For more than a decade reality TV shows have been an entertaining distraction. It’s amusing to watch castmates clamor to standout or be the biggest celebrity. They resort to being über-obnoxious and hypercompetitive, all for the sake of the spurious eminence of fame.
I get it.
But what about your neighbor who is simply over the top? The one that is extreme. He isn’t seduced by notoriety or pop celebrity.
As this writer composes this feature, I am in awe and looking for a term to describe the people in America who have these fetishes that are completely inexplicable.
Last season, on an episode of the “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” Kandi Burruss coined a cute term when she stated that castmate Phaedra Parks’ baby shower was boughetto, contracting the words bourgeoisie and ghetto.
But what one word or contraction do you use to describe the neighbor who’s raising a hyena at home, a Gaboon viper or a spitting cobra that he acquired through mail order or a Bengal tiger in his backyard, stalking and scaring your toddler?
A new film scheduled to hit theaters on April Fools Day, April 1, titled The Elephant in the Living Room, is an award winning documentary about people that are raising the deadliest predators on earth as common household pets — legally! The film follows Tim Harrison, a Hall of Fame martial artist and animal advocate who has spent the last 30 years rescuing hundreds of lions, tigers, bears, alligators, crocodiles, and the largest and deadliest snakes on earth that are “domesticated.” It opens with the story of a 550-pound African lion that escapes its owner and is attacking cars on a U.S. freeway.
Harrison boldly takes on a topic that you hear about on the news and has you saying in jest “not in America … some people are crazy as h—” The message in this film is really deeper than any reality TV show or news exposé can convey. The lives of two men intersect in the midst of this groundbreaking film. One, the previously mentioned Harrison, a police officer whose friend was killed by an exotic pet, and the other, Terry Brumfield, a man who is overcoming depression through a close connection with his pet African lion. –yvette caslin
