While Rome Burns: Difference between revisions
m
→Film
m (Mass update links) |
m (→Film) |
||
(16 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
[[File:quo-vadis-nero-singt.jpg|frame|Because any disaster needs a little ambient music.]]
''Dreaming of you.''
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
▲{{quote|''The earth died screaming<br />
▲While I lay dreaming<br />
▲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.
They're still reading a book, listening to music, [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|browsing this site]], whatever. Maybe [[Apathetic Citizens|they just don't care]], or they approve of what's going on. On the other hand, maybe they figure that if they're going to die, they might as well go out with quiet dignity rather than in a panic or with [[Rage Against the Heavens]]. If combined with [[Dissonant Serenity]] it might have heroic or [[The Stoic|stoic]] overtones.
Line 13:
The trope is named after Roman Emperor Nero, who is purported to have been singing and playing his lyre while Rome was ravaged by a massive fire (though there are no detailed accounts of the fire from contemporary historians, thus there is debate about how true that is), and as such implies an authority ignoring the pleas of its subjects, or simply not caring enough, although it has broadened to mean simply carrying on as normal when the whole world falls to pieces around you.
Compare with [[Holding Out for
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Played strait in [[One Piece]]. Sabo hears a rumor that the slums of his city will burn from a planned arson fire and thousands of citizens will burn. Sabo decides to go around the upper class area of the city to investigate. He sees that the rich nobles are calm and happy, so concludes that the fire won't be happening, until the nobles calmly mention it. Sabo is confused, wondering why no one is in a panic like he is. He talks with a wealthy elder, who confirms that the slums will burn and people will die, but the nobles don't care. Infact some nobles want the poor to die because 'they don't deserve to live if they aren't rich'. The old man actually warns Sabo NOT to save the citizens.
* In ''[[X 1999]]'', Seishiro and Fuuma stroll through Nakano Sun Plaza eating ice cream and chatting amiably. It all seems well and good until you realize that as they're doing this they're actively ''destroying'' the place.
* Kasumi Tendo, the [[Yamato Nadeshiko]] of ''[[Ranma
* In ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', as the latest powerful Angel draws close to bringing about the Third Impact and the annihilation of humanity, Kaji Ryoji is found watering his watermelon garden. He explains that since he can't pilot an [[Humongous Mecha|Eva]], there's nothing he can do to make a difference, so he might as well spend his final moments calmly doing something he enjoys.
* In the anime film ''[[Highlander the Search For Vengeance]]'', Marcus does this a LOT.
* Happens in [[Gundam Seed
* In ''[[Future War
* ''[[So Ra No
* 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]].
* ''[[
== Comic Books ==
* A rather chilling scene in the [[The DCU|DC Comics]] miniseries ''[[
** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|The funniest part]] is when one of them is about to fall on top of him whil he's on the phone. He excuses himself, walks out of the spot and continues talking as the guy plummets just behind him.
* ''[[Watchmen (
== Film ==
Line 52:
** 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 (
** Well they do try to send him food, {{spoiler|they just fail miserably and eventually the entire mall is overrun with zombies}}.
* In ''[[The
* ''[[Con Air]]'' depicts the [[Stuff Blowing Up|increasingly chaotic results]] of a bunch of convicts hijacking a prison transport plane. Toward the climax, while the plane is rapidly descending on the [[Viva Las Vegas|improvised landing strip]] and the surviving passengers flail about in a state of panic, Steve Buscemi's character sits unperturbed in his usual seat, cradling a Ken doll and singing "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands."
* ''Der Untergang'', or ''[[Downfall (
** There's also a scene in which one of the characters, who has fled the bunker, is arrested by military police at what seems to be a drunken orgy.
* In [[Monty Python]]'s ''[[The Meaning of Life]]'', there is a scene where British officers calmly go about their business as African aboriginal warriors brutally slaughter the troops in camp.
* In ''[[Fight Club]]'' the ending scene features the main character {{spoiler|kissing his romantic interest while watching various skyscrapers explode and collapse to the ground throughout the city.}}
* ''[[Metropolis]]'':
{{quote|
* ''The Day The Earth Caught Fire''. As the Earth hurtles towards the Sun all water is rationed; we later see teenagers high on drugs having water fights in the streets.
* During the sequence in ''[[Superman II]]'' when Superman and the Kryptonian villains are destroying half of Metropolis in the wake of their fight there is a crazed hobo in a telephone booth who laughs and talks to no one on the other end while the booth gets blown sideways down the street by super breath.
