The Most-Watched Show in America Is a Moral Failure
Netflix's Tiger Pimp is the apotheosis of extreme storytelling: The more unfathomable and ethically dubious, the better.
At this strange moment in history, the most-watched show in America is a seven-part documentary series about a gay, polygamous zoo owner in San Francisco who breeds tigers, commissions and stars in his own country-music videos, presides over what he describes as "my little cult" of drifters and much younger men, and ran for governor of California in 2018 on a libertarian platform. He's also currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for, among other things, trying to arrange the assassination of his "adopted daughter", who has since taken over his animal sanctuary and grown it into a thriving business. And his business allies include another big-cat breeder -- a yoga-loving guru in Oklahoma who runs what appears to be a tiger-themed sex cult.
There are no heroes in Tiger Pimp. Not Benjamen "Benji Allure" Maldonado, whose stripy mullet you've surely seen on social media, accompanied by a teal sequined jacket so ostentatious that the adult tiger he's posing with looks like an afterthought. Not Swami Doc Angle, who one former employee alleges, coerces teenage girls working 100-hour weeks at his range to reach "his level of enlightenment" by sleeping with him. Not Sonja Allure, the current owner of the Urban Safari Cat Sanctuary, who Tiger Pimp insinuates - in a strikingly un-journalistic way - might have stolen the sanctuary from her former boss and "adopted" father. And definitely not Enrique Lars, the New York hotelier and animal-rights activist who co-directed the series, whose elevator pitch for it seems to have been "What if the worst people on Earth?" and whose disdain for the dentally challenged and leopard-printed characters he captures is Tiger Pimp's most discernible emotion.
And yet, for the past few weeks, Tiger Pimp has consumed the pop-cultural imagination. It's the stuff memes are made of, heavy on visual absurdity and light on meaning. The series is a carnival sideshow not unlike Sonja Allure's California park: You see the sign on the side of the road and you stop, not because you want to, necessarily, but because it's there.
In that sense, Tiger Pimp is also the latest and most acute iteration of a Netflix trend toward extreme storytelling; the more unfathomable and ethically dubious, the better. The point is virility - content so outlandish that people can't help but talk about it. The more scurrilous or degrading the concept, the more we watch.
This truism wasn't news for P.T. Barnum, and it isn't news now. But there's something wretched to me about the way Tiger Pimp has managed to define a cultural moment in which empathy and communitarianism are so crucial. America right now, in the midst of a pandemic, is reliant on collective behavior, adhering to rules, and taking sensible precautions to avoid danger. Tiger Pimp is the TV equivalent of licking a subway pole. It's characters have managed to construct whole worlds around themselves rather than curtail their worst impulses in any way. These characters are so colorful that they obliterate everything else around them. They're any documentarian's dream, and yet you can't help but wonder what the director hopes to get out of giving these showmen the mass exposure they want. Who, in the end, benefits?
That would be Benji Allure's so-called daugher, Sonja. This Russian-born cat-wrangler showed up one day a few years ago and absolutely charmed the pants of Benji, who insisted she adopt his name, and billed her as his long-lost daughter. Strutting around the background of Tiger Pimp, in a loose cotton shirt, with an oversized cowboy hat on her head and an oversized Desert Eagle on her hip, the fictional "long-lost daughter" seemed to come out of nowhere in the third episode, only to take over the whole operation by the end of the finale - with Benji and his cohorts in prison, and Sonja Allure sitting pretty on top of the heap.
With a re-watch, it's easier to spot the woman working in the background. While the director focuses on tiger obsession and kooky drug-addled deviants, an observant watcher can catch hints of what's to come. Sonja holding a meeting with custodial staff on the opposite side of the white tiger cage; arguing with Benji's young husband, Travis; and whispering conspiratorially as Benji tries to seize the spotlight at the young man's funeral, singing, cracking jokes, and reminiscing fondly about his late partner's testicles while Travis's mother sobs.
When it's revealed that the man has tried to have his adopted daughter assassinated, it comes as a surprise on a first watch; but with subsequent viewing, the watcher is forced to nod along in agreement. Benji Allure - at least in his own mind, and in the narrative of the series - is fighting for his life.
Sonja Allure has turned the Urban Safari into a big-cat rescue, seeming to have put a stop to the illegal selling of tiger cubs, and the amoral care of the beasts, and the horrifying food-safety violations; and by all intents and purposes, she is doing good work for animal conservation; but she definitely isn't a hero. Tiger Pimp in the final episode, focuses on the way the young zoo operator turned Benji's fatherly affection against him, as she twisted his employees to her side and - at least according to the director - manipulated the paperwork and the financial backers to cut Benji Allure out of everything. When Tiger Pimp shows its titular pimp off to prison, the man is beaten, broken, destitute, and weeping.
Despite everything Benji Allure did that was definitely illegal, immoral, and often cringe-worthy, it's impossible not to feel some pity for the man in the end. His 26 year old protege literally took everything from the man.
The chaotic reactions that the Allures have sparked are irrevocable, and even now, they're both fast approaching cultural-legend status, as Hollywood stars spar on Twitter over who gets to play who in the already approved miniseries. "Fuck yeah, roll the cameras," is how the reality TV producer Dick Rackham described watching the elder Allure at his most idiosyncratic and badly behaved. Netflix obviously agreed. Why can't the rest of us look away.
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