The Middle Ages according to historians VS the middle ages according to "Hollywood"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- When a film crew came to the experimental living history archaeological open-air Middelaldercentret museum in Denmark they decided that the way historians, archaeologists and experts thought he middle ages looked like just wasn't filthy enough and they turned the place into a mess.
When I say Hollywood, I of course mean the movie/TV industry in general, not just films made in Hollywood.
Based on this viral thread here;
/ 1597290024877182977
Article explaining why the film crew was wrong about the middle ages;
fakehistoryhun...
Museum website;
www.middelalde...
The film in question is '12 Paces Without a Head' (2009)
Before you comment, check out the article that accompanies the Medieval Myths Bingo card, it explains every myth and why it's a myth, accompanied with a whole bunch of sources:
fakehistoryhunter.net/2019/09/10/medieval-myths-bingo/
Don't forget lit torches and candles all over the place during the day.
Why do they do this though?
Where the wax and animal fats are pretty expensive back in those days!??
SURE, HELL YEAH!!
and at night so many candles. maybe one hundred in a room for the lord
@@Anton43218 I meant hollywood do this, im pretty sure people dint in the middle ages since candles would be expensive. And torches dont burn that long.
This one at least has a bit of a practical purpose by adding extra lighting on the set.
-Normal people: "Oh, cool the middle ages!"
-Hollywood for some reason: "MUDPUNK WORLD"
@mortadelusmaximus
Mudpunk sounds like a band name.
What a coincidence! "Mudpunk" is my bands new name!
This made me laugh so hard.
"for some reason" 😂
"Oh look the king!"
"How do you know?"
"Well he ain't got shit all over 'im"
I’m so tired of the lack of color in media set in the middle ages. Everything’s gotta be brown and gray
It literally gets so boring and repetitive
Gotta keep that narrative of linearly progressing history propped up somehow
The colorful fifties with man in tights was the real deal.
Same with Rome, everything is white marble
as it should be.
Cleanliness wasn't discovered until Hollywood invented it apparently.
Until 'Merica invented it!
...In 1922 ^^
Well, they did not bathe often, if at all. Even in early America. But you can't see the odors in a movie! The Romans did bathe quite often, but it didn't seem to catch on and last after Rome fell. Maybe because they couldn't maintain the infrastructure needed to run the Roman baths.
@@tedrice1026depends on what you consider clean. Roman bathing wasn't hygienic it was recreational communal bathing for naughty things. As for medieval hygiene you can see tomes suggest ritualistic etiquette which points to atleast smells and appearance of hygiene. Now the difficulty of medieval sources is that you don't have a smoking gun because of the vast diversity of fiefdoms and cultures around. But as for the primary cultures of English, Italian, Spanish, high German, Francien we do see extensive efforts in personal sanitation with the advent of hospitals and wide adoption of balanced humors. The primary depiction of filth was mostly a misconception of progress due to many victorian writers depicting incredibly deteriorating slums assuming that before it was worse. Personal hygiene was at it's worst when you can logistically sustain an unhealthy body in contact with as many sick people like in the 2nd industrial revolution.
@@charlesramirez587 yeah , but the roman period ain't exactly medieval
People in the middle ages did not know of bacteria and viruses, but they certainly knew the link between dirtiness and disease.
Don't even need to know that, if it's smells bad it's obviously bad so they'd clean it
@@fueyo2229 exactly
They surely learned the hard way. That kind of knowledge tends to stick.
They didn't know what bacteria was but they were on the right track. I believe they thought that disease was spread by tiny invisible evil spirits which if you think about it is basically bacteria anyways.
Even if we assume everyone believed in the bad air theory. That disease and plague is spread on stank air. That’s more than enough to have people care for their environment. You don’t want things to smell like poo
I agree, the Hollywood version was totally wrong.
Not even one carriage full of dead people and no one aired out their cat against a wall.
Looks like there's a bit of shubbery hanging off the roofs of the background houses.
"og hvor spiller døden ludo om en ridders sjæl."
"Must be a king."
"Why?"
"He asn't gawt shi all over'im."
“Bring out your dead!”
"BRING OUT YER DEAD!" "I'm not dead!"
So aparantly Shrek had a better represenation of the architecture from middle ages despite being an animated film.
Any of the Disney fairy tales also got the design right.
@@cryora true true
@@cryora You really have to read a lot from the correct to sources to get a clear idea about how people where living back then I think it is a privilege for historians and all the kind of scientist who do research in this domain. It is very different from knowing a series of facts to understand people lives and how they felt about it. We were still the same as today, 500, 1000 years is nothing for a specie, but the perspective on the world was so different, most people would live their whole life and care for their local area, 50km was already a long distance, but they were not lesser or more than todays' people.
@@cryora Probably because it fits the Fairy Tale Vibed. Then again those Fairy Tales are from the Time Period. 😂
Duloc is an accurate depiction of the Alps yes
It’s even funnier when people think that slums were once something widespread and as old as cities themselves, when in fact the slums epidemic was only brought about by the advent of the Industrial Revolution and massive increase in the city sizes
Absolutely, in some ways things got worse after the middle ages, especially when industry grew and when cities became more and more overpopulated and also lost their agricultural character.
Not really, they were a common feature to any major city with high economic opportunity. Which is arguably also the reason why the became more common during the industrial revolution. Granted they became increasingly common during the industrial revolution due to loads of poor people moving from non-urban areas, significantly higher influx of people than the places could build housing for (let alone be affordable) and in turn increasing demand and by extension cost of living in the city.
There were many cities across the world with over a million people in before even the middle ages, never mind the industrial revolution. Every single one of them would have had massive tracts of slums. Rome was notorious for it.
@@lysandersensale2792 But those situations were nothing like they would become after the middle ages.
Most medieval cities still had an agricultural character, houses with yards and gardens, plenty of space for outhouses, wells, cesspits, dungheaps, etc.
It wasn't till cities became permanently overpopulated that problems got seriously out of hand, till then they of course regularly happened but they could often still fix those problems, even if temporarily.
Hollywierd also thinks that the poor people didn't know how to fix holes in their walls, or cut wood straight.
The modern Fallout series has the exact same problem.
@yu8vc1is8z Imported from Lebanon.
