Sunday, June 08, 2008

Swingtown-The Series


Brent Bozell is at it again. No sooner has the new CBS series “Swingtown” premiered than he has invented a reason to dislike it. From his article in Human Events-

Marriage is a necessary cornerstone of a civilized society. Crumble that building block and the waves of instability can be felt like tremors foreshadowing an earthquake. Sift through the wreckage of the collapsed mariage, and all too often, you'll find the broken bodies of children. It's never fails to be heartbreaking.

And here I thought I had a problem with typos. For one thing, marriages in general aren’t much of a cornerstone when a large portion of them are built on shaky ground-or quicksand. Having said that, of course marriage is, or should be, an important element of society-but what does that have to do with “Swingtown”?

His point seems to be that-

Notice that Hollywood producers openly proclaim they're "culturally subversive" with a smile, that each new frontier of taste they shatter is "groundbreaking." But the ground that's being broken here is the family — a foundation of hope and love that proves itself in devoted daily consistency and self-sacrifice. That formula doesn't make for sassy programming in the plastic world of television, I know, but it works in the real world.

So, in one fell swoop, with the introduction of this one summer replacement series, CBS is going to break the American family? Do they pay this guy by the word? If so, you would think he would put a little more thought into them.

I liked the series, or more accurately, the pilot episode. If it is going in the direction that it seems to be going, I hardly think there is cause for alarm. To sum it up as best I can-the Millers, a suburban Chicago family, have moved up and into a better, higher class neighborhood, whereupon almost immediately they meet their neighbors, the Deckers-a childless couple, it seems-who target them for a swing relationship. The Millers agree to the proposal a little quicker than might seem realistic, but hey-why beat around the bush? This is the swinging seventies, when women, and couples, were sexually liberated and eager and willing to experiment. The show in fact opens during the 1976 bicentennial, and the Millers leave their old suburban home in the middle of a wholesome outdoor family friendly neighborhood barbecue, and head smack dab into what passes for an American version of a Roman orgy.

The old neighbors follow behind. The man seems to have an unstated though barely disguised attraction for Mrs. Miller, while the clueless wife is your typical nice but old-fashioned homemaker who hasn’t quite coped with her rapid advance into middle age. She does not want to lose the Millers, and she and her husband end up tagging along to the new neighbor’s bash.

The husband finds his way outside to where Mrs. Miller waits for the coming fireworks. The wife starts looking for the husband, whereupon the hostess coyly directs her to the basement, where she walks in on the middle of an orgy. One man is swarmed by a bevy of young women and tells the woman, “why don’t you kick off your shoes, mom, and join the party?”

She leaves in a huff, finds her husband, and drags him away, demanding the Miller’s leave with them. The Millers, of course, do not intend to do any such thing, and at the end of the show, the Millers are alone with their new neighbors and, while Mr. Miller gives Mrs. Miller a foot massage, the new neighbor, an airline pilot, makes ready to enter the cockpit by way of her shoulders.

So, the show’s stage is set, but where is it going? It would be a mistake to assume that this pilot episode is the entirety of the show’s premise in a nutshell, because there are dark currents at work in this series. The Millers have two children. One of them, the daughter (who looks like she could actually be the daughter of the actress who plays Mrs. Miller, though she is not) is an academically intelligent high school student who smokes marijuana and has regular sex with her unambitious boyfriend. She also seems to have an attraction to one of her teachers-who in turn seems to be stalking her.

Their youngest child, a son of about thirteen or thereabouts, has discovered a young girl has been living in his bedroom prior to their arrival. She is the daughter of another of the Miller’s new neighbors, a woman who only seems to think about where her next cocaine buzz is coming from-with the exception of when she is trying to get enough aluminum foil to cover her windows at night. Her daughter obviously hates her and, it seems, pretty much everybody else.

The show is peppered throughout with seventies styles and references, and heartily seasoned with a soundtrack of seventies songs. The show titles for the most part seem to be named after seventies songs. For example, one of the future episodes is titled “Hello It’s Me”. I say for the most part, because I can’t recall ever hearing of a song from the seventies (or from any other era) with the title “Swingus Interruptus”.

I enjoyed the show, and will be watching it, as will others-perhaps a good many of them. Personally, I am going to be particularly interested in just what direction it does take. It may be a show about swingers, but I have an idea it is not all going to be one big long, wild, joy-filled ride of abandon with no consequences. There will be-and should be-an accurate and realistic portrayal of the consequences of engaging in debauched behavior as a pattern, with no precautions or evident moderation.

If it does this in a realistic manor, the Brent Bozzells and other such naysayers will then have no legitimate complaints. Of course, that probably won't stop them.

5 comments:

Rufus said...

Forget about Hollywood- we really have to protect our families from Athens! I mean, you have this Euripedes joker writing stuff like Medea- obviously trying to convince mothers to kill their children. Not to mention Electra- mother-killing. And the Bacchae is is obviously pro-dismemberment not to mention advocating teenage drinking. And don't even get me started on that Sophocles kook and Oedipus the King! And, of course, you have that radical Aeschylus writing about bondage. The mind just boggles. How did western civilization make it this far?

SecondComingOfBast said...

That's a good point. I wonder if there were Brent Bozell types back in ancient Greece, bemoaning the decadence of those old plays we now consider classics. I do know that in the early days of imperial Rome, Augustus used to criticize Ovid's writings as pornography, so I'm sure there were others throughout ancient times.

The only difference in Augustus and some of these other guys is Augustus was more or less a dictator, these guys just more or less want to be one.

These self-appointed guardians of public morality really kill me. Bozell was criticizing this show before the first episode even aired. At least Augustus presumably read some of Ovid's stuff before he chimed in.

Rufus said...

Well Plato was a cultural scourge, yeah. Pretty much across the board. I don't really think he got it from Socrates either; I just think he was an authoritarian.

SecondComingOfBast said...

I guess a lot of the philosophers tended to be that way, at least certain schools were, while others were probably more live and let live.

Also, I guess guys like Draco would fit into that category as well, though I don't know where he fit into the dramatic scene, whether he was before or after their time. Probably before, but I don't know right off hand.

A lot of the actual religious cults of the day were so secretive and standoffish I don't even know how they would have felt about the way in which some of their gods were portrayed in some of the dramas.

I've always thought a lot of the old myths were meant more for public consumption, while the actual rituals and dogma of the cults-which were restricted in their memberships to the wealthy and other elites-may have been quite different, maybe in not all but certainly in a lot of cases.

I'm not really sure how some of the dramas coincided with either the public myths or with the cult dogmas, or both.

Back to Rome, Augustus was actually the patron of Virgil's Aeneid, which was written and intended as a kind of propaganda vehicle for Augustus, establishing a divine lineage for him and the Caesar family as a descendant of both Venus and Mars.

That doesn't detract from it being a classic, but it does show that kind of mindset, of manipulating culture for political purposes.

Of course, the kind of person that supports that kind of thing will be the ones more likely to rail most against the kinds of things that doesn't fit their beliefs, or that conflicts with the mores they want to impose on the rest of us, usually in some way to their benefit.

Rufus said...

Right, well Augustus is trying to establish a stronger state after a period of power struggle amounting to civil war. So the central idea of the new regime is that order needs to be returned throughout the society along with an emphasis on social conservatism. They also enacted new laws about adultry and requiring people to have children. Basic authoritarian stuff.

Of course, Virgil is still great (I think Horace shilled for the regime too). If we left out all of the Western art that was created for propaganda reasons, we'd have a lot less of it to enjoy.