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

244 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
on his own abandonment and loss, which culminates in the death of his mother
and his own beloved dog, Sickan. as the flm’s title and these lines suggest,
Ingemar reaches across the boundary of species to shore up his own identity
and resolve:
I can’t help thinking about Laika. She had to do it for human
progress. She didn’t ask to go . . . she really must have seen
things in perspective. It’s important to keep some distance . . .
halström’s flm garnered critical acclaim at flm festivals in Berlin and toronto
before making headlines in the United States, where box ofce sales ultimately
topped eight million dollars. Nominated for a raft of awards and winner in the
Best Foreign Film category for both the New York Film Critics award (1987)
and the Golden Globe awards (1988), My Life as a Dog inspired a new wave of
(mainly musical) tributes to the frst dog in space.
the frst of these came in 1987 from the Spanish punk rock group,
Mecano. part of “La Movida,” the counter-cultural movement that mobilized
Spanish youth in the 1980s, Mecano found commercial success in France, Italy,
and Latin america, as well as in Spain. Still readily accessible on Youtube,
Mecano’s song, “Laika,” tells the story of a “normal russian dog” and speculates
about her “thoughts” as she looked down on earth through the window of her
space capsule. 25 Like many bands to follow, Mecano laments sacrifcing a dog
to human ambition and curiosity, and in so doing elevates Laika to realms
normally reserved for humans: “We have to think that on earth there is one
little dog less / and in heaven there is one star more.”
the most long-standing musical group to appropriate Laika’s name was
also founded in 1987. Ironically retro in conception, Laika and the Cosmonauts
ofered updated instrumental surf rock in the 1960s tradition of Dick Dale,
complete with loud reverberating solo guitar and lots of fast double picking.
the irony here derived from the former studio musicians’ Finnish citizenship.
Like their compatriots, the Leningrad Cowboys, Laika and the Cosmonauts
parodied Finland’s ambivalent stance toward the Cold War superpowers by
choosing a Soviet-themed name and adopting a quintessentially american
style. the group rode the wave of the instrumental surf rock revival set of by
the release of the surf documentary, Endless Summer II and the inclusion of Dick
Dale’s “Miserlou” on the soundtrack of the flm Pulp Fiction in 1994. reviving
the connection between rock music and space themes dating back to the early
1960s, Laika and the Cosmonauts paid explicit homage to the Space age with
their frst album and title hit, C’mon do the Laika (1988) and their 1996
compilation, Zero Gravity. Besides ofering covers of surf-rock classics and
25. “Mecano-Laika,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHkv1XPPis (accessed January 25, 2008).