@@mrviking2mcall212
Yeah literally anyone in that show is a bumbling idiot except the ghoul who is coincidentally named „Howard“ like Todd Howard
@yu8vc1is8z They had enough tree for hundreds of ships. And remember most of the ship they built was used for transporting goods, the big military ships came after when their sea fahrer culture was booming. This question is not this controversial.
Romans have especially good resources. The mediterraneum is not realy semi-desert.
@@mrviking2mcall212 I was just thinking of fallout 4! Like, people have been living in a home for years, but never bothered to move the skeleton out of their living room.
They just follow the tropes of 'everyone was stupid before 1776 etc'
Also noticed in 90% of battle scenes nobody wears colour despite most wearing ornate garments to look nice and distinguish themselves
Edit: calling the people back then all dirty yet they are the ones who trash the village
Completely missing the fact that heraldry was started in part so that you'd know who not to impale on the battlefield
Hell in Ukraine troops wear blue and red tape on their arms and helmets to distinguish themselves.
@@thetankhunter100 similarly in the English civil war where fashion drove many to look the same they wore orange or red sashes / scarves to distinguish themselves too
The older I get and the more history I learn, I realize we have always had beautiful cities, gardens, and common aesthetic amenities we have today.
@@theprancingprussianwow such two not alike colours! No friendly fire problems could arise from this!
Also people in the Middle Ages tended to dress way more flamboyantly than most people today realize. In fact, the outfits were often so bright and colorful that they'd be considered downright gaudy by today's standards. It was especially true for wealthier people, but even peasants wore colorful outfits. It wasn't a sea of drab browns, greys, and greens like a lot of modern people imagine thanks to movies.
Colourful albeit more in a pastel palette. If you've seen people working with historical dyes it's noticeable that the hues aren't as bold and vivid as modern acrylic dyes, being washed out and weak by comparison. There's also the issue of them often not being colourfast leading to fading and running over time. It's the main reason why such bold colours were in such demand and Tyrian purple could command the price it did (it was not only a true purple but got even more so the longer the garment lasted).
There was a period of time after one of the plagues in Britain, when regular working people were commanding good wages and living well, that laws were passed banning regular people from dressing flamboyantly.
@@PRH123 That was more pointed towards the upper end of society, rich merchants and the aristocracy. Those Sumptuary Laws included other things like food, fabric and furniture and had a trade protectionists bent to them aimed at supporting the domestic wool trade.
@@docholiday7975 hmm, this period was much earlier, after a plague had significantly reduced the population, and encompassed regular working people, I’ll dig about in my bookmarks and try to find the link to the utube video on the subject
@@PRH123 You have sumptuary laws in England going back to at least the 13th C, well before the plague. The 1337 one is the first to apply broadly to society what with forbidding the use of foreign fabric outside the royal family and forbidding the use of fur outside of to anyone outside the titled elite; it is notably several years prior to the plague entering Europe and contrasts latter ones with applying across so much of society rather than those at the upper end jostling for recognition. Latter ones like the 1363, 1379, 1402, 1406, 1420, 1483 & 1509 fail to contain specific detail to common working people, pertaining instead to wealthy burgher and artisans at the lowest whose specified wealth in the laws was considerable, enough that the latter would only be masters of large, successful, guild workshops. These were kind of people who could afford to pay half a pound for a yard of silk fabric (late 15th C price), not like weaver or a thatcher who was paid 7 pounds a year (same period) and spent most of it on food and rent.
i also love how hollywood thinks the 1st and 2nd centuries look as clean and pristine as modern post-industrial cities. seems like roman period was probably not as clean as hollywood thinks it is, and the middle ages were not as dirty and backwards as hollywood thinks it is. probably a smaller delta between the height of the roman empire and the middle ages
It’s been argued plenty of times there is more continuity than change between the Roman period and the Middle Ages. It can also be argued that the average quality of life for people in Western Europe increased during the Middle Ages compared to Rome with the advent of new technology and forms of social organisation
London was really filthy and stinky during the Victorian Era!
Imagine, growing from under a million in the early 19th century to about 2.5 million during the Big Stink in 1858, because there were no sewers.
@@AudieHolland And that was the era where it started the "black legend" of the dark ages compared to the marvels of modernity. When London was a lot cleaner and safer DURING middle age.
@@sean668 Middle age is a pretty varied period of time. In the era of migration the quality of life of people in the previous Roman Empire generally didn't improve. And that's reflected in a drastic population decline.
High middle age was generally a good period to live in. The previous depopulation left plenty of land for expansion. There were no generalized famine nor plagues. It had been a period of positivism, when scholars rejected superstitions. High middle age scholars, IE, generally didn't believe in ghosts, magic or witches.
Late middle age and early modern age (from late 13th century) came back to be pretty shitty. First overpopulation left no land for further expansion of crops, and periods of famine became common, then came the plague of mid 14th century, that bounced back and forth throughout Europe for the next three centuries so that, on average, a place was hit every 15-20 years. Then the wars of religion.
It’s called propaganda
Next you're going to show me proof that Mexico isn't entirely in sepia tone, huh?
Nah, that's real. It's all in sepia, even the jungle. And they all use white clothes with straw hats and sandals.
@@TheAlchaemist Oh okay thanks. ;)
In seriousness, there is a fun video on Kodak film stocks which explains why many 1970's-1980's films all have the same colour balance, before it was possible to create the infinitely variable digital colour grading that is possible now.
Sure, buddy. What's next? Russia isn't covered in greenish hue? Lmao
/s
LOL. Too true. It's amazing how they think you can film Mexico by just shooting video in a dirty place in LA and changing the color tone to sepia.
One thing in movies that is funny to me is that every battle scene is on a stormy and dark day. It seems funny to me to imagine medieval war on a sunny, blue skied day with birds chirping. 🤣
I can assure you birds wouldn't stay and watch, all that noise will scare them away
Sounds realistic if it's depicting a summer battle in England.
It starts on a sunny and blue skied day and ends on hell
Actually I love that contrast, a beautiful blue sky in a forest with birds chirping...
and then immediately cut off to show absolute carnage between two very colorful armies clashing. Like it seems like a very paradoxical and even contrasting world, but that was their world and even to day in some cases it remains so.
@@legna1932 Yeah that is true, but the picture of a sunny summer day war is still funny
Apparently they didn't wanna waste time being accurate. Oh wait it was accurate I guess he did wanna waste time.
by doing hours of work to make it less accurate....
