A while ago, there was
some ‘controversy’ when Warhorse Studios, the chaps behind the
game Kingdom Come Deliverance (set in Bohemia [roughly the Czech
Republic] in 1403), were criticised because everyone in it was white.
The game’s set in a small geographical area, and everyone being
white then is realistic, which is the angle that’s strongly pushed
at every level in KCD. Larger cities were more cosmopolitan, but
there’s no equivalent of Prague or Vienna in the game. In my view,
those wanting diversity were simply trying to impose modern standards
on historical reality (which isn’t necessarily unreasonable if you
have a fast and loose approach to history, but the whole KCD game was
focused on being realistic).
But it did get me
thinking. Sometimes, people want to impose modern social, moral norms
on historical works of media, whether videogames, film, TV etc. But
what if it happened in reverse? What if we had a roughly medieval
mindset, and assessed modern works by that standard?
In Stargate: Atlantis,
female cast members often have bare arms. That would be frowned upon.
(Plunging cleavage, not a problem, but biceps? Titillating beyond
acceptability). There’s also a lot of loose hair. Again, at some
periods in history this was rather indicative of, er, prostitution
(as were the bare arms). A medieval person, once having gotten over
the witchcraft of television, would be bemused to see this.
In the West, there’s
generally been a decrease in formality between higher and lower
status people (thinking primarily of working relationships, but also
in those wonderful countries that still benefit from the splendidness
of monarchy). This lack of formality would seem quite odd to those of
a medieval mindset, where one’s social superior (local lord, say)
could be the man sitting in judgement on you one day, and it paid to
show due deference.
Medieval attitudes to
vegans would be interesting to observe. Animal cruelty was pretty
widespread, yet meat wasn’t eaten on around half the days of the
year (it was permanently banned on Wednesdays, Fridays, and
Saturdays, as well as being
forbidden on certain holy days). Voluntarily not eating meat might be
seen as indicative of religious devotion.
Sticking
with food, being fat was seen as a sign of prosperity. In a world
where one bad harvest can kill the frail and two bad harvests can
destroy peasant villages, having sufficient food to not merely meet
but exceed needs was proof of wealth. Paler skin was also indicative
of high status, as more time was spent indoors rather than working
the fields. Thinner people (generally but not always considered more
attractive these days) were seen as less attractive because it was
down to lack of food, rather than an aesthetic choice.
Despite
certain glass-ceiling smashing memes, women have had leading roles in
sci-fi for quite some time (Ripley, Janeway, Samantha Carter, etc).
In a world where petty treason makes it a criminal offence for a wife
to disobey her husband, and which could be successfully used by a
woman ordered to commit a crime to escape legal punishment, this
would probably be seen as really rather odd. That said, there were
exceptions in medieval times (Black Agnes commanded a Scottish castle
when her husband was away, defying English attempts to capture it,
for example) but it’d still seem rather peculiar in medieval eyes.
The
absence of references to God would be utterly perplexing. Excepting
the odd expression (“Thank God for that” etc), most people hardly
ever refer to God in day to day conversation. Obviously religious
people do more often, but even that would be dramatically less than
was usual for medieval England, which was steeped in Christianity.
Which
brings us to an ugly aspect of medieval thinking: widespread dislike
of the Jews. Jews came over with William the Conqueror in 1066, and
suffered particularly during the reigns of John and Edward I. They
were generally concentrated in a small number of urban centres,
mostly London, and were pretty well-off due to usury (the forerunner
of modern banking). However, this was against Christian teaching at
the time, so, whilst economically beneficial for the Jews, and also
more widely, the wealth was achieved through acts against Christian
doctrine, by a minority. Sadly, the average medieval fellow watching
TV showing anti-Jewish behaviour might be more likely to side with
the bigot than the victim.
It’s almost as if
imposing the moral and social attitudes of one time period on
another, far removed, is a daft thing to do…
Thaddeus
No comments:
Post a Comment