Dont have time to get into a fullblown description of my initial thoughts about how I am perceiving steampunk, but thought Id point in the direction of a thread on the Steampunk forum that members have begun to hash out that very thing. For myself, I think I have always had punk sensibilities as well as Victorian ones, punk being anti-establishment and anti-conformity. I was precocious in my use of language and forever teased for my vocabulary in school days when most students professed a disdain for nerdy behavior. I actively sought out dress and mannerisms that harkened back to the Victorians when my youth was inundated with the hippie and jive culture. The 80s were the last time when I felt like eclecticism had its sway – you could dress whichever way you wanted and you were ‘in fashion.’ The 90s and Aughties have pulled more to sameness everywhere. Honestly, I feel like I see things in ‘fashion’ and general lifestyle that really havent changed for the last decade or so and my instincts are screaming for a severe change and return to more dignity.
But what I got on here to REALLy say was the discussion was to find out what the different perspectives of steampunk were and the main thread throughout was Victorian and Edwardian ideals. This got me to thinking about my favorite artistic period, Art Nouveau. AN was a reaction to the flush of mass produced culture in the mid-1800s, when the Industrial Revolution brought about advances in technology to generate a consummerism that made obtaining items easier and less costly. A prime example of this was the proliferation of East Lake furniture. This was a mass-produced style, very distinctive, that can be easily found in antique stores and old homes across the nation. Art Nouveau was an active rejection of that mass production, returning the eye and sensibility to the more romantic ideas of nature and higher aesthetics. In reflection of this, I have to wonder if steampunk isnt similar to that: the mass production and homogenization of technology and aesthetics has reached such a degree that people long for a return to beauty and ‘organics,’ – only this time, we harken back to a time when technology was still a ‘new’ and refreshing means of exploring possibilities?
Theres a lot to think about when it comes to steampunk. Perhaps I’m way off the mark here on ascribing it to Art Nouveau-like emergence. I sympathise quite a bit with the desire to ‘be punk with etiquette’ especially considering that etiquette has become so severely lacking that we are seeing backlash in a lot of areas in our culture. I have so wanted to rebel against the assumed establishment of our hip-hop, junk fed society, a society that assumes that anything they want will be within a hand’s reach, instead of learning to create and build from scratch.
