Basic Trope: A character lies on a piano seductively.
- Straight: Alice lies seductively on a piano in a cocktail dress as she sings and Bob plays the piano.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice lies naked on a piano and sings in the middle of a crowded ballroom.
- Alice and Bob literally have sex on a piano while someone's playing it in a packed stadium.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is dressed quite conservatively, but is quite beautiful.
- Alice just leans against the piano.
- Justified: The stage is tiny and crowded, there's no room for Alice anywhere but on top of the piano.
- Gender-Inverted: Bob lies seductively on the piano while Alice plays it.
- Inverted:
- Alice, an ugly gonk, poses on the piano.
- Alice, a beautiful woman, plays the piano.
- Subverted: During Alice's song, she does a Supermodel Strut towards the piano, but veers away instead of lounging on it.
- Double Subverted: Then she turns back again and climbs onto the piano.
- Parodied:
- Bob convinces Alice that a naked woman lying sultrily on a piano is an essential part of piano playing, and she reluctantly strips, climbs aboard his piano and poses in front of the orchestra audience. When she learns that it's not, she punches him and runs away naked.
- Bob is literally only capable of playing the piano well when Alice lies on it naked.
- Bob is an awful musician who plays completely out of key; it's only Alice's piano that's keeping the patrons' attention.
- Alice sings about how lying on a piano can be dangerous. The piano breaks and she falls off midway.
- Bob convinces Alice that a naked woman lying sultrily on a piano is an essential part of piano playing, and she reluctantly strips, climbs aboard his piano and poses in front of the orchestra audience. When she learns that it's not, she punches him and runs away naked.
- Zig Zagged:
- Averted: Alice remains standing throughout her performance and doesn't give the piano a second look.
- Enforced:
- The Film Noir needs to Avoid the Dreaded G Rating, Alice standing normally wasn't sexy enough.
- "Alice playing our licensed song on piano for three minutes is gonna be so boring. How do we keep people's attention?" "Eh, sex it up a bunch."
- Lampshaded: "Aw man, she's doing the piano thing. Are we back in the roaring twenties?"
- Invoked: Alice wants to seduce someone in the audience. Bob gives Alice the idea to do a sexy pose on his piano.
- Exploited:
- Alice is hiding a corpse in the piano and lounges on it to keep it shut until the performance is over and she can dispose of it.
- Brittany shoves Alice off the piano to injure her.
- Defied:
- Bob orders Alice to get off the piano before she breaks it or scratches the varnish with her dress's sequins.
- Alice refuses to get on the piano due to fears she will break it or believing it looks stupid.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Implied: While watching the performance, Carol comments "That's not how you use a piano" when Dave shushes her.
- Deconstructed:
- The piano breaks and Alice injures herself.
- Bob is distracted and messes up the composition.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice just leans on the piano or gets a specially reinforced one.
- A small partition is set so Bob can't see Alice.
- Played For Laughs: The venue has a sign counting the days since the last piano repair/replacement.
- Played For Drama: Alice sings a song about heartbreak.
- Played For Horror: Alice is found stabbed to death and artfully arranged on the piano, which plays by itself despite all attempts to silence it.
Back to Sitting Sexy on a Piano
