This article explores through perspectives of rhetorical criticism the stories of two rivals planting their national flags in unexplored territories. Whereas the American flag on the Moon proved American technological superiority over the U.S.S.R.’s, the Russian flag in the Arctic can be seen as a political move by President Putin to recreate the lost grandeur of the Soviet Union and reenact the Cold War to revive his political support at home. By doing so and recording their exploits, the two actors created national narratives that go beyond the simple performance of erecting a flag; these images construct an affectual nationalist identity through elites’ performance of flag planting, and mass media’s staging of these political events as a “spectacle.”

本文从修辞批评的角度探讨了两个竞争对手在未开发的领土上插上国旗的故事。月球上的美国国旗证明了美国对苏联的技术优势，而北极的俄罗斯国旗可以被视为普京总统为重现苏联失去的辉煌和重演冷战以恢复他的政治支持而采取的政治举措在家里。通过这样做并记录他们的功绩，两位演员创造了超越简单的竖立国旗表演的民族叙事；这些图像通过精英们的插旗表演和大众媒体将这些政治事件作为“奇观”来构建情感民族主义身份。