Steampunk is Not the SCA for Victorian Times

[talon]

It may have a Victorian substructure or silhouette, but it's been punked out to have science fictional and fantasy elements, and it wanders all over history - from the deep past to the extreme limits of our imaginings of the future.

Diana Vick says "Steampunk needs historical accuracy like a dirigible needs a goldfish."

I've overheard - at SoonerCon and FenCon, just this year - a few people comment that "it's NOT Period!" when referring to a jacket or to Itzl in his goggled top hat [1]. Those people don't understand that steampunk is not the SCA for Victorian Times, there are no Authenticity Police, no awards for the most excruciatingly historically accurate details. Indeed, the goal is to wander freely in alternate universes, full of make believe and wonder. People are more likely to show up at a Tea with a flamethrower than to wonder if the teacups are historically accurate - or to even have teacups at the Tea. I've seen perfectly good Teas with canned tea and cupcakes.

Steampunk is driven by "what if?" and slash [2]. It extends boundaries, plays with time and concepts, and is much more interactive than any other genre ever.

Doubt me?

Put "steampunk" in the Google search. You'll get jewelry, clothes, weapons, instructions, and then, oh yeah, books.

Etsy has nearly 60,000 steampunk items - both completed projects and parts to make your own.

Steampunk is international - just check the blogs - Brazilian, German, Polish, French, Russian, Japanese, American, Canadian, Australian...

What steampunk is saying is that the passage of time is no longer relevant. With the internet at our fingertips, information is rapidly dispersed. For instance, new archeological finds and astronomical discoveries that once took years to filter down to the average person is right in our faces, screaming in headlines and jumbled in our brains. The cloning of Neanderthals segues into the discovery of a planet that could bear life, wrapped in Victorianesque romanticism, shapes steampunk. The teen fangirl in a Gothic corset and detachable ribbon bustle, carries the past and the future jumbled erratically into the present on her back - and does so with ease and aplomp. Conversations wend all over time and space - and so do ideas and the desire to be, do, and make.

It's cybercultural, countercultural, subversive, innovative, recyclable, relational, visionary, nostalgic, crunchy, adventurous, daring. It's a journey into high art, low comedy, and workshops and labs. It's mad science, mussing things up, remixing and repurposing everything, not just the Victorian things.

Great Ghu, but the real Victorians would have hated steampunk, with its riotously joyous jumbling. They wanted things labeled, neat, orderly, covered up - they put paper frills on poultry legs! They had curio cabinets all neatly labeled and pretty.

Steampunk is a reflection, really, of our times. Consider the pictures we can find in newspapers' online "Pictures of the Day" or "Pictures of the Week" - a girl in a headscarf, a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt, shorts, and baseball cap carrying a cricket bat while chatting on her cell phone, or a group of school kids wearing dashikis and jeans, headscarves and Converse hightops, corsets and tutus, trading around iPods and netbooks while texting on cell phones. We're already culturally mix-and-match. Steampunk just takes it to extremes.

Steampunk's power is strongest in the visual arts, comics (Girl Genius, anyone?), costuming, film, and DIY. The literature, which kicked off and often informs the steampunk movement, is actually the least of it, but it seems to be catching back up again.

Steampunk says, "The future's so bright, you gotta wear goggles."

[1] yes, he does wear them -they are his prescription sunglasses since he has a light sensitivity, as many Chihuahuas do.
[2] Slash as in "meets", like Genkis Khan slash Horatio Hornblower, or Lady Gaga slash Jane Austen.