steampunk

[rmd]

interesting article over at racialicious about people of color and steampunk. reading this, i realized that i have pretty much always assumed that steampunk was somehow reliant on a conceptual alternate history where victorian england is rivaled by the craftsmen of the technologically advanced dirigible industry in china or the artists of the congo who guide trees into shapes as they grow, their work lit by the glow of their tube amplifiers when they play music while harvesting the trees and turning them into rubber and wood custom pc enclosures. or, you know, something like that. i've always assumed some sort of post-colonial or colonial-moot underlying social structure, assuming it went hand in hand with gender equality - both are imao required.

Comments

[loopback.livejournal.com]

I've long since come to the conclusion that the lion's share of steampunk fashionistas aren't thinking about the actual historical and cultural signifiers of that time period, because they know the clothing history, not the world history.

To wit, nobody engaged in steampunk dressup ever dresses as the severe underclass, or as a charwoman, or the like.

It is one of the problems with the genre that i don't think any of its adherents really think about.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Clearly the underclass wouldn't have enough money to wear the cool steampunk clothes anyway and would just be wearing what they'd have worn in our world, so where's the fun in that? O.O

[loopback.livejournal.com]

a friend of mine has a plan to show up as a ratcatcher to one of these events at some point, with a big sack full of rubber/plastic rats, and start screaming, acting insane with syphilis, and empty the entire sack on the floor before running out of the room.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

Next comes a visit to the SCA, where your friend will be a starving serf?

This is fantasy. It's about the shiny, not about reality. Even those of us who know the history of Victorian England can admire the pretty woods and gears, and mechanical toys.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

You're right. It really shouldn't be about the history, ever.

I'm going to start a Cottonpunk movement that focuses on the awesome fashion choices available in the prewar south and people can talk about their awesome plantations.

and anyone who suggests that's a bad idea or might have social baggage attached to it that's worth thinking about can be handwaved away with "it's fantasy!"

It's worth addressing the reality underlying the myths, even when you're engaged in "the shiny". Otherwise you get things like SS-themed bars because hey, they had some SNAPPY fucking fashion sense.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

Civil war reenactors have seen your Cottonpunk movement, and raised you some lovely flags.

Historical reenactment certainly has baggage. I'm not sure if it's fair to impute similar baggage to alternative history based games. The steampunk folks aren't reenacting Victorian England, they're playing Wild Wild West, or Diamond Age, where the Victorian clothes and gears are married to computers, and robots, and other strange machines.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

And that's where I see the danger coming in.

Civil War (or WW2) re-enactors have to be aware of the actual history, and have some understanding of what's going on in that time period. You have to dive in and get things correct & historically accurate (to the best of your ability, of course) because that's part & parcel of that particular scene.

The risk I see with things like steampunk is that they take all the signifiers of social prejudices, and have virtually no conception of what they're carrying forward. As much as I genuinely do dislike trotting out the nazi example, it's the cleanest (in terms of clarity of example) I can think of, which is the Nazi Bar in ... I think South Korea? They didn't necessarily have the historical context for it, but because it looked cool, they went with the fashions.

There are whole class/sex/race based assumptions in a lot of the clothing from that era, and my contention is that people aren't think particularly closely about tying themselves to a specific class mindset, and I think that's a very real problem.

With historical re-enactment you can call bullshit on someone choosing to go with the emblems of a particularly grievous choice of unit, and get on their case about it. in the case of steampunkfashionistas, you get immediately told, "it's just shiny!" and asked to move along.

Which, ok, fine. But I'm going to keep having my opinion that there's something there, and that the "Average Steampunker" (who tends, at least in my neck of the woods, to be a reasonably affluent white person) just doesn't see the privilege for the trees.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

That is interesting -- tying to a class mindset -- and not something I had thought about.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

are you familiar with the iron dream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream)?

it's kinda awesome.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

oh man no i haven't read that.

I have heard about it. It goes upon the list.

[coraline]

i don't necessarily see it as a problem -- it's not like anyone is claiming this is an accurate representation of any sort of time period, just a selective appropriation of the things they think are nifty.
just like renfaires, and the SCA.
it's fantasy, and i think that has its place.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yes. and my version of the fantasy has a lot more racial and gender equality than real history did. :-)

AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

[gayathri.livejournal.com]

I think mind does too, but that might be because we think about that outside of the context of the usual places people might think about it.

One of the things I liked about the article

[drwex]

Is that the writer admits that even in an alternate universe where the Pacific nations weren't so heavily colonized/mined they would still likely have had their own power dominance relationships (e.g. China and Japan on top) and that those societies are themselves deeply racist at times.

I think the point I got out of it was not that one could take some specific set of steps to neutralize all the racial/sexual/privelege-associated elements, but that the structure and newness of steampunk offered opportunities for a more aware and informed approach to those sets of baggage.

[coraline]

AMEN.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Also, goddammit, goggles are for eye protection, not for use as a hat-band.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

as we kept saying at the FIRST robot competition "safety glasses are for eye protection, not forehead protection"

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

The steampunk world you've described makes me want to write some (but I'm not nearly a good enough engineer).

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

You know many engineer-competent types. Handwave those bits and ask other to help you flesh them out.

I have a thought about the author

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

Some people don't know how to have fun.