Gotta work hard to fit the propaganda of everything in the past being a miserable hellhole and Modernity being the saviour of Mankind. B^)
@@Sanguivore the past was beautiful
@@bastait Amen, my friend!
@@Sanguivore this comment section makes me feel like im not alone.
This happens with depictions of prehistoric peoples all the time! They always shown as wearing filthy rag like animal skins and their hair is always matted and unkempt. No animal on earth keeps itself unhygienic.Chimps and all apes for that matter spend large amounts of time grooming each other’s body. Being clean is a matter of life and death for all animals. Not having a strong odor is also important for both prey and predator. The earliest civilizations reveal that humans had numerous methods for grooming both for hygiene and aesthetic purposes. This has been a pet peeve of mine for decades.
I was just about to write something similar. We always see prehistoric people on TV with dirt on their faces which is ridiculous. We can see hunter gatherers living today who care about their appearance and are well groomed. The same most likely applied to our ancestors, including Neanderthals !
@@tombassman one of the oldest tools found was a comb.
No, I think they're going way over board on the cleanliness. The homeless prove you can live in terrible conditions for years upon years. Same with London and how it's built on trash.
Water back then was scarce and a death sentence in quite a few situations. It's actually misconception that we hydrated with water. It was mostly with meat and veggies and beer or other fermented stuff.
@@TallicaMan1986 Industrial age London is not what I’m referring to, and homeless people are a result of a deranged economic system, in ancient societies people people with what we deem mental illnesses may have been held in esteem and they certainly wouldn’t be left to live in squalor the way the richest nation on earth does today . Comparing ancient people to modern homelessness shows the effect those misguided depictions have had on you and many others. The fact of the matter is that ancient humans societies and so-called primitive societies reveal well groomed peoples. Interestingly enough the standards of living after the advent of agriculture shows that health and hygiene actually suffered compared to before people began living in cities and towns. Two different books both entitled *AGAINST THE GRAIN* flesh out the details, one by James Scott,the other by Manning.
They also show cave people being stupid.
It's kind of a "clapping coconuts = the sound of horse hooves" thing. During the Enlightenment, there was what I can only describe as a smear campaign against the Middle Ages. That is where I'd say 90% of what people think they know about the period comes from. The lies told were then repeated from one generation to the next, often with further embellishments, until you got to the film era. Those early film makers, when designing sets, tapped into what they thought they knew about the period. Subsequent film makers would then reference those first works and, eventually, it became something audiences came to expect in any "realistic" depiction of the perood; just like with hoofbeats sounding like coconuts.
I was watching a live cam of a mating pair of American bald eagles. And people in the comments (presumably Americans) were joking how bald eagles in life real life sounds nothing like how Hollywood portrays it. If I remember correctly, they said they used the sound of a red-tailed hawk.
@@markusgorelli5278 That is correct. Real Bald Eagles sound more like seagulls or a squeaky door hinge being quickly moved back and forth. Early foley artists thought such noises did not sound majestic enough for America's national bird.
Also, the MGM Lion's roar is taken from a Bengal Tiger.
A literal smear campaign in this case, seeing as the result is the entire medieval period being caked in shit
Fantasy, in the Hollywood fifties medieval time was colorful and richly decorated, competent on horses and fencing. Monty python & all. introduced realism and coconuts.
@@georgiykireev9678because it kind of wad. This whole cleanliness revolution is revisionist history.
Reminds me of a Cathedral Documentary I saw that’s tone was almost embarrassed. Like “sorry, we got to show you what these people accomplished”. It was strange.
Most likely an anti religion political group that made it, leftist usually.
The writer was probably a liberal
Truthfully, we should be a bit embarrassed. If they were able to accomplish such great and beautiful things in the past, why do we settle for so much less now?
@@Sanguivore technically we are extremely advanced however I’d say peak of western culture was 1750s French aristocracy and it’s been downhill since.
@@rayhill5767 Advanced, sure. But there's no *artistry* in modernity. Everything's so square, grey, and soulless.
If we saw beautifully sculped mixed-use housing that existed for centuries, modernists couldn't sell us ugly amalgams of steel, glass, and concrete apartments at grossly overpriced rates.
Exactly! Oh and don't forget the paper-thin stucco and hollow doors.
Is that a joke or do you genuinely think that’s a reason?
@@maxkozak9702 It's partially true, not a conspiracy of architects but rather the tastes and biases of the showmakers coming out.
always one socialists in the comments pretending all woes stem from free trade.
I think you ruined your joke by using 'modernists' instead of 'capitalists'
YES, THANK YOU. Came here from Max/Tasting History, and decided to start reading/watching your stuff. Here's what really messes me up with how medieval Europe and its theming is depicted in media: your average Japanese-developed RPG with a medieval fantasy setting is far more accurate in depicting the architecture and building styles of medieval Europe than your average Hollywood movie or television show. There are exceptions of course, but it's wild how much the Victorians warped the public's perception and expectation of that time period up to the present day.
Why the Victorians?
@@miloelite That's a good question, and I'm interested in hearing the answer
@@miloelite Because most of the myth about the middle ages started in the victorian era
Victorian England (specifically) was a dystopia and the Victorians ruined society in general. Change my mind.
Started way earlier... Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers placed the medieval period as an era of decline and superstition between themselves and the classical period... hence the 'Middle Ages'.
"how did europeans suddenly move from the dark ages to global empires??"
it is a legitemate question still asked by some historians
the simple answer is, the dark ages didn't exist, there was a period of allround decline during the great migrations and shortly after but that itsself was followed by the karolingian renaissance . Europe always remained on par with asia as well despite being more divided and in fact it was this division that fostered the competition needed for the fast expansion of european power and influence during the early modern period (which was more of an evolution out of the medieval period than a revolution of some sort)
many historians make a point to mention the much much greater wealth of eastern empires during the early modern period, they forget to mention that they base it mostly on the wealth of the royalty and nobility in these empires, from what we have we can deduce that the average person allready lived at a much lower standard of living than the average european peasant post 13th century, sources mention this dichotomy in living situations where european commoners lived in wood and brick houses whilst most in india lived in mudbrick dwellings at that time. (this comes mostly from literary sources but the same divide is still very clearly in place in much of these places.
in short, there were no dark ages,
also the streets were not covered in feces, european farms were in fact often banned from selling any detritus because this was essential for fertilising the best fields, cities were pretty clean because litterally all the waste was in demand.
