The Chief ([info]jasonrhode) wrote in [info]anachrotech,
@ 2007-10-14 13:46:00
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Why Steampunk?


Dear fellow Steampunk fans,
We all seek a place to belong. A scene where we feel the personalities, aesthetic, and sensibility matches our own.

My friend Megan has heavy metal. My brother Nick had punk rawk. I have steampunk. And in truth, I think, with a lot of us, is that we were steampunk before we knew what steampunk was.

Example: I knew there was something I liked about Batman: The Animated Series' conjoining of 90's computers with 1950s and 30s aesthetic. I just didn't know what that was, but it turns out to be the same thing that pushed me here.

Now, I have a question that I need your help on. What attracted you to Steampunk? What attracts all of us? I've been wondering -- how would you explain the appeal of it to others?

Is it because that earlier time had higher culture and rude machines, and now we have exactly the opposite? Our machines are completely without physical art or tactile sensation, and we have declined in our social grace too? Is it that we seek roles to play in a society that only embraces the consumer? Perhaps it's that, in some ways, we feel steampunk society embraces the eccentric and the odd in the way that our culture does not. For all our vaunted individualism, in today's world, Nikola Tesla would never make the cover of Playgirl; Thomas Edison wouldn't rate a Cosmo profile. But in the Gernsbach and gears world, there is a wider space for the swashbuckling lady scientist, the adventurous lady-in-waiting, and the strange middle aged scientist with a mustache and steampowered seven-league boots can be a widget-and-wicket wench-woobie in the way that isn't thinkable today.

Or maybe ya'll have different notions. So I put this question to you: what is it about steampunk? What's at the heart of its appeal?

(cross-posted to [info]steamfashion )

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[info]divineaspect
2007-10-14 08:01 pm UTC (link)
Because It's a way of Recognizing that If I want a future, it's DYI. Because those mad scientists stand up against the picture of conformity, and say that in individuals contributions, even if never widely accepted, still have value.

When asked to explain it to outsiders it's simple, "I will not settle for a flavorless mass produced future, just the thought of it makes me angry."

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[info]peterbilt_47
2007-10-14 08:34 pm UTC (link)
I've heard a lot of people say it's about a discontent with the flavorlessness of today's technology, but that's not it for me. I think our current technology has loads of style.

For me, it's because it calls to mind another time when new technologies captured the imagination and generated boundless optimism. Much like today. There's simultaneously a self-deprecation about it, and a pride. Self-deprecation in that we know the steam-future was/is fanciful speculation, but pride in the creative impulse and spirit that gives rise to our optimistic ways of imagining the future we can create for ourselves, regardless of what future actually comes to pass.

Also, it's just plain cool.

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[info]twistdfateangel
2007-10-14 08:34 pm UTC (link)
For me, the future is beautiful, both the smooth-white-and-clear-plastic kind and the brass-and-steel-cogs kind. Steampunk has an over-the-top glamour and flash that contrasts so strikingly with the almost Zen elegance of the newer SciFi. It's playful, adventurous, with strange and ludicrous inventions that nevertheless seem so perfectly plausible. There's civility, chivalry, and optimism, all the things that made the Sci Fi of the Victorian Era and the 1950's so alluring.

I will not reject the "mass-produced future" because without steampunk vision, it would not be.

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[info]lilyayl
2007-10-14 09:12 pm UTC (link)
I am a consumer of steampunk books and films. For me, I am attracted to, in these stories, the sense of possibility. In many steampunk-themed pieces, the boundaries are constantly transgressed. If one of the main themes of cyberpunk lit is finding the division between man and machine, I think one of main themes of steampunk is discovering how much man can do with machine, going beyond what is allowed or what was previously thought possible. Also, steampunk lit usually includes a bit of optimism in regards to its tech. Even if the book or film explores the negative consequences of the science, the optimism doesn't fade. A certain line of inquiry might be negative/bad/etc, but science as a whole is not. I also enjoy the attitudes toward spiritualism and the occult during periods of history most closely related to steampunk.

I'm rambling sorry. Let's see, in cyberpunk, you have the cyborg, becoming machine. Questions like: What is humanity? etc. In steampunk, you have the wings or bringing Frankenstein back to life, doing the impossible. Questions like: What is possible? What should be possible? Sure you can have cyborgs in steampunk and vice versa, but the roles each occupies in the each genre is different.

Also, today's science is so specialized. In steampunk lit and films, amateur scientists are possible. Nearly anyone can innovate and create.

Also, the social politics of time periods associated with steampunk are fascinating.

