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1->'''Archie:''' I still don't understand how we all got here to Nostalgia Land!\
2'''Jughead:''' Me neither -- but I'm having a ball!
3-->-- ''[[ComicBook/ArchieComics Life with Archie]]'' #129
4
5"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." So said LP Hartley at the start of his novel ''The Go-Between''. Any prospective time travelers should also add the following: "make sure you get your shots before you go -- and ''don't drink the water''. Also, pack your own toilet paper!" The fact is that while we like to think that the past was just like the modern day but with funny hats and folk music, many of the things we take for granted just weren't common -- or even available -- back then.
6
7Ye Goode Olde Days comes into play when a historical or quasi-historical work makes things much nicer than they would really have been. Usually it stems from only partly Doing the Research: they might get the big stuff right -- authentic plate armour, the right kind of architecture, all that -- but the details of life in the past can be lost. So the farm village is an {{Arcadia}} with beautiful green pastures and nicely kept paths, and everyone in the medieval village lives in a lovely half-timbered house with two bedrooms and a stone fireplace. The Renaissance maiden never gets mudstains on the train of her beautiful gowns, the Roman Senator has magnificent pearly white teeth, there's no infant mortality unless the plot requires it, no one ever needs to empty a chamberpot, and horses never take a dump in the street.
8
9It falls somewhere between subtle nostalgia and outright hilarity when dealing with ages closer to modernity, like the RoaringTwenties being an age of wild parties and shiny classic cars for ''everyone'' and not just the idle rich, or the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Stalinist Soviet Union]] being a nice place where people happily work, [[VodkaDrunkenski drink]], have fun and never have to worry. In short, it's {{Disneyfication}} of history.
10
11Wishful thinking about life in the past is also prevalent in chivalric literature, in which noble [[KnightInShiningArmor knights]] ride great distances to [[DamselInDistress save beautiful damsels]], who are never remotely bothered that their rescuers presumably smell of sweat, grease, and horses. [[ComplainingAboutRescuesTheyDontLike We can only assume they're too glad to be out of mortal peril to care]].
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13Many champions of pre-industrial living are not stupid: they are well aware of the more unsavory aspects of those past eras. Their stance is that those problems weren't extremely bad or were suffered by only a minority of people, or even that those who indulged in degrading practices were [[NoTrueScotsman not]] ''[[NoTrueScotsman true]]'' [[NoTrueScotsman exemplars of those societies]] and were ruining the social standards for everyone else. Others will simply argue that their problems were a better trade-off compared with ours.
14
15Something to keep in mind is that neither TheDungAges nor Ye Goode Olde Days is "more" accurate than the other. The reality is that while hygiene was not good by modern standards, and living conditions were not what we'd call "comfortable" (what with the lack of air conditioning, flush toilets, and weekly garbage pick-up), neither did most people walk around barefoot, caked in filth, eating rotten food and living in tumble-down huts made of sticks.
16
17Because it is an AcceptableBreakFromReality in entertainment-- the average viewer prefers looking at good-looking people when they aren't watching a documentary, and most actors and directors aren't quite willing to subject themselves to a completely realistic version of history -- please don't add examples that are just "[Character] had clean hair[=/=]white teeth[=/=]clear skin[=/=]shaved legs[=/=]etc."
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19Strong aversions are probably examples of TheDungAges. See also YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe and NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe. Not to be confused with GoodOldWays.
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21Not to be confused with [[NostalgiaFilter complaining about how things were better in the good old days]].
22
23----
24!!Examples:
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26[[foldercontrol]]
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28[[folder:Arts]]
29* The Gothic Revival style had been pushed far in some German restored castles, and peaked when King UsefulNotes/LudwigIIOfBavaria commissioned the building of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle Neuschwanstein Castle]] replacing an earlier ruin. It was [[AwesomeButImpractical practically unusable as a political center]] because all efforts being directed into making it as Medieval as possible. Despite this, it had little connection to anything the Middle Ages might have been and was instead more of a fairy tale setting with modern amenities such as electricity, running warm water or central heating. To round off the trope, Ludwig's design was used as the basis for the original Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland.
