Anthony Bourdain and the Importance of Having a Shit Time
S1E2: "Iceland: Hello Darkness My Old Friend"
Iceland. Land of Ice and Fire (and cliche tourism slogans). Dream destination of adventure tourists everywhere. Home of famous geysers, glaciers, lagoons, and maybe elves. Anybody would be happy to go there—right?
But not Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain went to Iceland once for his show and was unapologetically fucking miserable, so much so that he never went back. The man spends about 45 minutes cursing, complaining, and generally humiliating himself. And it makes for great TV.
The only version of this episode that I could find online was a special edition with commentary from Bourdain and a producer. Although this meant I couldn’t always hear what was said on the show (if some quotations are transcribed inaccurately, I’m sorry, but I sincerely hope that you’re not reading this newsletter for faithful transcriptions of the show), the commentary was a gold mine.
It’s pretty easy to see on camera how miserable Bourdain was (the man does not stop complaining and at one point, he literally gets stuck in a cave during a blizzard. It’s hard to make that look fun.) But for every on-screen image of misery, there were about ten instances off-screen that nearly broke the man, so much so that at one point he tells the producer, “I wanted to kill you, then I wanted to go to the funeral, and anyone who showed up to mourn you, I wanted to kill them too.”
The producers had no idea what to do with the show yet since it was only the second episode so were scrambling for ideas, which is how Bourdain wound up in Icelandic Gold’s Gym waiting for two hours for a pack of bodybuilders to show up. There was an arctic char scene where only 30 seconds of footage actually made it into the show because of an unnamed disaster. The official fixer was a guy from a PR firm so boring Bourdain nicknamed him Smegmar. The famous Icelandic Viking party, Þorrablót? The show decided for some inexplicable reason to send Tony to a party full of middle-aged bureaucrats where he predictably had a terrible time. The famous scene of Tony riding on an Icelandic pony? Was not shot on the treacherous Icelandic tundra, but in a parking lot as Icelanders stared and giggled. The famous scene of Tony taking a mud bath? Not a fancy spa, but the spa in a retirement home for some inexplicable reason. Oh, also Tony was sick the entire time.
Bourdain describes this episode as “a catalogue of my most humiliating moments,” and it’s hard to argue. He whines. He complains. He gags at fermented shark, which he says is one of the most disgusting things he’s ever eaten. He makes a fool of himself.
There are plenty of travel hosts that might have played along, putting their brave face on. But Anthony Bourdain’s brave face involves sarcasm and scowling. He says of himself, “I am seldom as mean, bitter ,and sarcastic as I am in this show, I mean I am really unpleasant, I was not depicted in a sympathetic light here, and it’s not that I deserve to be.” Bourdain knows that he was a bit rude, and he does not try to justify it. He just admits it.
We can laugh at Bourdain’s meltdowns, and they do make for good television, but I think all of us with the privilege to travel have had a similar one. The crying fit in the airport. The all-out screaming match with travel companions (mine was on top of the Eiffel Tower. Fun.) The moment where you knew in the moment that you were being a complete fucking brat in one of the most beautiful spots in the world but you couldn’t stop yourself. Most of us just didn’t have a camera following us around the entire time to capture our worst moments.
There’s plenty of reasons why a trip can go wrong. You could get sick, someone loses your suitcase, your significant other breaks up with you mid-joint trip. But sometimes, there isn’t a reason. Sometimes, you just wind up in a cranky mood, or you show up with your own baggage. Sometimes, there is a reason and it’s all your fault. I can’t even count how many trips I ruined because I forgot that I need sleep and then replicated the surprised Pikachu face meme when I had an exhausted meltdown somewhere.
Bourdain explains his disastrous Iceland trip as follows:
There were a lot of good people who were very nice to me, but the fact is, that I didn’t have a good time for various reasons, I brought a lot of baggage with me, I was angry with you, I was angry with the country, I was angry with our fixer, I’d suffered the crippling disappointment of the arctic char scene [idk what that is] and wait a minute there was another one too, and the spa.
I appreciate the honesty. Sometimes, travel doesn’t work out. Sometimes, it’s the destination, sometimes it’s you. Not to get all “social media makes us perform” because that horse has been pulverized to dust at this point, but when anyone with a smartphone and a passport has had idle moments of thinking about becoming a travel blogger (don’t pretend you haven’t), the pressure to always have a good time sinks in. We’re supposed to think travel will make us better people, but sometimes I’m just the same depressed curmudgeon abroad as I am in my own backyard. The garbage feeling of wasting your money on a vacation that turned out to suck only feels worse when you look at everyone else having fun and start wondering what is fundamentally wrong with you.
But sometimes, traveling is a pain in the ass.
Besides providing representation for curmudgeons everywhere, this episode of Bourdain offers an interesting insight into why trips go wrong and the pitfalls of the modern tourism industry. I found an interesting article by an Icelandic commentator that used the episode as a lens to examine Icelandic image creation (at least from what I was able to understand using Google Translate). The author is not upset with the cranky Bourdain but with the local tourism board that pushed him into situations that clearly did not match his personality for the sake of creating a stylized image of Iceland. He says that this pressure to perform extends not just to visitors but to Icelanders themselves who have to present an image of themselves that aligns with the Tourism Board’s vision. “At the same time, the show is perhaps a necessary reminder that Icelanders should come to the door to greet foreigners as they are dressed—instead of emphasizing an image of themselves that is barely there.” Although Bourdain’s show, once it got popular, would eventually contribute to the kind of flattening of destinations he opposes, this episode at least pokes some holes in the common tourism literature.
Travel is artifice, both on the side of the hosts who create an image of the home that is idealized and on the side of the visitors who pretend this is the best time ever. Some artifice is necessary, I don’t think someone is entitled to know all the secrets of a place just because they visit once. But maybe we can all afford to drop the facades every once in a while, when it gets too exhausting. Also, tourism boards are the bane of everybody’s existence.
So the next time you have a miserable vacation, feel free to have a bad time loudly, wallow in it like a stuck pig. It’s what Tony would have wanted.
What Tony Did:
Went to the gym
Picnic on the icelandic tundra (sledding on dogs—witnessed one of the mushers beating the dog)
Visited Chef Siggi Hall, who worked in a hotel
Got stuck in a blizzard
Went to a thorablot party, also got a behind-the-scenes look at the production process when he visited a restaurant for lunch that happened to be run by a fan
Riding an Icelandic pony (“watch Little Tony1 ride his pony”)
Went to the spa, mud bath and massage
All night bar crawl with local chefs
The Blue Lagoon
What Tony Ate:
Peasant soup at the gym
Smoked puffin, lamb chops with barley, blinis, caviar, pickled dinner for picnic
Brennivin
Fermented shark
Sheep’s testicles and head
Fish stew made with cod, onions, potatoes, bechamel
Icelandic hot dog
What Tony Mocked:
His producers
Himself
Arnold Schwarzenegger
His mother (who called him and got mad that he made a joke about her being an alcoholic)
The Icelandic tourist bureau
The middle-aged functionaries Thorrablot party
A newsletter note: Sorry this took longer than promised but I got stuck in a bureaucratic hell of my own making, also wound up having to go back to the village (if anyone has a car and is in Istra at the moment, come hang out because I am mildly stuck). Next week’s essay will probably be about sports, not Tony because I can’t watch stuff while I’m at my grandma’s. If you made it this far, I love you.
I have a mildly funny story about a former boss who got nicknamed ‘Little Tony’ but if you want the full story email me lol