History Main / MuseumOfBoredom

Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease, since [[FunForSome there's always going to be someone interested in a subject]], no matter how dull it might seem to the rest of us. Having said that, [[HypocriticalHumor there is a German Occupational Health and Safety Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany.]]

* The town of Pawnee from ''ParksAndRecreation'' has a snowglobe museum. Leslie really likes it, but it's suggested that no one else finds it that interesting, including the museum's staff.

* ''BunnyAndTheBull'': The scene where the characters visit the Polish National Shoe Museum, complete with interminable tour guide.
* "RatRace" lampshades this by having the Pear family dragged to a detour at the Barbie Museum, which all but one member of the family expect to be a museum of boredom. However, [[spoiler: the museum turns out to be the ''Klaus'' Barbie museum, run by Nazis. HilarityEnsues.]]

* One episode of ''GomerPyleUSMC'' has Gomer enthusiastically dragging Sgt. Carter and his girlfriend to a rock museum, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

* ''FlightOfTheConchords'': Not a museum, but it has this feel. Murray goes on a walking tour of historic band rotundas. He'd planed for Brett and Jemaine to come with him, but they don't share Murray's enthusiasm.

NoRealLifeExamplesPlease, since [[FunForSome there's always going to be someone interested in a subject]], no matter how dull it might seem to the rest of us. Having said that, [[HypocriticalHumor there is a German Occupational Health and Safety Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany.]]

* WeirdAlYankovic's song "The Biggest Ball of Twine In Minnesota" name-checks a few other likely candidates in addition to the subject of the song. He's never revealed exactly which ones he made up and which actually exist.

** There's also the Colossus of Morpork, which while slightly more interesting than a bread museum is still unimpressive because [[NonIndicativeName it fis in a cardboard box]]. Bloody Stupid Johnson fully deserved his nickname.

* One episode of ''GomerPyleUSMC'' has Gomer enthusiastically dragging Sgt. Carter and his girlfriend to a rock museum, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

NoRealLifeExamplesPlease, since there's always going to be someone interested in a subject, no matter how dull it might seem to the rest of us. Having said that, [[HypocriticalHumor there is a German Occupational Health and Safety Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany.]]

* The town of Pawnee ''ParksAndRecreation'' has a snowglobe museum. Leslie really likes it, but it's suggested that no one else finds it that interesting, including the museum's staff.

* ''TheSimpsons'': Several:

* ''TheWeekenders'': A world food museum.

* ''{{Discworld}}'' has museums of things like dwarf bread or minerals, which generally bore any non-dwarf (Captain Carrot finds it interesting, but he's a dwarf by culture even if not by blood).

[[AC:Live Action Television]]

* ''{{Discworld}}'' has museums of things like dwarf bread or minerals, which generally bore any non-dwarf besides Captain Carrot.

* ''{{Freefall}}'s'' Museum of Lichen.

NoRealLifeExamplesPlease, since [[{{YMMV}} there's always going to be someone interested in a subject, no matter how dull it might seem to the rest of us.]] Having said that, [[HypocriticalHumor there is a German Occupational Health and Safety Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany.]]

[[AC:{{Radio}}]]
* ''TheMuseumOfEverything'' largely averts this, since it contains... well, everything. But some of the exhibits count, such as the history of stairs exhibit which is located between floors one and two.
* The first episode of the BBC radio series ''St. Berks'' involves a visit to the Museum of Concrete.

* ''FlightOfTheConchords'': Not a museum, it has this feel. Murray goes on a walking tour of historic band rotundas. He'd planed for Brett and Jemaine to come with him, but they don't share Murray's enthusiasm.

* ''{{Discworld}}'' has museums of things like dwarf bread or minerals, which generally bore anyone besides Captain Carrot.

Examples include:

[[AC:{{Television}}]]

{{Film}}:

* BunnyAndTheBull: The scene where the characters visit the Polish National Shoe Museum, complete with interminable tour guide.

