The Dung Ages: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"I mean, that's the thing about the past that people forget. All the shit. Animal shit. People shit. Cow shit. Horse shit. You waded through the stuff. You should spray 'em all with shit as they come through the gates."''
|[[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|Hob Gadling]] critiques a Renaissance Faire, '''[[Sandman]]'''}}
The convention to show the [[The Middle Ages|Medieval Era]] as a [[Crapsack World|crapsack time populated by]] [[The Pig Pen|pustule-faced, cat-beating, dung-caked, mud-farming peasants]]. Popularized by films created by the ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus|Monty Python]]'' team. (Partially for [[Rule of Funny]]—Monty Python's Terry Jones is a historian and knows better—and partially as a reaction against the flowery King Arthur-inspired romances that had shaped popular views of the era up until then.)
Portrayal of [[The Dung Ages]] is not limited to Britain and/or the Dark Ages. It's often seen even in portrayals of cultures where it doesn't belong. Many ancient Romans, for instance, bathed every day: once
Something to keep in mind is that neither The Dung Ages nor [[Ye Goode Olde Days]] is "more" accurate than the other. The reality is that while hygiene was not good by modern standards, and living conditions were not what we'd call "comfortable" (what with the lack of central heating and air conditioning, flush toilets, and weekly garbage pick-up); neither did most people walk around barefoot while caked in filth, eat rotten food<ref>although in a time of famine they might not be so picky.</ref> nor live in tumble-down huts made of sticks.
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{{examples}}
== Anime
* The setting of ''[[Berserk]]'' in general tends toward this, with only the royal courts having anything in the way of [[Gorgeous Period Dress]].
== Comic Books ==
* Hob Gadling in ''[[The Sandman]]'', who is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|really 600 years old]] but looks 30, grumpily complains that a Renaissance Fair or SCA event he's dragged to doesn't have enough shit everywhere. But later he complains that the toilets are "bloody disgusting" and gets back a "we strive for realism".
== Film ==
* Combined with [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] in ''[[Flesh and Blood]]''.
* Ridley Scott did this with his grittier, dung-ier take on ''[[Robin Hood (2010 film)|Robin Hood]]''. Lampshaded in the scene when the children capture Robin and he mentions that he can teach them to keep clean so they won't get sick.
* Robert Bresson's 1974 film ''[[Lancelot
* ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'', in which practically everyone runs around bedraggled, shabby and covered in filth, as noted by one character's caustic observation: "He must be a king. He hasn't got shit all over him." In fact, according to backstage reports, the attention of the two Pythons who were directing (Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam) to keeping things authentic in this regard eventually began to take on slightly obsessive tones and really began to piss off the other Pythons (and the other cast and crew members, for that matter), who were having to seriously suffer for their art. This eventually made it a pretty difficult shoot at times and also perhaps provided a reminder of why this trope exists in the first place. This said, however, Gilliam at least was willing to go through what he was putting everyone else through; his two main characters are probably the filthiest main characters in the movie.
** Terry Jones admits on the commentary track that this was exaggerated in comparison to what history research has indicated, mentioning for instance that skeletons from the time can have surprisingly good teeth due to the lack of sugar consumption.
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* ''[[Perfume]]'' depicts the 18th century Paris as the grossest place in the world; the book even points out that, while our 2008 Paris has at most a faint smell of car exhaust, the 18th century Paris smelled like crap, rot, sweat, rotten fish, urine, and any nasty odor you could imagine.
** Paris was also originally built on marshland, so it was pretty boggy until the swamp was drained in the 19th century.
* ''[[Yellowbeard]]'': Staring Graham Chapman, could be seen as an extension of the ''[[Monty Python]]'' motif.
* Mel Gibson's ''[[Braveheart]]''.
* The England depicted in ''[[Black Death (film)|Black Death]]'' is a filthy, depressing place to live (and probably die).
* Another ''Python'' offshoot (see a pattern here?) ''[[Erik the Viking]]'' (directed by Terry Jones) is also filthy dirty.
* The village landscape in ''[[Dragonheart]]'' are several shades of brown.
