Jaimie Baron - Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness

The third volume in the Docalogue series, this book explores the significance of the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020), which became must-see-TV for a newly captive audience during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The series a true-crime, tabloid spectacle about a murder-for-hire plot within the big cat trade prompts interesting questions about which documentaries become popular in particular moments and why. However, it also raises important questions related to the medium specificity of documentary in the streaming era, as well as the ethics of both human and animal representation. By combining five distinct perspectives on the Netflix documentary series, this book offers a complex and cumulative discourse about Tiger Kings significance in multiple areas, including, but not limited to, animal studies, queer theory, genre studies, labor relations, and digital culture.

Students and scholars of film, media, television, and cultural studies will find this book extremely valuable in understanding the significance of this larger-than-life true-crime documentary series.

Jaimie Baron is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Alberta. She is the author of two books, The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History (2014) and Reuse, Misuse, Abuse: The Ethics of Audiovisual Appropriation in the Digital Era (2020), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is also the director of the Festival of (In)appropriation, a yearly international festival of short experimental found footage films and videos.

Kristen Fuhs is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Woodbury University. She writes about documentary film, the American criminal justice system, and contemporary celebrity, and her work has appeared in journals such as Cultural Studies; the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television; and the Journal of Sport & Social Issues.

Series Editors: Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs

Each book in the Docalogue book series highlights a recent documentary film from five different scholarly perspectives. By focusing on a single documentary from multiple points of view, each book demonstrates the ways in which a single film can open onto diverse questions having to do with the status of the real, documentary ethics, and the politics of representation, among other issues. The book series is an extension of Docalogue.com, a monthly online publication that consists of short essays about contemporary documentary films.

I Am Not Your Negro A Docalogue Edited by Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs

Kedi A Docalogue Edited by Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness A Docalogue Edited by Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs

For more information on the series, visit: www.routledge.com/Docalogue/book-series/DOCALOGUE

A Docalogue

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 selection and editorial matter, Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataA catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-367-72182-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-74330-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-15720-5 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157205

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Docalogue began in 2017 and continues as an online journal, but it also began as a documentary salon in Los Angeles a decade earlier when the editors were both graduate students. Each month, we and a number of friends and colleagues would meet at one of our homes to watch and discuss a documentary film. Although the salon only lasted a year or so, it was one of the most stimulating forums for discussion of documentary film that we experienced during our graduate years. When the editors each moved on to academic jobs in different cities, we continued to meet at conferences, particularly Visible Evidence, which provides a major forum for documentary screening and discussion. Although Visible Evidence is always exciting and generative, we longed to have a way to sustain our discussions of documentary media throughout the year. From this desire arose Docalogue, a digital publication wherein we select one recent documentary each month and solicit two scholars to write a short essay about it, offering two perspectives intended to start off a broader conversation, whether on the website, in classrooms, or within documentary scholarship more broadly.