Parts Unknown, seasons 1-6, Anthony Bourdain, an appreciation

For those who left us too soon.

We took a deep dive into the world of Anthony Bourdain and watched seasons 1 to 6 of Places Unknown, originally created and aired by CNN. It is currently still viewable on Netflix despite the untimely end of it’s wonderful creator in 2018. 

Parts Unknown, seasons 1-6, Anthony Bourdain, an appreciation

Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidential launched his stellar global career and a series of global travel cookery shows. After No Reservations he moved networks and unveiled the Parts Unknown series, which are, arguably his masterworks. The shows tend to serve up a blend of travel, naturally, food, as you’d expect, but then also an interesting gumbo of politics, literature, music, history and sometimes something else too. As a self confessed film fan you can detect subtle nods to various styles of film makers and mood pieces in different episodes.

The range of locations is stunning, provoking, and often times not intended to just retread the familiar steps of others. In these ways he breathed life and originality into the travel genre. Michael Palin was keenly aware of his literary heroes, and did do a show specifically following the life footsteps of Hemingway. With Bourdain it feels like literary influences are seeped into almost every episode in a more clearly stated way.

Going to the Congo, going up river, you know that he knows that we know that we are all thinking about Conrad, Coppola, Kurtz and the whole dark seething mess. In Mexico, Malcom Lowry’s Under The Volcano is discussed and engaged with, evoking issues surely on many levels, and similarly with William Faulkner in the Mississippi episode too.

In a similar way his love of music is apparent and it is delightful when Iggy Pop pops up in Florida, Youssou N’Dour in Senegal (yes that is in a later season, but we didn’t watch it in an absolutely chronological sequence) and some of the legendary musicians of Ethiopia is Addis, among others. These shows don’t work because of these cameos by famous people however, rather it is his willingness to engage with, talk to, and give respect to anyone who he breaks bread with. To eat their food, and listen to their sufferings and passions.

There is a lovely openness and awareness of his own frailties, weaknesses and foibles. All of which gives him his super power of asking open and interesting questions to the people he meets. He doesn’t duck the difficult questions and this is why he managed to create some soaringly transcendent moments. In one interview, listed as his last interview, he talks about how he’d rather his shows were either great or terrible, but he just didn’t want them to be merely passable. Very much along the lines of Warren Zevon’s take on things, ‘I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all’.

The whole way through the episodes and the seasons you can’t help yourself sometimes considering a word, a phrase or a moment in terms of the context that, ultimately he did not stick around to see things out, leaving the world in 2018, at the age of 61. Perhaps, like Primo Levi, he had just seen, and endured, enough. While the act can often come as a surprise, it is rarely comes without having been contemplated beforehand. It is still deeply tough on all of those around them, while clearly being their ultimate expression of the feeling, even if temporary, that they no longer want to battle their own demons.

The joys of streaming, multiple episodes and seasons is that you can then take in a much wider scope of someone’s oeuvre in a shorter period of time. You also see someone ageing faster, which is tough, but part of the process too. You also notice that in some episodes tattoos are already on his body, that are only received in subsequent encounters. Slight ripples in chronology are naturally not important, there is a more important overall story arc that is playing out.

He is trying to show the world, and America in particular, how human and like us, the rest of the world is. At the same time he is also trying to question the unfairness of totalitarian leaders and autocratic regimes. The episodes in Russia, Iran and Turkey among others are all shining a light on unfair and despotic regimes, with truly tricky moments for those who were brave enough to articulate dissenting views. Particularly for people like Boris Nemtsov who were dead, assassinated within six months of filming.

The episode on Burma is all the more poignant now, after the respite from the military junta, it has now plunged back into curfews and army massacres. In any one season Bourdain often bounced between Africa, Asia, often South America, usually Europe, and always somewhere in the US itself. The variety kept in interesting, while you would also see commonalities too, historical, cultural, literary and musical links between so many of these places.

There is a lot to learn, appreciate, enjoy, and celebrate about Bourdain, his life, travels, his inquiring mind, and his deep empathy with humanity. We are richer people for spending time travelling with him and in his footsteps, especially during these lockdown times too, when much of our travel is destined to be virtual for at least a little while longer yet.

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