On the app formerly known as twitter, @katie_campione tweeted “Film criticism, when done well, is supposed to make you think deeper about a film and engage with it in more complex ways. It is not really meant to decide for the entire population whether or not they should see something. You all have agency. You get to decide that yourself.”
There are many things I am grateful that my parents gave me; from resources to care, they did go out of their way to embody “there is love at home”. One of the big things that they gave me was knowledge or better still access to knowledge. I was the child that had plenty of books as well as the one who watched the news with my mum and dad. Watching news with my parents was how I encountered a show that would change my life in more ways than one: Parts Unknown hosted by Anthony Bourdain on CNN. I deeply enjoyed watching Bourdain eat food and talk to people.
According to Britannica, Anthony Bourdain was an American chef, author and television personality who helped popularize foodie culture. He rose to prominence in 1999 when he wrote an essay for the New Yorker titled “Don’t eat before reading this” which highlighted the behind the scenes of the restaurant industry. That article was expanded into a book titled Kitchen Confidential. He then went on to have travel food shows such as No Reservations and Part Unknown and changed the landscape of food and travel.
Post his death, I could feel the space he left. There hasn’t been anyone like Anthony Bourdain and there probably won’t be anyone like him. Since his death, I have been going back to Parts Unknown episodes on YouTube. As an adult, I think he, in some ways, changed the world and me. The simple act of eating food with people embodied the popular statement “walk a mile in my shoes”.
The premise of Parts Unknown is simple, Anthony travels across the world and eats with people. He travels not as a tourist but as a “traveler”. He once said:
“If you have the opportunity to travel, you are lucky, you are fortunate. If you're lucky enough to go to Thailand or Singapore or Spain, don’t go there sitting down and saying I'd like a tuna sandwich or a club sandwich or a hamburger. You’re there to experience as much as you can free of fear and prejudice. Never say no to anything, eat as much of whatever’s around as you can. Drink all of the local beverages that's offered to you. Get drunk with strangers and be grateful for the fact you're lucky enough to do it and show that appreciation. Food is the best, purest example and expression of an entire culture, a cultural and regional identity. Be a grateful and polite guest.”
There are generalizations in his statement, but I think the point is that when we travel, not to stay in our ivory towers of being tourists and hitting the ‘hot spots’ but we should actually interact with the people and cultures of places we visit beyond the surface level. I will discuss two episodes that have stood out to me and exemplified this sentiment over the years. The episodes will be those about his trips to Singapore and Israel/Palestine.
In the episode titled “Oldest Perankan Restaurant in Singapore”, Bourdain starts out by mapping out what Singapore is in the popular imagination using words like efficient, spotless, safe, controlled, utopia that is run like a multinational company. He talks about how Singapore has seemingly avoided the social tensions a lot of countries experience and how we in the audience are probably thinking it may not be our ideal way but it does seem alluring. In the episode, Bourdain explores the social, cultural, political as well as the myth of Singapore all while eating different meals from various parts of Singapore and its immigrant communities.
It was an overall good episode but one part that stands out to me is when he is talking to a set of “young people”, a man and two women. They are having a discussion about the good and bad aspects of Singapore and one of the women mentions that security is one of the good aspects. Bourdain asks if women are treated equally in Singapore, the two women say yes. The second woman then offers that a possible explanation could be the maids. She explains that maids help the women of Singapore to be in the workforce. She says “Maids are the opiates of the masses”. Bourdain responds “Opiates makes you slothful and laying on the couch. She says “exactly!” and then goes on to explain how maids free her up but her husband doesn’t know how to serve himself water. Bourdain asks if they do laundry, they say no and laugh. During the banter on laundry, they ask Bourdain when last he did laundry, he says “4 days ago”. He goes on to make a statement that struck with me “Listening to you people, I want to go out and join the communist party. You are bourgeois men. You are living off the labour of the oppressed underclass”.
In Avatar: the Last Airbender, there is this phrase, “there is no war in Ba Sing Se”. It was a line that the secret police called “Dai Li” used in furthering a conspiracy of hiding the realities of war from the ruling class in Ba Sing Se. In the conversation Bourdain had with the Singaporeans, I could feel my “there is no war in Ba Sing Se” notion about Singapore shatter. There is all this talk about progress, wealth and high standard of living in Singapore that makes it fine in the mainstream zeitgeist for people not to have things like free speech but then you realize that there are those that don’t enjoy the benefits of Singapore’s wealth and still don't have these freedoms. There is also a liberal bourgeois conception of feminism being exposed, the “girl-boss” kind that yearns for women in leadership and the other positions of power but also relies on the exploitation of women in lower classes.
In the other episode we are considering, Bourdain goes to the most contentious piece of real estate in the world - Jerusalem. He talks about his Jewish and Catholic ancestry and his lack of belief in a higher power. I think the lack of belief was crucial in making him show and state things as they are.
We see him sit with Israeli settlers to eat and we can see behind the scenes of an Israeli settler’s mind. When he sits down with Israeli settlers, they talk about bringing prosperity to a “barren” place and their framing reminds one of the “Manifest Destiny” ideology that fueled the colonization of the Native Americans.
