"Ah, so this is why it's called 'knock out heat'."
"The air is so thick I can barely breathe! There's not a single breeze! This sun is giving me a headache! All this sweat is making me greasy and my hair is getting oily! I can't sleep because of the mosquitoes! Where are the air conditioners? And God, why are you wearing those tacky clothes? Don't you have any shame?"
— Denise, Monica's Gang
Typically, summer receives positive portrayals in pop culture, as love is blooming, the sun is shining, kids are out of school, it's the perfect weather for a beach day, fireflies are out, and That One Summer is a pivotal point of growth and development. It's almost unanimously agreed that summer is the universally best season, completely overlooking its not-so-glamorous aspects, which is where this trope comes into play.
During the summer, the days are longer while the nights are shorter. The scorching heat makes the air thick and stifling, as you struggle to inhale. Swarms of bugs pollute the scenery and disrupt your picnic. Overall, summer is the worst nightmare of those intolerant to the heat, Prone to Sunburn, allergic to the sun, or afraid of bugs. Historically, it was even worse especially in cities; with uncollected garbage and Road Apples stinking up the road, and many of urban poor dying of diseases like malaria and cholera, hence there were plots of rich city folks leaving to the cooler countryside or the beachfronts for the summer.
Can be a form of Subverted Innocence. Super-Trope to Summer Campy and Summer School Sucks. The Other Wiki has an article about Seasonal affective disorder
, which is when a person with otherwise normal mental health exhibits symptoms of depression during a specific season (typically either summer or winter).
Believe it or not, the romanticization of summer may be exclusive to certain geographical locations. Many popular Western media are created in places (the U.K., the northeastern U.S., etc.) where summer is unusually mild. There are in fact several regions of the world where summer being sucky is the default view — temperatures are so high people often die of heatstroke, for example — so media from those places may more commonly express hatred of summer. These tend to be countries and regions close to the equator and in harsh desert/tropical environments.
Areas with extreme humidity (such as the South Pacific regions and the U.S. gulf states) are especially hellish in the summertime, as high humidity bypasses the body's natural cooling system and makes things that much more miserable; sweat cannot evaporate properly when the atmosphere is already saturated with moisture. At best, this causes extreme discomfort when working or spending a long time outdoors; at worst, it can quickly raise your internal temperature high enough to cause serious, life-threatening conditions like the above-mentioned heatstroke.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War deconstructs the series' premise during the summer vacation arc. Since Kaguya and Shirogane are far too prideful to just admit they want to hang out without the excuse of student council work, school being out of session means that they spend pretty much the entire break laying in their rooms miserable. It also gets played for laughs in the spin-off, as Karen and Erika also spend their summer break miserable because they don't get to see Kaguya and Shirogane together (for Karen) or bask in Kaguya's presence (for Erika).
Kaguya/Shirogane/Karen/Erika: I wish... this summer vacation would just end already...
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Because of the Second Impact, the Earth is in an eternal summer. Almost all scenes set outdoors have cicadas chirping and a slight heat haze, most characters show annoyance at the incessant heat at one point or another (even the ever-stoic Commander Ikari) and as the series gets closer to December and the Cerebus Syndrome escalates there is just a general feeling of wrongness at how there are no signs of the times changing beyond the characters mentioning how weeks have passed.
Comic Books
- Monica's Gang: Played with. In "Eu Adoro o Inverno!",Translation Denise keeps complaining about how awful winter is compared to summer since she gets to take off the clunky warming clothes and hang out with other attractive people at the beach during the latter season. However, at the end of the story, she ironically pulls a 180 and bitches at length about how much she hates summer.
- The Simpsons: In one of the "Summer Shindig" comics, Lisa complains about how hot the weather is, blaming global warming. Homer tries various ways of cooling her down to cheer her up, but because he is a Bumbling Dad, all the attempts fail until both are sent to an air-conditioned hospital after getting sick from the fumes from artificial snow.
Films — Animated
- Recess: School's Out:
- TJ is devastated when he learns his friends are all going off to different summer camps instead of spending time together at the lake, leaving TJ to fend for himself back home in a sequence scored by "One (Is the Loneliest Number)". Subverted when, after saving summer vacation (and the world), the friends decide to give up summer camp to spend a typical summer together while they're still young enough to really enjoy it.
- Conversed by Dr. Benedict in his Evil Gloating monologue, as his ultimate plot is to get rid of summer vacation, believing that making the climate colder and forcing American kids to stay in school the whole year will improve test scores. Subverted, since a number of characters think the plan is insane and defend the good of summer vacation.
Films — Live Action
- Predator 2: Los Angeles is suffering under a Heat Wave in a future 1997 (the film being released in 1990). An actual war between Jamaican and Colombian cartels is burning hot as well with the LAPD is stretched thin battling the factions. The hot weather attracts an alien Predator who actually enjoys the heat and starts hunting the gang members on both sides and takes interest in Lt. Mike Harrigan's combat capabilities, hoping to challenge him to a fateful duel. The unbearably hot LA weather is like a character in and of itself, adding to the oppressive atmosphere of war-torn LA.
