- This video is sponsored by LG.
(upbeat music)
What's up, guys?
Michael here to talk about the return
of your favorite pandemic-era binge watch.
That's right, "Tiger King," season two,
which just dropped on Netflix.
While we haven't seen the new season
at the time of this filming,
rethinking "Tiger King" over a year later
had us feeling weird.
Specifically, it made us wonder, was the most addictive
and entertaining piece of media of 2020
kind of bad for the world?
Now, questions about ethics
have dogged "Tiger King" since its release.
Still, we thought it was worth reconsidering the series
in the broader context of the documentary genre,
in order to ask, what makes a documentary ethical?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack Edition,
"Tiger King and the Ethics of Documentary Film."
Spoilers ahead for everything that happens in "Tiger King."
But before we get into it,
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Now back to the show.
To understand "Tiger King"'s ethics,
or arguably lack thereof,
let's take a quick peek through documentary history.
Now the first films ever made
were technically documenting reality
from trains arriving at stations
to workers leaving factories.
But audiences quickly got bored
of these slice-of-life short films.
They wanted stories.
And stories they would get.
Like any narrative film,
real documentaries don't just showcase reality.
They tell narratives with beginnings, middles and ends.
Those narratives vary, as noted by scholar Bill Nichols.
He identified six modes of documentary:
poetic, participatory, reflexive,
performative, and the two most important for us,
expository and observational.
Let's start by looking at expository documentaries.
We first saw these in travel logs in the 1920s.
These shorts were made by Europeans and American filmmakers
visiting exotic lands
filming supposedly truthful representations
of people's lives there.
They typically feature a voice-of-God narration
that tells you exactly what to make of the image on screen.
Unsurprisingly, such cultural depictions today
seem quite condescending at best.
Similarly, tiger king has been critiqued
for presenting some of its characters
as sort of sideshow attractions.
In the case of early travel logs,
some have also been deemed down right inaccurate.
For example, director Robert J Flaherty
in his seminal 1922 film "Nanook of the North"
had his Nanook subject re-enact customs of his ancestors.
That meant say, hunting a seal with a harpoon,
though the tribe had a long since switched to guns.
Reenactments would remain a staple of the documentary genre.
That's mostly because cameras were too big and cumbersome
to lug around,
so documentary shoots had to be meticulously planned.
These early documentaries were expository
in that they presented a specific point of view.
And as documentary developed,
expository films remained king.
This was because many early documentarians
mostly saw themselves as doing a public good.
They focused on bringing attention
to social ills like poverty.
And, in the process, they wanted people to know
how they felt about those social ills in no uncertain terms.
But that was about to change in the 1960s.
This era brought portable cameras,
and with it, cinema verite.
These were observational documentaries
that captured moments as they happened,
rather than recreating them.
These films suggest a greater amount of fidelity
to what is actually happening in real life, at that moment,
as compared to reenactment-heavy docs.
A famous example is the Bob Dylan documentary,
"Don't Look Back."
The film intimately records the artist's journey on tour,
without comment, letting the audience
come to their own conclusions about who Bob Dylan is.
As with certain moments of "Tiger King,"
observational documentaries give us a sense
that we're a fly on the wall
witnessing true events objectively depicted.
As cinema verite took over the field,
ethical considerations started being more widely discussed,
according to scholar Kate Nash.
See, while expository film does make an argument
and present a point of view,
the frequent use of reenactments and narration
still suggest a sense of separation
from the real-life events.
(narrator speaks in foreign language)
That is to say, you know you're seeing
the filmmaker's perspective on reality.
In contrast, observational documentaries
seem to actually capture reality.
Of course, even observational documentarians
have to make narrative- and perspective-changing choices:
what to film, how to film it, and which shots to include.
But by presenting apparently neutral slices of life,
cinema verite can risk making people forget
about the inherent subjectivity of filmmaking.
Now, as documentaries evolved
and started showing up more on prime-time television,
hybridizing modes became more common.
And that's what we have in "Tiger King":
part expository, part observational.
While using a lot of the techniques
seen in the narratives of expository docs,
and maintaining a fly-on-the-wall aesthetic
feel at many points,
the directors are able to have the best of both worlds.
They can put together an argument based on their worldview
while maintaining some of the sense of reality
offered by observational filmmaking.
So now we understand why "Tiger King' is so persuasive,
thanks to its twin use of the exposition
of the filmmaker's opinion
and the truthiness of the observational style.
So let's look at what this means for the show
on a moral level.
We think "Tiger King"'s moral questionability
comes down to one thing: voyeurism.
Now, voyeurism is nothing new to documentary;
it goes all the way back to photography.
And a lot of this is class-based.
Per Susan Sontag: "For more than a century,
photographers have been hovering about the oppressed,
in attendance at scenes of violence,
with a spectacularly good conscience.
Social misery has inspired the comfortably-off
with the urge to take pictures."
You might be thinking: Isn't it good for people
to see photos of poverty so that they know it exists?
Maybe, but as Sontag elaborates, there's more going on.
