating emotions to confuse,
disorient and manipulate their followers. We see this with Joe, whose narcissism seems
only to be augmented when he’s on camera. Sometimes he’ll be kind and inspiring, sometimes
he’ll lash out cruelly at his employees, even firing them purely to generate drama,
like a real housewife on steroids.
- You're a slacker, and you do less than anybody here! That ain't gonna work with me so you're
going to need to find a new job.
- Then there’s the third criteria: Exploitation
of one’s followers in economic, sexual, and other assorted arenas. This most commonly
occurs when cult leaders overwork their followers in the cult’s “family” business, whether
that means dumpster diving for food like a Manson girl or helping to run the multi level
marketing cult NXIVM or working as housekeeper for the lesser known Father Divine. This is
Doc and Joe to a tee.
- I, just work all day. I'm kind of like a stay at home -
- Like 8 to midnight? - 8AM to midnight.
- You're working every day? - Yeah.
- Typically, and as we see in Tiger King, these workdays are long and grueling, leaving
followers too exhausted to do anything but go to sleep and dream about their beloved
leaders. This state of overwork puts their followers in a chronic state of sensory deprivation,
which makes them easier to manipulate and control. Arguably, spending 12 hours a day,
seven days a week shoveling tiger poo or manicuring tiger lawns makes you more pliable, more obedient,
and, some cult experts would say, can even potentially alter your brain chemistry. On
the economic exploitation front, all of these people make close to no money.
- How much do people get paid? - A hundred dollars, a week.
- Enriching their leaders, but also inhibiting their ability to leave. Then of course there’s
the sex stuff -- Joe and Doc seem to exclusively prey upon young people who lack solidified
sexual identities, and in Joe’s case, even potentially using drugs to coerce them into
sex. When you have a charismatic leader who has separated you from the outside world and
forces you to work hard for almost-zero dollars, can you really be in a willing and healthy
sexual relationship? We say nah, and most shrinks would probably back us up on this.
So with these three sucky criteria fulfilled,
we’re left with one big looming question: How do these leaders convince their members
to stay? That’s where we get to the real nucleus of what makes a cult, and if it weren’t
so sad and potentially lethal it could be kind of beautiful. Human beings are almost
genetically engineered to seek a purpose in life. For centuries, that purpose was primarily
realized in mainstream religion. Likely a big reason that cults sprang up with such
force in 1970s America was the downturn of mainstream religiosity that followed the baby
Boomer hippie awakening of the 60s. When you lose weekly church sermons about God’s love,
you need a replacement.
Thousands of Americans found that replacement
in cults, whether it was the Manson family, scientology, Children of God, or so on. Each
of these groups featured a charismatic leader who offered, critically, a PURPOSE to their
followers. For the Manson family, that purpose was free love with a side of race war. For
Scientology, it was advancing through bogus classes until you could learn the even more
bogus secrets of the universe
- He'd say, "The Fifth Invaders are up there, and this is how they dress, and this is how
they talk!"
- For the Heaven’s Gate cult, it was the promise of transcendence into an extraterrestrial
spacecraft. For Jim Jones’s unfortunate followers, it was the doctrine of so-called
“revolutionary suicide.” And if you’re a tiger trainer at the ritzy Myrtle Beach
Safari or the janky G.W. Zoo, you are following the gospel of saving the tigers - as noble
as that goal may actually be. And Joe Exotic especially makes a borderline convincing case
for that goal in the early episodes of the show, expressing a genuine desire to save
big cats from extinction via shopping mall cuddling sessions. Achieving a higher purpose
is lovely. We wish it for all of you. But please, God, not at the expense of your favorite
arm!!!
Of course, we haven’t really dealt with Carole Baskin, who is almost certainly not
a cult leader. That said, she does exhibit a culty characteristic here and there - most
notably in expecting her volunteers to work long grueling hours for zero dollars in devotion
to her cause.
- I don't pay anybody to do animal care because people will do that for free.
- Also, her whole uniform thing is pretty much textbook cult material.
- Our volunteers wear a color coded shirt system. After they've been here for like five
years or so, they can graduate to a Master Keeper.
- And that's blue? - That's a Navy blue. There's actually a royal
blue: - I'm actually an intern.
- You can find an exact analogy in NXIVM, which ranked its members’ status by colored
sashes. Obviously being stoked about your uniform doesn’t mean you’re in a cult
- but the members’ devotion to a rigid hierachy as decreed by Carole indicates a certain subservience
to her mission.
Of course, it’s worth asking: Aren’t some
of these tactics - say of bullying people into changing their behavior employed in say…
your local crossfit class? And aren’t you basically PAYING to work for your local improv
theater when you fork over $500 dollars for an advanced course that includes performing
for paying audiences? What about multi-level marketing schemes that ostensibly offer you
meaning and economic emancipation, so long as you’re willing to buy 20-thousand dollars
worth of tie-dyed leggings? We’d argue that the incessant human quest for meaning is capable
of being exploited by charismatic leaders in almost every area of human life - even
that of certain YouTube celebs though we certainly won’t name names. Whether we’re prostrating
ourselves to the soul cycle instructor or dedicating our lives to climbing up the ranks
of a multilevel vitamin company, we’re all guilty of subsuming our independence in the
name of a common goal, often while being marshalled by the words of a seductive leader. Even if
our life isn’t being run by a traumatic narcissist, we’re all capable of being whipped
into cult-like frenzies.
And it’s certainly not a bad thing to find
a cause you believe in - unless you lose your autonomy. There’s a difference between volunteering
for Doctors without Borders versus moving to Spahn Ranch with Charles Manson. But, you
know, if some guy with a mullet offers you a trailer to live in in exchange for a lifetime
of servitude -- maybe just try to find meaning in your local fantasy football league instead?
Hell, I’d even recommend Soulcycle.
But what do you think, Wisecrack? Are we reading
too much into the gospel of Joe Exotic and Doc Antle, or are they fully 100% cult material?
And is the search for meaning inherent in all of us a big part of what makes Tiger
King so damn addictive? Let us know in the comments. A huge thanks to our patrons for
supporting the channel and our podcasts. Hit that subscribe button and as always, thanks
for watching. Peace!