'Tiger King' Director Responds to Carole Baskin Criticism of Netflix Documentary
Tiger King may have been a smash success for Netflix, but many of its subjects were not pleased with how they were portrayed in the documentary. Last week Bhagavan "Doc" Antle called the true-crime series "sensationalized entertainment" in a now-deleted Facebook post.
However, the longest piece of criticism about Tiger King has come in the form of a blog post from Big Cat Rescue owner Carole Baskin. Speaking to Page Six, director Eric Goode has responded with some of his own issues about the animal sanctuary that Baskin owns.
In her post, which can be found on the Big Cat Rescue site, Baskin said Tiger King "had the sole goal of being as salacious and sensational as possible to draw viewers." She went on to criticize two particular points about the show—its treatment of the disappearance of her husband and the animals she has in her sanctuary.
Though Goode has not said more about the former, in his Page Six interview he doubles down on the documentary's portrayal of Big Cat Rescue. He said: "Sometimes you wonder whether or not one should humanely euthanize these cats instead of [letting them] suffer in cages."
"I posed the question to Carole: Is it fair to keep these tigers in cages? These animals pace neurotically. I know she means well, but I wonder if it's really the right thing to do."
Baskin seemed to preempt this criticism in her blog post. She said: "It has been interesting to see that some people who have contacted us have complained that animals should not be in cages.
"We totally agree and our goal is to end having them in cages and have no need for a sanctuary like ours. Our federal bill, the Big Cat Public Safety Act, would stop the cub petting that drives the breeding and end ownership as pets in back yards."
Later in the post, she makes a distinction between the cages at Big Cat Rescue and those at Exotic's former zoo. She said: "Our cats live in large, spacious enclosures in a natural setting full of foliage. Joe's lived in small barren chain link boxes with pebble floors that are bad for their feet."
However, Goode believes that actually Baskin and Exotic may be more similar than they realize. He added: "We wondered—and there were a lot of questions that arose when we interviewed her—[about] her lack of intellectual curiosity about these animals... She has never traveled to see these animals in the wild... It felt very much like she just wanted to live with a bunch of big cats."
Tiger King is streaming now on Netflix.