@istoppedcaring6209 Basically just balkinization that resulted in certain cities and vilages declining.
Well said, very true. Europe needs more credit 🙏🏼
Got to add the little ice age into the mix,we were just leaving the Roman warm period and entering the little ice age so crops started to fail as did many cultures.
Yes I said it the temperature on earth did change before cars
@@stoneageart9965 Yes, if only this was taught in our schools. Probably one of the reasons I home school my children.
Be well.
Its because we are an anglo culture. The narrative comes from anglo saxon bias. England was a backwater for most of the middle ages and post western roman fall. It was really underdevloprd and full of piracy and wars and sacking...etc. it was a dump. The british isles did havw a dark age. All the infighting never let things get too good for them for long.
Europe as a whole absolutely didnt though
Biggest European cathedrals (Cologne Cathedral, Cathedral of Saints Vitus) started to be build during middle ages (13.-14. century).
that's late middle ages and sorry but life in Europe was crap. people literally threw their own shit to the streets.
Don;t get mad at hollywood, your own people called them Dark Ages.
@@aarengraves9962 where did you learn that they threw their trash out onto the street
@@crafterrium8724 In Kingdom Come Deliverance.
@@aarengraves9962 a video game? of course my bad because video games are the most trusted source for history ever
@@aarengraves9962 They only did that in cities when overwhelming majority of people lived in villages.
The reason why Hollywood made medieval towns look like that, is because they think its "realistic".
To be realistic doesn't mean true to the reality of things, it means to make something that seems "sensible" or believable to them and their audience. It's why some movie would make people curse alot when making "realistic" settings. It seems realistic.
Hollywood medieval towns are colorless, depressed mud city in because modernity is a colorless, depressed, mud(concrete) city. No way something in the past can be better right than that. That makes no sense.
The idea of a colorful town lit with candles and natural light sounds like something from LotR.
These medieval mud towns have more in common with American Ghetto cities than actual medieval villages in Europe.
Before the party was only horror. The party invented all good things. Big Brother loves us.
@@charliehedrick6414 someone gets it
Common idea, but like how you digged deeply
I personally believe in "le evil producers," who makes Middle Ages Europe look like this - it's can be for propaganda (like with Eastern European countries having "grey filter", or, in that case, "cool guy with a cigarette" trope would more fit - but to sell modern cities, like was sayed in comments above), out of racial or religious prejudice, or just making like everyone else
But I like how you make deeper statement, that it's about psychology of filmmakers - there is no reference in observable life about type of society and city that appeared in middle century - to see societies like this it's need to leave zone of comfort and even maybe leave USA (hardest challenge for filmmakers)
Sorry for rant
I say.
This reminds me of an exchange in the Jurassic Park novel. In it Henry Wu is explaining to Hammond that they made the dinosaurs so real that they appear fake. Because people have a certain image of dinosaurs (slow and cumbersome) based on what they knew from movies and hypothesis, and the ones they bred are fast and active, creating this situation where the real dinosaurs would look fake and robotic to the common park visitor.
@yu8vc1is8zJust plain incorrect lmfao.
I really feel robbed of what we could have seen in movies.
This is not happening only in movies, you may see "experts" everywhere saying the europe feudalism era was the darkest moment in human history, people hanging witches, dead people left in the streets, catholic church inquisitors killing every human being able to count numbers. It's such a pathetic attempt to rewrite history, probably to make us feel like the past was full of horrors and only now humanity is living in a great peace and harmony.
The 'human cuckoos' have to destroy the past so that they don't have to compete with it, gaslighting us into thinking they aren't objectively just making things worse over time.
Oy vey! I wonder what kind of “experts” would have a reason to paint an unflattering picture of their enemies? ✡️
This is an anti church propaganda while actually medieval time was great until muslims invasion (well even After crusades médiéval Europe was good but in renaissance things became extreme and witches stuff started)
That's the objective from progressives to sell the idea that the poor conditions of early industrial revolution was better.
@@igormarins1227 100% agree
I love how they took extra effort in terms of time and money to fuck up something that was already largely historically accurate because…yes
Ehhh. They went overkill, but I suspect there was a lot of horseshit, and unbathed people.
If East Asians thought westerners were dirty during that era, we'd probably feel the same way.
@@GeoMeridium The horse manure is fertilizer, they used that on the fields, they didn't left it in the street.
And east asians met with sailors and travellers, a ship or a caravan has very different living conditions from a medieval village.
You even see it in video games. Go to, say, Skyrim (and I know Skyrim isn't medieval but it's "based on" medieval times), where the town, the ground, the trees, the mountains and the sky seem to all be shades of dirt brown, and then go to something like Kingdom Come Deliverance, where they sky is blue, trees are green, houses are whitewashed and trader shops are painted.
the color grade of skyrim special edition is a lot browner than the original version, which had a more cool palette
im not sure what this is trying to prove considering the first is a completely fictional fantasy world and the latter is actually (if i recall, i’ve never played it) set in a realistic medieval europe
@@monochrome_soft9472 yes but most medieval fantasy worlds are just that: based on medieval times, but with fantasy. Except they always look like, as someone else put it, "mudpunk" worlds.
@@UnclePengy no, there’s lots of fantasy that’s “based on” medieval times. something like the witcher or game of thrones that try to stay grounded in realistic medieval depictions, but with fantasy elements. i would not consider the elder scrolls to be in that category, so it feels weird to me to criticize its failure of historical accuracy when its in no way trying to be.
especially comparing it with a game that very much is trying to be realistic
People think we started being clean recently
Another one is castles in the medieval period, they were not grey, cold piles of unadorned stone, they tend to appear this now as they fell into disuses for centuries, even the exterior curtain walls were plastered and whitewashed, and interior walls were full of colorful murals depicting biblical scenes or ancestral battles, as well as tapestries, and all sorts of decorations and baubles
Found your video by accident. Really like it! Really grinds my gear to see the medieval era treated as "duuuh dark ages".
Don't forget all the soldiers wearing brown leather "armor" with no colour and everyone only uses swords as weapons
it's like a historical architecture Tiffany dilemma. They create what movie watchers who aren't into history want to see, as opposed to how it actually was.
Nitpickers will nitpick anyway, the glass windows and the paved road were unlikely. (edit) and those oven dried wooden boards with some decorative axe marks
Like Assassins' creed.
