Soundtrack Dissonance/Other Media: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

== Literature ==

* Invoked in ''[[The Hunger Games]]'' during the "highlight reel" of the games. Katniss thinks how inappropriate the cheerful music is in the scenes of the tributes training, given that all the people on screen except for {{spoiler|Katniss and Peeta}} are dead.

 

== Music Video ==

* The ''[[Gorillaz]]'' video for El Manana depicts air-pirates destroying the band's floating windmill while a band member runs for her life. Most of the video is pretty action packed and it ends on a cliffhanger. Despite this, the song is very somber and soothing.

** This also happens in the "sequel" video, On Melancholy Hill. The video fits the music for the most part except for the opening in which the aforementioned bandmate takes her revenge agaisnt the air pirates, shooting them down with a machine gun. The song is pretty mellow as well.

* [[My Chemical Romance]]'s video for SING can be called a similar case to El Manana, the song itself is upbeat and somewhat encouraging, the video shows the Killjoys blasting their way through BL/ind HQ to save the little girl, the girl makes it out alive, but the Killjoys all die doing so.

* [[Rammstein]]'s video for [http://vimeo.com/31836365 "Mein Land"] is an [[Inverted Trope|inversion]]: music is your typical Rammstein, but it's set to a stereotypical American beach party from [[The Fifties]], with the band dressed as [[Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist|Hawaiian Shirted Tourists]]. Also, there are shots of [[Mr. Fanservice|Till as a lifeguard]].

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

 

* In ''[[Sam and Fuzzy]]'', Fuzzy's accidentally turning on a museum's sound system during a heist results in [http://samandfuzzy.com/1118 Hazel being stalked by a murderous Mafia Ninja to the tune of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"]

* [[Looking for Group]]'s musical number, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g Slaughter Your World], takes the tune of [[Disney]]'s [[The Little Mermaid]]'s Part Of Your World, exchanges Ariel for [[Token Evil Teammate|Richard]], and exchanges the lyrics describing [["I Want" Song|a young mermaid's wish to experience life with feet as opposed to fins]] for a [[Psychopathic Manchild]]'s [[Cruel and Unusual Death|graphical descriptions]] [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|of what he gleefully does]] [[Bloody Hilarious|to the people that unfortunately (for them) happen to cross his path.]]

* In [[Homestuck]], there's a brief flash near the beginning of the series with peaceful wind chimes and the wind blowing. The same music is played in the end of Act 6 {{spoiler|Act 1}}, but does so while Jane is {{spoiler|seemingly BLOWN TO BITS BY A LETTER BOMB}}.

 

 

** Now there are videos to counter this, called "X DOES Y WHILE I PLAY QUITE FITTING MUSIC."

*** Like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cszjPuYnyKU this] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJajHAl4T6I this]. (There's also a wonderful [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic recut trailer for Mary Poppins] made two months previously.)

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGk4PC2eUmg ''Battleship Potemkin'', with a Parliament Funkadelic soundtrack.]

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsEvbwZbI4I ''Phantom Of The Opera'' playing] ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsEvbwZbI4I The Entertainer]''.

* ''Les Trois Accords'', a Québecois parody rock band, seems to embrace this trope and [[Surreal Music Video]] in their videoclips. Examples include [http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd2e0Sv2J9k ninjas and country music], [http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=mtToc5EmSho hawaiian music in a winter background] and [http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=4bLuSbQ2P_s just plain surrealism].

* An old ''[[Doctor Who]]'' comic features a mercenary who can't get an annoyingly cheerful song out of his head, later realising that he'd got his headset stuck on playing it after it comes off after he'd been shot after mortally wounding a friend of the Doctor. The Doctor shoots the headset.

** The tune in question, just for the record, is "We'll Meet Again" by Dame Vera Lynn, already touched on on this very page.

* The Internet meme of Rickrolling, which is the use of a falsely advertised video that, when viewed, actually runs audio of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", falls under this trope, because in a piece of irony in relation to the lyrics, the viewer ''is'' being let down.

* The ''entire point'' of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL9Qcbh-vxw Inappropriate Soundtracks.]

* [http://www.imeem.com/amvcenter/video/h4ZPaz-Z/zarxrax-amv-hell-4-the-last-one-comedy-video/ AMV Hell] derives a lot of humor from this.

