Some hallmarks of steampunk
May. 31st, 2010 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootI've never really done costuming. For one, I'm just not a seamstress, and for another neither the available SCA styles nor the available anime styles have appealed to me as something to actually wear all day. Steampunk, though, has a lot more of the "found costume" vibe to it, and it has the potential to be comfortable.
To do this, however, I need to have the project of it straight in my head. So let us go back to the question of what steampunk is.
Taking Shelley and Verne and H.G. Wells as a early exemplars, and Blaylock and Jester as mid-period examples with The Difference Engine Moorcock over against them, and the Foglios, Moore and Fullmetal Alchemist as current examples, a few patterns jump out at me.
For one thing, very few of these have ever been about science. In the "hard" science fiction much touted by some fans, science itself is nearly a character, indeed a sort of second hero, and much time and attention are lavished on its internal workings and logic. In most of these books, though, it's merely the machina to take the deus out of; in several of them magic is used instead, and science is generally treated in a very results-oriented way. Frankenstein creates his daemon, but it's never said how; Wells' Traveler makes a time machine, but the details aren't covered; 'Egyptian magicians' cause space-time gates to appear but the mechanics are complete handwavium; sparks can create true artificial intelligence out of gears, but no one says how.
(For an entertaining counterpoint to this, see Garrett's Lord Darcy books, in which the process and logic of magic is treated with exactly the kind of loving detail lavished on science in "hard" sf.)
There is also, not unreasonably, a continuum of technology: isolation to integration. Captain Nemo's submarine and Wells' Traveler and Frankenstein's daemon are all isolated, having only sporadic contact with the everyday world and usually only when it's necessary to make a point. They are faerie-land, and the narrators return from them to tell the tale. In later examples of the genre, though, technology has often resulted in an alternate history, has changed and permeated the entire world.
Last, there is a wildly variable amount of social consciousness and critique. Pretty much all the early exemplars are engaged in critique. Frankenstein spends most of its time on the ethics of child rearing and revolutions; Nemo is the son of a revolutionary and performs acts of charity and militant pacifism in between the giant squids; Wells applies Marxist critique with a sledgehammer, and takes out a billboard for added emphasis, in case we missed it. Some mid-period authors, on the other hand, appear far more inclined to pure adventure, sometimes of an extremely pro-Britannia stripe, as when Wells' Morlocks are converted from social commentary to invading aliens descending on an innocent London. The uncritical deployment of 19th C. orientalist tropes, such as the mysterious Egyptian magician-priests pop up a lot more. In contrast, however, Warlord of the Air is a scathing denunciation of imperialism and colonialism, and The Difference Engine, typical of Gibson, has a dark warning fable about human subjectivity in among the grimy action/adventure. Current steampunk is also, sometimes, swinging back toward the critique at its roots. Even in a storyline as rompingly action/romance oriented as the Foglios' there is the African character who tells our European heroine that he's in Europe for the sake of adventure and exploration in savage and uncivilized lands and the 'amazon princess' with more sense, and greater fighting skill, than any three other characters. Moore excoriates the in-universe British government for engaging in uncontrolled biological warfare. Arakawa writes a world of casual gender equality, and explores the nightmare of how easy a military is to control and prompt into atrocity while still showing individuals able to make moral choices.
Perhaps as a result of the need to have a narrator with the appropriate outside perspective to convey the wonder or the critique involved, the primary aesthetic identifier seems to me to be "things out of place": robots and other automation in the 19th century; fictional characters acting as self-conscious reality; a strange environment, though with familiar aspects.
Thus, it makes sense that the costume aesthetic that most speaks to me of steampunk is one that takes historically accurate items and mixes or modifies them. Skirts are cut short or reduced to the top-most rear flounce. Corsets are worn as outerwear. Aspects of men's fashion, such as vests and leather, show up in women's outfits. The tools of a worker are hung over fabrics and styles, albeit abbreviated, of the leisured class.
As has been noted, it's a lot easier to perform a critique of gender or class via costume than it is to perform a critique of race or colonialism.
Contemplating how this might be accomplished is the project of the next post.
To do this, however, I need to have the project of it straight in my head. So let us go back to the question of what steampunk is.
Taking Shelley and Verne and H.G. Wells as a early exemplars, and Blaylock and Jester as mid-period examples with The Difference Engine Moorcock over against them, and the Foglios, Moore and Fullmetal Alchemist as current examples, a few patterns jump out at me.
