As a follow-up to my Love and Movies post, a related article that was published earlier this week in the LA Times. The article, titled “Not in the Mood for Love,” looks into the decline of romantic comedies and what might be to blame for that decline. Maybe our penchant for humiliation? Or our generally lowered standards of entertainment? As Rachel Abramowitz, the article’s author, writes:

Some blame the decline of the romance on the cultural climate. One of America’s favorite pastimes these days is ritual humiliation–a penchant for shame that can zap even the sturdiest lovers.

Or maybe it’s just more difficult to string out a good love story in the wake of the sexual revolution of the 1960s:

As film historian Molly Haskell notes, “Sex is so easy you can’t pretend that it’s the holy grail. The condition that made for the sparkle and sexiness of the old films was the fact that there wasn’t any sex. You could easily keep two people apart for an hour and a half. Now the ways of keeping them apart are increasingly strained.”

Abramowitz looks into other possible causes, too. Give “Not in the Mood for Love” a read and let me know which theory you buy.