FORUM Tiger King’s Meme-ification of White Grievance and the Normalization of Misogyny Jorie Lagerwey 1 & Taylor Nygaard 2 1 Film Studies, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland 2 Film and Media Studies Division of the Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA doi:10.1093/ccc/tcaa028 A popular meme that spread in spring 2020 during Netflix’s promotion of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness features the titular monarch Joe Exotic with his bleach-blonde mullet in a colorful, sequin, tiger-print shirt hugging a beautiful complacent tiger (see Figure 1). The caption, “If a Lisa Frank notebook was a per- son,” links the eccentric, rural, white male zookeeper to the playful, juvenile, psy- chedelic brand known for 1990s-era school supplies. (This link was strengthened by Lisa Frank herself when she posted the branded drawing of Joe Exotic to her Instagram with the caption “If you can’t laugh at yourself, then what’s the point!”) While the meme successfully generates intrigue for Tiger King, it also trivializes the rageful, violently abusive white male protagonist at its center, setting a silly, fun, and almost parodic affective frame for the series. The tension of taking pleasure in spectacle, even when the display is spectacular rage or violence is emblematic of the racialized affective swamp of early 21st-century American visual culture that fea- tures polished Trump rallies alongside shaky amateur or bodycam footage of black protest and violence against black people. This piece examines that contradiction within the gaudiest of the pandemic lockdown hits. Tiger King paratexts, like this meme and the extra interview episode of the series hosted by Joel McHale—in which McHale is equally mocking and celebratory— set up the series as one to be approached with Frank’s light-hearted, rainbow-hued fantasy or McHale’s glibness. The show itself encourages this glib, gawking viewing position as most of the show’s participants are rural white people stigmatized in some way: they have spent time in prison, they are poor, they are queer, they are very young or elderly, they have addictions, have experienced trauma and violence, or are disabled. Their interviews are engaging and spark empathy, but also have the flavor of a 19th-century circus freak show, heightened by the carnivalesque setting of the big cat zoo. The behaviors onscreen range from taboo-breaking or norm- 1 Corresponding author: Jorie Lagerwey; e-mail: jorie.lagerwey@ucd.ie Communication, Culture and Critique 00 (2020) 1–4 V C The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 1 Communication, Culture and Critique ISSN 1753–9129 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ccc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ccc/tcaa028/6028886 by guest on 22 December 2020