@@2adamastthe reductionism of “if it’s even slightly unlikely then I DON’T WANT TO SEE IT BECAUSE IT’S NOT REPRESENTATIVE” is exactly what causes this problem. Absolutely no town ever has only had what is most “likely” for it to have.
The random tattered rags just tacked onto things are hilarious. Like, what is it FOR???
I can understand shutters, as those are an actual thing with a purpose. I can sort of understand the aesthetics of the wall mud - some weird erroneous interpretation of deteriorating stucco or wattle and daub? But the rags are giving me fits. XD
Among the reasons why there wouldn't have been randomly tattered rags tacked onto things there is the one that there was a MARKET for tattered rags. Paper was made out of them (and it was of much higher quality than nowadays wood pulp paper, since it was made of longer fibers).
To dry them 😂
Shutters were most likely used, at least on ground floor windows, as there were no police before modern times (except in ancient Egypt), glass was expensive, and drunkenness was common. I do not know why we don't use them today. Every hurricane you see people rushing to buy plywood to nail over their windows - just closing the shutters would be much cheaper and easier.
I don;t know what movie they were filming, was it something historical, some fantasy setting, or a parody of sorts ?
@@tedrice1026 stutters were very widely used, that's a fact.
But almost every society since the Ancient Egypt through the Middle Ages had both some type of peacekeeping/policing force and a way to sue for alleged crime.
Investigative policing was a comparative rarity, and even in the Ancient Egypt was almost exclusively reserved for the crimes against the ruling authority/clergy/upper class until the late medieval England.
But "there wasn't police" is a statement that, while being TECHNICALLY accurate, kinda misrepresents the practical reality.
Yeah, hollywood exaggerates stuff, it's true that it's often inaccurate, but these villages didn't exist only in perfect condition and dry sunny weather. A museum aims to maintain the exhibit at well-maintained state, it's not actively used by people living there, so in real life it would've certainly look less pretty. It looks like even in this picture there's dirt on cobblestones, so what happens if you visited a less wealthy village which didn't have paved roads, or even eastern europe where paved roads become even rarer? Sometimes several-meters thick cultural layer couldn't have accumulated if there was no dirt and mud and trash on the streets and people haven't just paved over the accumulated mud instead of cleaning it. There are enough small villages in eastern europe which looks similar to that hollywood set from october to april because of rasputitsa and no pavement (or gravel car road at best), and people still live in poor-maintained homes. Hell, i can even go to the area of private houses in my city and find adobe houses with peeled off plaster in some places, or faded formerly bright paint which isn't repainted every year. You are surprised they covered up glass here? Where i live, ordinary peasants usually used cow bladder instead of glass until about mid 20th century.
Exactly. There’s no “one way” the Middle Ages looked like, especially with the Middle Ages being a broad time period anyway.
Some places would’ve been messy and dirty, some places would’ve well kept, some places would’ve been somewhere in between. At least that’s what makes sense to me instead of just saying “the Middle Ages didn’t suck and people were actually super clean and things were pretty and nice”
I love the medieval myth bingo card, but one thing I disagree with ... the medieval period was not racially diverse at all, by our standards. Sure, you might find the occasional jew or muslim, mostly in their ghettos, in big cities, and sure, traveling merchants were a thing, but no, what we call racially diverse is NOT what the middle ages was, and even if there were "races" (hate that term in the first place, because they didn't think in those categories), they were most DEFINITELY segregated. Middle age europe was pretty pasty.
Within central Europe, yes. But there were areas within the borders of what we would consider the medieval era that were fairly "diverse."
that's all well and good...
But what does that have anything to do with the video?
Spain would like to have a word. Constantinople as well.
@@kamo7293the video is a comparison of Hollywood tropes vs the real world "as it was". And they compared modern Hollywood racial diversity trend vs real world. Pretty fair, I think
At least in Britain, the medieval period started off a lot more ethnically diverse than it ended up after the Anglo-Saxon migration. Most of the Roman _colonia_ in the island were founded as retirement communities for legionnaires and auxiliaries from across the far-flung Roman world. We have extant Roman records of Numidian and Ethiopian legions manning forts on Hadrian's Wall, and legions didn't garrison forts for decades without bringing their families and/or marrying into the local population. These people and their descendants had been putting down roots in Britain for generations by the time the western Roman empire collapsed, and they didn't all just pull up stakes and leave when the empire fell.
People saw france and assumed the entire world was filthy during the middle ages smh
People saw CURRENT day France and thought filthy the middle ages.
You can go to Calais and tour the knife crime sites. That'll keep you busy for a few hours. Hell, you might even get a realisitic reenactment done to you.
@@Squisky France is a rich India.
Not even Poland were like that, in Europe at that time it was the period of scolatiscs where Europeans were basically discovering everything from Economy to philosophy, to imagine that they were like cavemen with kings is ridiculous
@@icarojose6316 Poland was one of better and most civilized countries of all Europe back then. And the new technologies of this period were mostly learnt from Arabs.
Parts of France were actually among the richest regions of Europe. Next to Northern Italy, some towns in the Central HRE and Flanders.
It's funny how you can always tell who's winning from how history is being rewritten
Who
@@juan-ij1le Today it is the corporations who sell you plastic things what you don't actually need.
it's curious how we either overglorify or underestimate our ancestors. this reminds me of the image we made of neanderthals, they weren't dumb, they were pretty much as smart as we are. and the lack of modern knowledge humans had at that time doesn't mean they were dumb, it just means they had a different worldview. that assumption of "ancestor = dumb" gets even worse with medieval people, they lived only a thousand or less years ago, they were just as capable as we are, the only difference being they didn't have access to the information we have
Indeed, we either want the past to be much worse or much better, no inbetween.
Neanderthals were amazing!
it makes sense to change/add some things to make it feel more like people are actually living there. the clothesline fits into this category, bc people need to dry their clothes somehow. what doesn’t make sense is that the “clothes” in question seem to just be frayed brown rags. like, you know they had dyes, right? and hems? you know they knew about hemming, right?
Dyes aren't a recently discovered thing, Tyre had the entire economy revolved around purple dye
It's also operating on the assumption that someone who just spent WEEKS spinning thread, weaving fabric, and hand-sewing a shirt together, wouldn't want to drop a day's wages going to a dyer to have their clothes stained blue, red, yellow, green, or brown. Keep in mind they're going to be wearing this in front of the entire community.
they really do think nobody bothered to clean anything huh.
