En selskapshund på Nordpolen

Relasjonen mellom hund og polarhelt i to mediefremstillinger fra 2022 av terrieren Titina

Abstract

Theme: Dog

A Companion Dog at the North Pole: The Relationship Between Dog and Polar Hero in Two Media Portrayals from 2022 of the Terrier Titina

Titina was the Italian airship engineer Umberto Nobile’s terrier. He took her to the North Pole in the airship Norge in 1926 (together with Roald Amundsen) and on the airship Italia in 1928. There are several archive photographs of her. Titina is also the subject of a full-length animated family film, Titina (2022), directed by Kajsa Næss. The adaptation Titina (2022) is an illustrated non-fiction book for children, written by Lars Mæhle and illustrated by the film’s production designer Emma McCann. Here the two Titina versions are examined through adaptation theory (Bryant; Hutcheon). Inspired by Donna Haraway, the article discusses how the representations constitute the relationship between dog and human in each of these two media portrayals through five dependent research questions: How do the two representations place themselves in the polar literary tradition? How do the two 2022 representations relate to each other? How is humour acted out and for what purpose? What kind of perspective characterizes the presentations? How are dogs and humans constituted in relation to each other? The analysis is inspired by children’s literary humour theory (Cross) as well as point-of-view studies in film and children’s literature research (Janson; Lury; Rhedin; Ørjasæter). The article argues that when the companion dog becomes the polar hero’s companion, not only does the struggle to reach the North Pole appear meaningless, in line with the alternative polar literature. The closeness between dog and human is also emphasized and charged with meaning in a way that points forward to the cultural dominance of the family dog paradigm.