The love for steampunk is also due to a weird nostalgia for a time when dreams and the unimaginable were possible. When the scope of possibility was large. Nowadays we can do a lot with computers, but everything seems to fall within a narrow range. Because we can make better and smaller computer chips, we can make smaller computers, more versatile cell phones, and amazing computer/video games. The scope of imagination seems so small, the ideas falling with a very contained range, but in steampunk... the imagination is limitless, the scope boundless.

Lastly--- steampunk is just cool.

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[info]jackluminous
2007-10-14 09:27 pm UTC (link)
Because yesterday's future seems more exciting than today's future. Today, nobody is telling me that, in the future, no matter who I am, I can have a jetpack and a robot butler and a summer house on the Moon. I like yesterday's future better, and I think it had better style and more hope.

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[info]andygates
2007-10-14 09:59 pm UTC (link)
How true that is. We got to 2000 and it was just like 1999 (apart from the milennium bug overtime pay). The future we were promised was so damn cool, and instead we got congestion charging. It's hard to be innocently optimistic now.

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[info]radiumx
2007-10-14 11:02 pm UTC (link)
There are some interesting aspects of our 'modern' age that rival jetpacks. I mean... not to downplay the importance of jetpacks, but what would YOU do with one? My greatest hope is that someday so many people will spend their time on the Internets, they will stop driving places altogether and lessen the traffic for the rest of us.

The idea of a worldwide communications network and decentralized knowledge repository was scifi over 50 years ago, and now... here we are.

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[info]andygates
2007-10-15 10:08 am UTC (link)
And it's great. World-changing, a truly disruptive technology. But it's also infested with pr0n spam... Utopia ought to be clean (which, maybe, is why it's unattainable: clean exists only in simulation and Bauhaus apartments)

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[info]q13_exe
2007-10-14 09:56 pm UTC (link)
1) a love for eccentrics of any era
2) too many of my developemental years crawling around ghost towns and historical societies with my grandfather.
3) the arrogance of that age is mirrored by our own.
4) So much unchown at the edge of every map.
5) the simplicity and utility of the technolgy, the naiscance of the New, and of course:
5) Top hats, Pith Helmets, and Fezzes

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[info]q13_exe
2007-10-14 09:57 pm UTC (link)
A greater emphasis on proper spelling in correspandence...

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although, that doesn't actually make my list...
[info]noneuklid
2007-10-14 10:08 pm UTC (link)
correspondence.

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Re: although, that doesn't actually make my list...
[info]radiumx
2007-10-14 10:58 pm UTC (link)
O DELICIOUS IRONY, THY TASTE SWEETENS MY PALATE. :-D

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Re: although, that doesn't actually make my list...
[info]q13_exe
2007-10-14 10:59 pm UTC (link)
exactly.

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[info]tlttlotd
2007-10-14 10:27 pm UTC (link)
As you said, the embracement and acceptance of the offbeat and the eccentric. The willingness to let people play with technologies and use them creatively, instead of as mere consumers. It is like the difference between fingerpainting and buying a plastic model kit. There is also an artistic aspect to steampunk: Form need not necessarily follow function. A mechanism or an article of clothing can be as much a work of art as a thing to be used.

The steampunk ethos does not hold that things are to be used and discarded, but to be made lovingly and treasured.

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[info]radiumx
2007-10-14 10:56 pm UTC (link)
Steampunk is very personal. It's a one-person operation. The results of your science/tinkering are directly a result of your knowledge... a physical manifestation of the Nietszchean Will to Power. Thoughts made real in brass, glass, and leather.

Modern technology is very consumer oriented - Who cares how your magical iPod works or where it came from, as long as it pumps out the tunes? Steampunk is also very cause-and-effect - you can see the magic happening. It's all very simple and understandable. Press Lever A to engage gear assembly B, which in turn transfers power from driveshaft C... and so on. This is comfortable when you're in a technological society that is - at best - functional and not much else. The aesthetic aspects say 'here is a piece of machinery, or clothing, or a book that is functional, approachable, and elegant. Steampunk is unique, attractive AND effective - extremely sought-after properties of any meme.

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[info]loaswearargyle
2007-10-14 11:20 pm UTC (link)
No future-past aesthetics here, folks - my first steady job was in a factory and loud, clanging machines make me horny.

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[info]radiumx
2007-10-15 12:30 am UTC (link)
you wanking nerd. :-p''

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[info]loaswearargyle
2007-10-15 12:34 am UTC (link)
indeed, indeed! i wanked to a widget, found a wench and wumpscuttled her hoccico!

