Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

the MUSIC OF MeMOrY aND FOrGettING:
GLOBaL eChOeS OF SpUtNIK II
239
space capsule had food, water, and a climate control system designed to support
her for several days, it was not engineered to be retrievable, so the dog’s death
was a certainty from the outset. For 40 years the Soviets maintained that Laika
had died painlessly after several days in orbit, revealing only in 2002 that she
succumbed to overheating and panic a few hours after launch. 7
Sacrifced in the quest to make spacefight a reality for humans, Laika the
dog provoked intense reactions from people who regarded her variously as an
“experimental animal,” a “brave scout,” a “faithful servant,” or an “innocent
victim.” 8 at one level, these responses mirrored contradictory attitudes,
common in their main contours across many cultural and national contexts,
of people toward dogs. as such, conficting human perspectives on the frst
space dog drew on and intensifed more generalized tensions generated by the
intertwined nature of domestic dog and human ecologies. 9 they also tapped
the excitement and apprehension occasioned by the advent of the nuclear era
and the Space age, which suggested the compelling attractions as well as the
tremendously destructive potential of technological and scientifc advances.
Over the last 20 years or so, the multivalent echoes of Laika’s immediate
celebrity have inspired an array of creative endeavors, including Lasse halström’s
flm, My Life as a Dog (1985) and extending to a number of recent literary
undertakings, an array of Web sites, and, most remarkably, a diverse and
expanding corpus of music emanating from various points around the Northern
hemisphere and the transnational arena of cyberspace. Since the mid-eighties,
music groups in Scandinavia, Spain, Germany, Japan, the United States, and
the United Kingdom have dedicated songs to Laika, and three have adopted
her name as their own. this represents considerable name recognition. Indeed,
in the musical arena of commercial cyberspace, the frst space dog seems to
have more currency than the frst space man or even the founder of the Soviet
state. 10 Nearly 50 short pieces are named after Laika or have lyrics referencing
7. David Whitehouse, “First Dog in Space Died within hours,” BBC News Online October 28,
2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2367681.stm (accessed January 25, 2008).
8. these overlapping but often contradictory perspectives on Laika might be explained in terms
of the sociological concept of the “boundary object.” See anita Guerrini, Experimenting with
Humans and Animals. From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore, 2003), p. x; Susan Leigh Star and
James r. Griesemer, “Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and Boundary Object: amateurs and
professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science 19
(1989): 387-420.
9. On the extent to which the destinies of humans and domestic dogs are inextricably linked
by forces of nature and culture, see raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger, Dogs. A
New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution (Chicago, IL: the University of
Chicago press, 2001); Donna haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto. Dogs, People, and
Signifcant Otherness (Chicago, IL: prickly paradigm press, 2003); and Susan Mchugh, Dog
(London, UK: reaktion Books, 2004).
10. a search across all genres in the Itunes store in January 2008 yielded 23 pieces with Yuri Gagarin’s
name in the title, 27 pieces named after Lenin, and 43 referencing Laika.