Hm... yeah, I didn't know that; I just sort of assumed that it was for searching code etc initially, but you are correct.
BTW I just learned about pcregrep -M which can do a little more directly what you're asking for -- you can do pcregrep -M 'the(.|\n)orange(.|\n)menace' which seems to work, although you may want -A or -B to give a little more useful output also.