My memory was never great, and now after so many years of psych meds and the arrival of middle age, it’s considerably worse than great. Today I’m here to talk about a specific piece that I know is part of a larger genre, only I can’t remember any of the examples that have stood out to me in the past. It’s a type of essay in which a writer describes a development in internet culture that seems straightforwardly bad to me but which the writer doesn’t identify as such, in a way I find strange and mannered. (I know that’s a little abstract, but it’s a thing.) There have been others that have struck me but my memory betrays me. Anyway: let’s consider this piece by Becca Schuh, a few weeks old now, titled “The Meme-ification of Anthony Bourdain.”
Schuh’s essay is also a pretty standard issue type of writing in less abstract terms - essays explaining a niche (but not too niche) internet tendency or culture to the squares. A classic example are explainers about the tiresome intersection of the Sopranos and left politics, of which there are too many. Schuh examines the online immortality of Anthony Bourdain, the once-chef turned culinary and travel personality who developed a reputation for authenticity and intensity before he killed himself in 2018. As Schuh describes, Bourdain has become a stock figure in meme culture, deployed in pursuit of the blank and frictionless absurdism that online society has slouched into. Post Bourdain photo, add caption that sort of sounds like his patter but is in some sense exaggerated or incomprehensible, generate a few stale internal chuckles, reap the desultory likes. Schuh maintains a critical distance, mostly just describing, though at times her feelings seem clear. Which is fine. I’m going to just come out and say things.
He was remembered, chiefly, as someone lovable and accessible: straight-talking, salt-of-the-earth, as thoughtful as he was devil-may-care. A real grief surrounded his loss, and he inspired the same types of posthumous adoration so many figures do, complete with words-of-wisdom quotes pasted over nature photos. But it soon became just as common to see posts playing on his drinking habits or salty comebacks; people began to use images of him in the same ways we use images of pop-culture characters like SpongeBob SquarePants or Homer Simpson. Anthony Bourdain became, in short, a meme.
Right off the bat, let’s call this what it is: turning a moment of genuine sadness over a suicide into an object of forced levity. Communally, I mean, coming together and joining hands in an effort to avoid that which should not be avoided. And even if you’re among those who hate it whenever I do this kind of analysis (a vocal bunch), I think it’s worth asking, for the sake of the youngs, why so many people want to perform this constant alchemy, turning genuine sadness into affected humor, why they want to do it and whom it might serve.