She explains that, "Gazing on other people's reality
with curiosity, with detachment, with professionalism,
the ubiquitous photographer operates
as if that activity transcends class interests,
as if its perspective is universal."
Even in the best of cases,
this process and perspective can be objectifying,
resulting in what has been called "poverty porn."
Scholars Rebecca Mallet and Brett Mills explain
that "poverty porn objectifies and exploits people
of low socio-economic status in order to entertain
while also generating strong emotional reactions
of anger or outrage."
In a similar vein,
"Tiger King" satisfies the Netflix audience
by offering a stereotype-confirming look at rural America,
full of meth use, gun swinging, and so on.
It's a sort of quote-unquote "hillbilly" cousin
of poverty porn.
As Russell Cobb,
a professor at the University of Alberta writes,
"'Tiger King' is poverty porn for people
who like to see people make hot messes of themselves
while feeling superior to the residents of Flyover county."
Even though Joe Exotic might have money
via his cub-petting zoo, the series presents him
with all the visual vocabulary of a stereotypical redneck.
Think dirtbikes, guns, mullets, vests with no shirt.
In this way, it leverages our cultural associations
of white trash for pure amusement.
Throughout the show, "Tiger King" gawks
at the subjects' eccentricities,
but rarely in service of the plot.
There's very little attempt to understand them
on a deeper level;
we're merely marveling at them for entertainment value.
Whether it's John Finlays shirtless interviews,
or Joe Exotic's run for governor,
the characters are most interesting at their most absurd,
rather than at their most complex or most human.
This tendency to view the subjects as sideshow attractions,
rather than human beings,
became abundantly clear in the "Tiger King" aftershow,
with celebrity interviewer Joel McHale.
McHale, like much of the internet,
generally treats the subjects like characters
who exist for our own amusement.
For example, after one worker describes his poor treatment
by Joe Exotic-
- He always tried to keep everybody smaller than him.
- McHale responds not with compassion but by asking-
- Right, and did you ever say anything like,
well you don't know how to pick a hairdresser?
- [Michael] He also treats some of the show's
more tragic moments with a disturbing sense of humor.
For example, he asks one worker, Saff,
whose arm was bitten off,
about his relationship with the tiger afterwards-
- But he didn't look at your right arm
and start licking his chops or anything?
- Here, there's no recognition of the very real pain
that Saff endured.
Rather, it's a crystallization of the show's ethos:
these subjects are here to entertain,
even if the entertainment surrounds
the most painful moments of their lives.
Throughout "Tiger King," any outrage you might feel
over the objectively horrible conditions that the tigers,
and many of the characters live in,
is easily overshadowed by the entertainment factor.
Their lives are presented as pure sensationalism.
This is a risk in any documentary.
Scholar Paula Rabinowitz went so far as to say
that "voyeurism and its attendant sadism
is at the heart of the documentary narrative."
When the objectified people onscreen
are seen through the gaze of the documentary filmmaker,
they're at risk of being made what Rabinowitz calls
"the object of the middle-class spectator's scopophilia."
I.e, a "love of looking."
As a result,
we stop thinking of the characters as individuals.
"Tiger King" has a lethal combination
of other-izing, poverty porn, and tabloid-like revelations.
This creates a sense of lurid fascination,
rather than critical condemnation of what we're seeing.
It's why Travis's tragic death,
rather than viewed as the heartbreaking result
of abuse and addiction,
was treated as just another chapter
of "Tiger King''s pulpy paperback.
The luridness is only augmented by the choice
to show cruder parts of Joe Exotic's eulogy for Travis.
This includes waxing poetic
about his dead husband's testicles
while his mother weeps in the audience.
- Or if I was sitting there concentrating as hard as I could
on the computer to write a letter to a senator
or a congressman or something else,
he'd come and rub them balls in my face.
(group chuckles)
- Pretty bleak vibes, even for a funeral.
But "Tiger King"'s own moral failings
are reflective of broader struggles
that every documentarian goes through.
For scholar Calvin Pryluck,
the documentary genre is fraught.
For him, the struggle begins with that first act
of asking someone to be on camera, playing themselves.
He writes that "The use of people for our advantage
is an ethically questionable undertaking;
in its extreme it is exploitation in the literal sense."
According to Pryluck, there's an inherent power disparity
between the person holding the camera
and the person appearing.
And agreeing to be filmed doesn't generally mean
you're agreeing to the way
documentarians will choose to portray you.
In fact, Pryluck actually suggests
documentarians try to collaborate with their subjects
to avoid ethical issues and craft more fair portrayals.
Of course, filmmakers often justify
their intrusion into people's lives
by evoking a real truth about the medium:
It's long been used to expose hidden societal injustices
or to teach people about important social causes.
According to Pryluck, a responsible documentarian
has to balance the "society's right to know"
about an important topic
with "the individual's right to be free of humiliation,
shame, and indignity."
In this way, he explains, "exploitation is justified
through claims of society's interest
in advancing knowledge."
We can see this balance being thoughtfully negotiated
throughout the genre.
