Feng Schwing

"Most bachelors in this city are only interested in an apartment that comes fully loaded with every gadget and contraption man has invented to snare a woman."

— Barbara Novak, Down with Love

Bob's bachelor pad looks pretty decent, almost like a model home. Of course, that's just for when most people come over. If Bob has a date over, he's a cad, so his home is rigged with the latest mechanical ways to get a woman in the mood, from a luxurious bed with satin sheets that automatically folds out, to recessed mood lights, to romantic music, all at the flip of a switch.

Bob either hired a Gadgeteer Genius to set this up or is one himself, and has rigged up his house better than Bruce Wayne ever dreamed of doing. Yet, Bob isn't Q from the James Bond stories, so his gadgets aren't spy tools, they're sex aids.

This is usually a comedy trope that's Played for Laughs, and would rarely happen in a straight drama.

The trope name is a Portmanteau of Feng Shui^note the ancient Chinese art of decorating and not letting evil spirits into your house and "SCHWING", the sound Wayne and Garth make whenever they see an attractive woman and their spirits are uplifted.

Compare Lonely Bachelor Pad. A Shag Wagon is the vehicular version, and it may have the same push-button mood music and folding bed. A Sub-Trope of Super Multi-Purpose Room.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Eureka Seven, Matthew and Moondoggie are seen Feng Schwinging Renton's room in order to help him and Eureka reach past first base. Holland is not amused.
• Patlabor: The New Files. The Love Hotel in "Two in Karizawa" has elements of this; Hilarity Ensues when Shinobu tries to work the controls on the bed.

Fan Works

• In the Star Trek: Voyager parody The Voyorgy Conspiracy, the holographic Doctor accidentally assimilates some Fan Fic and decides to give Lt. Torres a Creepy Physical.
  EMH: Computer, generate a subspace vibration field around Lieutenant Torres' body. Increase the field by 500% around the patient's mammary glands and clitoris. Inject her with 200 ccs of Klingon hormones. Play the soundtrack to the Orion slave girl holosuite program; the one Mr Paris bought from that Ferengi on Deep Space Nine, on a subconscious wavelength. And download into my matrix the complete personality subroutine of historical figure Captain James T. Kirk!

Film

• Rock Hudson has one or two in his movies, and it is spoofed in the movie Down with Love.
• Austin Powers's jet in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: revolving bed and music. "Do I make you randy, baby?"
• Our Man Flint. The suave superspy decides that the nudes in his apartment are making his former boss Cramden uncomfortable, so he presses a button causing them to rotate into the wall to be replaced by more abstract art.
• The Russian assassin Olga Bariosova fixes up Inspector Clouseau's bedroom like this at the end of The Pink Panther Strikes Again: bed folding out of the wall and music. "I gave Cato the night off."
• The Matt Helm films were a major contributor to the trope, right down to the revolving bed that can dump you into the pool for a bath. In one of the movie, The Wrecking Crew, the female Gypsy Lola Medina has a room like this (including mood lighting) which she uses to try to seduce Mr. Helm.
• Eric "Otter" Stratton in Animal House has his room this way, which is humorous both for being the only non-messy place in the house and for being so obviously a "bachelor pad" of this type.
• Dudley Moore's character in Foul Play.
• In the 1966 film The Swinger, the lecherous head of "Girl-Lure" Magazine tries to seduce Ann-Margret's character with an office much like this.
• Frankie Avalon's character also has a bachelor pad much like this in the notorious 1968 flop comedy Skidoo.
• Jack Lemmon's apartment in Under the Yum-Yum Tree.
• Tony Stark's private jet in Iron Man, complete with Sexy Stewardesses and a retractable stripper pole.
• In Mars Attacks!, Jerry Ross, the sleazy spin doctor to the president, takes a Martian disguised as a woman to a secret one of these in the White House—and refers to it as the "Kennedy Room."
• In The Bobo, Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland go to a resort designed for romantic encounters - the concierge, dressed like Louis XIV, demonstrates the amenities with a handheld control panel for ambient music, a ceiling-mounted tv, and a large bed that folds out from the wall.
• In The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, a femme fatale spy has one of these places, where she invites the title character, a violinist who is Mistaken for Spies. As her superiors watch on closed-circuit tv, she goes to change, and he kicks back on the couch with a cigarette, which he promptly drops underneath him - as he flails around manically to retrieve it he hits a switch which opens the couch into a big comfy bed. His watchers admire his smooth technique.
• Jason Robards uses a wall bed to seduce Britt Ekland in The Night They Raided Minskys. She's a virginal Mennonite girl who doesn't want to "do it" unless she gets "a sign from God," and the bed is rigged to lower as his Victrola plays "Hallelujah"...
• The Wolverine: While on the run from the Yakuza, Mariko and Logan hide out in a Love Hotel. The only vacant rooms are "The Dungeon", "Nurse's Office" and "Mission to Mars." They awkwardly pick the last one, which has a rotating bed with a recording that says "Liftoff! We have a liftoff!" Logan elects to stand outside in the rain.

Literature

• Contrary to the preceding article, one of Q's assistants, Ann Reilly (aka "Q'ute") rigs up a similar room in a James Bond continuation novel, Licence Renewed. James is confused and impressed all at the same time.
• In the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Taint, Fitz clearly wishes his scuzzy little flat were like this. He just has a "sleazily red" lightbulb in his bedroom, which Sam (whom he's on a bit of a date with at the time) makes fun of him for. He says it's his "relaxation bulb" and swaps it out for a normal one.

