The Dung Ages: Difference between revisions

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.)

 

 

 

 

The growing [[Dungeon Punk]] subgenre blends Dung Ages squalor with [[Heroic Fantasy]] tropes and modern or near-future aesthetics. See also [[Medieval Morons]].

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[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 ''[[Animorphs]]'' book ''Elfangor's Secret'', which makes a big point about how bad the hygiene of the general populace was in medieval times. The animorphs find the time travelling villain by looking for someone clean.

** 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.

* ''[[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 emphatical encouraging to bathe. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are no less clean than the modern people.

** 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".

** The second series as well, the couple decide to buy Blackadder's house specifically because it doesn't have an indoor toilet.

* ''[[Maid Marian and Her Merry Men]]''

* The 1997 English mini-series of Sir [[Walter Scott]]'s ''[[Ivanhoe]]'' went for this kind of period accuracy in clothing, beards, and decor. On a small TV set, this left all the male characters looking drab, hairy, and nearly identical, while the scenes were so under-lit the parts of it this editor saw might just as well have been shot in a cave.

* ''[[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.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* 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.

 

* 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 worshipped an animal and rubbed its droppings on their clothing.

 

* 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 [http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/Death%20and%20Disease%20in%20Ancient%20Rome.htm sick people were encouraged] to visit them.

** There were plenty of disease outbreaks during the era of the Roman Empire. They didn't call July, August, September, and October [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.''

* 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.

** 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.

** [[wikipedia:Polish plait|The Polish Plait]], a sort of welding of the hair (due to excessive dirt) in a pigtail, which according to name was common among Polish peasants, affected even King Christian IV of Denmark. It would be [[Nightmare Fuel|horrible even to imagine]] [[Body Horror|how the lower classes looked]] in comparison to their King...