Mom, Dad, I'm into Steampunk: an imaginary monologue
McSweeney's Short imagined monologues presents, "Mom, Dad,
I'm Into Steampunk" by Marco Kaye.
No, I won't take off my topcoat. And that's exactly my point. I understand your confusion. The nascent trend I have latched onto is difficult to define. Maybe I can explain it to you with the new mods I've been working on. No, Mom. Not like in Quadrophenia, although I appreciate those mods' fondness for tailor-made clothing. These mods.Mom, Dad, I'm Into SteampunkThis looks like a late-18th-century organette, correct? Look again. It hides the Dell laptop you got me when I went to college. This bronze hand crank turns it on, and I've hidden a miniature photo printer where the tune sheet is supposed to go. I even installed Linux. I've put a lot of time into this since I quit my job at Anthropologie, which is something else I wanted to tell you about. Don't get up and go to Lowe's yet. But when you're there can you get me a two-speed fan capacitor?
the latest
latest episodes
At least I'm not into cyberpunk.
It may be petty - but he lost my sympathy when he claimed "league of extraordinary gentleman" was any good.....
.........there's no helping some people you know.
Wht S t wth stmpnk? Zzzz.
In America, everything is about fetishistic consumerism. It's all surface bullshit without any real substance. Is steampunk fetishism any different from love of the Ipod? I wonder how long it will be before the whole trend is co-opted by target and Walmart?
I wish there were people around capable of thinking. Suppose this will be a fad one day? Sorry Boing Boing. I know how much you love SP.
#4 PYROS -
I'm far from convinced a majority of BB editors or readers are even remotely interested in Steampunk.
I'm far from convinced anyone at McSweeney's is remotely interested in Steampunk.
#4 - some of us find it fascinating without taking part in it. I'm at a stage of life where it is fairly impossible to dive into the culture of SP, but I love reading about it and seeing the fantastic craftsmanship and artistry that is performed!
The back-story is equally endearing. Unlike the iPod fanboi genre, steampunk has roots in literature and cinema. Take two evenings and read Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder. You may have a rewarding change of heart :)
Besides, if it is massed produced, it is by definition Not Steam Punk.
#7 - SKARBREEZE -
If: rooted in literature and cinema
Then: endearing and rewarding
I submit to the court Evan Almighty.
Unless it was mass produced in the Victorian age...
@#8"if it is massed produced, it is by definition Not Steam Punk"
That is what every subculture says about itself.
I'd disown you. I won't have any of my kids fckng others' inventions ... involving brass ... dammit! Steampunk is over my '70's head. I'll watch antiques road show some day and not be mad. Although the idea of the museum typewriter has logic in the electric key shit but that's a bullshit spy angle -- you are not gonna decipher any text that way. But what do I know? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might be about to cap my ass, then fight among themselves.
I'm not a big sci-fi dude, just an eee engineer wanker dude, but I am a dork of sorts. Q, though? Where are the red "Christine" Impalas ? Crushed or not? I would love an original from the flick. -thanks-
That was a Plymouth Fury .
I'd love to buy one. Don't go out and wreck your dead Grannies car though. I want the vin numbers to match. Peace
m s sck f stmpnk, I want the polar opposite, "gleamicable" - shiny & friendly.
"Mom, Dad, I'd appreciate if you persecuted me a little for my awesome sub-culture. You know, when you look at it, this steampunk shit *is* really bizarre and freaky and... what do you mean at least I'm not watching the WWE?! C'mon, I need a little teenage angst here!! Hello?"
And that's why this is both imaginary and a monologue.
As I've said before: there's nothing punk about steampunk.
It's a somewhat twee form of arts-and-crafts for nerds, saddled with a lame name.
Disclaimer: I am a nerd with my own arts-and-crafts preoccupations. I just don't call 'em anything "punk".
This seems like a good opportunity to plug Finder, my favourite comic, because the comic just happened to feature a steampunky vehicle and its driver today!
Finder, incidentally, is *not* actually steampunk - rather, it's everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink sf, which means anything that strikes the author's fancy may wind up in there. And the author, Carla Speed McNeil, is interested in many things - which makes for an endlessly fascinating setting. (Of course, the setting is not the only fascinating thing about Finder, but it was the first thing that I fell in love with. But, just for the record: she writes great, believable people, too.)