== Literature ==
* In the ''[[Gotrek and Felix]]'' book, ''Skaven Slayer'', Felix once went to a tailor to get some fancy clothes and then he had a hard time figuring out how to get to some guy's mansion without getting his clothes gross. He got there presentable by having a carriage take him there. (I forgot details such as if someone provided it to him, or if he saw a setting equivalent of taxi and thought 'oh that works!')▼
* Played with in [[George Macdonald Fraser]]'s novel ''[[The Pyrates]]''. The opening pages describe an idealized picture of England during [[The Cavalier Years]] with buxom wenches and lots of [[Gorgeous Period Dress]], but then refer to scholars' conclusion that the actual standard of living and cleanliness of the time made it closer to The Dung Ages. Fraser then dismisses these conclusions in a tongue-in-cheek way as [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]] and announces that he would prefer to write about 17th century England as it should have been.
* ''[[The Warlord Chronicles]]'' by Bernard Cornwell rips the [[King Arthur]] mythos from the medieval version of [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] setting into this one.
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* Averted in Leo Frankowski's ''[[Conrad Stargard]]'' series. Good hygiene doesn't show up in the medieval town of Okoitz until the titular [[Time Travel|time-traveling]] engineer's reforms start taking effect.
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' goes for the duality of [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] and The Dung Ages. A lot of the action involves the nobles, but it's made clear that the "smallfolk" are having a pretty shitty time of it, usually paying the price for disputes between lords. The moral aspects of the era are called up, as well—thirteen is seen as a perfectly valid age for marriage, the most popular system of justice is trial by combat, castration's still a legal punishment... [[Crapsack World|Westeros is just not a nice place]].
* ''[[The Witcher]]'', in all its postmodernist glory. Here it goes even to the higher classes, at least in the North, where even kings would need a rather
** Which is completely intentional. On the other hand, in his brilliantly acerbic critical essay ''The Pirog'', Sapkowski lampshaded the tendency of hiding behind the postmodernism by telling a story how after another author defended his decision to put a batiste panties on on of his characters as "postmodernist",<ref>The Witcher's world is in a late Medieval/early Renaissance period historically, so batiste, invented in a XIII century, was perfectly accurate for the period.</ref> the said author dressed his own character into a mail made of scales of a giant catfish—which doesn't have scales ''at all''. As Sapkowski noted, "creating a mail of something that doesn't exist requires ether exceptionally strong magic, or exceptionally strong postmodernism".
* Completely averted in the novel of ''Timeline'', by [[Michael Crichton]]. After a hard day's work, sure, the people are dirty—but then they go home and bathe. At least within the fortress walls, but that's where as many people as possible live, for the protection.
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* Invoked by Ellie, word for word, in ''[[Avalon High]]''. While others may have romantic notions of the Middle Ages, this daughter of Medieval scholars has absolutely zero desire to be one of them.
* In ''[[Evolution (novel)|Evolution]]'' a hunter-gatherer arriving in a Proto-Indo-European city (about 6000 BC) is understandably appalled by the hygienic conditions following the rapid population growth.
* Deliberately avoided in the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' novels, where everyone bathes regularly if they can, including public baths. Of course, this is a setting where everyone has access to at least some degree of [[Elemental Powers]], so hot, fresh water is commonplace thanks to fire and water furies. The injured and wounded are actually the cleanest, as the healing abilities of watercrafting usually require the patient to be submerged in a tub. Bathing for cleanliness is a bit harder to acquire for the Legions when they're in the field, to the point where the camp followers can make a decent income off of providing hot baths for
▲* In the ''[[Gotrek and Felix]]'' book, ''Skaven Slayer'', Felix once went to a tailor to get some fancy clothes and then he had a hard time figuring out how to get to some guy's mansion without getting his clothes gross. He got there presentable by having a carriage take him there. (I forgot details such as if someone provided it to him, or if he saw a setting equivalent of taxi and thought 'oh that works!')
== Live Action TV ==
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* ''The Dark Ages'', a 1990s [[Britcom]] by Rob Grant, starring Phil Jupitus.
* Featured in one of the regular sketches in ''[[French And Saunders]]''.
== Tabletop Games ==
* Since it's such a [[Crapsack World]] already, ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'''s Old World loves to include elements of The Dung Ages. A typical Bretonnian army has both the stereotypical Arthurian knights and the gross, almost-worthless filth-covered peasants they've conscripted.
* Often glossed over in the ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' world, but ''Blacksand!'', the second volume of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy series, details just how filthy and stinking the streets of [[Wretched Hive|Port Blacksand]] are. In some parts of the city, there's so much mud and horse crap on the streets, that it can be '''waist deep''' for a Dwarf.
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Demon's Souls]]'' and ''[[Dark Souls]]'', both being heavily influenced by [[Berserk]] are this. It's most obvious in the Vally of Defilement and Blighttown respectively. These areas are nasty, disgusting, plague ridden towns built over swamps.