* ''[[
* [[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)|The Disney version of Hunchback of Notre Dame]] has an almost literal version of this; "while Paris burns" to be precise. Frollo threatens to burn down all of Paris, and manages to burn down a considerable portion of it, but while Quasimodo and the gargoyles are looking out at the fire, they're discussing (and eventually singing about) whether or not Quasimodo might have a chance with Esmeralda after all.
{{quote|
** Well, it's not as if Quasi is in a position to do anything, since he's been forbidden by Frollo to leave the bell tower - and the one time he disobeyed this order, things didn't go at all well for him.
* ''[[
* 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 ==
Line 77 ⟶ 78:
* ''[[Edgar Allan Poe|The Masque of the Red Death]]''. They shut themselves in a tower to avoid a plague and hold a party. The whole point of the story is to give them a massively karmic death, a ''red'' death. The source tale, ''[[The Decameron]]'', did not kill off the characters. It's just an excuse for a frame tale that shuts people in a room so they'll tell stories to pass the time.
* Stephen King's ''[[Cell]]'' has the 'Sprinters', people who steal the most expensive/fast looking vehicles they can find and drive them down the street after the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] renders their owners either dead or insane. On the two occasions when specific Sprinters are mentioned, they manage to get themselves either injured [[Too Dumb to Live|or killed spectacularly]].
* Averted in ''[[
== Live Action TV ==
Line 83 ⟶ 84:
* ''[[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.
Line 97 ⟶ 98:
* Steve Taylor's "Smug" lambasts Christians who take sick pleasure in thinking the rest of the world is going to hell. "Rome is burning, we're here turning smug."
* Weird Al's "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" has shades of this.
** "It's Christmas at Ground Zero", if taken more seriously, also sounds exactly like this.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsBXgDLj45A The video] for Mythos & DJ Cosmo's "The Heart of the Ocean", a [[Speedy Techno Remake|techno version]] of the main theme from ''[[Titanic]]'', features a dance party on a sinking ship.
* "We dance to the sound of sirens, and we watch genocide to relax."([[Covenant]], in "Theremin")
* The song ''Accordion Player'' by [[Voltaire (
* ''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 ==
Line 113 ⟶ 118:
*** 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
* 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.
** Although the times Sims do avert it are equally annoying, for example if a Sim stands around watching a tree on fire instead of going to his final exam. (The tree was outdoors, and not near any part of the dorm that could catch fire, and it was raining, so the fire would go out anyway.)
* In the third ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]'' game, Larry Butz sees a bridge burning...and instead of running for help, he sketches the scene.
* Two examples in the ''[[
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
{{quote|
** On the eve of the final day, the good ending for the Romani/Creamia sidequests has the two sisters tending to their cow. Romani seems oblivious to the danger of the moon, but Creamia ignores mentioning it in front of her sister and handles their impending doom with calm acceptance.
*** [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|And by asking Romani to sleep with]] [[Tear Jerker|her in her bed that night.]]
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]''. During [[Evil Empire|Emperor Gestahl's]] [[I Surrender, Suckers]] scene, where he repents for the evil he's done (ha!) and pledges to restore peace, balance, and harmony (double-ha!), while the party does not [[Go
* In the Sadie's Story extras in ''[[Halo|Halo ODST]]'', an overweight butcher stays in his store, happily trying to sell or outright give away his meat to refugees fleeing New Mombasa.
** Though he's doing this so that people can have food while getting out of the city, and you can hear a woman thanking him profusely for giving her a number of kabobs. He also admits that he is extremely fat and would take up space on a bus or train that would be better spent on thinner people.
** ''[[Halo: Reach]]'''s New Alexandria level has, as an [[Easter Egg]] activated by a switch on another building, a dance club where a DJ is spinning "Never Surrender" from ''[[Halo 2]]'' (and "Siege of Madrigal" if you hit another switch on the roof) while the city burns. The grunts even dance to the music.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' -- yet another display of [[Artificial Stupidity|dwarven stupidity]]. When civilian alerts are called in zones, usually due to hazardous ''[[Everything Trying to Kill You|anything]]'', they will still wander over to grab a drink, or take a break in a rock garden or waterfall, while their fellow dwarves are dying [[Ludicrous Gibs|splattery limb-flinging deaths]] to murderous abominations.
