Between Rhetoric And Reality:Manufacturing The Arctic Myth
Abstract On the evening of 21 May 1937, a play opened at the Variety Theater in Moscow. The offering that night was Mikhail Vodopianov’s A Pilot’s Dream (Mechta pilota), a melodrama depicting a squadron of Soviet pilots landing at the North Pole. The remarkable thing about A Pilot’s Dream has nothin...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressNew York, NY
1998
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195114362.003.0006 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52535637/isbn-9780195114362-book-part-6.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract On the evening of 21 May 1937, a play opened at the Variety Theater in Moscow. The offering that night was Mikhail Vodopianov’s A Pilot’s Dream (Mechta pilota), a melodrama depicting a squadron of Soviet pilots landing at the North Pole. The remarkable thing about A Pilot’s Dream has nothing to do with its literary qualities (which are meager) but rather the timing of the play’s premiere. When the curtain went up, the author of the play had actually arrived at the pole only hours beforehand, having piloted the lead aircraft of the SP-1 expedition to the top of the world. In other words, the opening of the play was deliberately staged to coincide with the real-life fulfillment of the fantasy portrayed on stage. |
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