== Web Comics ==
* Appears in ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' once, with some [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0212.html mud-farming peasants].▼
▲* Appears in ''[[Order of the Stick]]'' once, with some [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0212.html mud-farming peasants].
== Web Original ==
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== Western Animation ==
* One of the ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' plots is to gain money via Robin Hood methods, and get indoor plumbing to England, which would inspire the people to make them kings. While everything else works, the plan falls flat because the English didn't want to be bathed, believing hot water and soap to be a lethal combination.
* In the short lived cartoon ''Mad Jack the Pirate'', Jack and Snuck visited a very poor village who
* Averted [[Rule of Funny|humorously]] on ''[[Family Guy]]'' in an early episode showing the Griffins attending a medieval festival featuring [[Eternal Sexual Freedom]], plenty of good food, and a chorus of monks grunting Gary Glitter's "Rock 'N' Roll Part One." (Peter even sarcastically remarks that the characters at the festival act so hoity-toity that they remind him of the TV show ''[[Frasier]]''.) This from the same series that regularly portrays [[The Fifties]] unflatteringly, with iron-toothed racial segregation (even in the North!) and people so grotesquely gluttonous that they [[Extreme Omnivore|literally ''eat'' cigarettes]].
== Real Life ==
* The perception then was bathing was sinful. In Roman Empire times, bathing was a social activity when people would go to public bathhouses and gymnasiums not just to keep clean, but also to relax, socialize with peers, and engage in prostitution. These places were seen as places of decadences (opponents claiming they were essentially swinger clubs or brothels in all but name), together with the gladiatorial games. Hence, Queen Isabella and some saints got the "holy" credit for not bathing.
** People in the middle ages weren't necessarily worse for the wear for missing out on the public baths. As the vast majority of Roman baths were un-chlorinated bodies of rarely-changed, standing water frequented by large groups of people with questionable hygiene, the cleanliness they offered was only skin deep. Especially since [https://web.archive.org/web/20190921040751/http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/Death%20and%20Disease%20in%20Ancient%20Rome.htm sick people were encouraged] to visit them.
* After the fall of the Roman Empire, bringing in the [[Dark Age Europe|so-called Dark Ages]], Rome might as well have been known as Malaria City.
** There were plenty of disease outbreaks during the era of the Roman Empire. They didn't call July, August, September, and October [https://web.archive.org/web/20190921040751/http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/Death%20and%20Disease%20in%20Ancient%20Rome.htm "sickly"] for nothing. Residents were told to go somewhere else, if at all possible, those months. 30,000 Roman residents died ''every year''. Bathhouses and aqueducts didn't protect against malaria: it is estimated that over half of all Roman children became infected during summers when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power.
* Even better, up until the late 1400s and early 1500s, there were still a few public baths in operation in major European cities and [[Medieval Stasis|the collective memory of the people drove them to still practice the Roman custom of bathing]], infrequently as they could afford to, and supposedly not knowing ''why'' would they do it in the first place. It can be said The Dung Ages come [[Did Not Do the Research|immediately ''after'' the end of the Middle Ages]] proper.
** [http://www4.gvsu.edu/wrightd/Honors%20216/GreatFamineandBlackDeath.htm Quote]: ''The conversion of forest into arable land had reduced the supply of wood, however, and the bath houses began to shut down because of the expense of heating the water. They tried using coal, but decided that burning coal gave off unhealthy fumes and abandoned the use of the stuff. By the mid-fourteenth century, only the rich could afford to bathe during the cold Winter months, and most of the population was dirty most of the time.''
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** In the North, where the winters were brutal and forests abundant, they even had heated outhouses, built up to the back wall of the house, where the stove was installed, and heated by its warmth. The outhouse was connected to the main building by the special gallery that kept the filth ans smells away and was also used for storage.
* When the automobile was invented, it was thought by many that this would ''reduce'' pollution, because the city streets would no longer be filled with horse dung (and the occasional dead horse). It can be argued that the Dung Ages in New York City lasted ''until the 20th century.''
** Arguably it did reduce pollution, as the
** The Italians performed an
* Refugee camps in ''any'' era are usually reminiscent of this trope, as hygiene is the ''last'' thing that desperate, weary people fleeing starvation and violence are going to worry about. No shortage of displaced people in medieval times.
* A family that lived for several years on a replica Iron Age farm said that the modern convenience they missed most was welly boots. Every winter was a losing battle against mud. Hence the tradition of Spring Cleaning.
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