Bourdain and the Boss

A table sits encased in glass in a faraway land—preserved as an artifact, a six-dollar meal frozen in time in the capital city of a country where tens of thousands of Americans died, in a war many scholars believed to be unnecessary.

Photo courtesy of Straits Times

Here, in Hanoi, Anthony Bourdain and Barack Obama speak unassumingly about America, past and present, over a beer and bún chả.

This conversation, albeit short, casual, and inexpensive, can help us better understand America’s changing place in foreign affairs and colonialism, within a context and land it once attempted to dehumanize. Throughout the episode, Bourdain engages with locals, and those who experienced elements of the war—each interaction inspires a sense of optimism and healing, but also intense reflection about America’s war efforts and global strategy.

By dropping Obama and his clunky Secret Service into his centuries-old healing broth, Bourdain tries to show that Americans can play a role within the foreign spheres their fathers once fought to conquer: listening, travelling and tasting new flavour profiles to better understand themselves and their impacts, and finally learn what’s “appropriate.”

Bourdain begins the episode not by focusing on the meeting with the leader of the free world, but by introducing his audience to the sights and sounds of the capital city of Hanoi. In this way, he begins to assemble the fundamental ingredients that will become his statement. In his field notes, Bourdain writes he had no intention to interview Obama—he had intended to speak to him “only as a father of a 9-year-old girl, as a Southeast Asia enthusiast, and a guy who likes spicy, savory pork, and noodles with a cold beer (Bourdain). Instead, Bourdain encourages his viewers to hop on the closest motorbike, and zip around the city in order to truly experience it like a local. Blending in with the citizens, while riding on a Vespa through the “river of people, rushing through the streets,” Bourdain becomes part of Hanoi’s brimming soup.

Dismounting his Vespa, Bourdain describes the simultaneously changed and constant Vietnam to the American viewer: the same bowls of spicy snail noodles, the same French architecture, and the same Vietnamese soul. Simultaneously, he describes new economic policies, foreign tourists, western chains, and Obama’s American effort to normalize relations between the two countries. In this introduction to Hanoi, Bourdain unveils the setting’s looming context: America’s War with Vietnam- the ubiquitous Nước Chấm fish sauce, which ties the episode together.

Beyond shots of Vietnamese youth and war memorials, Bourdain addresses the elephant in the room: “For most Vietnamese these days, the war has become an abstraction, not a memory: fewer and fewer every year even remember what they call the American war.” Illustrating the unique receptions of their former American adversaries, Bourdain encourages the American viewer to let go of the wartime preconceptions they might hold from popular media: “Americans coming here as tourists for the first time, especially Veterans, are shocked by how friendly the place is—people are genuinely happy to see you.”

While Bourdain takes care to curate the authentic warmth of Hanoi, Vietnam found itself portrayed as a “mad house” that “reduces the complexities of heart and mind to caricature” in other influential media like Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola imagines conditions to be like Hobbes’ state of nature, engraving the sense of the “other” and the “one” that have long demonized non-Western cultures (Kleinen). A system of domination, “orientalism” in film fabricates the “cunning, cruel, even sadistic, ambivalent, and irresponsible” characteristics of the Vietnamese soldier and citizen alike (Kleinen). In doing so, it recentres the American—the foreign aggressor—as the subject. In sharp contrast, Bourdain’s recipe is authentically Vietnamese.

Continuing to gather ingredients to layer his broth, Bourdain first shares a meal with his friend Hao, a middle-aged Hanoi woman, an Eisenhower Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. Her main work involves strengthening Hanoi-Washington relations and veteran visits to Vietnam. The idea of the changed Vietnam takes centre stage as the two sit outside sharing rice rolls, and youth share meals in the background. Hao speaks to Bourdain about an emerging young population- one that spends the lion's share of their time on the internet, and loves Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hao explains that Vietnam’s history is a history of war—the nation has only known peace since 1989. Bourdain and Hao discuss the raw emotionality of former American fighters returning to their battlefields since the “American War.”

Bourdain posits John Kerry and John McCain’s infamous visits to Vietnam, where Hao describes the flow of tears and postwar reflection. “The memory I have of you 25 years ago is the memory of an enemy, I did anything and everything to defend my life, and protect the people in my platoon—but today, when I see you again, not as an enemy but as a person. All the bad feelings go away.”