For one thing, very few of these have ever been about science. In the "hard" science fiction much touted by some fans, science itself is nearly a character, indeed a sort of second hero, and much time and attention are lavished on its internal workings and logic. In most of these books, though, it's merely the machina to take the deus out of; in several of them magic is used instead, and science is generally treated in a very results-oriented way. Frankenstein creates his daemon, but it's never said how; Wells' Traveler makes a time machine, but the details aren't covered; 'Egyptian magicians' cause space-time gates to appear but the mechanics are complete handwavium; sparks can create true artificial intelligence out of gears, but no one says how.
(For an entertaining counterpoint to this, see Garrett's Lord Darcy books, in which the process and logic of magic is treated with exactly the kind of loving detail lavished on science in "hard" sf.)
There is also, not unreasonably, a continuum of technology: isolation to integration. Captain Nemo's submarine and Wells' Traveler and Frankenstein's daemon are all isolated, having only sporadic contact with the everyday world and usually only when it's necessary to make a point. They are faerie-land, and the narrators return from them to tell the tale. In later examples of the genre, though, technology has often resulted in an alternate history, has changed and permeated the entire world.
Last, there is a wildly variable amount of social consciousness and critique. Pretty much all the early exemplars are engaged in critique. Frankenstein spends most of its time on the ethics of child rearing and revolutions; Nemo is the son of a revolutionary and performs acts of charity and militant pacifism in between the giant squids; Wells applies Marxist critique with a sledgehammer, and takes out a billboard for added emphasis, in case we missed it. Some mid-period authors, on the other hand, appear far more inclined to pure adventure, sometimes of an extremely pro-Britannia stripe, as when Wells' Morlocks are converted from social commentary to invading aliens descending on an innocent London. The uncritical deployment of 19th C. orientalist tropes, such as the mysterious Egyptian magician-priests pop up a lot more. In contrast, however, Warlord of the Air is a scathing denunciation of imperialism and colonialism, and The Difference Engine, typical of Gibson, has a dark warning fable about human subjectivity in among the grimy action/adventure. Current steampunk is also, sometimes, swinging back toward the critique at its roots. Even in a storyline as rompingly action/romance oriented as the Foglios' there is the African character who tells our European heroine that he's in Europe for the sake of adventure and exploration in savage and uncivilized lands and the 'amazon princess' with more sense, and greater fighting skill, than any three other characters. Moore excoriates the in-universe British government for engaging in uncontrolled biological warfare. Arakawa writes a world of casual gender equality, and explores the nightmare of how easy a military is to control and prompt into atrocity while still showing individuals able to make moral choices.
Perhaps as a result of the need to have a narrator with the appropriate outside perspective to convey the wonder or the critique involved, the primary aesthetic identifier seems to me to be "things out of place": robots and other automation in the 19th century; fictional characters acting as self-conscious reality; a strange environment, though with familiar aspects.
Thus, it makes sense that the costume aesthetic that most speaks to me of steampunk is one that takes historically accurate items and mixes or modifies them. Skirts are cut short or reduced to the top-most rear flounce. Corsets are worn as outerwear. Aspects of men's fashion, such as vests and leather, show up in women's outfits. The tools of a worker are hung over fabrics and styles, albeit abbreviated, of the leisured class.
As has been noted, it's a lot easier to perform a critique of gender or class via costume than it is to perform a critique of race or colonialism.
Contemplating how this might be accomplished is the project of the next post.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 07:55 pm (UTC)*dryly* Which has bearing on Wells, too, since I, viewing through the lens of current litcrit nomenclature, would call The Time Machine a solid part of the Marxist family despite Wells' own disavowal of the term as it was used politically in the early 1900's.
At any rate, that's one of the aspects of steampunk costuming I find most interesting: This is not re-enactment. These are not Victorian women, and they're not, most of them, trying to be; they are trying to assume a world in which the fantastic modifications of steampunk are a given. While I'm not going to claim that all steampunk costumers have revolutionary agendas, I do think that there's a lot of potential for good critique in the worldbuilding.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-01 09:29 am (UTC)And there, in one sentence, we have the reason why modern lit-crit brings me out in hives. If you have a man who consciously shapes his personal ideology in response to/reaction against Marxism (quite possibly influenced by the fact that Marx's son-in-law* keeps coming round and touching him for a few quid which he, Wells, has little to no hope of ever being repaid) ignoring that fact seems a bit perverse, to me, in terms of interpreting the work.
*Well, outlaw, in the case of Aveling
no subject
Date: 2010-06-01 03:49 pm (UTC)Such is the nature of terminology in different fields. Well, and also the nature of a long, long debate over whether and how much the author's stated convictions should come in when interpreting the text. But mostly, really, the first; just as psychoanalysis is a very different thing in crit than in psychology (worked a lot better as crit) and, for that matter, feminist crit takes paths that are often pretty distinct from feminist activism.