VLVL: RIP Ronald Reagan/Alexei

[jbor]

Our ultra-conservative PM described Reagan as America's "most-loved
President since World War II", and all of the eulogies on the Tube here
focused especially on Reagan's role in ending the Cold War, amongst other
excerpts showing the speech he gave where he asked Mr Gorbachev to "tear
down the wall". Eulogies do tend to foreground the good and gloss over the
bad, obviously.

In that context, then, I'm wondering about Alexei, the Russian sailor who
turns up in that Vineland clearing just after Brock's visit. In Prairie's
eyes he's carrying his guitar "as if he'd been preparing to use it as a
weapon" and she asks him whether he's "defecting". He isn't, though, he's
"[l]ooking for American rock and roll" (377), and he "turn[s] out to be a
Russian Johnny B. Goode" (384). The introduction of this character (like
Sasha's new boyfriend, Derek, on pp. 361-2, and perhaps the same thing
applies there too) has always seemed superfluous and badly-done to me, but
perhaps Alexei's pre-emptive Americanisation is meant to serve a symbolic
function as well, ironised though it may be.

http://www.bluesforpeace.com/lyrics/johnny-b-goode.htm

Note also that at Pririe's first sight of Alexei she finds him so
"foxy-looking ... she suspected UFO involvement". Berry's recording of
'Johnny B. Goode' was the only rock and roll song sent out into space with
Voyager 1 in 1977:

    The spacecraft, which has enough power to work and fly on for
    another 17 years, carries a gold plated message from mankind
    to whoever or whatever might find it, including a recording of
    Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode [...]

http://www.scienceagogo.com/message_board6/messages/527.shtml

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