However, when Bourdain speaks to Palestinians, he humanizes them. This was important for me to encounter because my only (media derived) image of Palestinians prior to this was either as terrorists or as victims. This episode made the reality of Israel/Palestine self-evident, from how there are restrictions on where Palestinians and Israelis can go in terms of road transport to how Israeli settlers have displaced Palestinians; how, even though it is illegal, they have faced little to no consequences for their acts of displacement. I also learned what price tagging is and how it is done by Israeli settlers as a way of intimidating Palestinians. Towards the end of the episode he says:
“One can be forgiven for thinking when you see how similar they are, the two peoples, both of them cook with pride, eat with passion, love their kids, love the land on which they leave or the land they dream of returning to, who live so close, who are locked in such an intimate, if deadly embrace, might somehow, someday figure out how to live with each other but that will be very mushy thinking indeed. Those things in the end probably don’t count for much at all.”
I have found myself drawn back to this episode since the October 7th tragedy done by Hamas and the genocide of Palestinians that have been justified by the Israeli government post October 7th. Watching Israeli settlers attack Palestinians without consequences while also watching Palestinians wrestle with what liberation means and who their heroes are makes me think of what Bourdain said about how the similarities between Israelis and Palestinians doesn’t count for much in the face of systemic issues.
You may be wondering, why is Ireoluwatomiwa telling you about Anthony Bourdain, a man that died in 2018? Well, I saw an Opeyemi Famakin video and it rubbed me off the wrong way and I couldn't articulate why. In the video, Opeyemi is asked by the interviewer what the most overrated soup in Nigeria is and he said Oha soup and I remember the video not landing well for me. The “clickbaity” nature of the video aside, I just wasn’t feeling it and I wasn't sure why. Before I go too far, let me discuss my credentials, or better still, my lack of credentials. Contrary to all the stories I have told you, my relationship to food is that food is for sustenance.
I eat for fun, but that's for mostly junk food. When I go out, I can’t tell the difference between a good meal and a great meal. Still, finding out why I didn't like Ope Famakin made me think about what it means to be a critic. The problem for me was more of him not taking his subject seriously enough to actually engage with it. Now, I will admit that my interaction with Ope’s content has been very limited, but from what I have seen, his content seems geared towards getting attention be it negative or positive rather than engaging with the subject. I have also noticed this problem in other areas like film where accounts like Cinema Pointer are rushing to write the next headline worthy thing. All of this has led me to think of some questions, namely: What is the role of the critic and by extension what is the role of the Nigerian critic in the era of the internet?
Social media has changed the world and reshaped it in its image. In some ways, it has democratized access and opportunities. We live in a world where you can record songs in your room and go on to become the next popstar. In this internet era, fame is within anyone's reach all you need is to create content online. This change has permeated every area of life and that includes criticism. It has probably never been easier to become a critic. Everyone can become a critic. This is not an essay against the concept of critics, in fact some of my favorite writers namely Wesley Morris, Doreen St. Félix, Andrea Long Chu, and many more are themselves critics. I do value criticism, but what is the role of a critic, especially in the internet age?
To me, a good critic engages with the subject and takes it seriously. A critic creates conversations and analysis around art or the subject of their criticism. In the words of Roger Ebert when describing a good review:
“Here is what I think a movie review should do. The first thing it should do, it should give some notion to the reader what the movie is about and what it’s like. If you play fair with your review, you could give a bad review and they’ll still be able to read that review and know that they would like to go see that movie. You shouldn’t just blast it in such a way that the reader will think no reasonable person would ever want to go to this film. You have to give the movie its day in court too. There has to be something in there that conveys what the experience is like. Then secondly, there should be a first person tone. Now one thing that people forget is that of the average readers of a newspaper probably less one or two percent will ever go to see any of the movies that you review and this could go on with books, concerts, theatre and so forth. So the second thing you have to do is make it entertaining to read for someone who is only going to read it.”
I think if I were to say what I think this quote means, it is that no matter if it’s a negative or positive review, the critic’s job is to invite the audience to sit, examine and analyze the art or media they consume. I implore everyone to have an “inner critic” when we consume any media. In many ways the beauty of education of any sort is that education transforms us to thinking humans. Artists need critics, the “art” scene is better when critics exist. Criticism cultivates a better audience. However, in the words of Uncle Ben from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” We need to demand that we have better critics, critics that just don’t just want virality and social media engagement. Critics that leave you, as a member of the audience, richer after engaging with their works of criticism. Critics that help you explore areas you may not even care about.
Anthony Bourdain was in no way perfect and he didn’t solve any of the problems he confronted. Singapore still has its underclass; the Israel and Palestine conflict is obviously ongoing. However, there was an engagement with food, culture and by extension with people that showed he had respect for them. That respect resulted in his audience widening their knowledge and shifting their views on how the culture is viewed. To end this, I am thinking about what @dieworkwear said about Anthony Bourdain. He tweeted:
“What I appreciated most about Bourdain was the way he deconstructed the social hierarchies around food. As Pierre Bourdieu noted, cuisines like French, Italian, and Japanese are often used to signal status. I was moved to see Bourdain treat Vietnamese food with the same reverence.”
I am not naive to act like critics are at the front line saving the world but I do think we can expand the imagination of our audience. The critic holds the mirror and reflects the world through their subject. The critic also has a responsibility in shaping how images in the mirror are framed. So I ask: What are our critics showing us and are we better for it?
Sources/ References
I love this! This satisfied the demands mentioned as it went—this was not a critic of a particular object but, yes!
It was interesting to read and got me interested in the exploring other things at the end.
Thank you. You're a star!