My Crush on Anthony Bourdain.

[browngirl]

So, I have acquired a crush on Anthony Bourdain (or at least his TV persona, which he does do a good job of making look authentic). He plays a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold very well; for all his cynicism and snark, he listens respectfully to everyone (except his producers), even seeming to respect people more the less money they're surviving on. He enjoys a great many things, and when he enjoys them he enjoys them thoroughly and without reservation.

(Plus, well, that whole leathery-voiced foul-mouthed bad-boy thing.)

I've started watching travel shows recently, I'm not sure why. Maybe seeing other people's well-edited vacations just entertains me. At any rate, I've been watching No Reservations, Mr. Bourdain's show, and... I was charmed by the episode on Ghana, which he presented so respectfully, but without artifice. He didn't show the Savage Benighted Africa people envision in the West, he showed a thriving country reaching out to those of us in the African Diaspora, reaching out to the whole world. I was delighted by the episode on Korea, where he let one of his employees (a young Korean-American woman) haul him around her heritage; he complained amusingly, drank entertainingly, and observed soulfully, and was really nice and polite to her family.

And then the episode on Jamaica! It only makes sense to judge a travelogue by what it says about the bits of the world one knows, doesn't it? Well, he got Jamaica 100% right. I nearly cried with nostalgic delight. And he showed... there's a lot more to Jamaica than the tourist version, and people often don't realize that. He showed some of the rest of Jamaica, grit and grandeur both. So I feel I can trust his presentation of other places, because he did so well by the island I know.

I don't know if I should write him a fan letter; he'd probably just crumple it and use it to light a cigarette. But he's won my heart all the same.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, sweetie. I thought of asking you if you wanted me to delete the entry.

Still, you've reminded me of what I forgot to say in this entry. I was surprised to like him. I'm not surprised to hear he's insulted vegetarianism; I've read what he thinks of fat people, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have much use for me. He always struck me as founding his humor on mockery and cruelty, until I started watching this show.

But with all that... he's said some amazingly tender things about food, people, places. He could have been condescending to the Ghanians and made the country look primitive and muddy. He could have made all of Jamaica look like a theme park or a pot-smoke-filled gangster's paradise. He didn't do these things, and I have to give him credit for that, too.

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I'm not willing to expose myself to his negativism about a choice I've made, or the result of other choices I've made in the past. That said, I'm glad to hear that he has said some things that could have been negative and are positive.