http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/07/fury_of_the_ill.html

since clocks were still fairly primitive in da Vinci’s day.

Mod was always about fashion. Especially U.S. Mod culture.
I’m not saying that punk wasn’t as well (often only about fashion), but at least it had a serious political and philosophical edge to it in a way that Mod did not. (think Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Patti Smith, Bad Religion, etc)
Punk was a cultural revolt, a reaction and rebellion.

I’m not sure how my saying that Mods didn’t have a political stance is indicative of my thinks on steampunk.

I love the aesthetic of steampunk, or retrofuture or pulp (whatever folks wanna call it).
Perhaps there are sub-genres to this overarching subject. and that’s fine. The more non-status quo the better.
(altho paradoxically, the more the better perhaps then becomes status quo and we start all over again.
but i’s 0530 and I woke up at 0300 so sleepless rambling is on)
Anyone remember when there was no “goth” only a more depressed and slower music kind of punk?

I appreciate the more philosophical aspect of it – the reaction to this “lowest common denominator”
as Molly put it, way of living. I think she is right on the mark with that assessment.

Personally, I find few things more humorous than an artistic movement that takes it’s self seriously getting co-opted by the forces it revolted against.

Before you get too mad at old geezers bitching about the term punk being used to describe anything, you should at least understand that the term punk now describes something anathema to what it described in the 70s and 80s. Punk isn’t just dead, it has been forgotten and replaced by a repugnant corporate doppleganger. It’s gone from sub-culture to vapid fashion. It still is one of the saddest things in the world for me to see kids spending hundreds of dollars in a hot topic in the mall to look punk- presumably because they figure it will be easier for them to get laid.

It won’t be long before the malls carry brass goggles either.

“The new groups are not concerned
With what there is to be learned
They got Burton suits,
Ha! you think it’s funny,
Turning rebellion into money!”
-The Clash
White man in Hammersmith Palais

Alan Moore does a really good version of steampunk in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the comic book, not the atrocious movie.

I am rather amazed that it is showing up in Anime. I watch anime sometimes. The only thing which I really picked up along those lines is Howl’s Moving Castle. It seemed to be set in a kind of Victorian steampunk era. You could see steam cars rolling around on the streets as a kind of background image.

Of course if you were truly thinking of Victorian magic, everything would be powered by phlogiston or the ether between the voids.

I think that the real issue is that the term ‘Steampunk’ has been picked up by the wider culture to describe a whole range of Victoriana and pulp. There is no academy to control the use of language and it is unlikely that anyone in this discussion has the means to stop Time magazine from misusing the names of sub-subcultures.

I look, I read, I listen, I even build things occasionally. Sometimes I like things because they’re purty, sometimes I like things because they make me think or open my eyes and mind to new ideas. I plan to continue with what I have been doing, just like I did before I thought of it as steampunk. I encourage everyone else to do the same:

The best you can with what you’ve got.

To you, it means this; to them it means that… and that’s about the long and short of it. I actually agree with a lot of what you’re saying here (I personally think there are too many victoriana fans going around with decorative gears and no ‘punk’ in their ’steam’), I just don’t see a point in trying to get people to re-label something this late in the game. I think the stuff that is called steampunk by most people is actually more like retrofuture or pulp, and even though that is the stuff I am more drawn to… my life is probably more suitable to the victorian era than most people’s. I have no car, I have no cellphone, I own a sizable collection of vinyl music, I always try to observe good manners.

Besides, I see the ’steam’ as referring to the whole era; its culture, its architecture, its dreams, and struggles… not literally just one basic facet of the era’s technology. What is the benefit of limiting things so much? So you can be a ‘purist’ and feel better about yourself than all those ‘fakers’ just having a good time?

In my own estimation, the last 100 years have been a diversion into lowest common denominator fashion via cheap labor and computer automation, and people are starting to react to it. They are looking to the past splendor because the modern clothes are bland and characterless comparatively. It doesn’t bother me in the least whatever someone wants to call it, I think its great that people are turning to handmade goods and DIY modding. THAT is the punk in steampunk to a lot of people. The political statement is that we are sick of planned obsolescence and we are rejecting disposable everything.

I believe in fewer walls, more fun. Labels are for catalogs and washing instructions.

Most of the people getting into this whole realm right now are doing it from an aesthetic direction only, and I think that’s somewhat unfortunate, but I figure that its going to happen if we like it or not. Leave the whining to the goths, and just hope that enough people look deeper into the genre and stick around. The fad idiots will pass, and those of us that stick around will be part of something that matters deeply to us.

This just seems like an odd thing to let get to you.

with best regards,
Molly ‘Porkshanks’