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]]
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
Strong aversions of
The growing [[Dungeon Punk]] subgenre blends Dung Ages squalor with [[Heroic Fantasy]] tropes and modern or near-future aesthetics. See also [[Medieval Morons]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* 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
* 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
** 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.
** The scene with the "autonomous collective" was supposed to take place on a normal-looking farm. Because they couldn't get access to a real farm on their filming budget, they changed it to a ''mud farm.''
{{quote|
* Terry Gilliam's film ''[[Jabberwocky]]'', overall depicting the Middle Ages as a pretty damn nasty place to live. Even the king's clothes are ragged and dirty.
* The French movie ''[[Les Visiteurs]]''
* ''[[
** Paris was also originally built on marshland, so it was pretty boggy until the swamp was drained in the 19th century.
* ''[[
* Mel Gibson's ''[[Braveheart]]''.
* The England depicted in ''[[Black Death (
* Another ''Python'' offshoot (see a pattern here?) ''[[
* The village landscape in ''[[Dragonheart]]'' are several shades of brown.
== Literature ==
* 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 Warlord Chronicles]]'' by Bernard Cornwell rips the [[King Arthur]] mythos from the medieval version of [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] setting into this one.
* Invoked in the ''[[
** Not just bad hygiene, bad ''health'' as well. They actually specifically call attention to the fact that even the really important kingy people have giant sores in their faces from smallpox and what have you. When they say "clean" they actually specifically mean "doesn't have a face full of holes".
* 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 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
* Completely averted in the novel of ''Timeline'', by [[Michael Crichton]]. After a hard day's work, sure, the people are
** And the introduction pulls no punches in criticizing the foundations of this stereotype.
* Averted to some extent in the [[Aubrey-Maturin]] series. Conditions ashore can often be pretty messy, but much is made throughout the course of the books about the Royal Navy's positive fetish for cleanliness on board ship (and the reasons why such an obsession was, in fact, very sensible indeed), and Jack Aubrey's home, Ashgrove Cottage, is kept shipshape by retired sailors.
** O'Brien has a great deal of fun playing with the expectations of a bachelor house in the books, to the point of doing a literary [[Gilligan Cut]]. Scene 1 -- rural English gentlewomen speculating how messy Aubrey's house must be (since he has no proper maid or servants). Scene 2 -- a description of how the sailors acting as servants clean the house just like they do the
* Sometimes averted, sometimes upheld in [[Eric Flint]]'s ''[[1632]]'' series. The "downtime" Germans of the 17th century are notable in their day and age as having some of the cleanest cities and towns in Europe, but some other places - Edinburgh, for one - are every bit as filthy as stereotype would have it. {{spoiler|Indeed, Julie Sims Mackay's infant daughter contracts a severe infection while passing through Edinburgh from which she almost dies.}}
* 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 (
* 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 ==
* ''[[
** The second series as well, the couple decide to buy Blackadder's house specifically because it doesn't have an indoor toilet.
* ''[[
* The BBC's ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'' (2006) includes some elements of
* The 1997 English mini-series of Sir [[Walter Scott]]'s ''[[
* HBO's ''[[Rome]]'' has
* ''[[Hercules: The Legendary Journeys]]'' had Herc's greedy friend Salmoneous invest in a dung-fertilizer business run by brothers who had become ''way'' too desensitized to the substance.
* Tony Robinson's ''[[Worst Jobs in History]]'' confirmed this to be quite literal [[Truth in Television]]. A key component of the daub in wattle and daub construction was manure.
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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
* 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 ==
* ''[[
== Web Comics ==
* Appears in ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' once, with some [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0212.html mud-farming peasants].▼
==
* Debunked in ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s "[http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html 6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes]" and "[http://www.cracked.com/article_20615_5-ridiculous-myths-you-probably-believe-about-dark-ages.html 5 Ridiculous Myths You Probably Believe About the Dark Ages]".
▲* Appears in ''[[Order of the Stick]]'' once, with some [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0212.html mud-farming peasants].
== 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
==
* 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.''
** In Russia, where the forests were so abundant that even ''now'' there are
* Queen Isabella II of Spain bathes only twice in her entire life. This is the ''queen'' we're talking about here. That's saying something.
** The reason why is often cited for the same reason mothers still warn their children not to get wet in the rain. The guy who gets cold and wet is more likely to get sick. Showers involve getting cold and wet. So logically, those who don't shower don't get sick.
** The pale yellow color called "
** Louis XIV of France is another famous ruler who is said to not have bathed more than a few times in his life (most of the occasions when he did get clean from head to toe was when he was about to enjoy a new mistress for the first time). The contrast with the [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] of the time is all the more glaring.
** [
** Mariners of later parts of the Age Of Sail (when water was at a premium on board all ships) would help this process along with some tar.
** It should be noted that the queen would be bathing far less than anyone else. That is why she bragged about it, because she was an exception that proves the rule. Commoners who worked had to bathe far more often to clean off dirt, sweat, and other things that made them smell. She was showing off that she was rich and powerful enough that people did everything for her; she didn't work up a sweat, so she didn't need to bathe. Moreover, she had oodles of servants who could give her ''sponge'' baths whenever she wished. Bathing in a tub like a villager, or a pond like a peasant, meant doing the work of scrubbing yourself.
* Following horses to clean up after them is relatively recent. Before then, wherever they wanted to go, they went. Even if the horse died right in the street, it was left there to rot. It was only moved if it was blocking traffic. But the horses went quickly even if the street cleaners didn't do anything. They would get grabbed up by butchers.
** ''Herbert Wells'' once wrote a pretty apocalyptic article where he pictured London covered to the roofs in the horse
* Up until the 19th century, the water from the Thames was used both for drinking and sewage. This is why there are portraits of kids drinking beer, it was much safer than water.
** This is true for most of history, actually; water is rarely entirely safe to drink, regardless of man-made contaminants. The reason has little to do with the alcohol content (which could be as low as 1% for "small beer") and everything to do with the very first step in making beer: ''boiling the water.''
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** On the flip side, to Muslim observers, who are required to wash their hands and faces ''five times a day'' for religious reasons (can't pray if your face and hands aren't washed) they were ''still'' too filthy and disgusting.
** An old legend about the Crusades tells the story of a wounded soldier, first tended by a cleaner, wiser Islamic doctor whose work is undone by a filthy Frank physician: he simply amputated the injured limb, obviously leading to infection and death.
* Similarly averted by the Slavs, who were living in much the same condition as Norsemen, had a pretty similar culture, and frequently intermingled. Every weekend was a bath day, and the house didn't count as such if it hadn't an adjacent bath built up close.
** 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.
* An interesting subversion in ancient Rome - there is the story of a nobleman who was very proud of his gleaming smile (by virtue of cleaning them with the acidic properties of urine). A rival nobleman called him out on it, saying "You brag about having the whitest teeth, but this only means that you drink the most piss."
* [
* In the Philippines, Spanish friar historians frequently cracked down on the "unholy" practice of bathing in rivers by the natives, mainly because men and women bathed together though they still covered themselves up. Note that up until the late 19th century, the Philippine culture as it was run by the Spanish was described by some observers as medieval.
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[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:The Dung Ages]]
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