Take Harlan County, USA, which exposed the devastation
faced by union miners in Kentucky
fighting for fair wages and working conditions.
Or Crip Camp, which highlights the struggle
for disability rights in the '70s.
So does "Tiger King" justify its arguable exploitation
through its advancement of knowledge?
It's debatable.
The show certainly doesn't seem particularly concerned
with its educational value,
nor with what Pryluck calls the "dignity, respect, and pride
of the people in the films."
And it doesn't necessarily raise any host of ethical issues
that you could reasonably consider
to be "of public interest"
unless you're super into really bad music videos.
While "Tiger King" could purport to raise ethical questions
about the way privately-owned tigers are treated in America,
the show generally seems more interested
in gawking at its human subjects.
The directors reportedly convinced
some subjects to appear onscreen
by saying that they were trying to make
the big cat version of "Blackfish."
That was the popular 2013 documentary
which exposed SeaWorld's abuse of its captive whales.
Compare "Blackfish" to "Tiger King."
It's pretty easy to see
which one is earnestly trying to expose
systemic animal abuse,
and which one is more interested in juicy drama.
The lack of concern over the ethics of tiger breeding
led to plenty of criticism by the media,
including by Peter Frick-Wright,
co-producer of the podcast Cat People
and writer for the magazine Outside.
He criticized the fact that the filmmakers
basically ignore the fact that Baskin seems
to treat her tigers more humanely than Exotic.
Coupled with the extensive focus
on Baskin's husband's disappearance,
this clearly helped stack the deck
in determining viewers' allegiances.
This is part of the expository aspect of the film,
which creates a narrative
in which Joe is the flawed protagonist
and Carole the intolerable antagonist.
Tellingly, there are plenty of Joe Exotic fans,
while Carole is pretty universally hated.
Though, if you're the lonely maker
of this Carole Baskin fan art, please drop a comment.
This results from the way the show exaggerates
and hyper-focuses on Carole's
admittedly-annoying eccentricities,
like her obnoxious Facebook presence.
- Hello you cats and kittens. It's Carole.
- The camera scans every leopard-printed item in her house
as if to say, isn't this lady a kook?
Again, the objectifying lens prevents us
from seeing Carole as an actual,
three-dimensional person and renders her a caricature.
And it's a lot easier to believe
that a caricature would kill their husband.
This is another example
of how the filmmakers' selective framing
can change the audience's response to people and events.
Frick-Wright also suggests that "Tiger King"
actually represents a step backward
for conservation efforts.
He states that: "The show gives voice to the idea
that breeders are helping wildlife
by increasing their numbers.
This is one of the most common arguments you hear
from tiger owners and breeders.
It's also intellectually dishonest,
and the fact the series does not give anyone a chance
to correct is irresponsible."
What's more, Frick-Wright points out a major cinch
in Exotic's defense of his business.
He explains that,
"Virtually all privately owned tigers in the U.S.
are mutts who do not belong
to any of the six distinct subspecies found in the wild
and therefore are genetically useless
to conservation efforts."
Basically, Joe Exotic's work is not helping
regenerate the tiger population,
as the show might make you think.
So the voyeurism coupled with lack of ethical concerns
makes "Tiger King" look pretty sus.
But does that make it irresponsible
to indulge in the show as a spectator?
Maybe not.
Scholar and curator Minou Norouzi argues
that objectification in documentaries
can actually serve a purpose.
She writes, "Objectification works
against empathic identification."
In this way, it "forces upon the viewer
the issue of their complicity
in the process of objectification
through the very act of viewing."
That is, voyeuristic moments like those in "Tiger King"
could make thoughtful viewers
reconsider their own role as spectators.
These moments create what Norouzi calls
"spaces for self-interrogation," in which viewers can ask:
What is my role here?
How am I complicit
in maintaining this problem, that suffering?
When it comes to responsibility,
the viewer is as entangled with these questions
as the filmmaker."
In other words, maybe "Tiger King,"
by forcing us to reckon with our own voyeuristic urges,
is raising ethical issues.
Even if that wasn't necessarily the intention of the makers.
In this way, the content we consume can serve as a mirror
that forces us to evaluate our own complicity
in its creation.
This doesn't mean the filmmakers are doing good
by indulging our voyeuristic vices.
And of course, it doesn't mean that every viewer
will have that self-interrogating experience.
And for those of us who do recognize our voyeurism
when we watch "Tiger King,"
it might not quite convince us to turn off the TV.
And that's understandable.
The show is damn entertaining.
But what do you guys think?
Are we complicit with "Tiger King"'s moral issues
when we watch it?
Can experiencing the discomfort of unethical voyeurism
make us think productively about our own complicity?
Or are we just looking for an excuse
to binge "Tiger King Season 2" this weekend?
Let us know in the comments.
Thanks to our patrons for all your support,
and be sure to check out our podcasts.
Pat that subscription button
like it's a tiger cub at Joe Exotic's petting zoo,
and don't forget to ring that bell.
And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
(upbeat music)