In a PyQt application is it possible to kill only the GUI (Qt) part?
Any Python commands running should be unaffected, only the graphics should disappear.
how about QtGui.QWidget.setVisible(visible)  

PySide.QtGui.QWidget. setVisible ( visible )
     Parameters:  visible – PySide.QtCore.bool
     This property holds whether the widget is visible.
Calling setVisible(true) or PySide.QtGui.QWidget.show() sets the widget to visible status if all its parent widgets up to the window are visible. If an ancestor is not visible, the widget won’t become visible until all its ancestors are shown. If its size or position has changed, Qt guarantees that a widget gets move and resize events just before it is shown. If the widget has not been resized yet, Qt will adjust the widget’s size to a useful default using PySide.QtGui.QWidget.adjustSize() .
Calling setVisible(false) or PySide.QtGui.QWidget.hide() hides a widget explicitly. An explicitly hidden widget will never become visible, even if all its ancestors become visible, unless you show it.
A widget receives show and hide events when its visibility status changes. Between a hide and a show event, there is no need to waste CPU cycles preparing or displaying information to the user. A video application, for example, might simply stop generating new frames.
A widget that happens to be obscured by other windows on the screen is considered to be visible. The same applies to iconified windows and windows that exist on another virtual desktop (on platforms that support this concept). A widget receives spontaneous show and hide events when its mapping status is changed by the window system, e.g. a spontaneous hide event when the user minimizes the window, and a spontaneous show event when the window is restored again.
You almost never have to reimplement the PySide.QtGui.QWidget.setVisible() function. If you need to change some settings before a widget is shown, use PySide.QtGui.QWidget.showEvent() instead. If you need to do some delayed initialization use the Polish event delivered to the PySide.QtGui.QWidget.event() function.
Kill only Qt in PyQt