Soundtrack Dissonance - Television Tropes & Idioms

Asuka: Shinji, you suck.
Shinji: Yeah? Well, let's see how you feel after I strangle you. Cue the light, happy jazz-pop!

— Toastyfrog's End of Evangelion: Thumbnail Theatre

"Should peppy music really accompany your film's darkest, most disturbing scene? I suppose if Tarantino did it, people would laud the ironic juxtaposition, but this is Coleman Francis. Anything that appears to be a glimmer of brilliance is always pure happenstance."

— The Agony Booth, recap of The Skydivers

"It's toe-tappingly tragic!"

— 'Dr. Zoidberg, Futurama

So you're a big-time Hollywood director. (Congrats on that, by the way.) You've got a dynamite action movie you're about to start shooting. It won't win you an Oscar, but hey, you've got two of those, and any way, your mortgage payments are becoming somewhat uncomfortable.

Keanu Reeves has signed on to be your hero/messiah figure, and Seth Green will be the annoying/lovable comic relief. Best of all, Scarlett Johansson has signed on to be the love interest. She won't do the simulated sex scene on page 42 of the script, but she's OK with frequent scenes in swimming pools.

There's just one problem: the movie is supposed to end with a bloody firefight, and your stupid conscience is acting up again. You went to the NYU film school, dammit, you can't just have 13 minutes of blood and bullets.

But wait. What if you overlay the horrific carnage with beautiful music? Then, you're not indulging your audience's bloodlust, you're making a deep philosophical point about the duality of human nature. What says, "Mankind is both glorious and murderous" better than a faceless mook getting shot in the head at close range while Schubert's "Ave Maria" plays in the background?

You're taking advantage of a tactic used countless times over the years to heighten the sadness of a scene. Your dissonant music doesn't have to be played over a violent scene, of course. Happy, upbeat music at a funeral of a beloved character can also work. It can be used to excellent effect, especially if the song is somewhat silly, but if you use "Ave Maria" (Schubert's version or Gounod's version) or Ode To Joy, you'll almost certainly degenerate into What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic territory of the most generic kind. Handel's "Messiah", too. (What've you been watching??)

Of course, it can work both ways as well. Inappropriate music can be often played for laughs; a sombre, portentious and important-sounding piece of music played over something utterly trivial happening on screen can increase the laughter. Similarly, a light and cheery pop song or sweet love ballad playing over an otherwise tense scene can be played for laughter, especially if the tension comes from something absurd that the characters are otherwise treating entirely seriously.

The Ode To Joy choral in the fourth movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is especially cursed to suffer from Soundtrack Dissonance due to its notorious use in Third Reich propaganda, hence modern usage is just as often due to this association as it is its original intent (to be absolutely clear, Beethoven's original lyrics were about the equality and brotherhood of all humankind. So Yeah).

Pretty much any anime with a happy Ending Theme will achieve this trope with its first serious Cliff Hanger, intentionally or otherwise. Same for a happy Opening Theme and any stressful teaser.

The entire process has been streamlined by the ability of some video game consoles to replace a game's soundtrack with anything the player cares to play. Try setting the most violent, obscene parts of Gears Of War to "Yakety Sax" sometime; your parents will search your mattress for drugs, but you'll be enriched by the experience. Unless, you know, you actually have drugs stashed in your mattress.

A common variety, covered by What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome, is using dramatic music to mundane events.

A subtrope of Mood Dissonance. Compare Lyrical Dissonance.