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[info]lamregcinerhp
2007-10-15 03:58 pm UTC (link)
So a guy comes home from work and tells his wife, 'I have horrible news! I had this urge and I acted on it; I stuck my penis in the pickle slicer!'
His wife says, 'OMG, are you ok?!'
He says, 'Well, we both got fired.'

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[info]perpetual_lent
2007-10-15 12:08 am UTC (link)
I'm not a "Steampunk", so I technically can't answer the question. However, what I like about Scientific Romances was summed up quite poetically my R.H. Serard in his interview with Jules Verne:
The windows on the Boulevard Longueville command a magnificent view of the picturesque, if misty, town of Amiens, with its old cathedral and other mediæval buildings. Right in front of the house, on the other side of the boulevard, is a railway cutting, which, just opposite Verne’s study window, disappears into a pleasure ground, where there is a large music kiosk, in which during the fine weather the regimental band plays. This combination is to my thinking a very emblem of the work of the great writer: the rushing tram, with the roar and the rattle of the ultra-modernism, and the romance of the music. And is it not by a combination of science and industrialism with all that is most romantic in life that Verne’s novels possess an originality which can be found in the works of no other living writer, not even amongst those who count most in French literature?

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[info]digitalopiate
2007-10-15 12:24 am UTC (link)
I think one of the aspects (since I'm older than most I'm willing to bet) that I love is the very nature of the aesthetic. Steampunk now is where the goth was in the 1980s. You can't buy it in the mall. You can't find the music easily (outside of the internet). It's still very DIY. It's still small, and evolving, and very charismatic. It's not yet stuck on itself, nor sold out, nor degenerated.


On top of that, I am a real steam enthusiast. I hold a (currently expired pending some testing) FRA fireman license, and have fired steam engines. I have also gotten covered in vile thick grease working on them, exposed to asbestos, and pulled my back out trying to lever huge parts on them more times than I can count. And all that made me love them.

Plus there is a belief in steampunk that function and beauty are not exclusive. I've missed that, with all out plastic geegaws and flimsy tripe these days.

Brass, bronze, and capped oil reservoirs forever!

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[info]lamregcinerhp
2007-10-15 01:04 am UTC (link)
That camera in the user icon looks a bit like a KIEV 60, but I'm not sure.

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[info]digitalopiate
2007-10-15 01:20 am UTC (link)
Close. It's a Zenit E

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[info]lamregcinerhp
2007-10-15 03:59 pm UTC (link)
cool. I have a kiev 60 myself.

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[info]lamregcinerhp
2007-10-15 01:02 am UTC (link)
I read H.G.Wells as a child and it was all downhill from there.

Also I was into performing magic as a child, and would often refer to books written around a century ago for ideas. I actually have this sheet of paper from when I was about 9 or 10 and copying a recipie for glow-in-the-dark face paint from a 1920 edition of The Black Art Exposed.

To Give a Person a Supernatural Appearance.—Put one part of phosphorus into six of olive oil, and digest them in a sand heat. Rub this on the face (taking care to shut the eyes) and the appearance in the dark will be supernaturally frightful; all the parts which have been rubbed appearing to be covered by a luminous lambent flame of a bluish color, whilst the eyes and mouth appear like black spots. No danger whatever attends this experiment.

I found that because the complete text of the book is online here.

I was also a huge Harry Houdini worshipper, and Dante, and Thursdon, and Harry Blackstone Sr., and Robert Houdin, and all the others.

And I always enjoyed reading books from the past and anything from Victorian and Elizabethen times, particularly from the UK, maintinging this quiet assumption that things were somehow more refined and such then.

I think that I actually assumed that a lot of things that my classmates said that are part of accepted American English were indeed slang. One time when I was bullied I demanded of the bully to "unhand my bicycle!"

Anyway, you get the idea. It's always been with me.

I didn't learn that I was a steampunk, or even what it was, until I was 23.

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[info]amatol
2007-10-15 02:32 am UTC (link)
For me I am still not sure I am Steampunk in the sense of belonging... at least like some people are punk rawk or goth or any such sort of whole lifestyle commitment. I'm not really into belonging, rather just being me. However I am drawn to it as it reflects a lot of thinks I like, which are quirky gear driven machines, dirigibles and and a world with a bit of a sepia tint. I also like anachronism, I like old west cowboys deep in space, old shows or books about the distant future (usually ending up being this present), I like Doctor Who, Sci Fi that isn't all slick, brass machinery, anime worlds such as Last Exit and steamboy (among others). My fashion sense is not quite victorian and neither do I like the idea of returning to that centuries screwed up politics and social system (I am glad for the work the suffragettes went through to make sure I didn't have to live as a 2nd class citizen). But there are things from that era that I like, and with steampunk (at least my definition of it) I can happily steal those parts (or the parts from different eras including right now) and ignore the rest.