Art directors. Their job is to hide any parking lots and remove watches from actors. That's it.
What part of that involves shuttering medieval windows, putting straw on roof tiles, caking mud on medieval brick walls, and putting torches in the streets?
@@davidwuhrer6704 They had no art director.
@@SHONNER I guess that makes sense
*10,000 BC:* Straw isn’t weatherproof. Use mud & tar. Write that down so we don’t forget”
*11,500 years later:* Was straw a yes or no?.. I can’t remember”
1:23 wait, this totally depends on the time period. Using the blanket term 'the Middle Ages" doesn't tell us anything because the period lasted for a thousand years. Glass windows in the early or even high middle ages would only be found in a church. Clay roof tiles would have been more common than glass windows but again, the time and place mattered.
Yeah, it greatly depends on the place. Where I live, tiles only began arriving in the late 18th century, before most houses had straw roofs or if they were near mountains, they had chalk roofs
That's amazing. It would be easier to just tell the truth, but they work harder to lie.
I was watching a video about old clothes and I found out that middle age people used to wear colourful clothes. And movies and series always portrait them with white, brown, grey and black.
The Bingo is a bit hard to apply to the entirety of the middle ages to be honest
Medieval europe varied extremely throughout the several hundred years that the medieval periods lasted
The only point i really have a problem with is the racial diversity that is claimed.
It's a matter of races that were actually present and those were predominantly caucasian and some asian influences, not total racial diversity especially not in denmark and central europe
Even if you look at these countries today
Have you read the article in the description?
@@fakehistoryhunter i haven't
What the hell?! I don't quite understand why the people in charge let them do this there, after they explained what they needed to do to the houses I would've immediatelly kicked those goons out!
If they want some fantasy drivel they should build their own crap and not go to an actual medieval open air museum.
Probably because the locations department came along and made them a financial offer that they just couldn’t turn down. A couple of weeks filming will produce more revenue than an entire season of visitors.!
@@juliadove1006
Yes of course ... but they probably need most of the profit to undo the damage.
Whatever they're paid, a museum should have some standards at least.
Any damage done during production or filming is the responsibility of the film company. They are contracted to put all back as it was before. Or sometimes, if everybody has got on well, even better than they found it! So the profit is as it were Net! 😊.
Usually, being a ‘ location’ is great fun, educational, and leaves the hosts, happy to see them gone, but hoping that they want to come back!!
@@juliadove1006
That's not at all what I heard about tv production, wouldn't have guessed it's that much different from film, anyways, why do you have this kind of expertise?
@@DerEchteBoldFilm crews are not allowed to leave locations modified like this. Unless stated otherwise by the location in their contract they are to return it to the state it was before filming began. I am certain the museum was returned to its original state (thank god) immediately after production. Otherwise the film would be in legal trouble.
wow this really shows how popular media treats the middle ages with such disrespect and gets them so wrong
this genuinely pisses me off
Jews did that
The Middle Ages were more colorful than probably any other time in history.
I saw you on another video earlier. Cool.
Funny to think that most of the accurate representation of middle ages are the ones from fantasy
The rich ancient Romans lived in houses whose colorful wall paintings and bright colors would cause headaches for people prone to migraines. Compared to that, the Medieval era was more migraine-friendly than Antiquity although still very colorful. On the other hand, in countries where the only "paint" was red ochre, medieval houses were usually painted red, unlike in countries where the walls of the houses were whitewashed with chalk and painted with yellow ocher and other colors (such as muddy green and some blue color that was neither azurine nor ultramarine (possibly blue ocher?) ) that were more easily available there.
They were even using radiation to paint glass (this is true) they discovered natural radiation and were using it to make things glow
@@icarojose6316Natural radiation paint?
never believe anyone in film they have no ability to read a book they just use tropes
You couldn't even use punctuation in your grand standing comment, rich of you to accuse anyone of not knowing how to read.
@BurgertubeFounder this needs to be the most nitpicking I have seen for the sake to discredit someone
There are plently of intelligent and multi faceted people who work in TV and film. Say, Viggo Mortensen or Denis Villeneuve.
But lots of times the production companies have the final say. Cause it's ultimately the dumbass audience that they need to sell the product to.
And people, in general - are incredibly dumb.
same with ancient Roman and Greek buildings and monuments, Hollywood still loves to show them as bleach white marbles everywhere. while on most surviving things and ruins they still shows clear traces of remaining colourful paint all over.
"There's not enough poo buckets being flung around. This is nothing like Monty Python's Holy Grail!"
"Dennis! there should be some lovely filth down here!"
If people would portray existing cultures the way they portray the middle ages, they'd be charged for hatespeech.
ah yes the "everything before Henry Ford was stupid people covered in sh*t" mentality
It's how you could tell someone was a king, "He hasn't got shit all over him."
@@rwill156wait till the king oppreses you
How did I miss this when it was released. Anyway, watched it now. I can tell you a few things about some film art departments, but not in public! Some are, of course, brilliant too.
I remember reading something a few years ago that went; "Were medieval people and houses really dirty? This would sound insulting to a medieval housewife that spent all of her waking hours sweeping, scrubbing, brushing, polishing and repairing. Not to mention the long hours she spent boiling and hanging clothes."
Very true!
Archaeologists sometimes even find broom-traces in the dirtfloors of old medieval houses showing that they brushed the floors, a lot :)
Middle-Eastern Mexico: "First time?"
Put a comma
Hollywood forgets bathing was still common in the Middle Ages.
When in the middle ages are we talking? 1300, or 500? Those are two very different times
The one represented by the museum so high middle ages
@@legna1932 I know, I'm just tired of people being like, " the middle ages didn't suck!"
They super sucked at the beginning. Ain't nobody was painting their house red in 536.
@@ThePizzaGoblinhow else are we gonna find something to complain about
Many people don't even count 500 as the Middle Ages. Some set the beginning at the end of the last non-Germanic ruler of Western Rome (476), some at the Lombard takeover of Northern and Central Italy in 568, others at the start of the Medieval Order, when Charlemagne became Emperor, 800AD.
I personally think that any point before the proper end of the migration period (basically when Lombards and Anglo-Saxons were fully settled down) is a bit ridiculous.
@@Alias_Anybody yeah, that's why I call all that time the European dark age. 536 was literally darker than other years
Real Middle Age: people living their lives
Hollywood Middle Age: people doing Cow Dung Throwing tournaments every Tuesday
I've still got a Ladybird Book of Dogs claiming that Border Collies were brought over to Great Britain by the Vikings....that's got to be a controversial historical claim!