Time to settle and process conflict also brought back both hope and healing between America and Vietnam. In 2009, the respective administrations committed to “a deepened, sustained, and substantive relationship on the basis of respect for each other's political systems, independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” (Siracusa and Nguyen). The 2012 visit of the acting US Secretary of Defence to Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay marked the very first since the end of the war. A year later, under the direction of former Vietnam veteran John Kerry, the United States began to provide the Vietnamese coast guard with aid packages, as well as increased cooperation. It was during that same memorable visit in May 2016, during filming, that Barack Obama announced the end of the arms embargo on Vietnam (Siracusa and Nguyen).

In the words of Hao, “Life turned to a new chapter, and this chapter is a good chapter.”

Time healed not just for the actors of government but for Veterans themselves. A 2010 study from the Environment and Behavior journal determined that veterans who returned to Vietnam War Memorials were more likely to see symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder improve. These opportunities serve as sorts of “bad-tasting medicine” to heal the wounds of a veteran or victim’s soul aching for souls now lost (Watkins et al.). Hao’s wisdom echoes once more: “As time passed, all the bad feelings went away (Bourdain, Hanoi).” In many ways, the harsh flavours have broken down and mellowed, allowing the subtler flavours to be perceived.

Bourdain ventures out next to the waters of Halong Bay, where he integrates the tastes of the fishing villages. Just as the veritable broth begins to harmonize and develop its authentic flavours, Bourdain and the Fishing Family sit cross-legged on the floating wooden surface, and the heat is abruptly turned off.

Bourdain’s heartfelt conversation with the family is interrupted, thirty minutes into the show’s forty-one minute runtime, to the sound of The Boss—the growls of Barack Obama’s motorcade, and the anthem written by James Brown. As Vietnamese soldiers whip out their phones to film and secret service soldiers form a barrier, the two icons immediately bond over a discussion of the markets of Jakarta—distant memories of Obama’s childhood. Bourdain instantly attempts to bring Obama into the sensual experience of smells and flavours that drew him into the Vietnamese reality, to which Obama quips, “there are some smells that are not as appealing,” but create “part of the mix.” Obama himself, ketchup in a bowl of phở, becomes a part of Bourdain’s curated, authentic mix. Bourdain declares that the smell “grabs you, captivates you and holds you forever,” almost as if he was foreshadowing the impact of his own work—gritty, unofficial and raw. While “orientalism” sentences the Vietnamese to the role of the “other,” the stereotype, the overlooked, Bourdain looks to difference as a point of beauty and sacred attraction. Instead of treating the unique features of Vietnam as inferior, he looks to them for inspiration for his recipe and boldly introduces Obama into the developing flavour profile.

Stirring this broth, Bourdain introduces his choice of setting: a family-run Vietnamese bún chả bar, where a “dinner and a beer” costs 6 dollars. The selection of bún chả is every bit as off script as the addition of Obama himself. Bún chả is not a national dish, but rather a local specialty. From Bourdain’s field notes: “A few young Vietnamese told me, with tears in their eyes, how shocked—and how proud—that the president of the United States had come to their town and eaten not phở, or spring rolls, which they would have expected—but bún chả” (Bourdain). After riffing about whether ketchup belongs on a Chicago dog, or scrambled eggs, for which Obama deemed necessary for an intervention, Bourdain finally introduces a political statement: amidst America turning inwards and isolationist, Bourdain mentions that Obama was in the process of rebuilding ties with countries like Cuba and Iran, which disagree with America’s policies. He follows this with the wish that more Americans get their passports—to see the way people around the world truly live. Obama responds, “confirming the basic truth, people everywhere are very much the same.”

This underlying similarity is captured through the way Bourdain treats both the Washington statesman and the people of Hanoi in the same light. A paper by the Asia Europe Journal supports that “western film culture,” as noted, “helps to construct identities and world-views by setting up the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’: in this case, between ‘the West’ and the ‘Rest’”(Kleinen). Referencing Edward Said’s theory, these forms of media that enforce the binary exclusion of the “other” are capable of “warping” the perspective of author and viewer equally (Kleinen). Bourdain asks Obama for his help in deconstructing those walls, and demonstrates how little we actually differ, from Hanoi to Washington.

And in 8 minutes, the conversation with the Boss ends. Bourdain returns to the floating fishing village—he rushes back to the stove, tending to his broth. He carefully balances the perspectives and delicately adjusts the flavours. In his refusal to otherize, he instead opts to equalize, allowing for the unfiltered truths of the residents themselves to be shared. Every flavour is authentic and present. Bourdain asks the village family’s mother, a former tour guide, about her feelings. Tearing up, she repeats twice the most important line of the show that we have all heard in some context before: “It is important we know about history…and to make sure it never happens again.” She remains surprised by the grace of visiting veterans, people from whom she learned so much. Fading to shots of older white men standing in front of memorials: “We really don’t want another war.”

