The thing about the period we call "the middle ages" is that it lasted from about 476 A.D. to around 1453 A.D. and as you can imagine, a lot things changed during that span of time. Too many to even list here. Everything from philosophy to agriculture, to fashion changed drastically in that time. The 700s were very distinct from the 800s, the 1000s were very distinct from the 1100s, and the 1200s, 1300s, and 1400s were all radically different from each other. Heck, even the 1440s were very different from the 1450s, to pick an extreme example. Scholars have tried to alleviate this by dividing the middle ages into three different periods, the Early Middle Ages(500s to 900s), the High Middle Ages(1000s to 1200s) and the late Middle Ages(1300s to 1400s), but even that is far too over simplified and not at all satisfactory.
Another thing to consider is that the medieval period was a very different time for each part of the world, or even each part of each continent. Medieval England was nothing like medieval Italy, which was nothing like medieval France, which was nothing like medieval Spain, which was nothing like medieval Germany, which was nothing like medieval Greece etc. The main exception to this is that, from the late 1000s to the early 1300s, England and France were pretty similar, but even that was only for a few centuries, not the entire medieval period. To give an example, in certain parts of late medieval Germany it was illegal for peasants to own swords, however in England, at that same time, peasants were ordered to own swords so that they could more effectively fight off bandits.
Basically what I'm trying to get at with this autistic, poorly written, rant is that there is no common or general way of portraying the middle ages. There is no general idea of they were like because they were so different across the various centuries and lands they encompassed. The fact that not only the media, but academia as well tries to paint it all with the same broad stroke is either an act of extreme ignorance or extreme malice.
