On the death of PG-13 rated comedies...

Once upon a time, you could go to the movies, and find a decent (if somewhat cutesey) PG-13 related "family" comedy. For the most part (except for bad remakes and sequels) they have gone by the wayside, caught between the upper millstone of simon-pure family entertainment and the nether millstone of raunchy R-rated (or unrated) comedic movies that pull no punches and do not accept children under 17. As I thought about the movies I have seen recently, I realized that I have not seen a PG-13 rated movie since Star Wars, and that was hardly a comedy. Both Corpse Bride and March of the Penguins were both very family-friendly movies, and both The Forty Year Old Virgin and the Aristocrats were most definitely not.

Why has the PG-13 rated family comedy died? The same reason why the grays are disappearing all over the our world. PG-13 related comedies are often not that family friendly. Sure, they don't use too many swear words, or have graphic scenes of sex and violence, but their language is far from pure, there are often a lot of scenes showing disrespect to parents, sometimes even scatalogical (read: potty) humor. There are also large amounts of scantily clad women in such movies, doing enough to tease, but not enough to satisfy. Indeed, they are neither pure enough for the family crowed or raunchy enough for the "mature" crowed. And so PG-13 rated comedies are gradually being left by the wayside for either their cleaner or their dirtier cousins, both of whom are performing much better at the box office.

It is not only in the realm of movies, of course, that the middle ground is gradually disappearing in the face of assaults from both sides. The same is true with politics as well. But rather than talk about that, I'd like to talk about the randomness of the critiques of dating. I had been familiar with the critique of dating from the puritan crowd (Joshua Harris and company) for sometime, but I was just recently acquainted with the organized criticism of dating from the other side. I found it, at a site called www.catch27.com. This site contains large amounts of people of mostly loose morals (though not all fall into that category) and where people trade cards and look for random hookups. I need better friends--friends who don't invite me to such sites. *Sigh*. I'm really not into random hookups. I'm just not that kind of person. Of course, I'm not really satisfied with the solution of Joshua Harris, which sort of denies the ugly realities of trying to find someone to love. And I am never one deny reality, no matter how ugly.

There seems to be ever-dimishing room for such people as I, though. It is a most unsettling place to be, between Scylla and Charybdis, between those who shut their eyes to reality in order to avoid anything unpleasant, and those who relish in sin and debauchery. May there always be some room for sanity and candor and true (rather than self) righteousness in this world, even if that room is shrinking.