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32[[folder:Comic Books]]
33* In ''ComicBook/SuperiorSpiderMan'', this is made into a plot point with a nascent superhero/villain calling herself Livewire believing that this was true. She brought New York into a massive blackout during an [[TooDumbToLive alien invasion]] to "bring mankind back to a purer era when they followed the moon." Superior Spiderman is quick to point out the problems.
34* An Al Hartley-era ''ComicBook/{{Archie|Comics}}'' [[http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics210.html comic]] has the gang transported to an idyllic 1890's small town with none of the ills of today's world...and none of the ills of the 1890's either. The result is a ridiculously naive reactionary fantasy land that any perusal of a credible history book on the era, or Upton Sinclair's classic novel written in that time, ''Literature/TheJungle'', could puncture.
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37[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
38* The people and environments in ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'', mostly likely due to the practices of the Ancient Romans, and even one of the characters mentioned how sanitation and hygiene have improved since the Romans have been in charge. The fact that it's set in the warm, dry Middle East as opposed to squalid, damp and muddy old England also helps things a bit. Of course, the majority still live in disgusting, tiny hovels, begging lepers are a common sight ([[HealingHands unless Jesus comes along]]) and people are executed horribly for minor offenses.
39* In ''Film/{{Eragon}}'' the hero, an ordinary farmboy, lives in a house roughly the size of an aircraft hangar despite the fact that his family is portrayed as ''so poor he has to sleep in the barn with the animals'' rather than having a bedroom of his own.
40* ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure'': Our heroes travel to -- and pick up hitchhikers -- from ancient Greece, ancient Mongolia, and medieval Europe (among other eras), without needing to bother with unpleasant hygienic issues.
41* ''Film/AKidInKingArthursCourt'' had medieval England as a pretty nice place. It's moderately clean, and unless you stand under a window while walking down the street, you won't be covered in filth.[[note]]Watch out for the wives emptying the chamber pots![[/note]] TheProtagonist notes that his joust helmets smell something awful. Both the princesses are perfectly clean, but then again, ''they're princesses''.
42* Nearly [[TheWildWest every Western]] ever made has immaculately clean townships, even when the characters have the appropriate sweaty, weary and dusty appearance ([[FridgeLogic which makes one wonder]] where they got that dirty in the first place). Horse dung, mud and flies, patched and ragged wooden buildings, straw on the pub floors to absorb spittle and spilled drinks and occasional drunken vomit were the norm rather than an exception in RealLife. On the other hand, it's very often {{averted}} in another manner, as the violence sometimes gets very exaggerated. Most towns had strict gun laws, requiring that visitors check them with the sheriff (perhaps the only films that shows this are ''Film/{{Unforgiven}}'', which even so has plenty of violence, and ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII'', in which the deputy demands that [[BigBad Buford]] checks his gun during a town fair). The bottom line is that the film version of the Wild West was both cleaner ''and'' more violent.
43* ''Film/{{Timeline}}'': Marek has this view of life in the medieval era, saying people's lives had honor and purpose. The actual period shown is pretty brutal though, with little of honor. Nonetheless, he chooses to stay in the end.
44* ''Film/TimeChanger'': The film treats 1890 (and by extension, American society up to around 1930, when the Hays Code was introduced) as far better, as the time-traveling protagonist complains about rampant disobedient kids, alcohol abuse, crime, poverty and blasphemy. Of course, those things were common not only in 1890, but before and into the 1930s too (the alcohol problem is especially funny, as people took it so seriously this led to Prohibition). He would also have to be extremely sheltered if a film character blaspheming God's name sent him fleeing in shock from a theater.
45* Despite being a comedy, ''Film/UpTheChastityBelt'' plays the environmental aspects of chivalric romances remarkably straight, with no one ever being besmirched by their physical exertions, whether it is in sodden England or the scorching heat of the Holy Land. TheDungAges is only invoked when needed for a particular joke.