* [[Let's Play|Lets Player]] [[Deceased Crab]] plays with this in his videos of the Flash Games [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOxzZ8Iln8s Don't Look Back] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=240teOagPhk I Was In The War]. {{spoiler|He switches the games' soundtracks, having a jarring effect on their atmosphere.}}

* During the credits of Brad from 4PlayerPodcast's Lets Play of Silent Hill 4 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ15n95C6UA\] he plays 'Come On Eileen' by Dexy's Midnight Runners, not only does this clash with the general mood of the game (though not of the Let's Play as it is Brad), he gets an ending where {{spoiler|Eileen Galvin dies}}.

* Though it can't actually be heard, one chapter of ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]'' has Nny go on a murder spree... while listening to "Ode to Joy".

** And a much sadder one: when Andy Lippincott dies of AIDS, the last panel of the comic shows him slumped in bed as the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" plays in the background.

* The 1984 song, "Yo, Little Brother" is about the older brother finding out the titular little brother has gotten into the wrong crowd that he himself escaped from in the past. The ''music video'' on the other hand had the older brother looking like a 1950s child version of [[Max Headroom]], the little brother like a 7-year-old [[Billy Idol]] and the "wrong crowd doing things they shouldn't oughta do" are [[WTH Casting|a kid dressed up as Prince (that can't dance,) a mini-Rick Ocasek, a mini-Bruce Springsteen and a mini-Cyndi Lauper (that would've made a better Boy George,)]] who simply play Charades. Aside from a more [[Lighter and Softer]] approach to the song, it was a prequel to [[Milli Vanilli]] as the kid in the video, Nolan Thomas was lipsynching Elan Lanier's song in an obnoxious case of [[Executive Meddling]].

* Used to deliberate effect in [[Devo]]'s "Beautiful World" video: The lyrics about how wonderful humanity is were meant to be read as sarcasm [[Isn't It Ironic?|despite the happy melody]]. However, it's still unsettling to see the prominently used stock footage gradually go from idyllic suburban life, fashion shows, and dance parties to Klan rallies, riots, starving children, and nuclear bomb test footage, all while the lyrics keep going on about how the world is a "sweet romantic place" backed by chirpy synthesizers.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lma2xqVOrfE Chin-chillin...]

** A lot of the dramatic readings he does fit this trope, considering the content of the fics.

* [[Star Wars|the Battle of Hoth]] with the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr_hMbbrr5U Coca-Cola X-mas] theme? It's [[Better Than It Sounds]].

* Averted quite well in a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p6MOiY7FM4 seasonal commercial about the plight of homeless during the holidays]. It begins playing the classic "I'll Be Home For Christmas", which seems rather dissonant considering the focus is a man with no home at all, but ends with the song's most poignant line "if only in my dreams".

** Most people forget this song was echoing the thoughts of American troops during World War I, who had hoped in vain to return home in time for Christmas.

* How about a literature one? In [[The Dresden Files|Dead Beat]], Harry Dresden literally powers an undead Tyrannosaurus Rex using the power of polka, care of Waldo Butters, a little pathologist in a one-man-band polka suit.

* In the world of (North American) commercials, Celebrity Cruises is still the reigning king of soundtrack dissonance. Its first "wrong" song moment was with their commercial featuring Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life", a song about heroin addiction. Its second "wrong" song moment was with their commercial featuring "Fame" by [[David Bowie]], a song he wrote about the perils and emptiness of fame.

* [http://youtu.be/bWxS9MNo4jA Just to kiiiiss youuuu...]

* Occasionally done in the ''Classic Game Room'' [[YouTube]] videos where cheerful music plays over scenes of extreme gore and violence. Here's an [http://youtu.be/zpHNqOcM2jo example].

* [[YouTube]] user dprjones uses this trope to great effect (from time index 9:44 to the end of the video) when [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRKi6yoYwaI showing just how badly the religious gloss over the atrocity of Noah's Flood.] If you don't have time to watch it, the music is a cheery children's song about loading animals onto the ark, with documentary footage of floods and the resulting corpses.

 

 

== Web Animation ==

* Short animation [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/smokekills Smoke Kills] ends with a global nuclear war. The song that plays when the world is up in flames? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf052uxFF58 Eurythmics - I Saved the World Today] of course.