[A note: Finder is still best experienced in book form, as the online version is often just pencils, and also, the books contain appendices of notes that are not only useful but constitute a wealth of stories and hints of stories in their own right. Also, finished stories get removed from the website after a while, except for an introductory chapter. So, it's best to consider the web version not as a full webcomic but as a kind of free sample.]
BTW, what is all this about steampunk being a 'nascent trend' or recent fad? Hasn't sf whose aesthetic was more indebted to Verne and Wells than to anything post-Gernsback been around for at least a couple of decades? I guess this is another case of a phenomenon only really entering the public consciousness after someone slaps a neat term on it... (cf. 'New Weird').
Not that I don't like the aesthetic (and frankly is there anything else to it?), but is it too late to redefine it as Steamdork? I'm on board for the change.
Show of hands.
HMPF:
"Hasn't sf whose aesthetic was more indebted to Verne and Wells than to anything post-Gernsback been around for at least a couple of decades?"
No. No it hasn't. Not in sense worth acknowledging.
Other people liking things that I don't is really offensive. We must name and catalogue people's interests then list them from best to worst. Interests that lie below the threshold of acceptability must not be enjoyed, and certainly not discussed around me.
If we can't tell everything about a genre by splitting its name into base words, cleary something is wrong.
Besides, they're doing it wrong! Why can't they see that they are wearing clothing from a fictional age incorrectly? Making crafts with a design ethic that does not match my own? Unpossible! They really should run their designs past me before posting them.
I loved the Design Observer rant against Steampunk--even though it was based on false assumptions--because it was well written and passionate. But I am really getting tired of the low quality of criticism by commenters here on BB.
Come on guys! Throw something that sticks!
I find Steampunk interesting when it is done well.
I also find that many folks equate gluing the brass section of a hardware store along with hunks of a clock onto random objects with Steampunk, which cheapens it for me.
A sense of humor doesn't hurt either. :)
@#19 (JackAsimov):
"No it hasn't. Not in sense worth acknowledging."
Okay. Let's say at least *one* decade, then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_West
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen
And I'm sure these two aren't the earliest or only examples, but I'm not that deeply into steampunk, and at the time wasn't even that deeply into sf yet, so I mostly only noticed the 'high profile' examples then. The Japanese were probably at it much earlier, though (a lot of early Miyazaki comes to mind), and so, I'm sure, were the more 'subcultural' parts of western sf fandom. The existence of stuff like Lea Hernandez' indie comic 'Cathedral Child', subtitled 'Texas Steampunk', which was published in 1998, certainly indicates that the concept must have been reasonably familiar by then already... which means it must have begun to spread somewhat before 1998.
So, the phenomenon has existed for at least ten and probably more years under that moniker - not exactly a freshly hatched new trend in my book. (And I'm certain there were examples of it even before the term existed. Hence the guesstimate of 'two decades'.)
Our defintions of what makes a trend worth acknowledging probably differ, though. ;-)
Not that any of this really matters. I just find it interesting how something that has been around for quite a while will sometimes just suddenly 'take off' - and almost invariably is then described as a 'new' thing.
Okay, sorry for the dissertation here. I'm procrastinating instead of writing my m.a. thesis, which probably explains the pedantry. I'm in that sort of frame of mind at the moment...
@#1 Moztom, #15 Triseult, When I told my parents I was into Cyberpunk, they asked me, "Why couldn't you just be gay?"
They handled the part about Steampunk pretty well after that. "Does this mean you'll stop wearing so much black and spending so much time with those infernal machines?"
@#4 Pyros, It's the thin veneer of style, replicating a time that there was actual substance there, laid over the lack of substance inherent in modern consumerism. It does seem kind of superficial to simply recase modern technology to make it look like it was made in another era, but it still looks good. It's still a lot more interesting to actually use the tubing as a conduit, to actually make the added gauges show something useful, and to use at least part of the original mechanism, such as keeping the keyboard linkage and having the hammer strike a switch rather than just using old keys on a modern keyboard.
@#8 Agent 86, What about modernism?
@#23 HMPF, Brasil was released in 1985, and had a lot of steampunk elements in the visual design. The difference engine was published in 1991, which is about the first work I had ever heard described as Steampunk. It's just taken a while for it to reach critical mass and become a movement of its own.
