Tiger King: An American Tale

Netflix’s new true crime drama is a distillation of all things American.

It’s a strange time to be alive. A novel form of coronavirus is cutting a swathe through the American landscape, its spread enabled by a president who denied its importance until he had no other choice and who still seems to have no clear idea what to do about it. Most of American life has ground to a halt, with both the economy and social ties have begun to fray under the pressure of enforced isolation.

And, just in case all of that wasn’t insane enough, the cultural text that everyone is talking about is a Netflix documentary about a mulleted man named Joe Exotic from Oklahoma who owned a private zoo and was sentenced to prison for taking out a hit on a woman who was doing her best to close down his operation. Seeing it written down just reinforces how absolutely bananas this story is, even while it also makes it clear why such a bizarre narrative is the perfect distillation of the truly unsettled and nightmarish times in which we live.

As of this writing, the Netflix documentary is the most popular show on television. Everyone seems to be talking about it, and the show has already generated a veritable army of memes (always a good barometer for how effectively a series has tapped into the cultural zeitgeist). While its…