While Rome Burns: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:quo-vadis-nero-singt.jpg|frame|Because any disaster needs a little ambient music.]]
{{quote|''The earth died screaming
''While I lay dreaming
''Dreaming of you.''
|'''[[Tom Waits]]''', "Earth Died Screaming"}}
Something awful is happening. The world is ending, the economy collapsed, there's an earthquake, and rioting in the streets is commonplace. Everyone's in a panic—except this guy.
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Compare with [[Holding Out for a Hero]], [[Refusal of the Call]], [[Achilles in His Tent]], and [[Slept Through the Apocalypse]]. If the survivor seems to be actively enjoying the destruction, see [[Dancing in The Ruins]]. If it's more an example of heroically attempting to avoid letting nasty situations get you down, it's probably [[Screw the War, We're Partying]]. Not to be confused with [[Stiff Upper Lip]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
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* Happens in [[Gundam Seed Destiny]]: as fragments of Junius Seven bombard the Earth and massive destruction is being shown, Lacus Clyne sings a gentle song to calm some kids in her shelter, also providing epic [[Soundtrack Dissonance]].
* In ''[[Future War 198X]]'', Laura still sits behind the piano at the underground jazz bar in Tokyo after hearing that enemy jets are inbound, playing a mournful tune while thinking of Wataru. Michael heartbrokenly sings "Eidelweiss" to himself {{spoiler|while looking at the white flower his dead girlfriend once wore in her hair}} after blasting the nuclear warhead and shaking the whole war.
* ''[[
* Toward the end of ''[[Speed Grapher]]'', Suitengu seals up a majority of members into the club with intent to demolish it, if the JSDF doesn't do it first. Relatively few of them are shaking at the barred entrance in panic while most continue indulging in [[Hookers and Blow]].
* ''[[Sekirei]]'' has Natsuo Ichinomi who is the Ashikabi of the feared [[Badass Crew|Disciplinary Squad]]. He combines this trope with [[Dissonant Serenity]] as he explains key info to Minato while a battle rages around them. They are almost killed and he resumes the conversation as if nothing is happening. None of the chaos caused by Sekirei Plan bothers him because he no longer cares what happens to him or the world.
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** Also hilariously parodied with Green Day as themselves at the beginning of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' movie. As their barge sinks into Springfield lake due to the corrosive pollution, they calmly pull out violins and play until all fall in and die.
** Referenced in ''Osmosis Jones'', where a couple of random cells say the line while Frank "dies."
* The two ''[[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Dawn of the Dead]]'' movies are effectively this, they hide away in their own little paradise while the rest of the world is destroyed by the zombies. Hell, in [[Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)||the remake]] a man starves to death just across the road while they're making lattes. They do care though.
** Well they do try to send him food, {{spoiler|they just fail miserably and eventually the entire mall is overrun with zombies}}.
* In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', there is an old lady sitting at the street side table oblivious to or uninterested in what's going on around her while the world is being destroyed. This is Douglas Adams's mother. The director didn't give any acting directions to her or anybody else in the scene for what they were supposed to do, to simulate chaos, so she just sat there reading a newspaper.
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* In ''[[Mean Girls]]'', after the female population of the school has descended in to madness over the Burn Book, Regina stands at the top of the stairs and admires her handiwork as people run past and debris flies through the shot.
* It's small and easy to miss, but in ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'', [[Creepy Child|Lizzy]] can be seen smiling evilly as she watches the chaos that ensues when Lewis' invention malfunctions.
* Lighthearted example in ''[[Men in Black]]'' after Jay accidentally triggers the device that [[The Gump|caused the New York City blackout of 1977]], everyone in the headquarters screams and dives for cover as it bounces through the building at high speed, breaking everything it hits... Except for [[Da Chief|Zed]], who calmly continues doing his work and drinking coffee, even as it bounces around his desk.
== Literature ==
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* ''[[Band of Brothers]]'' had an interesting example that happened ''after'' the disaster. The opening of one of the episodes showed a quartet of German violinists playing somber music as their fellow villagers were working to clean up the rubble from their ruined town.
* ''[[The Day of the Triffids]]'' remake. A man is shown [[Soundtrack Dissonance|playing the violin]] while panicked policemen who've lost their sight gun down civilians. After he's finished playing, the man calmly walks to the balcony and throws himself off.
* In ''[[The Outer Limits]]'' (2002 series) episode "The Human Factor", commander Ellis Grover [[Despair Event Horizon|sabotages the colonization project he was in charge of after finding out his superiors started a nuclear war that killed off most of humanity including his family]]. This is ''after'' he spent the entire episode trying to stop his [[Robot Buddy]] Link from doing the exact same thing out of the belief that [[Humans Are
* In the final episode of ''[[Kamen Rider OOO]]'', [[Crazy Awesome|Kosei Kougami]] indulges in his hobby of singing "Happy Birthday" and baking birthday cakes while the city outside is gradually being devoured by a monstrous construct out to absorb everything, and the building he's in grows increasingly damaged.
