Pretending to have fun on Vashon.
Pretending to have fun on Vashon. Instagram/Parts Unknown

There was plenty to hate in the recent Seattle episode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. The episode is essentially about the clash between old and new, art and tech, NIMBY and YIMBY, which can be an interesting (if plenty covered) conflict. But the show had some very strange elements. The singalong at the end was particularly cringe-worthy, when producers forced a bunch of unknown-elsewhere and kind-of-known-here locals like John Criscitello and Knute Berger to lip sync, straight-faced, over a Mark Lanegan song. Lanegan, the frontman for the grunge-era band Screaming Trees, was apparently the reason Bourdain, who is a fan, decided to come to Seattle in the first place, even though Lanegan has actually lived in LA for the past 20 years. Not that this stops him from talking about the city like he knows what the fuck is up.

Anyway. The show was weird. Bourdain seems convinced that Seattle is seething with underground serial killers (he brings up the Green River Killer more than once); he looks thoroughly bored at a Vashon Island clam bake; and, for some god awful reason, he watches VR porn at Add-A-Ball. There were some high points—I, for one, had no idea that there is a lab in Bellevue making canned bread... maybe because it's in Bellevue, and the brother and sister duo behind the Hollingsworth Cannabis company seemed very fun—but it certainly wouldn't give the casual viewer an accurate portrayal of how most of us live in this city, which does not include watching pornography in public (unless you're at HUMP!).

And now, Seattle Met's Darren Davis has discovered that Parts Unknown cut a segment about harassment and gender discrimination in tech. Davis writes:

After the episode aired last week, Nikki Barron reached out to me to explain how earlier this year Parts Unknown producers contacted her in hopes of developing a segment about abuse and discrimination experienced by women in the tech industry. Barron is on the board for Techbridge Girls, a nonprofit focusing on getting girls interested in technology. She, along with Liz Rush of Lesbians Who Tech, eventually met with producers to hash out what such a discussion might look like.

Barron says she and Rush filmed said discussion with Anthony Bourdain this summer at Knee High Stocking Co. in Capitol Hill. Barron recalls the conversation as a vulnerable and ultimately disappointing experience. She divulged on camera personal stories of abuse, cited common workplace problems for women such as frequent interruptions at meetings, losing out credit for original ideas once they are repeated by a male coworker, and retaliation for bringing up problems in the office. To this, Bourdain—widely considered a vocal progressive who came swinging at Harvey Weinstein and apologists after his girlfriend, Asia Argento, accused Weinstein of rape—didn’t offer much by way of response, according to Barron.

Prior to filming, Barron watched prior Parts Unknown episodes that dealt with colonialism in Madagascar and the civil war in Myanmar. “I thought, ‘This guy is so intelligent and well versed in these really nuanced issues.’ But he is not nuanced in women’s issues in any way.” She says Bourdain offered up advice that included punching a man if he tries to interrupt you in a meeting. He also cited what Barron calls male feminist tropes, like “I have a daughter” as a sort of ally credential.

Now, we don't actually know why the segment ended up on the cutting room floor—maybe it was boring, but, then again, so was the rest of the show—but Barron felt misled by the producers. She told Davis that had she known about the segment on VR porn, she wouldn't have participated at all. She said she views most "mainstream porn" as inherently exploitative, and she was told about all of the other participants in the show except for MiKandi, the company that produces VR porn. Even more troubling to Barron, while they cut her segment about women in tech, they included her in the weird lipsyncing singalong at the end, and she says, if they were going to cut her out of the show, they shouldn't have left her in doing that.

Really, they shouldn't have left in anyone in doing that. For a more interesting portrayal of life in Seattle, you may as well watch The Real World, circa 1998.