Live Action TV

• An odd variation of this appears in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "A Nice Place to Visit". Henry Valentine's suite acts this way (including music starting automatically), but it's just for mood, because the woman concerned didn't need to be seduced.
• Ponch's waterfront apartment (a bit expensive for a highway patrolman) on CHiPs is like a primer on how to be a stud in California.
  Paul Mavis: First, get a job as a Highway Patrolman (flash rig, sweet uniform, gun). Next, get an apartment down at the Marina. Next, get a waterbed (loosely filled for that "ocean motion" effect), restore a Trans Am that you picked up as a wreck (actually, get your partner Jon who has no life to fix it up for you), and then have your partner help you move your stuff in, including your Carpenters records (they're prominently on display, to let the chicks know Ponch is sensitive). Throw in some ferns and smoked glass, and watch the chicks roll in.
• There's an episode of NewsRadio where Matthew and Beth end up house-sitting for Bill, and his apartment is much like this, complete with mood music and rotating bed that activate once the lights are turned on. Matthew being... well, Matthew, he's quickly swept up into the "mystique" of the apartment and tries to put the mack on Beth. However, the episode ends with the reveal that it actually wasn't Bill's apartment, but his friend, Larry - who, according to Bill, is "one of the busiest male prostitutes in the biz."
• In the French-Canadian television science-fiction/mystery/drama/suspense/horror (!) series L'Héritière de Grande Ourse, a character has a device for that purpose hidden in his sofa.
• The late father's home in the pilot of the short-lived show Jenny.
• Inverted by Barney's bachelor pad in How I Met Your Mother, which was designed to get women to leave in the morning, with everything from one pillow to a porn library to a toilet seat lid that automatically springs upward.
• Surprisingly, showed up in the aggressively squeaky-clean (and even more aggressively obscure) Sitcom Safe at Home.
• Less outrageous, but the apartment Latke briefly rented on Taxi had a lot of party-friendly furniture concealed in the walls.
• A downplayed version in Hunter. when Hunter and Dee Dee McCall have to stay in a No-Tell Motel where There Is Only One Bed which has restraints and a coin-operated vibrating mattress. Dee Dee starts to crack up laughing when she hears Hunter drop a couple of coins in and the bed starts to vibrate.
• A decor variant in The Nanny episode "The Morning After", when Fran's cousin helps her redecorate the kitchen. Hoping to help things between Fran and Max progress, she uses suggestive imagery throughout, e.g. a clock with horns and an oyster wallpaper pattern. The result is utterly tasteless, though it does work on Niles and C.C..
• Netflix's How To Build A Sex Room is a reality TV show about this trope in Real Life.
• Deep Space Nine. In "Our Man Bashir", Dr. Bashir is playing a holodeck program where he's a 1960's secret agent. He's surprised to find the bar in his expensive apartment rotates around to reveal a bed with a beautiful Russian spy reclined on it (and even more surprised to find it's his colleague Major Kira playing the part).

Video Games

• In Kingdom of Loathing, the 300th floor of Fernswarthy's Basement features a seemingly-empty room that converts into a cheesy bachelor pad.
  The wall opposite you rotates 180 degrees, revealing a circular bed with leopard-print sheets. To your left, a portion of the wall slides up vertically to reveal a fully-stocked wet bar. Red and blue lights flash overhead as sexified, slow-jam R&B music slinks out of hidden speakers. Oh, man... you just learned way more about Fernswarthy than you ever, ever wanted to know.

Web Original

• The Onion has a recurring opinion/lifestyle columnist named Smoove B, who is a casanova straight out of an R&B song. Smoove's bachelor pad is mentioned in many columns, and is optimized for seduction. The place, which "has been photographed for many romance-enthusiast magazines", includes a fireplace with fur rugs, red silk wall hangings, a round bed with luxury sheets, and a hot tub.

Western Animation

• Family Guy spoofs this even more with Glen Quagmire's house. He seems to have Murphy beds built into every wall item in his house. Everything pops out a bed when Cleveland is chasing him with a bat. Stereo, refrigerator, and...bed. His RV has a more...forceful version, where the buttons on the console clamp the girl down and force her mouth onto his private area. Stewie (and especially Brian) learn that the hard way when they steal it.
  • A later episode shows that he has mechanisms that are voice activated to phrases inverse to how much someone wants to stay. Someone requesting to leave gets dropped through a trapdoor into a sex dungeon, while asking to stay can get you violently defenestrated by a robot arm.
• Zapp Brannigan of Futurama calls his the Lovenasium. He needs it because he suffers from a very sexy learning disability: "Sexlexia".
• In an episode of The Simpsons, the entire mayor's office is one of these, complete with dancing girls descending from cages in the ceiling.
• In King of the Hill, Hank Hill goes to get treatment from masseur John Redcorn. Unlike most of John Redcorn's female clients, he actually needs it. The room is set up to automatically activate make-out music and mood lighting, which can't be turned off, ever.
• Justice League. Green Lantern is puzzled as to why Flash has turned a van into a Pimped-Out Car, until Flash opens the back and shows the cargo space has been converted into a cheesy bachelor pad. GL promptly turns down an invitation for them to go on a road trip together.

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