While all the Vietnamese flavours have been given a chance to mellow and infuse over time, there are more burners on the American stove. As Bourdain is cooking up bún chả, Obama is seriously torching the Kabuli Pulao. The question becomes, is it truly a time of healing and realization of a better world, or simply another perfect taste of American hypocrisy?

As a reporter asked the then-president George W. Bush after the beginning of US bombing efforts in Afghanistan in 2001: “Can you avoid being drawn into a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan?” Bush assuringly responds, claiming that America learned many lessons from Vietnam (Whitlock). It is clear to both Obama and Bush that the Vietnam War serves as a cautionary tale of death and destruction. Contrasting Obama’s hopeful message to Bourdain, even a quick check under the pot lid reveals an inconsistency with his past and future action, or inaction for that matter: “It must be clear that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.” That they did. Over 2,300 American troops and 241,000 total lives have been lost since the beginning of the Afghanistan war. The Washington Post's release of the Afghanistan Papers describes Obama’s administration attempting to manipulate Americans into supporting the newest 20 year war, through the doctoring of “fact” and perpetual narrative spin (Whitlock).

Bourdain closes with a quote from General William Westmoreland: “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as a Westerner. Life is plentiful—life is cheap in the Orient.” Bourdain then echoes, over scenes of busy streets: “Maybe, I hope we’re smarter now.” At that very moment, soldiers roamed Afghanistan.

The words of the former tour guide in the floating fishing village near Hanoi invite us to remember history so we don’t retrace the horrors of its path. Bourdain develops a new recipe for bún chả and a new path forward. Through listening, travelling and tasting new flavour profiles, we can open ourselves to the beauty of the “other” while better understanding ourselves, our impacts on the world around us, and finally learn what’s “appropriate”—from the actions of the state, to the actions of the individual. The episode is particularly significant because it speaks of American Foreign policy through the senses. A masterful director and chef, through the metaphor of film and food, serves us an everyday seat at the table of diplomacy. It’s an invitation that replays at every table and transcends conventional, otherizing, media- leaving us with a smell and taste that “grabs you, captivates you and holds you forever.”

At its most practical, Parts Unknown Season Eight, Episode Two is the result of the intentionality behind each invitation. An invitation that tried to treat the president like a citizen, and an invitation that refused to treat America as the answer. While Bourdain’s legacy may be to some the image of a world traveller who was lucky enough to geographically experience much of what Mercator drew, and to others, the “Ignorant Rube” from New York in endless search of hedonism, I believe much of his work recontextualizes America within a world bigger than itself—critiques of American exceptionalism and imperial power.

The ability to contextualize and de-exceptionalize a world leader into the kind of unfamiliar surroundings, once symbols of the carnage his country made, is a skill that will be missed through every American “project” in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. Bourdain prepares his broth, filled with local flavours and perspectives, curating tastes of the viewer in the hope of making the parts “unknown” known once again. Through the thematic juxtaposition of power and the people, by splicing informal local interviews with manufactured presidential irony, Bourdain calls back to the sorrows of the past and present, urging the viewer to see towards a future of greater American empathy.

Works Cited

Bourdain, Anthony. “Bourdain’S Field Notes: Hanoi.” Explore Parts Unknown, 26 Sept. 2017, explorepartsunknown.com/hanoi/bourdains-field-notes-hanoi.

---. Hanoi. Directed by Tom Vitale et al., season 8, episode 2, 26 Sept. 2016.

Kleinen, John. “Framing ?the Other?. A Critical Review of Vietnam War Movies and Their Representation of Asians and Vietnamese.” Asia Europe Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, Aug. 2003, pp. 433–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-003-0033-0.

Siracusa, Joseph M., and Hang Nguyen. “Vietnam-U.S. Relations: An Unparalleled History.” Orbis, vol. 61, no. 3, Jan. 2017, pp. 404–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2017.05.004.

Watkins, Nicholas, et al. “The War Memorial as Healing Environment: The Psychological Effect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Vietnam War Combat Veterans’ Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms.” Environment and Behavior, vol. 42, no. 3, Mar. 2010, pp. 351–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916510361873.

Whitlock, Craig. “The Afghanistan Papers: At War With the Truth.” The Washington Post, 9 Dec. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents.

Eugenio is a second-year student at the University of Toronto, who is studying, in general. He can often be found eating Jerk chicken with chopsticks on Line 2 Bloor-Danforth. He aims to merge Kassem Ryan, Anthony Bourdain and Ben Rhodes.

@eugeniociarlandini