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[info]thirteenthgrace
2007-10-15 07:59 am UTC (link)
Because the above poster is far more elequently spoken than I - I'd like to say "ditto this" to the above. I'm a bit of a fashion theif of others styles, my friends and co-workers figure I dress like I fell out of a book, depends on what day as to which book, adventure or fairytale. I don't want to live in the Victorian era, I'm an outspoken girl and would have gotten my arse whipped pre-woman's lib, and I also owe quite a lot to modern medicine (I'm a bit of a daredevil and tend to get hurt a bit, and I don't think myotherapy was a big trade in Victorian times, let alone neurofen).

With that said I've always loved old gadgets (especially clockwork, which would technically make me more clockpunk - but it's all the same sort of idea) due the the handworked beauty of them, and working with metal and wood has been with me since childhood thanks to my grandpa and his magical workshop - so I'd say that was the appeal.

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why? Because it wasn't there.
[info]chrisfixedkitty
2007-10-15 06:33 pm UTC (link)
Why steampunk?

Because I read Jules Verne too young and never got over it. Because I love science and the joy of science and, despite years of academia and industry, never got over it. Because I love clothes that both fit and express an aesthetic. Because each outfit or item is personally made and not yet commercially nudged to stand for some popular-for-a-month marketing-crafted value. Because I would have been an outcast uppity woman in the actual Vic/Ed era, and yet it was an era whose leaps of science I adore and whose excitement was more raw than the excitement of our own. The steps in our stepwise process are at times tedious and harder to explain well to the laymen. I keep working at that. And I get my flu shot every year. I haven't given up on our glorious present. I just like celebrating a glorious past that almost was.

Why steampunk? Because craft supplies are cheaper than therapy and because I just can't get excited about the modern marketing-crafted trends that only give the illusion of individuality, Hot Topics be damned. Because I look damned fine in Natural Form Era. And goggles.

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Re: why? Because it wasn't there.
[info]lamregcinerhp
2007-10-15 09:45 pm UTC (link)
Here here!
A drink for the lady!

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[info]jetfx
2007-10-15 09:20 pm UTC (link)
Steampunk is a form of romanticizing the Victorian period and that is what appeals to me the most. The ideas, the society, the clothing and the industry. Even hated class privilege looks a little rosier. However I'm not much of a sentimentalist, so I really enjoy the irony that steampunk romanticizes the very thing that the Romantic movement found abhorrent - the Industrial Revolution.

The Romantics stressed the importance of "nature" in art and language, in contrast to the 'monstrous' machines and factories, that in Blake's words were, "Dark satanic mills". Steampunk focuses on the urban, the scientific and the artificial. Sterling and Gibson's The Difference Engine is set entirely in a heavily industrialized London with a scientist as the main character, whereas Coleridge and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads is set in rural England exploring the lives of the country folk.

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Rebel without a Pause
[info]interdtimet
2007-10-16 06:33 pm UTC (link)
Because it glorifies the individual, both the lone inventor and the lone adventurer. Even in groups, they are "lone" compared to government expeditions. (This is not necessarily true of the other SF-punks.) It's not tree-hugging crystal-gripping naturism. It's mechanized and civilized, even when not urban, and values technology for what it can do, while demanding it not be too ugly (real tech is often ugly: steampunk tech has engraved brass plates). It's lower tech and higher culture, rather than high tech and low culture.

In life, it's not yet popularized to death. It's individual, DIY or buy it from the small coterie of craftspeople or buy something the seller never imagined as steampunk because they never heard the word. I can't walk into a store and get a steampunk bedroom in a bag: I have to imagine one and build it out of the pieces I can find or make.

In art, it frees us from our future, from what looks like a narrow dark tunnel of mega-corp technology and consumerism to think other futures whose turn-off we missed. It also means you don't have to explain the gizmo in detail to hardsci geeks who take speculation apart like it was a proposed serious system. Thank heavens for steampunk/gaslamp fantasy.

It's neo-Victorian, and maybe now we're far enough out of Victorianism (alive and well into the mid-1960s and lingering after that) to be able to appreciate its virtues rather than just fight its lingering flaws. We can also imagine a romantic kitbash of only the best of their culture =and= ours.

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