Small Town Boredom: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* Naota says "[[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here]]" in the first episode of ''[[FLCL]]''. [[Tempting Fate|Naturally]], he's quickly proven wrong...

* Many children (and some adults) in the [[Pokémon]] universe.

* Rita in ''[[El Cazador de la Bruja]]'' desperately wants to escape her small town and go to the big city.

 

* The comic and film ''[[Ghost World]]''.

 

* The DCOM ''Stuck in the Suburbs''.

* Luke Skywalker in ''[[Star Wars]]''.

* George Bailey from ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'' wants nothing more than to leave Bedford Falls forever. Life intervenes.

* Dorothy in ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]''

* In ''[[The Silence of the Lambs]]'', while Clarice Starling is interviewing a girl in Belvedere, Ohio, the girl asks her:

{{quote|'''Girl:''' Is that a good job, FBI agent? You get to travel around and stuff? I mean, better places than this?}}

* In the rarely seen ''De Laatste Zomer (The Last Summer)'', the character Tim often vents about wanting to escape to somewhere different.

 

* Corrie Swanson in [[Agent Pendergast|Still Life with Crows]].

* The book [[The Dark Side of Nowhere]] starts out with the protagonist thinking like this. Then he discovers that he and most people in the town are actually a race of aliens gearing up for a full-scale invasion.

* In [[Devon Monk]]'s ''[[Age of Steam|Dead Iron]]'', Rose wants to leave and go somewhere where even a girl can make devices. (It doesn't help that they all think she's touched in the head.)

 

* Motivation for Joey on ''[[Dawson's Creek]]''.

* This is a good portion of JJ's backstory on ''[[Criminal Minds]]''.

 

* The [[Garth Brooks]] song "Nobody Gets Off in This Town"'' -- referring both to how nobody gets off the bus here and to the lack of entertainment opportunities.

* Dexter Freebish - "Leaving Town" (I know you've been talking about leaving / You've lost all your feelings for this town.)

* "Dry County" by The B-52's, on the album ''Cosmic Thing''.

* The song "Small Town" from Lou Reed and John Cale's eulogy for Andy Warhol, ''Songs For Drella''.

* "Something To Do" by [[Depeche Mode]]. The singer, living in a factory town, is "going crazy from boredom" and says "it's a wonder this town doesn't sink".

* "Cool Enough" by Nicole Atkins.

* While the song itself isn't about it, but the song "White Kids Love Hip-Hop" by [[MC Chris]] has a spoken-word monologue by [[The Brak Show|Andy Merril]] along these lines.

{{quote|Aw man, there's nothing to do in this stupid town. Rope swing's busted, stinkin' cops always kicking me out of the park, manager of the 7-11 always saying 'Get off my curb, you good-for-nothings!'. All the girls already know I'm a bad kisser so they won't come anywhere near me. I dunno how many times I've been to T.G.I.F; a kid can eat an Onion Bloom only so many times. Bowling's boring, the skating rink's been taken over by twelve-year-olds. There ain't no good movies out. Blockbuster never has any good games in. I don't want to play [[Star Wars|Bombad Racing!]] I mean, what the heck is that? I'm sick of all my records but any time I go to the record store, I forget what I want to get! And there ain't nothing on TV! Not a stupid thing! There ain't nothing to do but take naps, and wait patiently for death!"}}

* Steve Earle's "Someday".

 

* On his album ''Werewolves And Lollipops'', [[Patton Oswalt]] talks about growing up in Sterling, Virginia, and "The Test Of The Small Town". You pass the test when you say "I'm leaving before I kill everyone and then myself!" You fail it when you say, "I'm gonna get a job at the Citgo and fill my truck up for free!"

 

* [[Anton Chekhov]]'s ''Three Sisters''.

* Natalie from the musical ''[[All Shook Up]]''.

 

* ''[[Persona 4]]'': Said boredom is such {{spoiler|that it drives someone to murder}}. This was also a key point in Shadow Yosuke and Shadow Yukkiko's dialogues. [[Shadow Archetype|Shadow Yosuke]] taunts Yosuke about how boring the town is to him, while Yukiko's shadow mentions how much she hates the town and just sits on her '''ass''' waiting for her prince to come rescue her from it.

* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', [[Be Careful What You Wish For|Riku wants to get off his home island]].

 

* Touched on sometimes in ''[[King of the Hill]]'', specifically the episode where Hank worries about losing Bobby to a more exciting place... like Wichita Falls, home of the Dallas Cowboys training camp. Hank tries to campaign to have the training camp moved to Arlen, with disastrous results, but in the end Bobby says that he would never move to Wichita Falls—because to be a prop comic you need to go to New York or Los Angeles.

* Belle from Disney's ''[[Beauty and the Beast]]'': "There must be more than this provincial life!"

* The title character from ''Katy Caterpillar'' begins her adventure because she considers the safe cherry tree where she and her sisters live to be "ever so boring."

 

* [[Truth in Television]]: Happens even with some good-sized cities that aren't as huge as others.

** Some states, such as [[Flyover Country|Indiana]], have problems keeping up job rates because college grads and other people of age immediately flee to larger cities such as Chicago or LA to seek gainful employment.

** It gets worse in the [[Down on the Farm|Great Plains states]], where this trope, combined with industrialized agriculture outcompeting small farmers, has been causing [[wikipedia:Rural flight|a demographic crisis]]. Small towns are being abandoned as nobody shows up to replace the young people who leave, and the last Census survey holds that some areas now have a lower population density than they did in [[The Wild West|1890, the year that the frontier was declared to be closed]]. There have even been calls to bring back the Homestead Act in order to resettle the Plains states.

* Some of the [[Down on the Farm|farm-country]] and [[Lovecraft Country]] areas of New England.