Banging Pots and Pans

We're banging pots and pans
To make you understand!
It's the song I hate
Sonic Youth, "Youth Against Fascism"

Want to get someone's attention, especially if they're sleeping? Banging pots and pans will certainly do.

Alternatively, it may be used to signal that it is time to eat.

Compare Trash Can Band, when this is done for music.

Examples of Banging Pots and Pans include:

Anime and Manga

• In Azumanga Daioh, Osaka says that it's always been a dream of hers to wake someone up by banging on a frying pan with a spoon. She, half-asleep, attempts to do so to Yukari (but ends up leading to the Memetic "knife" scene).
• Last Exile: Lavie wakes Claus every morning by banging a hammer against a sheet of metal.

Literature

• In Ranger's Apprentice, The Siege of Macindaw has Malcolm's people banging pots and pans as part of a distraction for the attack.

Newspaper Comics

• Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin bangs on a pot for two panels. His mom tells him to stop giving her a headache. In the final panel, Calvin is marking his calendar, "And a check mark for Tuesday!"
• Garfield does this a lot to Jon.

Real Life

• Some families celebrate New Year's by going outside at midnight and banging on pots and pans to make as much noise as humanly possible.
• Little kids absolutely love raising hell with pots and pans like this.
• Used as a form of protest in South America, particularly Chile and Argentina.

Video Games

• Cook Kirby does this, in the "time to eat" variation.

Western Animation

• This is done a lot in Looney Tunes cartoons. Many times it's in a particular order—shout, then bang pots and pans, then the one-man band.
• The Simpsons: in a Flash Back to when Bart was 2 and Marge was pregnant with Lisa, we see Bart with a pot on his head, banging another pot.

Bart: I am so great! I am so great! Everybody loves me, I am so great!
Marge:' Honey, honey, honey, honey, honey. Could you please be quiet?
Bart: Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! Quie--
Marge: Bart, get out!

• The Aaahh Real Monsters episode "Attack of the Blobs" had the main trio take shifts in taking care of an infant monster. Ickis is banging the trash can lids during his shift.