Radical romantic comedies became popular in the late 1960’s and 1970s, with movies such as Annie Hall and The Graduate. What most romantic radical comedies have in common is the notion that the plot displays situations where it persuades the viewers to believe that the couple involved will not end up together at the end of the movie. In class we watched clips of the movie The Graduate which can be seen as radical because of the plot; a boy sleeping with an older married woman, who then falls in love with the woman’s daughter.  In the end he dramatically disrupts her wedding and steals her away while the daughter’s parents chased him outraged by his actions. Right after this scene the couple sits in the back of a bus, quiet which led me to believe they were thinking “What do we do now?” The radical romantic sex comedies in the 70’s had a tendency to expose the preoccupations and anxieties of that time. In “Boy Meets girl Meets Genre” by, McDonald, Tamar Jeffers , Jeffers claims that these type of movies took many away from big issues and political movements, which were much more ethical in the 1960’s. It was as though the movies inspired a new way of thinking. It opened up topics such as sex to a whole new level, creating a new era of greater realism. This is why today many movies are very open about sex, such as “Friends with Benefits” starring Justin Timberlake, and Mila Kunis. The movie is about two friends who have sex just for the fun of it. The whole idea is to keep a relationship free of drama, emotion, and love. The fact that this is something that many understand today through personal experience is an example of how movies in the 70’s opened up a new way of thinking, especially for women.  Before the 60’s this type of openness was not suitable because of the more conservative mindset. A great example of this conservative mindset can be seen in the show “I love Lucy,” which was aired in the early 1950’s. In the bedroom the married couple Lucy and Ricky did not share the same bed. Although husbands and wives slept together, it was not shown on television because of the restrictions of that era. Instead, the couple slept on two separate beds in the same room.  There are basic characteristics that make a romantic comedy radical, such as the boy meets girl, loses girl, and then regains the girl. The characteristics that really define it however, are done through its language, sexual frankness, and being very open with sex. The endings o radical romantic comedies, often times leave the viewer questioning, such as the way The Graduate did, or simply making it a happy or unhappy ending. There are many movies made today that have been influenced from the ones created in the 1970’s, which I believe really did make an impact on our societies views and standards about sex to be much more open than ever before.