In
the hours following his very public death by suicide, CNN’s
lachrymose anchor, John Berman, said, “Everyone wanted
to be Anthony Bourdain.”
My
first, admittedly sympathy-challenged, thought was why would
we admire, revere, and want to emulate someone who ends up
hanging himself at the end of a rope. Since Mr. Berman was
speaking on behalf of millions of admirers, all of whom, presumably,
would rather be alive than dead, we are forced to conclude
that they hadn’t figured out that Tony Bourdain’s
life was the beautiful lie that both he and the celebrity
makers confectioned out of the disparate elements of his well
documented early and middle years, a lie that, thanks to a
complicit media, continues to thrive in the imagination of
his vast society of worshippers and mourners, a lie, that,
five years since his passing, has not been submitted to a
post-mortem.
I
suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. It's in our DNA that
we (our inner groupie) seek out what is exceptional in others
as a way of dealing with the banality of our own lives. And
whether the person is real or a fantasy construed for our
distraction and/or entertainment is immaterial. There is an
existential void to be filled, and fools rush in. What matters
is
that we come to care about the larger-than-life person as
if s/he is someone we know. “Seen from a distance,”
writes Albert
Camus, “these existences seem
to possess a coherence and unity which they cannot have in
reality, but which seems evident to the spectator. He sees
only the salient points of these lives without taking into
account the details of corrosion.”
Tall,
ruggedly handsome, unselfconsciously virile, smart and observant,
he had it all and we all wanted it. He spoke directly from
the heart to the heart of the matter; he was refreshingly
unmannered, unedited. He once said “I’m not afraid
to look like an idiot.” If, as Arthur Koestler observes
in The Act of Creation, “a snob is someone
who when reading Dostoyevsky is moved not by what he reads
but by himself reading Dostoyevsky,” Bourdain was moved
not by his confession but by himself confessing while making
direct I-contact with the camera.
His
considerable appeal combined an unusual admixture of diffidence
and nonchalance. He could be simultaneously cool and empathetic.
He demonstrated that it was possible to be detached while
wearing your heart on your sleeve. He had no qualms entering
his misdeeds, regrets and all that is “foul and fair”
into the public domain in language that borrowed equally from
the X-rated and Barak Obama. As his popularity and ratings
soared, Bourdain would have been keenly aware that audiences
were hugely attracted to his confessional style, that his
charisma was directly related to a willingness to enter his
flaws and foibles into the public domain, and that his person
-- the star he had become -- and not the exotic location was
the take-away destination in Parts Unknown. Had Tony locked
himself in a windowless room for an hour, we would have still
tuned in.
Not
unlike hard-living journalist Hunter S. Thompson, whom he
greatly admired, and who, incidentally, also died by his own
hand, he was trademarked as irreverent, a badge of honour
that would over time alienate Bourdain from his essential
self as he began to measure himself through the eyes and expectation
of his growing fan base. Bourdain’s apparent facility
and ease in every conceivable environment -- from aristocratic
France to the mosquito blighted jungles of Borneo –
became the means to the end of swelling the ranks of his followers.
Over
time, the attention and adoration became a drug he was unable
to refuse, and he quickly learned how to assure his supply
by becoming a work junkie. It was at this critical juncture
his downward spiral began.
IIn
the ninth or tenth season of Parts Unknown, and not so young
as he once was (in his late 50s) Bourdain became obsessed
with looking good and fit in front of the camera. To that
end he lost weight and began to work out every day, so that
when a scene called for it, he was all too ready to remove
his shirt and show us that middle age going on old was no
barrier to projecting masculinity. That he was away from his
wife and young daughter for 260 days a year was a choice that
implicated both the physical and psychological pressures staying
at home entailed. Was Bourdain infatuated with his day job
or running away from the truth of himself (ageing star) family
life would have obliged him to confront? Perhaps a huge chunk
of both.
As
he became a media star, the gap between his image and real
self grew to unsustainable proportions. And he would discover
the hard way that he couldn't simultaneously be himself and
untrue to himself. Hooked on the high of celebrityhood, he
chose the latter and ended up sacrificing his personhood on
the altar of audience expectation.
