Pushing the Envelope with “Swingtown”
I’ll bet you’re familiar with this little experience of human nature. Just pick one – one or more tend to be daily occurrences in my household.
I say, “We don’t need to throw our toys.”
My preschooler says, “But, I’m just dropping it.”I say, “Let’s don’t bang our toys around so much. We need to take care of our toys.”
My preschooler says, “But, I’m just ‘working’ on it.”I say, “Ooooo. It’s too loud right now to hit the coffee table with that wooden spoon. Let’s put the spoon down.”
My preschooler says, “But, I’m just playing my drum.” And then, with a gleaming look over at Mommy he ever so slightly taps the wood with the spoon and then holds it just above the table in anticipation of another word of correction.
I’m told that these types of experiences are not unusual with 3-year-olds, and I’m proud of how much my sweet little guy is learning in this area when he tells me out of the blue, “We don’t need to throw.” Despite our usual assumptions, not much escapes the 3-year-old mind. But, that’s another post.
Yes, these little snapshots of human nature are sometimes cute at 3 years old when paired with the process of growing and learning our boundaries – not so pretty, however, at 38 when boundaries (or the lack of) are still blurred. At our house, no matter how cute the phrasing or creative the excuse, we call it doing wrong, in this case disobeying Mommy. When we get to be grownups, however, we and our culture tend to call it “testing the waters,” “pushing the envelope,” or even “groundbreaking.”
Enter “Swingtown.”
“I don’t understand why this show is so threatening, but I don’t understand why gay marriage is so threatening either. I understand there’s going to be a portion of the available audience that will just say, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t go there.’ Too bad, because there is so much to embrace in this show. I think people who reject it have a problem with fear in general in their lives.“
~ Mike Kelley, creator of “Swingtown,” a new television drama premiering this week on CBS.
As quoted in a LA Times article about the show
(I’ll let you read the article to discover the premise of the show, if you haven’t seen the less than subtle ads.)