{{Literature}}:

* {{Discworld}} has museums of things like dwarf bread or minerals, which generally bore anyone besides Captain Carrot.
* Frank Stockton's short story "The Queen's Museum" (1887). The title museum is full of buttonholes, which the country's queen finds fascinating but everyone else finds completely uninteresting.
* The childrens' book Thanks for the Sardine features the heroine Aggie persuading her boring aunts to come to a day course about how to be a good auntie by telling them it's an iron filings museum, which they find fascinating.

{{Radio}}:

* TheMuseumOfEverything largely averts this, since it contains... well, everything. But some of the exhibits count, such as the history of stairs exhibit which is located between floors one and two.
* The first episode of the BBC radio series St. Berks involves a visit to the Museum of Concrete.

{{Television}}:

* The Coogan's Run episode The Curator is set in a dull local museum. The museum might actually be mildly interesting if the curator himself wasn't so desperately dull. The curator blames his museum's failure on the bigger museum down the road that keeps getting all the best exhibits.
* FlightOfTheConchords: Not a museum, it has this feel. Murray goes on a walking tour of historic band rotundas. He'd planed for Brett and Jemaine to come with him, but they don't share Murray's enthusiasm.
* The town of Pawnee ParksAndRecreation has a snowglobe museum. Leslie really likes it, but it's suggested that no one else finds it that interesting, including the museum's staff.

{{Webcomics}}:

* {{Freefall}}'s Museum of Lichen.

WesternAnimation:

* TheSimpsons: Several:

* TheWeekenders: A world food museum.

* TheWeekenders: A world food museum.


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There's a world food museum in TheWeekenders.

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* {{Discworld}} has museums of things like dwarf bread or minerals, which generally bore anyone besides Captain Carrot.

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Before anyone actually decides to do a RealLife example: if you're interested in Subject A, Subject B, and Subject C, there is definitely someone out there that absolutely hates all three subjects.

[[HypocriticalHumor But there is a German Occupational Health and Safety Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany.]]

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[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* Frank Stockton's short story "The Queen's Museum" (1887). The title museum is full of buttonholes, which the country's queen finds fascinating but everyone else finds completely uninteresting.

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Would ''WebComic/{{Freefall}}'''s Museum of Lichen count?

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It certainly sounds like it fits the bill!

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The childrens' book ''Thanks for the Sardine'' features the heroine Aggie persuading her boring aunts to come to a day course about how to be a good auntie by telling them it's an iron filings museum, which they find fascinating.

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The same type of humor is often used with an AbsurdlySpecificBook.

...which was a ykttw some time ago. Not sure what happened to it.

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I'd say NoRealLifeExamples because YMMV, and stick to how the museum is treated in-universe. Most of the time, and at least in all the examples here, it's pretty obvious, but some examples might be a bit trickier, like little kids being bored by a fine art museum because the pictures don't move. How would we treat stuff like that?

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I think a museum portrayed as fairly normal, while the characters find it boring (as in the art gallery example above), should be excluded. This would only be for museums that are clearly meant to be inherently boring to most visitors.

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The town of Pawnee ''ParksAndRecreation'' has a snowglobe museum. Leslie really likes it, but it's suggested that no one else finds it that interesting, including the museum's staff.

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I'm reminded of UHF's Spatula City, though that was a store and not a museum. (And it didn't actually sell spatulas, but meh.)

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^^In the ''Coogan's Run'' example the curator blames his museum's failure on the bigger museum down the road that keeps getting all the best exhibits.

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IThoughtItMeant shows presenting museums in general as dull. In fact, why focus on the "dull" part? Why not focus on museums about very specific topics?

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I'm not sure. I think overly-specific museums tend to be portrayed this way in fiction and so are likely to be covered by this anyway.

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Not sure if this would count, in ''FlightOfTheConchords'', Murray goes on a walking tour of historic band rotundas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1Q9Ucj-xU

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Another TheSimpsons example: The Springfield Stamp Museum.

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