Literature
- Amelia's Notebook: In "Amelia's Itchy-Twitchy, Lovey-Dovey Summer at Camp Mosquito", Amelia goes to summer camp. While there are things she enjoys, much is made about the mosquitos, cold showers, uncomfortable cabins, bad food, and outhouses. She's also less than enthused about the fact that her older sister Cleo is there. The worst part, however, is that Amelia and her best friend Carly develop crushes on the same guy, which leads to them being at odds for much of the summer. All's well that ends well, though—the guy eventually proves himself to not be worth the trouble, Carly and Amelia make up, and they ultimately have a pretty good summer.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Zigzagged in "Dog Days", which takes place over the summer — Greg, being Book Dumb, does enjoy not having to go to school during the summer, and he likes going swimming. However, he hates going outdoors during the summer, referring to himself as an "indoor person", and complains that outside he has to check his soda can for wasps before drinking.
- In the short story Drought, the protagonist is a preteen girl, who is miserable at the summer's drought — crops are failing, the school can no longer have a swimming pool, it is so hot, and she and her father have to put a brick in the toilet tank and do their dishes only once a day. The father is also so sad about the drought that he wants to cry but can't bring himself to, so his daughter comments that he has a "drought" too.
- The Great Gatsby: Most of the novel takes place in the summer, with Chapter 7 emphasizing the tense and heated love triangle between Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy in the middle of a heat wave, with Jordan just wanting the room to add more windows over this heat.
- Harry Potter:
- Harry, unlike most people his age, dreads summer vacation, since it means leaving his friends from Hogwarts and staying with the Dursleys, who ignore and mistreat him. Since the Dursleys hate magic, he is often forced to do his summer homework in secret. Downplayed during summers when Harry is able to leave the Dursleys early.
- Especially present at the start of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, when Harry is still grappling with the traumatic events of the Triwizard Tournament and hasn't heard from his friends in weeks. In the midst of this, Privet Drive is hit by a heat wave, forcing everyone to stay inside to avoid the heat and leaving the front lawns parched and yellowing. To top it all off, Harry and Dudley get attacked by dementors, and Harry gets expelled from Hogwarts just for defending himself. Somewhat subverted once Harry is picked up by the Order of the Phoenix.
- Milly, Molly: The cartoon adaptation has an episode titled "Salt and Pepper", in which there is a huge drought, necessitating the eponymous horses to pull a cart and deliver water to water the plants.
Live-Action TV
- How I Met Your Mother, the first two episodes of Season 2 have Marshall feeling depressed over the summer after Lily broke off the engagement over commitment issues regarding her future art career in San Francisco, which didn't pan out for Lily as well.
- M*A*S*H: A few episodes deal with the extreme heat that is part of Korean summers. Not only do the personnel at the 4077th have to deal with the heat on overly hot days, but so do the wounded who are passing through, whose conditions are not helped by the high temperatures.
- The Twilight Zone: In "The Midnight Sun", the Earth's orbit drastically shifts, causing an extreme, unending summer that leaves people suffering from unbearable heat and the breakdown of society due to climate change.
Music
- Bananarama: Their best known single, "Cruel Summer", outlines a particularly hot summer that's made worse by a lack of friends.
- Eddie Cochran's hit song "Summertime Blues" features the protagonist complaining that his parents made him get a summer job where his boss makes him work late and thus he doesn't have time to enjoy his summer break.
- Songdrops: In "The Summer Time Song", the singer complains about everything he hates about summertime, including heat, flies, and bird poop, which he mentions several times.
- Taylor Swift: "Cruel Summer", which Swift herself best describe this as a "song to feel like a desperate summer love that might be doomed from the start".
- "Summer" is the most consistently dark of the The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. The oppressive imagery is made explicit in the accompanying sonnet:
Under a hard season, fired up by the sun
Languishes man, languishes the flock and burns the pine
We hear the cuckoo's voice;
then sweet songs of the turtledove and finch are heard.
Soft breezes stir the air, but threatening
the North Wind sweeps them suddenly aside.
The shepherd trembles,
fearing violent storms and his fate.
The fear of lightning and fierce thunder
Robs his tired limbs of rest
As gnats and flies buzz furiously around.
Alas, his fears were justified
The Heavens thunder and roar and with hail
Cut the head off the wheat and damages the grain.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street:
- In one episode, everyone is frustrated with how hot the weather is, so they ask Mumford to make it snow. He does, but it ends up only snowing on Maria.
- In another episode, Baby Bear tries to sell porridge but gets no customers because everyone's too hot and sweaty to eat porridge.
Theatre
- In the Heights: The show is set in July, with Washington Heights and the rest of New York City in the middle of a massive Heat Wave. The heat eventually results in a massive blackout and contributes to Abuela Claudia's death.