What
kind of person, when invited over by CNN’s Anderson
Cooper for a friendly dinner, sets up a camera in the kitchen?
What kind of person provides for a small film crew when, shirtless,
he’s at the gym working out with weights? How do we
account for the shots he was belting back episode after episode
in contrast to his teetotaling existence at home? Are we to
believe that at the age of 60 Bourdain decided to have his
upper body tattooed for aesthetic reasons -- and not to appear
cool and hip?
Before
Bourdain lost his wife and daughter they lost him who was
lost to himself.
No
one, The Portrait of Dorian Gray notwithstanding,
is immune to the ravages of time. In the final season of Parts
Unknown, Bourdain was 61 and clearly lacked the maturity to
deal with the hard facts of growing old, of having to live
up to the demanding masculine role that was expected of him
both on and off camera. When on June 8, 2018 the lie he had
been living finally swallowed him up whole and spit him out
dead, we shouldn't have been surprised.
If
there was a time when he might have taken his life, it was
when he was a “damage done” junkie living from
one hit to the next, doing himself and no one around him any
good. But alas, there would have been a significant deficiency
in purchase, in the public attention his passing would have
excited. It was only when he became a celebrity, only when
the camera would provide the appropriate amplification, would
suicide become at first a temptation and then an obsession
that took over his life. One can only guess how many times
Bourdain imagined his demise and its after-effects before
tightening the rope around his neck. Recreating the public
mourning, the adulation and eulogies, the obituaries must
have worked on him like a powerful drug that he required more
of for the same effect -- to the final effect that in the
end it didn't matter if he weren't around to enjoy it.
By
the time Bourdain slipped away he had become a star unhinged
in the vacuous glitter of fame and celebrity. The only honest
moment he showed the world was in the rendering of his final
judgment on the phony he had become -- by getting rid of it
once and for all.
What
really happened in that lonely hotel room in Kayserberg, France
is that Anthony Bourdain strangled his persona in order to
be free.
His
suicide is a tragic reminder that when fame and celebrity
conspire to estrange someone from his or her essential self,
in certain instances nothing less than radical intervention
is called for, and whether the afflicted one survives the
ordeal is almost beside the point.
The
critical distinction between psychology and philosophy is
that the former encourages you to like yourself as you are,
while the latter asks you to make yourself into someone you
like. Given the proliferation of psychology and the disappearance
of philosophy from daily life during the past century, Bourdain,
in a very real sense, didn’t have much of a chance.
Everyone around him wanted him to stay ‘as is.' Surrounded
by sycophants and devotees, there was no one to help him address
his radical self-estrangement, much less set him on the path
to recover his essential self.
What
kind of advice could he expect from his colleagues at CNN?
Both Anderson
Cooper and Don
Lemonworshipped him; they wanted to be like him. And
like the legions of his admirers, their hands, too, are on
the rope that took him away from us. Where there should have
been the helping hand of a real friend, there was only the
unrelenting din of love and adoration and applause that became
deafening.
Since
Bourdain’s afterlife has been as much of a lie as was
his actual life, the real person remains an enigma, and what
was authentic in the man and his life is still waiting to
be exhumed. The blinded-by-the-light media tried to explain
away the suicide to a defective sequence of genes, conveniently
exculpating itself and the star of the show.
If
“the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak,”
(Adorno) maybe one day, on his behalf, the people who knew
Tony well will speak the truth to the aura that continues
to obscure him, to the worship and veneration that have disfigured
him beyond recognition. Then
again, if art is said to happen when the artwork is superior
to, more engaging than the thing itself -- Cezanne's apples
more than the bowl of apples -- we should be thankful that
Anthony Bourdain sacrificed his personhood, gave his life
for his groundbreaking Parts Unknown. We got what
we wanted: entertainment and edification. CNN scored big time
on the ratings. And Tony got what he wanted: fame, adulation
and a robust afterlife.
The
only thing we really know about Tony Bourdain is that he was
not the television personality we came to know. Which isn’t
to say he is not the good friend who is missed because he
is no longer around.