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48[[folder:Literature]]
49* {{Justified|Trope}} in ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'', as the family has a tradition of putting somewhat more effort into getting and staying clean than their neighbors. [[spoiler: This is mainly because Jerin's grandfather was a prince and used to more cleanliness.]] Also, the one neighbor family we hear much about are presented as their society's version of the LowerClassLout.
50* Creator/GKChesterton was often accused of making the past look better than the current age. He responded by saying he was correcting the "Whiggish" view of history (that being the view all the mistakes of the past lead towards a better future). Of course this didn't make a bias for the past correct either.
51* ''Literature/ThePyrates'' is set firmly in a Ye Goode Olde Days version of TheCavalierYears. [[Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser The author]] {{lampshaded}} this immediately following the idyllic introduction, saying that historians would no doubt point out the complete lack of sanitation, hygiene, or social services. He concluded that the historical characters, "happy conscienceless rabble that they were," likely wouldn't care, and urges the reader not to, either.
52--> "There wasn't even a London School of Economics, which is remarkable when you consider that Locke and Hobbes were loose about the place."
53* Pointedly {{averted}} in the ''Literature/TimeScout'' series. Travelers through the Time Gates get multiple shots, they take many, many preparations against death and disease, they understand that they may have to be quarantined when they return, and men intending to go brothel-hopping downtime even get surgically restored foreskins.
54* ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'', despite [[WordOfGod being set in a world like the 17th century]], has quite high living standards and sanitation.
55* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' novel ''Elfangor's Secret'', averting this trope is a plot point. The soldiers and villagers of Europe circa the Hundred Years' War are notably ridden with diseases and parasites. This becomes a plot point when the Animorphs need to figure out which soldier of the massed armies is a fellow time traveler; they eventually look for the one person who is as healthy and unmarked as they are.
56* Otto Bettmann's (non-fiction) book ''The Good Old Days -- They Were Terrible!'' is dedicated to disputing this trope in regards to American society in the Gilded Age (c. 1870s-1900). Child labor sweatshops, streets filled with manure and trash, malnutrition among frontiersmen, etc. are discussed.
57* Creator/MarkTwain wrote ''Literature/ThePrinceAndThePauper'' and ''Literature/AConnecticutYankeeInKingArthursCourt'' specifically to avoid this trope. It was a TakeThat against Creator/WalterScott's book ''{{Literature/Ivanhoe}}'', which he blamed for helping to cause the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar, because the antebellum South clung to their outdated culture in the face of change.
58* Discussed and ultimately defied in ''(Re) Vive l'Empereur!'' After getting a taste of life in 2015 France and discovering that quite a lot of people are nostalgic of his reign, UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte more or less calls them deluded, saying that if they are so unhappy in their own time, they won't be happier in any other era.
59* Deliberately averted in ''Creator/LeoFrankowski'''s time travel series The Crosstime Engineer. Sir Conrad, narrating via diary entries, notes that it might be somewhat as pretty as 20th century people believed, but for the horse manure everywhere.
60* ''Literature/HouseholdGods'' by Judith Tarr and Creator/HarryTurtledove plays with this trope. The protagonist, a female lawyer who lives in modern LA (c. the late 90s when the book came out) wishes for something else than her difficult life juggling a career and family, praying to a statue of two Roman gods she bought, thinking it was better in the era they came from. When her prayer is granted, and she's woken up in the body of a female Roman tavern owner in the 2nd century AD, it turns out to be quite unpleasant in many ways. She's disgusted by the lack of hygiene, slavery and the Romans' attitudes toward many issues. Then things become worse. Ultimately it boils down to finding appreciation for what she has in her own time.
61* Professor Welch in ''Literature/LuckyJim'' is a Medievalist who loves Medieval arts and culture, seeing the Middle Ages through a very rosy light. Welch has Jim give a talk on "Merrie Old England", making his view on the subject clear. To butter him up, Jim plans to end his lecture with an extended digression on how much better those times were than now, and how the Medieval man would be shocked by modern society.
