My first crush on a national figure, however, was Dmitri from the movie Anastasia. A cartoon figure. I can find few screencaps of the movie, which is unfortunate since he was so hot. Long dark hair, angled face, broad shoulders, a kind, giving nature. He was totally crush-worthy. I would sit and watch this movie for hours; I'm pretty sure we still own it on VHS at home. I used to have all of the songs memorized. Although now I hate John Cusack, who voiced Dmitri, at the time I didn't know who he was.
Later, on the long plane ride to Russia (I spent a few weeks abroad during high school designing murals in our sister city) we got to talking about movies about Russia, or guest visitors on Sesame Street who had Russian accents, and Anastasia came up, and it turns out I wasn't the only one who had a crush on Dmitri when they first saw the movie. In the hotel room where we stayed our one night in Saint Petersburg, we got a little tipsy on some vodka and sang "Have You Heard? There's a Rumor in Saint Petersburg!" (The word for 'water' and 'vodka' is very similar in Russian, and it was a mistake that we decided not to correct.)
Even on the IMDB message boards, there's a list of all the girls posting on how Dmitri is the sexist cartoon character, on the same par as Aladdin or Prince Eric (from Little Mermaid).
In Russia, we were always on the look out for "Sexy-boy Dmitri" look-a-likes, but were sorely disappointed. (The myth of the Russian twink is greatly exaggerated.)
I'm pretty sure this is the beginning of my adoration of the Russians. In addition to this blog (named after my favorite Dostoevsky novel), the accent, the iconography, the misunderstood romanticism of Communism, vodka, the decadence of the czars, the passions in the revolutions, pelmeni, I'm all about the Russians.
I can add Dmitri to the top of the list.