- Kiss Me, Kate: Conversed in "Too Darn Hot", the Irrelevant Act Opener, where the men complain it's so hot they don't even want to go out or make love.
According to the Kinsey report
Ev'ry average man you know
Much prefers to play his favorite sport
When the temperature is low
But when the thermometer goes way up
And the weather is sizzling hot
Mister Adam for his madam is not
Cause it's too too too darn hot
It's too darn hot
It's tooooo da-arn hot!
Video Games
- Saints Row 2: The post-mission newscast for "Jailbreak" establishes that the game takes place during the summer period. Reporter Jane Valderamma claims it is the worst in Stilwater's history, as not only is the city experiencing a heat wave, the Playa awakes from their five year-long coma and escapes with the assistance of another inmate by the name of Carlos Mendoza. The situation further deteriorates from there, as the 3rd Street Saints would reestablish themselves and initiate a series of increasingly violent gang wars in order to regain control of the city.
Web Animation
- Dayum: "Types of People During the Summer Portrayed by Minecraft" has three people who have a bad time in the summer — Nathan, who tries to camp, only for bugs to attack him, Dylan, who gets a sunburn, and Maya, who hates the heat and spends her time chasing AC.
- The Debbie and Carrie Show: The title characters take a trip to Hawaii that they won in a contest, only to have to flee from an approaching hurricane (a common threat in summertime), so they go to Los Angeles, where they have been several times before, only to be caught in an earthquake. In the end, they have to settle for Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Debbie used to live.
Western Animation
- Bluey (2018): Zigzagged in "The Pool" — initially, it's so hot that all the Heelers want to do is lie around and complain. However, Bandit takes the girls to his brother Stripe's pool, and this initially perks them up but he didn't bring needed supplies like sunscreen and flip-flops, because he thought they were boring, which almost spoils the outing. Luckily, however, Chilli brings the "boring things" over, allowing them to have fun after all.
- Gravity Falls: The show takes place over the summer. The show doesn't hesitate to show viewers some of the downsides to staying in an old house next to the woods, with bug bites being mentioned several times and high heat being central to the plots of two episodes (it kicks off the plot of "The Deep End", and in "The Land Before Swine", the summer heat is the reason dinosaurs are appearing in Gravity Falls).
- In an episode of Handy Manny, the summer is so hot that a man replaces all his plants with succulents so he won't have to water them as often.
- The Koala Brothers: "Ned Goes Red" involves Ned getting a sunburn and sunstrokenote as a result of running around in the sun without a hat and without drinking anything. He'd been warned about the sun's "harmful rays", but didn't know what they were or how to be safe from them, so he'd been paranoid about Ray Guns.
- Martha Speaks:
- In "Martha Spins a Tale", everyone is cranky because it is a hot day, and Jake even breaks out in rashes from the heat.
- Played for Drama in "Martha's Steamed" — it's a hot summer's day, and a dog named Ruby ends up locked in a hot car and needs to be saved. In addition, T.D. tries to cool down by putting his shoes in the Lorraines' freezer.
- "Alice Covers Up" focuses on Alice being Prone to Sunburn and having to keep reapplying this particular type of sunscreen, which eventually dyes her orange.
- Phineas and Ferb: Despite the titular duo normally being optimistic and expressing how much they love summer, there have been times when they express frustration at the heat. The main reason for their creating "S'Winter" is because it was way too hot out.
Lawrence: So, boys, what are you doing today?
Phineas: [while he, Ferb, and Perry are upside down] Ugh. We don't know. It's too hot to think. - South Park: The episode "Summer Sucks" involves the town being bored due to fireworks being banned (and Cartman being upset because younger kids keep peeing in the pool every time he tries to go swimming). Due to the ban on typical fireworks, the town decides to light a giant black snake firework instead — however, this turns deadly when the snake gets out of control, as the manufacturers didn't account for how long it'd last.
- Nearly everyone on Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation experiences this, save for maybe Hamton and Elmyra, but the one who clearly got it the worst is Plucky. Deciding to tag along with Hamton's family upon finding out they are going to Happy World Land, he ends up on the road trip from hell as the Pig family's eccentricities are a bit much for his tastes, from getting overly excited during car games, pulling off to eat at a drive-in restaurant (they brought their own food), to picking up an ax-crazy hitchhiker. Then finally, they make it to Happy World Land and all they do is ride the monorail and go back home. They didn't want to overdo it on their first visit. By the end, Plucky is actually happy for summer to be over.
Plucky: I miss school.
Real Life
- Parts of the Deep South can get extremely hot and humid, especially the Gulf States (Florida, Alabama, etc.). Often, the high temperatures combine with the high humidity and stagnant breeze to make the region less than hospitable. This region is also prone to hurricanes as the high temperatures dive the weather systems.
- While it's always been a problem, changing weather patterns as a result of global warming have resulted in a great increase in summer wildfires. In addition to the catastrophic destruction they can cause, the giant clouds of smoke they produce can spread across thousands of miles, making for miserable, choking air for everyone caught in it.