* In [[Fallout 3]], you can stumble upon a bizarre building owned by a Russian named Dukov. All he does all day is party, drink, get high, and have sex with his two "party girls". They seem completely ambivalent to the fact that they are completely defenseless in the middle of a hilariously dangerous city full of mutants.
** Not true. Dukov is an ex-mercenary, which is the only reason his whores stick around and put up with him in the first place. One of them even asks you for a safe escort out. Of course, Dukov is old, and likely both out of practice and drunk off his ass, so he's easy enough for ''you'' to kill. It helps that he wears pajamas.
* Near the end of the second act of ''[[
* At the end of ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Allied Assault'', there are alot of guards still hanging around while Fort Schmerzen burns [[Collapsing Lair|and collapses]].
* If you count player action, the option to invoke this becomes [[Take Your Time|a trope itself]].
* In [[Saints Row the Third]], the antagonist Killbane, upon being humiliated on live television, (Either by de-masking him or by defeating him) actually quotes the origin of the trope itself...
{{quote|
== Webcomics ==
* ''[[
** Rose has roughly two minutes to save John from {{spoiler|being killed by an incoming meteor}}. She spends the first forty seconds playing a violin refrain. The game sarcastically compliments the player's time management skills.
** More figurative use of the trope would be when Dave and his Bro battle it out on the rooftop, {{spoiler|with Houston being obliterated in the background}}. The battle itself is ''completely pointless''.
Line 149 ⟶ 154:
== Western Animation ==
* In the season 4 finale of ''[[
* Played for laughs in an episode of ''[[Justice League]]''. While the rest of the population of Vegas has fled because of Joker's bomb threats, a single old lady continues feeding coins into a slot machine.
{{quote|
* Subverted in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
* 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 ==
* [[Trope Namer]]: According to legend, Emperor Nero played the fiddle (or lute, or lyre) while Rome was burning down. Supposedly, his men actually helped ''set'' the fire. This story was more likely than not circulated by those who disliked/despised him. All actual evidence found suggests he wasn't even in the city at the time and quite possibly wouldn't have been in any position to help
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Henry_Hoover Lou Henry Hoover] did this a lot when stranded in China during the Boxer Rebellion. One time she was playing solitaire when an artillery shell crashed through her front hall. She kept on playing.▼
His apocryphal behavior is traditionally described as "fiddling while Rome burns", which has predictably been played for all the [[Double Entendre]] it's worth for centuries.
▲* [
* According to a letter written by his nephew, Pliny the Elder took a nap in Stabiae near Pompeii... ''while Mt. Vesuvius was erupting''. Even though he was there in part to assist in the rescue of the villagers.
** And, as we all know, he didn't survive it either. He suffocated for being too close to the epicentre.
* Controversy surrounded [[George W. Bush]] when he chose to continue reading a children's book about a goat to a grade-school class after being informed that the 9/11 attacks occurred. Though a somewhat more generous interpretation is his not wanting to scare the kids, who would have plenty to worry about later, [http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/08/911/The_drama_in_Sarasota.shtml he was told during the event] "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
** More concretely, there was Bush actually playing a guitar on a California Naval base the day after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
** Then there's the matter of [[Barack Obama|President Obama]] reacting to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico by focusing like a laser on... his golf game.
* A similar PR disaster struck the unpopular and gaffe-prone Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who was heavily criticised for continuing to play a round of golf after hearing the news of [
* English soldier [
* Another Roman example. When Emperor Honorius was informed that Rome had "perished" (sacked in 410 AD) he panicked, thinking his pet rooster also named Rome had died. When it was explained that Rome the ''city'' had been sacked, he was visibly relieved his rooster was fine.
* Another famous example is Archimedes keeping on working on mathematical diagrams during the fall of Syracuse. He was killed by a Roman soldier who had come to arrest him. As the soldier approached, Archimedes was drawing some mathematical figures in the sand, and shouted at the soldier "don't disturb my figures". The soldier didn't like that.
Line 170 ⟶ 180:
** Other retellings accentuate the irony by having the soldier ''ask him where Archimedes can be found'', because they want him alive, and Archimedes ignoring him.
* Former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon is now being compared with Nero after admitting that she went out to dinner with her husband and two friends on the evening of the Black Saturday bushfires, in spite of being warned of the likelihood of an high death toll shortly before leaving.
* As hinted in the ''[[Downfall (
* So many people during the Black Death died, some people knew that they were likely to get it and die, so what did they do? Party! Similar things are apt to happen during any large-enough scale disaster.
* 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
* 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]]
[[Category:
|