If true, at least they did one good thing.
@@samuelmelton8353 after watching videos of these stone cottages exposed to the cold icy winds off the ocean in these areas, my theory is the redheads all ran TOWARD the Viking longboats, after hearing they were going to the MEd. for the winter.
I actually broke down when I saw what they were trying to do with "leather tanning". Yeah, cos people don't mind if your smelly dead animal skin is just where people walk, oh no. Better hope it doesn't rain!!
My favorite thing about history is learning how little people have changed.
and then you've got the average tik tokers that's convinced that's it's really how it happened
Reminds me of how Greek and Roman architecture is always depicted as being pure white, when we have evidence that they painted everything. Roman cities weren't nightmares of white marble, they were as colorful and vibrant as every other civilization. Humans tend to like looking at interesting, colorful environments, no matter the time period.
Film and television are visual media and it's easier to convey that the characters are enduring strife, oppression, corruption, and conflict by dirtying up a set.
But was the middle ages all that oppression and strife filled? Like across Europe, the Middle East and north Africa? For nigh on 1,000 years?
@@mattmorehouse9685 I think my original point might have been misunderstood. I wasn't suggesting that the entire Middle Ages across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa were filled with constant oppression and strife for a thousand years. My comment was more about the way films and TV shows use visual cues to quickly convey a sense of hardship or conflict.
When filmmakers dirty up sets and make villages look filthy, they're using visual shorthand to communicate to the audience that the characters are living through tough times, even if that's not entirely accurate to history. It’s a tool to create atmosphere and tell a story more effectively in the limited time they have.
Historical accuracy often takes a backseat to storytelling in visual media, which is why many depictions of the Middle Ages seem dirtier and grimmer than they might have been in reality.
Hope that clarifies my point a bit better!
@@Firguy It does.
@@Firguy Except *every depiction of the European Middle Ages is like this.* They're not pushing a specific mood. They are treating the entire historical period as a time of misery and hardship. Which, sure, it can seem that way from our modern perspective. But to the characters living in that moment? That was their normal, their everyday, their banal and mundane. Their baseline. So why aren't we rooting these stories in their perspective?
@@tbotalpha8133I'd rather be a medieval peasant than live in Totalitarian tyrannies of 20th/21st century. Also peasants were far happier than most people in this day and age
It complements Farya's video about bardcore pretty nicely. Just like in Orientalism, the common misconception becomes the standard, and therefore any media that wants to easily convey a feeling uses the same tropes. East: Duduk, belly dance, desert. Middle ages: mud, brown rags and pigs everywhere.
It looks as a delibirate propaganda on behalf on Hollywood.
As if people in the middle ages didnt take care of their homes.
I also love when they make vikings look like they are about to jump on the are motorbikes and go down to the local biker club for a beer .
I was surprised to learn from Shadiversity that high-end medieval furniture was often painted in bright colors such as red, blue, green and yellow.
it feels kind of obvious that medieval people kept their houses and streets neat, because when have humans ever enjoyed living in filth? when it happens its usually because of poverty or disability, its not generally something we choose
And medieval serfs were Indeed poor
So were there not poor people in the medieval period? So yeah there would’ve been plenty dirty and messy towns too.
It’s not one or the other. “Medieval towns were clean and pretty actually” or “they were all dirty and mud filled actually” there would’ve been one or the other and also in between
Directors are often just C- minus students who didn’t know what else to do and thought it would be easier than having to do something that required studying academically. I’ve learned this the hard way
I can't believe those _"historians"_ don't realize affordable paint wasn't invented until the Enlightenment, everything was brown and grey!
-Filmmakers
I’m so glad other people notice this too, like what the hell I’m watching a movie and none of the characters can stay out of dirt for more than five minutes, all the food looks like crap and houses are all old and crumbling.
I'm from the USA and in school they used to teach us that they never had glass before the 1800s and that the glass they did have back then was bad and not possible to see through. They also told us that everyone has dirt/mud floors and only dusty dirt roads up until recently. All such deliberate lies and BS to give us a feeling of superiority for being modern people.
I didn't learn any of that in high school or college in the U.S. Sorry for you I guess.
I'm gonna call bs, they didn't teach any of that when I was in school in the states, and I know people from all over the country, and no one I know was told such a thing. So you're going to tell me they didn't teach you about Rome, it's roads, or it's aqueducts even? Hell, I was taught at a young age that concrete has been around for thousands of years, did they hide that from you too? I have a sneaking suspicion you just think it's cool to be a self hating American, because you can't stand the idea of going against the "hurr durr americans r dumb" stereotype.
I just paid a visit to the ruins of the Isca Roman Fort (now called Caerleon) in the UK, and they had 2000 year old glass flasks in the museum of items they had pulled out of the digs. I am also from the USA and I was NEVER taught glass only came after the 1800s-- in fact I was taught a large history of glassblowing and how important it was in trade through history. I would think this is a failing of your school, and I question the logic of whoever taught this falsehood given that even in pop culture there's well known medieval devices made out of glass, like alchemy equipment. Alembics specifically were made out of wood or glass. Alembics would have been quite popular as they were used to distill alcohol and the process was knowin at least in 1100 Italy. Alembics are also well known and iconic when thinking of "medieval alchemy" to the point tv, games and movies will have them as props.
By the way, those Roman glass flasks were crystal clear even after 2000 years.
if you look closely you will spot the small hat and large nose of the people lying about european history. it really is an agenda.
We were also taught that glass "melted" over time, and that's why church glass was thicker on the bottom. Nevermind that it's more structurally sound, and that the tops of the windows weren't dipped down or thin as paper.
I blame most of this on Monty Python movies, with an honourable mention to "The Lion In Winter". Also, when showing medieval castles and churches, why are they always so worn and dilapidated? They would've been NEW back then.....
They filmed on location, that or Hollywood studios, what is more real? There is a camping aspect (trestle tables, folding chairs, drapery, ...) in royal households.
It would only make sense that if people went to the trouble to build a place to live that they would make it as nice as possible and keep it that way. People back then might not have known all about germs and pathogens but that doesn’t mean they were dirty
This is a big problem in fantasy media as well were recently every village in almost every fantasy story has lost all variations and has just become bree.