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* "We dance to the sound of sirens, and we watch genocide to relax."([[Covenant]], in "Theremin")
* The song ''Accordion Player'' by [[Voltaire (musician)|Voltaire]] is about an accordion player who refused to take part in a war in his country, even when the fighting came to his town. The song ends with the musician declaring repeatedly "I want to die playing", the music becoming more frantic and impassioned as sounds of battle rage around it.
* ''A Card Game in 1812'' by [[Vladimir Vysotsky]]. Right at the start a younger aggressive noble accuses older one in cheating, and then proceeds to insult him, issue the challenge to a duel, and then insult and boast some more. In the full version [[It Gets Worse]]: he collapses, and later privately admits that he wanted to ask for a loan, but it was awkward and, being too drunk, he started all this mess (they, of course, proceed to the duel anyway). The part making it a real treat, however, is the context: refrain that is not connected to the rest in any way other than as stated in itself, and the original has but two different lines:
{{quote|This was the time when [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Bonaparte]]
This was the time when Bonaparte
Was crossing over border. }}
== Theatre ==
* The second act of ''[[You Can't Take It
== Videogames ==
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*** He does duck at the last second. Somehow, that seems to have helped him, since...
*** [[Death Is Cheap|He got better.]]
* The opening cutscene of ''[[
** The black Marine jamming out during a battle is possibly a [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[Apocalypse Now]]''.
* You can probably find countless examples from ''[[The Sims]]''. One sim decided to take a bath while the kitchen was burning wildly and killing the sim's poor family members.
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{{quote|'''Joker:''' I love this town!}}
* Subverted in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "Swarm of the Century". Pinkie takes one look at the crisis of the day and rushes off in search of a tuba. Everyone dismisses it as Pinkie's usual harmless psychosis, and sets about trying to get the parasprites out of town, while Pinkie passes through periodically asking if anyone's seen yet another piece of the polka ensemble she's been diligently assembling. Just when it looks like all hope is lost and the parasprites are going to be the end of civilization, Pinkie marches by strapped into a one-pony band, and the parasprites follow her in [[Pied Piper]] fashion. It's implied throughout the episode that Pinkie's dealt with parasprites before, but couldn't communicate this fact to the others because they have trouble with the idea that Pinkie is capable of lucidity.
* In one episode of ''[[Darkwing Duck]]'', Negaduck uses a magical artifact to steal the powers of the other four members of the Fearsome Five, causing him grow to giant size; he then proceeds to flood St. Canard and use electricity to heat the water to the boiling point. As Darkwing wracks his mind to think of a way to bring him down, the four powerless villains do nothing but sit down, sadly drinking weak tea. Of course, this is a Zigzagged Trope, as they do so because they're too depressed over the loss of their powers at the moment to help. This also leads to a [[Eureka Moment]] when they realize that Negaduck had their weaknesses along with their powers.
* Played with in ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]''. As the Separatist Confederacy attacks Coruscant, Chancellor Palpatine remains in his office, sipping tea and ignoring the Jedi's encouragement to take shelter. And when the Jedi-killer General Grievous smashes through the window, Palpatine reacts by standing up to Grievous and angrily saying he "won't be bullied by some thug" who breaks into his chambers. But this is all for show: unknown to anyone present (including Grievous), Palpatine is also Darth Sidious, the shadowy leader of the Confederacy. He makes no effort to protect himself because had arranged his own kidnapping.
* In the ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]'' episode "Solar Power", Luminous hijacks LexCorp's communication satellites to block off the sun's yellow radiation and cripple Superman. Despite the fact that Luthor's denial of wrongdoing is hard to believe [[Not Me This Time| (even though he isn't involved)]] and the crisis is costing his company millions in revenue, he spends at least part of the time calmly practicing archery.
== Real Life ==
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* An apocryphal story tells that even as Constantinopole was on the verge of falling, the elders of the Byzantine Church ignored the threat and busied themselves discussing theological trivalities. Modern day Turkish Politicians occasionally bring the story up as a metaphor to criticize the hijacking of important debates by irrelevant non-issues.
* A more literal and heartwarming example: During the Siege of Sarajevo, the Serbs would shell the city every night. It was under this backdrop of shelling that cellist Vedran Smailović would play christmas songs in the middle of the town square ''while the city was being shelled around him!'' He said he did this to prove that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the spirit of humanity was still alive in that place. According to The [[Trans-Siberian Orchestra]], this act of bravery/craziness was the inspiration for their song Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.
* Barbara Tuchman in ''The Guns of August'' characterised Nicholas II as a grotesquely incompetent, apathetic leader, stating that when Nicholas received a telegram informing him of the [[Russo
* The saying "arranging deckchairs on the ''Lusitania'' / ''Titanic''" is essentially used to refer to someone getting distracted doing something inconsequential or trivial during a time of great crisis. It's unknown whether anyone actually ''did'' worry about arranging the deckchairs on either of these ships as they were going down, however.
* Senator Bernie Sanders actually used the Trope Namer as a comparison to [[Donald Trump]]'s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying at the 2020 Democratic Convention, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs.”
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
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