Wednesday, July 11, 2012

AS SEEN ON TV: CAPTAIN BUINOVSKY


CAPTAIN BUINOVSKY

CREATED BY:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

PORTRAYED BY:
Torin Thatcher

AS SEEN IN:
'Bob Hope Chrysler Theater'
["One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"]

TV STATUS:
Multiversal

TV DIMENSION:
Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World). The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Its publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history—never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed. The editor of Novy Mir, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, wrote a short introduction for the issue, titled "Instead of a Foreword," to prepare the journal's readers for what they were about to experience.

A one-hour dramatization for television, made for NBC in 1963, starred Jason Robards Jr. in the title role and was broadcast on November 8, 1963.

Buinovsky (Buynovsky, "The Captain") [is] a former Soviet Naval captain. A relative newcomer to the camp, Buynovsky was imprisoned when an admiral on a British cruiser on which he had served as a naval liaison sent him a gift. In the camp, Buynovsky has not yet learned to be submissive before the warders.

Since prisoners were each assigned a grade it was considered good etiquette to obey. This is outlined through the character of Fetiukov, a ministry worker who let himself into prison and scarcely follows prison etiquette. Another such incident involves Buinovsky, a former naval captain, who is punished for defending himself and others during an early morning frisking.

BCnU!

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