This weekend was a real epiphany for me. Since I was working over the weekend, breaks were few and far between. But when I got them, I would turn on the old boob tube to learn something. I don’t really watch a lot of entertainment oriented television shows. How I Met Your Mother and Glee are about it for me. I gravitate toward shows I can learn from.
I popped on the TV and found Filthy Cities on the DVR. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a real eye opener. We think we live in a polluted world now. People in the 1700s would have traded their eye teeth for greenhouse gases, well that and their small pox. This particular episode took us to France, Paris specifically.
To really give you an idea of how bad it was, they did a little cgi magic, overlaying the filth over current city scenes. Back then, all the raw sewage in the city was dumped directly into the Seine. This included the waste from the tanners. If you don’t understand how leather was tanned back then, I’ll give you a Reader’s Digest version. First the hide was soaked in lye, then the hair and fat was scraped off and then, if that weren’t enough, the hide was left to soak in a sauce of water and dog poop. Yes, you read correctly. Poop softens the hide. All this was dumped right into the Seine.
In fact, some of the streets of Paris used to be canals of filth, working their way to the river. People reported having puss filled blisters in their throats from the stench. They stepped in the poo of 20,000 horses on the streets every day. And you didn’t use an umbrella back then to keep the rain off of you. It was to keep the contents of chamber pots being emptied from the floor above you off. What’s worse, they didn’t have any kind of garbage pickup in a town of 600,000. Imagine that for a moment.
And we think it’s terrible when the garbage man forgets to pick up our trash on Wednesday.
I have often said that re-enactors can’t possibly “live in the period” as they say they want can because you can’t replicate the conditions that existed. You can’t even beting to understand the conditions – the rancid, despicable, unhealthy stench of civilization at the dawn of urbanization. So really, you’re just playing dress up and calling it “living history.” That’s O.K. Just don’t try to convince me that it is a snapshot into the days of old.
I fast forward to my second break. Gangs of New York was on. Gritty and raw aren’t even adequate terms to describe this movie. You really have to see it on a movie channel because any network that shows it has to do a lot of editing. It is gruesome. It’s also a little unsettling, since the opening scene is between the people “born here” and the immigrants (things don’t really change, do they?). Lots of head bashing and carnage.
Now, I will admit there is some cinematic license here, but the story’s background of the New York Draft Riots and the ongoing battle in the bowels of the city for power and control is in fact true. It took the Union army to quell the riots with cannons and fixed bayonets. Hundreds were killed, thousands more injured. If you want to learn more about this relatively unknown period in our history, read the nonfiction book, Gangs of New York. It will blow your mind.
As I sat there watching these two shows over the weekend, I couldn’t help but think what a bunch of namby-pamby whiners and bitchers we are. We drive our nice new cars to our jobs, live in relative peace and security in our homes, roam the fully stocked aisles of a supermarket when we’re out of groceries (even though our house is usually stocked with food, just things we don’t feel like eating) and with a flick of a switch, we defeat the weather with heat or AC.
We don’t have to roam litter and pestilence filled streets. We don’t have to feast on moldy bread while the King and Queen eat cake, we don’t have to kill one another over land or possessions (most of us). And yet we bitch and moan. Worse, we’re teaching our children to bitch and moan instead of teaching them to feel fortunate that we live in such wonderful times.
Sure, gas is around four bucks a gallon. But at least we have gas. If any of you sat in gas lines back in the 1970s you’ll remember how pleasant that was. Frankly, I’d rather pay $4 a gallon and not wait in line than 75¢ and not know if there will still be gas two hours later when I finally make it to the front of the blocks-long line.
If you really want a bit of reality therapy, I encourage you to watch Filthy Cities. It can be a tough go sometimes, because they do a darned good job or recreating the times, right down to small pox.
But what you’ll see is that we’re very lucky to live in these times. It makes the whole debt ceiling/national debt thing look silly and a bit poignant at the same time.
Why? As you’d see in the show, the citizens of France became so fed up with the squaller that they petitioned the King to fix it. When they ran out of bread, the queen said they could eat cake. The wealthy wouldn’t even go near Paris. Versailles was 15 miles away. The aristocrats were totally out of touch with what was going on in their own country. They were too busy living the high life.
Heads were about to roll. Literally. Fed up, the masses rose up and overthrew the King. They cut off his head as well as Marie Antoinette’s. But they didn’t stop there. They executed hundreds of the wealthiest people in the country whose lavish lifestyle had really pissed them off. It was the French Revolution, fueled by their own declaration of independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Hhm, heads rolling because the needs of the average citizen went unmet. Out of touch power brokers and the elite who are totally out of touch with the average man. Now where have I heard that before?
Out on the Treasure Coast, eating cake for breakfast,
– Robb