Swinging - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Film

• The Blood Oranges (1997), two western couples, one with children, come together in the fictional Mediterranean village of Ilyria. The film was adapted from the 1970 novel by John Hawkes.
• Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) is an American comedy classic that captures the sexual revolution of the late 1960s in the United States. It was nominated for four Academy Awards; Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay.
• Brüno involves the protagonist being involved in a swingers' meeting.
• Eating Raoul (1982) is a comic send-up of swinging stereotypes.
• The Fourth Protocol (1987) shows a brief clip of four American women and an American airman naked in a room. The swinger overtones were very implicit.
• The Ice Storm (1997) by director Ang Lee features a cheating husband, played by Kevin Kline, and his long suffering wife, played by Joan Allen, who attend a "key party" during a nasty ice storm.
• The Rapture (1992). Mimi Rogers's character Sharon pursues an active swinging lifestyle with her 'partner', played by Rustam Branaman.
• The Savage Innocents (1960) is a drama adapted from the novel Top of the World by Swiss writer Hans Rüesch in which an Inuit offers his wife to a priest.
• The Sex Monster (1999) is a comedy about a couple who begin a ménage à trois with another woman.
• Swingers (2002) is a Dutch film that tells the story of a thirty-something couple and their first experiments with the swinging lifestyle.
• Mixed Doubles (2006) is an Indian film that follows the general plot of a middle-class Bombay husband persuading his wife to swing.
• Swinging with the Finkels (2010) features Mandy Moore and Martin Freeman as a suburban married couple looking to improve their sex lives through swinging.
• Swingstock has been featured on HBO's Real Sex and Playboy Channel Sexcetera.
• Zebra Lounge (2001) talks about swinging and its effects on the lives of a married couple with kids who seek some sexual adventures.

Literature

• In John Irving's novel The 158-Pound Marriage, two New England college professors and their wives enter a ménage à quatre with disastrous consequences.
• Harmon Leon wrote about infiltrating the world of swingers in his book, The American Dream. He went undercover and lived the swinger lifestyle.

Television

• In a 1972 episode of All in the Family, Edith befriends a couple whose names she finds in a "friendship" magazine and invites them over for coffee, not realizing that they are swingers expecting to swap spouses with her and Archie for the night.
• A 2010 episode (118) of the series Criminal Minds featured an episode with a serial killer who met his victims in swing clubs and acted out because his wife got pregnant.
• In an episode of American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, "Swap Meet", a woman is found dead in the fountain of a gated community after visiting a neighborhood swingers party.
• In The Hard Times of RJ Berger, RJ's parents are apparently swingers.
• In Journeyman, the eighth episode "Winterland" shows Dan Vasser traveling back to 1973 along with Livia and finding themselves in a swinging party.
• The short-lived 2003 series Keen Eddie featured a character Monty Pippin who, along with a female friend, pretended to be married in order to gain access to a swingers' club for recreational sex.
• An episode of the BBC television programme Life on Mars featured the main characters infiltrating a swingers' club.
• In an episode of his Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends series, the BBC2 interviewer and documentary maker Louis Theroux investigated an American Swingers group.
• In an episode on the first season of the Fox series The OC, Sandy and Kirsten Cohen are tricked into attending a swingers' party on New Year's Eve.
• In the second series of Sugar Rush (TV series) Stella and Nathan both experiment in the swinger lifestyle, ending in a visit to a club in Brighton.
• 2008 CBS series Swingtown is a period piece which deals with social and sexual changes of the 1970s, including swinging.
• In the Fox sitcom That '70s Show, the episode "The Good Son" featured Red and Kitty inadvertently attending a swingers' party.
• Touch And Go, a 1998 BBC Two drama, focused on a young couple, played by Martin Clunes and Zara Turner visiting a swinging club in order to reinvigorate their marriage.
• A 2000 episode of the series Yes, Dear ("The Good Couple") featured two of the main characters, Greg and Kim, inadvertently becoming social with a swinging couple.
• A 2008 episode of the series Close to Home (Episode 4 of season 1) features main prosecutor Annabeth Chase handling a case related to the swinging lifestyle craved by the murderer's husband.
• A 2011 episode of the series Law and Order: SVU features characters Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson going undercover at a swinging club.
• A 2011 episode of the series Body of Proof features character Dana Delany investigating a homicide in a neighborhood in which all neighbors are in the lifestyle.