I remember being stuck in a doctor's office waiting room and watching some teen soap opera where the school musical was Spring Awakening and thinking what high school in their right mind would do a show with nudity, masturbation, suicide, sadomasochism, child molestation, abortion, the F-bomb and bukake in it? Then I thought, well, isn't that the point?
What I am saying is: dumbing down Spring Awakening to a PG-13 rating by stripping out anything suggestive just to appease the uptight parents of teenagers seems to be 100% antithetical to its message. But who knows? Selling out worked for Rent.
This is actually a conversation my friend and I often have had. While cutting out language and subect matter would indeed be almost ruining its message, if it was made into a PG-13 movie, so many more people could see it, and therefore be introduced and changed by its brilliance. I guess it's just a double-edged sword:/