A full minute of stunned silence means "My god, what did you do?", not "Please continue".
Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Someone is shocked or stunned into silence.
There are two major types: Stunned amazement or stunned horror.
Often, stunned amazement causes the performer to think the audience's initial silence means they dislike the performance. The truth becomes apparent when they burst into applause. Often will lead to a
Slow Clap. If in comedic fiction, bonus points if the sound of cricket chirping is the only audible thing.
Stunned horror can be further divided into stunned by stupidity or stunned by surrealness. This ocors when a character says (or does) something so stupid or off the wall other characters are rendered unable to talk or limited to a single world. See also
Chirping Crickets,
Loudspeaker Truck,
Face Fault and
Idiot Crows.
Examples:
Stunned Amazement:
- In "The Mountain Whippoorwill", a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet, Hillbilly Jim gets no applause because the crowd is stunned by his fiddle playing. He's that good.
- Happens at the final performance in the film Cats Don't Dance, before the audience bursts into applause. Somewhat justified, as the audience had taken considerable abuse during the show.
Stunned Horror:
- "Springtime For Hitler" in The Producers.
- Happens in The Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore. Wulfgar wins a one-on-one fight by crushing the guy's skull with his bare hands. After the fight a herald was supposed to step in and proclaim the winner. Instead, everyone just stands around staring at what he'd done.
- ECW once did a storyline involving Raven tying The Sandman to a wooden cross, then placing a crown of barbed wire upon his head. This marks the only time the ECW mutants were ever not cheering, chanting, or screaming for blood. Definitely the "silent horror" variety. They had to send Raven (who was supposed to be the bad guy in all this, keep in mind) out to apologize to the crowd afterwards.
- "Ross? I'm pregnant."
Other:
- Real Life: The Sex Pistols final concert in Winterland, USA. After their rendition of the horribly tasteless "Belsen was a Gas" the audience sat in stunned silence for a few seconds before applauding.
- A Japanese audience was utterly silent at the end of Star Wars — their greatest possible compliment.
- Stunned silence variety appears in Something Positive after a couple of musicals/plays the main characters put on. One of them ended with the audience pulling out their lighters and setting fire to the place.
- Truth In Television: A particularly moving piece of music gets silence from the house. Can be a powerful, powerful compliment. I saw one occasion where a clap began, but most of the house didn't join in, and it subsided again. (It was a tribute to a dead member of the orchestra, and applause just didn't seem appropriate)
- Long ago, there was a YKTTW entry with this name which described the way dramatic arguments in shows would end: one person would raise their voice and deliver a final cutting line, then simply walk out, leaving the other in stunned silence.
- The Simpsons: Krusty hosting the "Krusty Komedy Klassic" at the Apollo Theater. Um, oops...
- On the stupidity side, someone really doesn't understand how memory works