62* ''Literature/IndustrialSocietyAndItsFuture'': Kaczynski thinks life really was better before the Industrial Revolution, and is opposed to all technology beyond the things an artisan could create (e.g. a water wheel). Given that claim however, he admits those times also had their problems, but feels they were far less than now, asserting that as humans evolved in pre-industrial times we're maladapted to the modern industrial society, which deeply harms us along with the whole environment, while also threatening our future freedom as in his view most technology increasingly enslaves us.
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65[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
66* Ancient Japan seemed awfully tidy in ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', although there is a degree of accuracy here; cleanliness and hygiene were both quite advanced and socially important in Japan. The punishments for failing to uphold the proper level of cleaning etiquette could be draconian.
67* In James Clavell's ''Literature/{{Shogun}}'', both book and TV series, Blackthorne's Dutch crew insist on maintaining European standards of hygiene and housekeeping, utterly appalling their Japanese hosts. Men not at home with the idea of daily baths, who throw their intimate refuse out into the street in accordance with European custom, soon find themselves demoted to the ''eto'' class - lowly, despised and untouchable dregs of humanity. This is meant as both condemnation and judgment, but they simply do not notice.
68* PBS ran a series of reality-based programs (the names varied from series to series but were generally ''[Decade] House'' (1900 House, 1940's House) or ''[Setting] House'' (Frontier House, Manor House, Colonial House)) in the early 2000s, where modern families with an interest in, but no great knowledge of, another era were asked to live in an expertly-crafted recreation of that time for several months.
69** Some historical details were neglected on purpose for health and safety reasons, for example in the Victorian house, the widespread use of lead-based paint and the stove that was in reality prone to exploding were left out.
70** The Victorian era family did better than most as they were set up as upper-middle class, but still were shocked at how long household work took and got increasingly squicked by the lack of shampoo.
71** The Pioneer era families very quickly got tired of scrubbing pots and chopping wood. When their winter stores were inspected at the end of the series all but one (young and childless) couple were deemed to have insufficient food and firewood to survive.
72** The Texas Ranch house families had fun riding horses for a day, then realized it took weeks to get the cows anywhere. Meanwhile the house was infested with flies (and no insecticide).
73** The early 17th century New England colonial era community did surprisingly well. There was plenty of strife, emotional and otherwise, but they pulled through and eventually gathered enough supplies and started exporting enough to be deemed survivable through the winter.
74* The "[Decade/Setting]House" genre was neatly parodied by ''[[Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook The Mitchell and Webb Situation]]'', with "1990s House". Which was then done for real (to an extent) by BBC Four in 2009.
75* The Series/BBCHistoricalFarmSeries loves to avert this trope, but at the same time likes to call out misconceptions that exaggerate TheDungAges reputation of past societies.
76* ''Series/TheDailyShow'' once had John Oliver try to track down when "The Good Ol' Days" ''were'', after hearing the likes of Radio/GlennBeck, SeanHannity, and Creator/BillOReilly lament their passing. He proceeded to interview people who'd grown up in each preceding decade (starting at the '70s), all of whom disproved the notion by [[LongList listing the things that were screwy]] during that period, culminating in a woman who'd lived in the '30s describing TheGreatDepression. He concluded they [[NostalgiaFilter all felt the good old days were when they'd been children]], since everything usually seems better at that point, largely because parents will go to great lengths to protect their children form poor circumstances.
77* ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'': Camelot is awfully cosmopolitan and clean for the Middle Ages, though the former is potentially justified by the setting being loosely (what with the castles in particular, very loosely) post-Roman Britain, which was actually very cosmopolitan -- graves of highly-ranked people of North African origin, for instance, have been discovered in Britain, and a number of Roman legions (which recruited from all over the vast Empire) were garrisoned in Britain for hundreds of years, meaning that the cosmopolitanism isn't entirely surprising. The cleanliness, on the other hand, is.
