Basically, when the mood of the scene in a movie contrasts with the choice of music, ie: Gestapo thugs beating a guy senseless while you hear the Chicken Dance song playing, or Asuka Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion getting put in a bad way while the Hallelujah chorus plays, so on so forth. What’s that called?
juxtaposition?
I’d like to know, too.
Or nuclear warhead delivery aircraft refueling in midair to the tune of Try A Little Tenderness in Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick was a master of this technique.
Or Vietnamese getting lined up against the wall and shot during “What a Wonderful World”
Irony?
ironic juxtaposition?
He certainly was - A Clockwork Orange being full of such moments.
Film sound theorist Michel Chion coined the term “anempathetic” sound or music. It is sound, or music, that shows indifference to what is happening visually in the scene. This is in contrast to “empathetic” sound which mirrors the visual’s emotional content.
Because the “anempathetic” carries the sense that the music is used despite the action, instead of in direct contradiction, in my own classes I divide empathetic relationships further into parallel and complementary, and anempathetic relationships into contradictory and independent.
Furthermore, these relationships can occur at a number of levels: semantic, formal and causal. For instance, you can have visuals that move along the rhythm of the music (parallel formal relationship) but you see brutal violence while the music expresses peaceful feelings (contradictory semantic relationship). “Causal” refers to the source of a sound. A superb use of complementary causal relationship are the light-sabers in Star Wars. Visually, a light-saber is just a glowing streak, it’s the sound that really gives it its sense of physicality. However, without the visuals, you wouldn’t know what made that sound (the first time you heard it) – it would be totally abstract. Chion calls this “added value”.
Michel Chion is a relatively important writer in the field of film sound and music. He coined a lot of terms and I find many of his ideas useful but other writers will use different words to refer to similar concepts.
I’m not sure this completely answered your question…
Well, it’s definitely a type of irony. From the English teacher’s point of view, irony occurs when the opposite of what you expect happens but still makes thematic sense. When the words and tone of a spoken line don’t match, it’s verbal irony or sarcasm.
So, dramatic irony?
I like what jovan came up with - contradictory anempathetic soundtrack.
Aside from the question of what this is actually called, I’d also be interested in building up some sort of ‘master list’ of when it occurs. I feel like I’ve seen this used a few times in films when a central character is being beaten up, and some sort of pretty, dramatic music is played in the background.
This wouldn’t be a proper term for what you’ve described. It’s more of a tangential note on what this technique might be used for.
Kurt Weill used something a little like this in some of the songs he wrote (the lyrics dont match the tone of the song). Although he was often doing satire, it was working in support of the overall effect Brecht was often trying to achieve. The intent to take the audience out of the moment - not only to make them realize they’re watching a show, but also to reconsider the events as depicted. (The technical term is Verfremdungseffekt, or V-effect for short). With Brecht it was stage productions, and went beyond just the music. The overall emotional intent was quite similar, however.
Would Truman’s reunion with his dad in The Truman Show count as an example?
Can’t find a clip, but that’s when you hear this sweeping emotional music playing in the movie when Truman walks toward his long-lost father, then we jump to Christof’s control room, where he tells the keyboardists (?) there to pump up the strings, and you realize how Truman is being manipulated and you’re observing his manipulation.
Associative dissonance? 
No, that’s not right. Drat! I’ve read the term before, I believe in referance to Kubrick, in fact. cudgels brain I’ll post if I think of it.
I don’t know if this is quite the same as the scene is lacking in action but the scene in the bar in Pulp Fiction when Butch is getting bought out for the fight. the music in the background is “Lets stay together” of all things.
The scene from Reservoir Dogs is the one that comes to mind for me.
And there’s an absolutely great cutscene in the phenomenally underrated game The Getaway for PS2 where a guy, tied up and hung from the ceiling, is getting tortured to death with a live electrical wire by a bunch of sadistic thugs while this incredibly upbeat, poppy British song plays on the radio (my friend insists it’s by Junior Senior but I’m pretty sure it’s just a one-off song recorded specifically for the scene.)
God that game is great. Best cutscenes ever, maybe barring Metal Gear Solid 3.
I think that’s a good example. In another movie you might identify with Truman, being caught up in the reuniting scene - instead you’re noticing one more moment where the movie is making its point about media manipulation. It is rather Brechtian.
Brecht probably had a slightly different and more definite structure to his ideas, but it’s fair to say his influence is at play in many scenes like this.
For more examples, I’d like to throw in John Woo movies. Slo-mo hails of gunplay overlaid with light happy music.
Can’t speak for the OP, but it sure answered mine. And then some. Thanks for a truly terrific and informative post.
There’s a Buffy episode (Listening To Fear, season 5, episode 9) that has a great example of this.
Buffy is in the kitchen, doing dishes, and she turns on the radio. Distraught because
her mother just had a stroke
she bursts into tears. Meanwhile, the radio is playing this incredibly cheesy, peppy and repetitive salsa music. The contrast of the music playing while her body is wracked with sobs (plus she continues to wash dishes) makes what could have been a maudlin scene absolutely heartbreaking.
I suppose, according to the terminology jovan introduced, this would be causal anempathetic music?