Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain gave us sophisticated TV when most television, was generally unwatchable. He was a junkie, a chef, a profane, insightful and gifted writer, a passionate traveler and, towards the end of his life, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. It was a helluva a range for a single human being.
Bourdain was an affluent elitist, with a compassion for the common man, as much as any individual, with his pedigree could muster, while still being a wealthy, world-traveler, with a taste for food that few people could or ever would eat. Not without mortgaging the house, assuming they owned one. That was the yin and the yang of Bourdain’s world, who would eat with poor-folk, living in marginal circumstances, sampling their food and paying homage to their culture. He’d then jet off to the next exotic locale, eat, get drunk, eat some more, drink some more, and then begin again the next day. It was a life few could live unless they won a very big lottery. It seemed as perfect a job as could be imagined, especially, if you loved food and to travel. This, apparently, was the reality, and the illusion of Anthony Bourdain’s life.
What Bourdain wasn’t, was a common man, whatever that term really means, although he might’ve disagreed. In that sense, Bourdain was a model leftist. He cared deeply for the disenfranchised—or, at least, deeply enough to share their food—but only, very selectively. It was the broad middle that Bourdain tended to ignore. Watching people slap a burger on the stove, slather it with ketchup and mayo, while eating a pile of frozen french fries wasn’t his thing, and doesn’t make for good TV.
I don’t fault Bourdain for that. He was who he was. And who he was, gave us some wonderful Television, as well as some exceptional writing. But there was a cultural and political underpinning to Bourdain’s work that was typical of a leftist world-view that saw things in the extremes of the very rich and the humble poor. Heaven and hell. The good and the bad, with little in between.
Anthony Bourdain was many things; the junkie vomiting in the alley. An elite world traveler, sampling food made by other chefs with a philosophical bent about cooking as art, living in a world where cooking as a means of not-starving, is far more the norm. Not surprising, that’s how he lived his life.
This may be why artists seldom really grasp the politics of the common man. Their imaginations and their talent give them a rarefied vision of the world, filled with aesthetic considerations, about maybes and what ifs, when the mundane process of food production—enough to feed a nation—is an unparalleled feat that’s largely ignored.
“Hey! Start up the conveyer belt with the chicken nuggets and let’s get a taste!”
This is good for the common man but makes for rotten television. Even so, the lone individual seeking to make the perfect sauce fades into oblivion by comparison. This dichotomy is why writers reduce complex subjects to archetypal symbols, “The Blue and The Grey,” as a way of understanding The Civil War. Or, the story of totalitarianism as an allegory using animals on a farm. Neither deals with the nuts and bolts at the heart of running a supermarket, filled with inexpensive, readily available food, so even poor people are obese, even homeless people. What an extraordinary accomplishment.
A fine, aged cheese, relatively speaking, is nothing much, no matter how delicious or how long it took to age it.
Personally, I’m glad that Anthony Bourdain ignored the chicken nuggets and jetted off to Vietnam instead. But I’m equally wary of the tendency to see the world in such starkly beautiful, but one-dimensional ways—caviar and quail’s eggs, peregrine cheeses and Icelandic shark meat—will never beat a couple of grocery store eggs, cooked over easy with some corned-beef hash and toast, heavy on the real butter.
Having said that, I’m glad that Bourdain left us with a decade or so of some of the best food-oriented television and writing we’re ever likely to see. It was the hallmark of a true artist, one with a passion for a good hot-dog, as well as the rarest of cuisines.
Goodbye, Anthony Bourdain. We never met. But it was still good to know you.
Mark Magula
Anthony Bourdain gave us sophisticated TV when most television, was generally unwatchable. He was a junkie, a chef, a profane, insightful and gifted writer, a passionate traveler and, towards the end of his life, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. It was a helluva a range for a single human being.
Bourdain was an affluent elitist, with a compassion for the common man, as much as any individual, with his pedigree could muster, while still being a wealthy, world-traveler, with a taste for food that few people could or ever would eat. Not without mortgaging the house, assuming they owned one. That was the yin and the yang of Bourdain’s world, who would eat with poor-folk, living in marginal circumstances, sampling their food and paying homage to their culture. He’d then jet off to the next exotic locale, eat, get drunk, eat some more, drink some more, and then begin again the next day. It was a life few could live unless they won a very big lottery. It seemed as perfect a job as could be imagined, especially, if you loved food and to travel. This, apparently, was the reality, and the illusion of Anthony Bourdain’s life.
What Bourdain wasn’t, was a common man, whatever that term really means, although he might’ve disagreed. In that sense, Bourdain was a model leftist. He cared deeply for the disenfranchised—or, at least, deeply enough to share their food—but only, very selectively. It was the broad middle that Bourdain tended to ignore. Watching people slap a burger on the stove, slather it with ketchup and mayo, while eating a pile of frozen french fries wasn’t his thing, and doesn’t make for good TV.
I don’t fault Bourdain for that. He was who he was. And who he was, gave us some wonderful Television, as well as some exceptional writing. But there was a cultural and political underpinning to Bourdain’s work that was typical of a leftist world-view that saw things in the extremes of the very rich and the humble poor. Heaven and hell. The good and the bad, with little in between.
Anthony Bourdain was many things; the junkie vomiting in the alley. An elite world traveler, sampling food made by other chefs with a philosophical bent about cooking as art, living in a world where cooking as a means of not-starving, is far more the norm. Not surprising, that’s how he lived his life.
This may be why artists seldom really grasp the politics of the common man. Their imaginations and their talent give them a rarefied vision of the world, filled with aesthetic considerations, about maybes and what ifs, when the mundane process of food production—enough to feed a nation—is an unparalleled feat that’s largely ignored.
“Hey! Start up the conveyer belt with the chicken nuggets and let’s get a taste!”
This is good for the common man but makes for rotten television. Even so, the lone individual seeking to make the perfect sauce fades into oblivion by comparison. This dichotomy is why writers reduce complex subjects to archetypal symbols, “The Blue and The Grey,” as a way of understanding The Civil War. Or, the story of totalitarianism as an allegory using animals on a farm. Neither deals with the nuts and bolts at the heart of running a supermarket, filled with inexpensive, readily available food, so even poor people are obese, even homeless people. What an extraordinary accomplishment.
A fine, aged cheese, relatively speaking, is nothing much, no matter how delicious or how long it took to age it.
Personally, I’m glad that Anthony Bourdain ignored the chicken nuggets and jetted off to Vietnam instead. But I’m equally wary of the tendency to see the world in such starkly beautiful, but one-dimensional ways—caviar and quail’s eggs, peregrine cheeses and Icelandic shark meat—will never beat a couple of grocery store eggs, cooked over easy with some corned-beef hash and toast, heavy on the real butter.
Having said that, I’m glad that Bourdain left us with a decade or so of some of the best food-oriented television and writing we’re ever likely to see. It was the hallmark of a true artist, one with a passion for a good hot-dog, as well as the rarest of cuisines.
Goodbye, Anthony Bourdain. We never met. But it was still good to know you.
Mark Magula