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80[[folder:Music]]
81* In the Music/BillyJoel song "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant":
82-->''Do you remember those days hangin' out at the village green?\
83Engineer boots, leather jackets and tight blue jeans!\
84Drop a dime in the box, play a song about New Orleans!\
85Cold beer. Hot lights. My sweet romantic teenage nights!''
86* The song "Crocodile Rock" by Music/EltonJohn is all about the good ol' days of young rock and roll:
87-->''I remember when rock was young.\
88Me and Suzy had so much fun.\
89Holdin' hands and skimmin' stones.\
90Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own.''
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93[[folder:Western Animation]]
94* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' took part in a reality show where they lived in a turn of the century lifestyle while their house is gassed for termites. The family had to ride Cugnot Steam Trolley to Apu's, and could only buy stuff that was sold in the era. In spite of this, largely they lived a pretty comfortable middle-to-upper-class life. Eventually though they got ''so'' into it -- even adopting the speech mannerisms and mindset of the era -- that viewers grew bored. The show then gets derailed when the producers try to get more ratings through introducing a washed-up '70s TV actor (who's entirely out of place) and endangering the family by sending them and the house they're in down a river.
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97[[folder:Real Life]]
98* Generally speaking, this is a case of LuddWasRight crossed with NostalgiaFilter. For times not in one's living memory, simple lack of knowledge.
99* Most of the art of the Middle Ages does not depict the poor as emaciated or dirty. Thus the artist(s) imply that everyone was well fed and clean back then.[[note]]In years with good harvest, no plague, and no war, then maybe.[[/note]]
100* Much of our image of the Middle Ages comes from depictions of medieval England and France. Sanitation and hygiene were much more important in other areas (Muslim-dominated Spain, for example; the Scandinavian countries and their colonies in what would become Russia were also much more stringent about matters than England and France). It still wasn't quite up to modern standards, but much of Europe wasn't stuck in the DungAges.
101* UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance is often portrayed as too clean, when in reality hygiene had a marked decline in that era due to it being seen as unchristian to bathe (as in "in a bathtub") since it was an activity embraced by non-Christian societies like the Ottoman Empire, and also due to public baths having spread ThePlague (due to the water rarely being changed), which was blamed on people "pridefully" wanting to be clean. Taking what we call a sponge bath, with a basin and washcloth, wasn't nearly as frowned upon, and can be just as effective. Washing your ''clothes'', however, was more difficult. Modern men and women have very little idea just what women had to go through before the invention of the washing machine and dryer.
102* [[http://www.oldstagecoachstop.org/webgeezer/Backhouse.pdf The flush toilet]]. The invention of the Sears catalog was a Godsend for this reason.
103-->''We tarried not, nor lingered long, on what we left behind:\
104 The torture of that icy seat would make a Spartan sob!\
105 For needs must scrape the gooseflesh with a lacerating cob,\
106 Which from a frost-encrusted nail hung suspended by a string...\
107 (My father was a frugal man and wasted not a thing.)''
108* Some have gone even further back, idolizing pre-civilization and thus crossing into NobleSavage territory with their view of hunter-gatherer peoples (or foragers, as anthropologists now call them). While it's true some foraging peoples were peaceful, this was mostly the ones largely isolated who thus didn't have enemies to fight (with, obviously, tragic consequences if hostile forces ''did'' find them). Many were extremely violent, with some anthropologists estimating their men on average as having a homicide rate as high as ''40-60%'' due to endemic warfare. This may stem largely from guilt over how foraging peoples were and are treated, but it does not make such idealized conceptions of them any more correct than the opposite.
109* The UsefulNotes/SocietyForCreativeAnachronism (SCA) effectively "splits the difference" between historical accuracy and modern convenience; the unofficial slogan of the SCA is "the Middle Ages as we'd ''like'' them to have been". In cases where historical records are "fuzzy" on a particular topic, or recreating a historically documented practice would be impractical or unsafe, it's usually acceptable to create a reasonable approximation using existing historical data.
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