Medievalists of Tumblr: what inaccuracies annoy you the most in movies set in the Middle Ages?
Mine is probably the ‘everyone was constantly caked in mud and only wore grey and brown’ aesthetic.
Same. Also the idea that “women were property so they did nothing but sew and have babies and the time was inherently backwards and violent”
the complete absence of christianity from pop culture perceptions of the medieval period really bugs me (or it being relegated to the fringes and a few monks somewhere)
like… this was a major part of most people’s daily lives even if it didn’t necessarily look like christianity as we know it. also medieval theology is fucking wild! where are all the debates about cannibal babies in pop culture medieval stuff? WHERE is the twelfth century werewolf renaissance? the fuckign infancy gospels?? give me weird medieval theology you cowards
A lot of them had already been mentioned, so may I add
“The dishes were only bland soups and maybe some moldy bread”
I’m studying English language and literature, not History, but like… Pork vs Pig… Deer vs Venison… Cow vs Beef… May give you the idea THEY FUCKING ATE MEAT AT LEAST GODDAMIT
And not even like we do
Where’s the feast with venison? The ridiculous amount of salmon and other fishes? The little gardens full of spices? Or the trade of exotic foods? Slaughtering season was celebrated in some places not that much ago (like… I saw one when little), why not portray one?
And more importantly
WHERE’S THE CHICKEN WITH HELMET???
GIVE ME CHICKEN WITH HELMET OR GIVE ME DEATH
Yeah, and for better or for worse they were much less picky about which animals they ate than we are. Porpoise, anyone?
Medieval people loved their spices; The Forme of Cury has a lot of flavours I’d associate more with Indian food than anything else. Even if you weren’t a wealthy seasoning-loving king like Richard II, you could still have garlic, onions, and herbs.
Also please link me a picture of the chicken with helmet if you can, I need to see this.
Here it is
Here’s a link with more info. Apparently the dish is called Singing Chicken… But that’s a chicken with a helmet
In Medieval times, food was medicine, religion and status. And in Medieval feasts, an art-form The Medieval poor mostly ate pottage - basic
This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Hollywood has a tendency to portray the past as “just like today, minus whatever of today’s things we know they didn’t have.” There’s no concept that the past had things that today doesn’t.
Like bawdy medicinal tips.
@candiceirae
The idea that people used spices to cover spoiled meat is similarly stupid and utterly infuriating.
And yes, the gaping absence of religion from depictions of the Middle Ages is jarring.
All of this, but mostly that they existed in a sepia toned world with no color, pattern, or texture.
Going off the colors of textiles, the assumption that their textiles were always crude and rough compared to today’s. Think of the twills and brocades! The cloth of gold! The silks, and the wool so gauzy you could see through it! The soft wool clothing! The quality and variety of fabric we have available has plummetted since the industrial revolution.
beyond conventional spices the medieval cook and especially the resourceful housewife would have been exploiting herbs by the fistfull on a level we today cannot comprehend, like we dont even know what some of the names of herbs they used even mean anymore and they grew them like suburban homeowners today grow ugly border hedges. whatever soups they had access to had a decent chance of being something that would be 100% locally grown and every bit as flavorful as any regonal dish today withiout having to resort to saying ‘well they could possibly have been eating curry’ instead of giving them a flavor identity of their own. just because ‘spice’ isnt readily available dont assume ‘flavor’ is out of reach, the aromatics they used would be on par with the modern french concept of mirepoix but, moving past the kitchen the two things that irk me are that everyone toiled miserably and everything was grey stone, rudely carved buildings, shoddy construction unadorned well yeah, if you went to a decrepit ruin thats been abandoned for centuries it would look like that, but not when people lived there! you see the shows and movies and sweet baby cheese the kings residence looks like a dank basement and sometimes he doesnt even have a change of clothes when castles were in use they were prominent displays of power and wealth, whitewashed so that even small amounts of light reflected well inside them so that they illuminated well, paintings and murals in a riot of colors and displaying personal tastes, tapestries that may be the local lords wife, aunt, or grandmothers gift to them as tappestry making was a popular hobby at court where women gathered to gossip and giggle while making vibrantly colored decorations that are usually dismissed because the only ones that survive had endured about 500 years of sun damage, smoke damage, and uncertain cleaning history
