Russian movie audiences are said to prefer tragic endings, which accounts for the title of this English filmmaker's series of evocative black-and-white photogravures: richly printed, enlarged copies of old postcards depicting strangely sad or violent subjects like a derelict car, a dead whale and several kinds of explosions.
The work refers to an old practice of making movies with different endings for different audiences; Russians were said to prefer a tragic ending.
Following in part the economist Thomas Sowell, he distinguishes between a leftist utopian vision of human nature (the mind is a blank slate, man is a Noble Savage, traditional institutions are the problem) and the tragic vision preferred by the right (man is the problem; family, creed and Adam Smith's Invisible Hand are the solutions).
He differs from Aristotle, however, in preferring epic to tragic poetry.
You could describe it as a comedy on the clash of cultures – that theme can be heavy-handed, solemn and tragic, but I preferred to look at the comical side.
He was – at least as we look on these things: earlier generations preferred maturity – the handsomest president ever, and, like Che, he had a tragic, mysterious fate.
Opponents of immigration often prefer to ignore the tragic forces that compel people to risk death in order to reach our lands of plenty, not to mention the horrors that often await the "lucky" few, once they do arrive.
Many Democrats on the left, committed to "self-righteous inaction," fearful that any exercise of American power might be imperialist, prefer to evade "the tragic choices that defending freedom requires," Mr. Beinart argues.