The Lighthouse (2019) gave me a good idea how much time and energy was spent cleaning and maintaining ones property before power tools and manufactured homes
"Must be a king."
"Why?"
"He hasn't got shit all over him."
This is absolutely *right* , thank you for pointing this out. I am sick and tired of seeing depressing scenes and vistas in film, TV shows and especially video games.
People really don't know anything these days. In the past, that includes middle ages, people like today, wanted always good, beautiful and neat things. Their households were always neat, with trimmed grass, cattle in the stays when not in the fields grazing. Actually the difference between live and dying household is how much everything is overgrown and falling apart. In *dying* household, which means that there are not enough young people, especially men and or there just living few old people, is that grass is took hold, everything is overgrown and wood/house/stays are falling apart.
The reason why the grass looked trimmed is because every morsel of green grass was a food for cattle. So pretty much around household all grass would be all eaten, also including surrounding fields. In the summer the grass would be sown and transported to back of the household and made in many haystacks for winter. There would be beautiful orchards around a village and with very strictly divided fields with wheat, ray, barley, millet etc. Each household would have multiple of beehives and would have at least one stay for cattle, or even multiple, bigger for cows and horses, smaller ones for sheep and pigs. There would be chicken coop as well. Also prominent feature of thriving household, in the back, would be a huge mound of cow/sheep/goat dung/maneuver, which was gathered throughout the year so in the autumn it would be transported in the fields and used as fertilizer.
Front of the households would typically be clean and neat, with one or several trees for shade, usually those would be fruit barring trees, like pares, apples, mulberry. There would be table and few benches in the warm weather in the front. Household would typically be surrounded by wattle fence, however, contrary to media, these fences would be tall, but it would depend. Like around yard it would be about human size up to shoulders or more, this would be prominent in the areas that have wolf population. In the front of the yard, that faces the main street, it would be made as wood fence, in a like normal wealth households, but in poor it would be wattle all the way around. Gates would usually have two wings and even a small roof over it.
Also one of the feature of any village would be a bench for sitting in front of every household and on the main street.
The woods around village would be also kept very tidy, without any loose, old or decaying trees. This all would be used for fire. So you'd immediately know when you are coming near some settlement. That would be the big difference between wild forest and village woods.
Also main and stricken feature/vista of any village would be smoke. Every hose would have smoke coming out of it (chimney) or from yards. And smell of smoke would be all around and all present in the village.
Also people liked colors, so there would be colors all around, mostly in form of tapestry, sheets, carpets. Even in some house facades. Tho mostly these would be kept clean white as it will get white wash each year, or at least one in couple of years.
There is more, but these would be the main issues that are not present anywhere in the media today.
Even building in ancient egypt looks better than that
If they didn't do this, then everyone would notice how crappy the present is...
I really appreciate architecture from the High Medieval period. Incredible craftsmanship, beautiful roofs, bright color, gorgeous windows, and fun profiles you don't see much anymore.
But I'd much rather live in my house with electricity, heating that doesn't create smoke, vent fans for cooking and bathroom, upstairs plumbing (and most medieval houses wouldn't have downstairs plumbing either...), air conditioning, year-round freezer, dishwasher....
of course. the continuous progress narrative needs to be pushed somehow
I always wondered why western middle age shows, movies and games looks mud and dirty a lot.
While Chinese, Korean and Japanese in middle age on the other hand looks clean and artistic as hell.
Judging by the comments, sounds like the western devs don’t seem to respect their own culture and history
It’s the same issue with Bethesda’s Fallout and how they think people would genuinely live in dirty, run down buildings with actual SKELETONS still lying around and live off of scavenging 200 YEAR OLD FOOD from grocery stores instead of just… yknow… FARMING?
Been happier since I stopped consuming Hollywood
I can't think of a movie that would get it right (maybe Rome series), but I like how Kingdom come deliverance game depicted it - we're the same people as 400 years ago, we want the same things in live, we do the same things to achieve them.
Human history is incredibly short by any other measures, and 400 years is virtually nothing.
It is of the imperative that we believe the middle ages were a universally unpleasant time.
You see the same misconceptions with how the Aztecs are represented in media. They are usually portrayed as dirty jungle-dwellers with cobbled-together buildings and drab clothes (if they wear any clothes at all). They do nothing but cut people’s hearts out all day.
In reality, the Aztecs lived in a dry-temperate climate, (the Mayans were the ones who lived around jungles) and their buildings were clean and colorful. And while they _did_ generally wear less clothes than we do, they could get pretty elaborate with it. I won’t deny the cutting-out-heart thing, though. They did do that a lot.
In terms of games, I highly recommend Kingdom Come Deliverance for historical accuracy
Ah yes, the Sepia age. The world wouldn't turn black and white until the early 1900s.
All era have those myths and it will happen to us
Maybe someday people will say "in the 2000's, people was not even capable to recognize between sexs" or even worst, "they forgot that the earth was spheric"
It sounds crazy, but in school, teachers told me that Colombus discovered the shape of the earth, or even worst, when they talk about the independence, usually mention a "breed system" were spanyards were the higher class, the criollos, the crossbreeds, the indians and finally the africans, a fully anglosaxon vision of history
I don't know where you went to school, But I was NEVER taught that Columbus discovered the shape of the earth in school. I know some people think this but I was never formally taught this. And I went to US (Pittsburgh, PA) public schools in the 1960's-70s. Another school myth I hear is that no Americans were taught the Metric System until the late 1970s. Not true! I have a third grade math book (also from Pittsburgh) from the '90s (1895!) and Metric and USCS are there in full! If you don't use something daily you forget it! I couldn't do long division if you paid me because I haven't needed to despite learning it over 50 years ago (cheap calculators ended my need to do it) But I do use much of the Metric System that I also learned over 50 years ago.
@@jamesslick4790 "american", not hispano-american
It was not formally, but a lot of teachers told me that, even a foreigner teacher taught me that myth
Only one and a half minute and I learned so much. I've never really questioned it, but it's completely illogical to think that the middle ages would be in a constant state of decay and disrepair.
They always make the towns look so run down and ghetto yet we have many places being still standing as evidence to the craftsmanship and upkeep.
Cant live long if your roof caves in and shitter rising annually outside the doorstep in afternoons.
I love what you post on Twitter and I am so excited to find you here on TH-cam now!
"He must be a king"
"How do you know?"
"He isn't covered in shit."