On Steampunk and "Steampunk"
A fascination with Victorian tech is at its heart a salutary
acceptance of the machine-ness of machines - and correspondingly
an acceptance of the humanity of human beings. There's something
nauseatingly predigested about the look of late 20th and early
21st century industrial design, all those Steve Jobs-approved
rounded edges like cough lozenges sucked on for a minute or so
before being spat out into your hand. Whereas Victorian machines,
with their precision-cut gears and spurred mantis armatures, are
unabashedly themselves rather than trying to smoothly cozen their
way into your life. Thus we similarly perceive flesh & blood
Victorians - even the fictional ones - as being more genuine than
ourselves. They had lives; we have marketing. Even unto our
souls; drama and ruin were possible to those who guarded their
secrets and shame, as pre-digital clocks held their tightly
coiled mainsprings inside themselves. That's what makes this last
fully human epoch so interesting for writers and readers alike.
And why I was gratified rather than surprised that the thing to
which I so offhandedly gave a name now clanks forward at its own
pace. The faint tick and whir we hear across the sadly
therapeutic centuries is that of our own foolishly abandoned
hearts, which we'd love to wind up and set running again.
Steampunk enthusiasts are engaged, however unknowingly, in nobler
fun than mere mental cosplay. May God bless and increase their
tribe; human beings might yearn for lost things, but never for
unreal things.
Extract from the INTRODUCTION
K W Jeter
The sidebar at right comes from the introduction to
the book "Infernal Devices". The author is credited with
coining the term "steampunk".
He is saying in this introduction that steampunk is propelled by an
honesty and an appeal of things that display rather than concealing
their innards. They are authentic.
I use the word in the context of honest, trustworthy, genuine, open, reliable.
There is a significant emphasis on authenticity in leadership these days,
as scandals, crashes and generally deceptive dealing are much in the
minds of the public of late.
This appeal to which Jeter alludes
is imbued in the Jellyfish Swatch that Carolyne bought
for me decades ago and in the acrylic enclosure my student Benson has
put around our iDCC train control this year. Exposing the circuit board and the
components for all to see imbues an object with a powerful, if geeky, style.
Form and function hold hands.
I think Jeter has missed a lot of the story.
I do not accept that it is the authenticity alone
that accounts for the appeal of Steampunk. Most grand events owe
their grandness to a coincidence of factors; they may be
precipitated by one, but they are carried along by the
combination.
Part of the appeal of steampunk lies in the
distinctly-recognisable and historically-localisable retro
design. Steampunk apes the style associated with the rise of powerful
machines, steam engines and the other products of lathes and
milling machines that propelled countries to greatness in the
Industrial Revolution. Jeter aptly describes the brass and copper,
ticking and hissing, mesh & grind of Victorian life. The same era
brought other society-changing ideas and inventions such as
novels, electric power, force projected by navy, and trains. Electronics and radio blur their
way into 19th-century stories of modern authors. It was
an exciting era.
Hence the top hats and waistcoats that accompany the brass and cogs.
I see another force behind the appeal of steampunk: It is
what is now called "greenness". More exactly, it is the Malthusian
conviction, submerged by the very disposability of product that is
concealed so neatly by Steve Job's lozenges, that things should
be built to last.
Steampunk appeals to the value judgement that gives rise to that pang of despair you feel when
you can think of nothing better than the scrap smelter for that
perfectly-working but ludicrously-inadequate
10-year-old computer or 100-year-old steam locomotive.
Anthony Burgess
would have loved the current ascendancy of the word authentic.
His book is as much about authenticity as it is about freedom.
Burgess took the title of his book, made famous by
Kubrick, from the Cockney expression
`queer as a clockwork orange', meaning supremely weird,
according to Stephanie Bunbury.
His point was that one can only be said to be good if one has the choice.
You cannot tell if someone is inherently good if they don't have the chance to be evil,
and that is rather weird.
We see the workings of a man or a society, know it is authentic, only when he or it
is allowed to make its choices freely. No freedom of choice, no authentication of values.
Burgess hated "our present-day pragmatic socialism"
and condemned those who advocated aversion therapy in
real life, lamenting that ''society, as ever, is put first''.
No social good was worth the sacrifice of an immortal soul.
Burgess was a monarchist and yet an anarchist at once.
Like your humble author, he supported a national health system,
but detested social security as implemented in the 20th century.
The web-common mantra reproduced in the yellow side bar summarises, in a
manner somehow simultaneously humerous and ruthless,
what a more responsible format for social security might look like.
There is something broadly distasteful in the nanny state
that impells Burgess and I to revile the politicians responsible for it.
This feeling is hard to express, but somehow embodied in the much-quoted
rhetorical reply from Brando's character in
The Wild One:
"What are you rebelling against?"
"Whaddya got?"
Everything you do stinks when you have the wrong priorities.
To be monarchist and anarchist seems paradoxical.
The resolution of the paradox lies in the fourth dimension---things change.
In the socialism mantra, the key phrase is
"it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing
absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem".
To quote President Clinton, social security was meant to offer
"a second chance, not a way of life".
There is little authenticity in many a politician, especially
Australian ones. They do what they think will get them votes, or money to sway voters.
Thus a well-meaning experiment grew to the nanny state where control is
sold as care.
The anonymous author of the adjacent mantra,
Burgess,
and I,
all share the belief that the good of men should come ahead of the good of society.
Note, it is not simply the order of priority, but the inclusion.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard felt that the employees came first,
that customers came after, but that the community needed to be
considered also, and that the wellbeing of the company would follow from these
being duly balanced.
Put Me in Charge...
Put me in charge of benefit payments. I'd reduce cash payments
and provide vouchers for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of
cheese, basic sanitary items and all the powdered milk you can
use. If you want steak, burgers, takeaway, and junk food, then
get a job.
Put me in charge of the national health system. We'll test recipients for drugs,
alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce, use drugs, drink
alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.
Put me in charge of local authority housing. Ever live in
military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and
good state of repair. Your home will be subject to inspections
anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma
TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.
Put me in charge of compulsory job search. You will either search
for employment each week no matter what the job or you will
report for community work. This may be clearing the roadways and
open spaces of rubbish, painting and repairing public housing,
whatever we find for you.
While you are on benefit income you no longer have the right to
vote. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. If you
want to vote, then get a job.
Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realise
that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our hard earned
cash and housing assistance, accept our rules. Before you say
that this would be "demeaning" and ruin someone's "self esteem,"
consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's
money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self
esteem.