Steampunk is just "goth for geeks."
I understand that a backlash had to happen, but overall I think people should just cool it. It isn't a big deal.
Let people enjoy whatever clothing style they want. I don't care if people are going to antique clothing stores and thrift shops to buy their clothes. That's fairly common. Everyone is into a different style of dress. Some dress conservatively, some dress with the fashion, some don't. Who cares? Yes you can overdo it with monocles and top hats...but seeing vests and ties isn't that odd really.
And about the engineering part, that's just awesome. I can't do anything even close to their work and I admire them for it. A lot of the work ends up looking very beautiful and well done. Like what do you other people do that could compare?
Hw s "'m s sck f stmpnk" ffnsv r drgtry tht t rqrs dsmvwllng? S snstv.
because its boring. Go away.
Steampunk is just "goth for geeks."
Isn't goth just goth for geeks?
To #8 and #11...
I'd just like to provide some real market insight into this...the steampunk community does indeed like their works handcrafted, but they have no problem buying the works of others if it suits their fancy.
I am the creator of a website-based tool for the steampunk community which I won't link here (although I will say it contains the words "buy" and "steampunk" in the URL) and through it, I'm able to see the eBay purchases that my users make.
Rest assured, they don't mind buying the works of others, even when there are multiples of that product created. However, I think the real question is where do you draw the line between a limited run and mass produced?
Why does the latter have to have a negative connotation? I've been a member of various subcultures in the past that have started as niches and exploded into the mainstream...two examples were the rave scene and anime. I've seen what happens when they go mainstream...yes it dilutes the core audience, yes it leads to a lot of crap, but it also adds a lot of variety and brings new people into the fold.
I know some people feel protective of their niche and don't want "mainstream people" coming in, but everybody has to start somewhere, and some people didn't find out about it until it went mainstream. Plus, until something goes mainstream, often times there isn't enough of a market to make it worthwhile to produce the really cool things that sometimes pop up. We wouldn't have half the anime we do today if it hadn't exploded the way it did in America. While some would argue whether that is a good or bad thing...I feel like variety is always a good thing.
Subcultures rarely stand the test of time in the same form. Yeah it'll be a sad day when Hot Topic starts carrying a steampunk line, but to me that just indicates that the subculture has grown to its limits and is shrinking again. Eventually the mainstream goes away to the next trend and leaves the core followers behind to once again enjoy their world as it was before, albeit with a lot of new toys most likely.
Sorry for the long post, but I feel I have a lot of insight into this very topic and think it needs further exploration.
Steampunk has mutated to Eamespunk:
http://nevolution.typepad.com/theories/2008/07/the-eamespunk-m.html
I'm waiting patiently now for the arrival of Punkpunk, a world modelled on the run-down London of 1976: squat dwelling, fast music, spiky hair, tight jeans, Vivienne Westwood "Destroy" t-shirts and flying Ford Cortinas powered by saliva.
Seriously don't understand the backlash. This happens *every time* a steampunk-related post happens.
Just frickin' skip it. Some of us like the genre and the aesthetic. The name is based on "cyberpunk". It makes sense.
Just... gah. Sick of the unnecessary meanness.
"Observe, I've taken this commodity jean jacket from Wal-Mart and done a fabulous punkpunk mod with just a few metal studs, a circle-A patch, and assorted bits of cloth! It takes painstaking work, but the result is priceless: a jacket that really looks like it came from an era when subculture was /counterculture/, when alternative fashion was a loud statement against oppression and authority, not an empty hobby."
Ooh - my first disemvowelment, because I queried the incessant steampunk articles.
I actually object to it, because it seems to be a dull debasement of what was originally an interesting idea (Pavanne, The Difference Engine, His Dark Materials).
Stick a carapace of old metal on a perfectly good computer doesn't seem to me to be a particularly enlightening or creative thing to do.
Oh well - I'll just skip them from now on. It'll cut down on the time I spend on BoingBoing, I guess.
scroll bar padster. scroll bar
"Alchemancer"
I love it.
John Coulthart @31, thanks for the Eamespunk link...now I have a genre name for the style in The Venture Brothers
About my comment, I mean that Steampunk seems to be defined by quality craftsmanship, where as massed produced = cheap gaudy plastic crap. I'm sure they _could_ mass produce quality Steampunk items, but I'm also sure they won't.