that clearly showed the people of the time valued color, had style, and only occasionally made horses look like a dog made out of play-doh. even people who didnt live in a castle still had access to paint to liven up the plaster walls of their homes, brightly dyed fabrics and flowers were as available to them as and they sang, constantly. what we assume was a life of toiling in the mud from dusk till dawn the whole year was typically a relaxed paced life of 10 hour a night sleep in a comfortable bed where work didnt start untill you had your flagon of ale and a song with your buddies as you walked to the field, you sang as you worked, took three ale breaks from work while singing, and then you sang as you walked to the tavern so you could sing while you played nine mens morris or cheated at mancala because you thought the miller was too soused to notice. we barely know any of the songs they sang and humanity is less for it, a scant handfull of them do remain and its just beautiful to hear what a table of tavern patrons would break into song about to prove they werent too drunk for another round song and story were all day every day, theres a reason the most well known middle english text was canterbury tales- whose narrative was that a selection of travelers on the way to the same location had an ongoing bar-bet about who could tell the better story, asking bartenders to judge the complexity of these stories, all of which were absolutely valid as just shit you would say to another drunk in a tavern, would give modern soap operas a swift kick in the pants and its sad that it takes a historian to tell you just how crass and lowbrow humor they were on a similar vein to how so many people somehow forgot that shakespear was lowbrow humor for the commoner and not somehow too sophisticated for rubes it wasnt just bards who would own an instrument, instruments are wood, leather, string, bone/horn, or even clay… those are all commonly available and affordable if not straight up FREE items to someone in the medieval world so a hefty chunk of the population would have an instrument and know how to use it, anything from a wood flute to a simple drum to an ocarina. many designs were even specifically for travel so you could always have it at the ready
how about this- in all the versions of robin hood i have -EVER- seen the most historically accurate any of them got was the scene in kevin costner ‘king of theves’ where friar tuck was singing to himself while on the road ‘women wine and whoring’. not just because its one of the only times in any medieval period movie ive seen someone singing to pass the time in the mind-numbing hours of traveling before the invention of the car radio, but ALSO because they based the tune he sings off the classic ‘ Bache Benne Venies’, the oldest known drinking song we still know the words and tune of and let me tell you that song slaps talk to me about historical accuracy in movies and ill tell you that tolkein writing hobbit songs for walking, drinking, or describing what an elephant was was more historically accurate then all of GOT passed through a sieve to collect every grain of stray element of medievalness gaily dressed hobbits full of pie, sitting in a well decorated room full of beautiful hand carved furniture, on their fifth ale, and singing about the man in the moon getting shitfaced is about ten times historically accurate as most anything else i can think of if you ignored the historical accuracy of them being hobbits
There were also lots of non-white people in the middle ages but you don’t ever see it in pop culture
Also baths. Bathhouses. Medieval bath culture. It was all over the place. Occupational dirt was fine, but you were expected to get rid of it as soon as you could. And to wash up in the morning and before meals.
And also: let’s not lose touch with the kind of world where you go to the hairdresser’s, find there’s a one-hour wait because your hair guy is setting someone’s broken arm, and so you grab some sheet music out of the rack on the wall, take the cittern down off its peg, and start doing your own cover of the latest hit while your fellow waiting-for-a-hairdo people pass around a bottle and sing along (and maybe critique your fingering).
I added my comments about bathing to a previous reblog of this very post, with plenty of illustrations, naturally. :->
So instead I’ll echo: the use of colour in fabric; the use of texture in fabric - diapering and damask are both done during the weaving process; the presence of music in general and singing in particular, as a means of timing cooking etc., or just for fun. All worth remembering as bricks for the world-build.
If you’re not up for writing lengthy lyrics Tolkien-style, just describe what the song is like - complex or simple, funny or melancholy, solo or part-song, clean or dirty - and how it’s being sung, beautifully or badly or just well enough to please those doing it and nobody else within earshot.
Give them histories, places where they’d be heard and places where (hopefully) they wouldn’t; give them titles - pastoral, historical, folksy or whatever, maybe with a double entendre: I have one of my characters whistling - in entirely the wrong surroundings - the well-known tune of a song called “Gold Above And Bronze Below”, whose equally well-known lyrics don’t refer to metalwork…
And of course use them as plot devices, for instance someone unconsciously singing or whistling something they shouldn’t know, or shouldn’t be doing in that location; there are plenty of real-world examples.
I don’t know how risky “Marching through Georgia” might be in 21st century Atlanta, but visitors to 21st century Belfast shouldn’t sing “The Sash” on the Falls Road or “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” on the Shankill. Both are assisted suicide, or at the very least comprehensive self-inflicted injury, equivalent to walking into the Mended Drum in Ankh-Morpork and announcing yourself as “Name-Style-or-Title the Indestructible”.
Singing matters, whether it’s for starting a riot or boiling an egg.
A hard-boiled one, if I remember “Night Watch” properly… :->.
