However, there’s also an eerie sense of dread that prompts a brief questioning of what is truly happening at Catskill, and who’s really running it. One still in particular shows a group of men and a woman posing for a picture seemingly on some sort of Safari, with two of the men holding huge hunting rifles. Another still shows a man in a bolo hat and button-up shirt and tie feeding a rhinoceros through thick steel bars while the animal stares blankly out from its dingy, ramshackle enclosure.

Each image mixes the sweet taste of Americana-influenced nostalgia with the unpleasant aftertaste of lingering discomfort with what you’re looking at and romanticizing. Hawkins has gone to great lengths to bridge the secret history with a strikingly familiar visual style, turning that bitter aftertaste of discomfort up to its max. 

American Zoo is ultimately about more than just Catskill, though. It spans the entire globe, tracking down former zoo workers and descendants of the Lindemanns and Hecks who are willing to share their families’ absurd history, mapping the story of fascist zoology across multiple generations. 

Catskill Game Farm was open for 73 years, welcoming millions of visitors who were unfamiliar with the actions of its owners over its lifetime. Hawkins goes to great lengths to not indict the unknowing visitors who formed early attachments to Catskill, while also not flinching in the face of disgusting conduct. The dreamlike quality of the stills of young families and children combined with their lurking uncanniness, an uncanniness only viewers of American Zoo can see, is evidence of that.