* The short animation ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEgtYOJ_qeM&feature=related Diblert 3]'' juxtaposes [[Dilbert]]'s shooting rampage and suicide with a mellow and romantic synthpop cover of the title theme from [[RoboCop]] for the Commodore64. It's disquieting, to say the least.

 

== Real Life ==

* Reputedly, at least one news company used David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the Apollo 11 landing. Which seems appropriate when you consider it's a song about an astronaut on a trip to space. Until, of course, you get to the final verse which seems chilling when you consider there was a real danger the two astronauts who landed on the moon might not have been able to back to the ship: ''Ground control to Major Tom/Your circuit's dead -- there's something wrong...''

** ''Space Oddity'' gets this a lot. The BBC introduced a series of school-related programmes with an advert that showed a child being dressed as an astronaut and launched into a symbolic 'universe' while ''Space Oddity'' played.

* Similar to, and perhaps serving as inspiration for the ''[[Schindler's List]]'' example listed under the Films section, there are chilling real-life accounts of groups of Holocaust victims being forced to run nude in a field, then shot by Nazi soldiers, all while classical music or peppy, patriotic pop songs were played over a speaker system.

** Somewhat similarly, the signal for Portugal's [[wikipedia:Carnation Revolution|Carnation Revolution]] almost a year to the day earlier (25 April 1974) was [[Silly Love Songs|Portugal's entry]] for the [[Eurovision Song Contest]]. The revolution was nearly bloodless, but it ''could'' have gotten quite bloody if the forces loyal to the regime had opted to make it so.

** This Troper once heard 'Shoplifters Of The World Unite' by The Smiths while browsing in a convenience store.

* During the team intros for 2009 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies at New Yankees Stadium, [[Star Wars|The Imperial March]] was played for the Phillies while the Yankees got the intro theme. I'm sure there's a lot of people who think someone switched the songs since it's not the Phillies who're called [[Fan Nickname|the Evil Empire]] and just got a bigger, better, more advanced <s> planet-destoyer</s> baseball stadium...

** Philadelphia teams rally around "Eye of the Tiger," because 1. The Rockey movies were filmed in Philadelphia, and 2. Philadelphia teams are perennial underdogs, having endured a 25 year championship drought until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series. It even showed up in 2009 with the fact that the defending champions were considered the underdog, despite having a team nigh identical to the one they had just won the championship with. Yeah, the Yankees won, but they should never have been considered the favorites in that scenario.

** The Yankees do that at every home game, regardless of who they're playing.

** Interestingly, that's similar to the setup for the famous [[Only Fools and Horses]] episode "A Touch of Glass", AKA "the falling chandelier episode"; long before the chandeliers are even mentioned, Del Boy has just bought a massive shipment of gaudy cat ornaments which play ''How Much Is That Doggie in the Window'', an incongruity which leads Rodney to be less confident than Del that they will be able to sell the cats at a profit.

*** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwT-RbU03vc And now, the same thing], with a [[Babar]] musical toy. This hits home as Soundtrack Dissonance because ''How Much Is That Doggie In The Window'' is the last thing you'd expect from a toy featuring elephants.

* There's a peppy jazz number called "I'm gonna Kill You Just For Fun".

* a [[wikipedia:Jazz funeral|jazz funeral]] displays this.

* The Muzak remained on in the plaza at the World Trade Center on September 11. A cop described the eerie sensation of being there with no people around and no sounds except for that, sirens in the distance, and debris falling to earth...as well as people jumping from the windows.

* On Christmas Day of 1975, Francisco Macías Nguema, dictator of Equatorial Guinea, executed 150 alleged plotters in a national stadium while a band played "Those Were The Days".

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk& Susan Boyle's premier.] As she sings a song about the death of dreams and how horrible real life is...well, you just have to look at the reactions to see the dissonance. Hell, [[The Mean Brit|Simon and Piers]] are smiling. That's mind-screwing dissonance in itself.

* Coldplay tended to get this a lot in recent years, probably because TV producers know they're popular without actually listening to their songs. One particularly egregious example was during the 2008 Academy Awards, where "Viva La Vida" (a song about a tyrant's fall from grace) was played over a montage of Jerry Lewis' movies and telethons for disabled children. Uh, what?

* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' presents: [http://www.cracked.com/article_18990_6-pieces-music-that-mean-opposite-what-you-think.html 6 Pieces of Music That Mean The Opposite of What You Think].

* You can [[Invoked Trope|invoke]] this at any time.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Other Media]]