Millions of people connect with his media persona, he was/is a cultural phenomenon. There is a picture of him that is treated like a shrine at my cousin's very good restaurant. Why did a man who seemingly had everything to live for take his own life? Not through an OD or other excess, but by hanging himself from a doorknob? The guy could score drugs in a second, why not ride it out in a heroin haze?
This whole thing is a puzzle to me and it seems wrapped up in his romantic life somehow? I remember seeing a picture of his girlfriend who was obviously cheating on him while "training" MMA etc...
I lose a lot of respect for people that "trade up" after they get famous and ditch their long time spouse that supported them when they were just a normal person, turnabout is fair play? Was it really that he could dish it out but couldn't take it?
Is this someone that people should look up to because he could be a charming bad boy for the cameras? I almost feel like it was too many 3rd world trips, I could actually see the pain he experienced while getting an "authentic" experience over and over again from people that wouldn't make in a lifetime what he made in a day. One or 2 fixers/guides even angled for some wealth or a chance to move to the US and pointed out the extreems, and that is just what they showed us on camera.
Anyhow, I'm a few glasses of wine in. Nowhere in my rambling, incoherent response did I come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all dumber for having read it. I award myself no points and may God have mercy on my soul.
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Notes -
Per Wikipedia, Bourdain looks like he was a serially relapsing druggie, which suggests deeper problems he was trying to self-medicate for. He was probably clean when he died, but the police never said what the prescribed medicine found in his system was, and in any case withdrawal is a bitch.
"Hard-living troubled artist" is a lifestyle trope which has a script, including a dramatic premature death. Perhaps Bourdain had always planned to die before he got old, and realised that he was running out of time and needed to take matters into his own hands. If you know why Kurt Cobain killed himself, Anthony Bourdain probably did it for the same reason, plus some semi-conscious desire to copy people like Cobain. The fact that Bourdain was 61 and Cobain was 27 is a comment on rockstardom being an even less healthy culture than celebrity chefdom.
I mean yeah, but most rockstars and celebrity chefs go their whole lives without killing themselves. It does certainly seem like Bourdain cultivated the "Hard-living troubled artist" lifestyle trope, as you say. I think this is the best explanation I've come across, well said. It seemed very deliberate. I mean, it worked, here I am still banging on about it 5 years later.
'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.' -KV
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