The Night of the Steampunks, or, Wilde-Wiled Wits

Many involved in the steampunk culture take the technology and accessories of today, left, and redesign or adjust them to incorporate touches of the past. Then they show off their inventions to kindred spirits on the Web.

As Eddie Munster liked to say, “Neato!” As Thomas Dolby’s blinded scientist couldn’t resist exclaiming, “Good Heavens, Miss Sakamoto – you’re beautiful!”; as the Moody Blues saw shining down upon them now:

Listen to the tide slowly turning…

From the ashes we can build another day

Fashion & Style

Steampunk Moves Between 2 Worlds

<> Devotees of the [steampunk] culture read Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, as well as more recent speculative fiction by William Gibson, James P. Blaylock and Paul Di Filippo, the author of “The Steampunk Trilogy,” the historical science fiction novellas that lent the culture its name. They watch films like “The City of Lost Children” (with costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier), “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Brazil,” Terry Gilliam’s dystopian fantasy satirizing the modern industrial age; and they listen to melodeons and Gypsy strings mixed with industrial goth.

<> And, in keeping with the make-it-yourself ethos of punk, they assemble their own fashions, an adventurous pastiche of neo-Victorian, Edwardian and military style accented with sometimes crudely mechanized accouterments like brass goggles and wings made from pulleys, harnesses and clockwork pendants, to say nothing of the odd ray gun dangling at the hip. Steampunk style is corseted, built on a scaffolding of bustles, crinolines and parasols and high-arced sleeves not unlike those favored by the movement’s designer idols: Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and, yes, even Ralph Lauren.

<> If steampunk has a mission, it is, in part, to restore a sense of wonder to a technology-jaded world. “Today satellite photos make the planet seem so small,” Mr. Brown lamented. “Where is the adventure it that?” In contrast, steampunk, with its airships, test tubes and time machines, is, he said, “sort of a dream , the way we used to daydream. It’s like part of your childhood’s just bursting forward again.”

<> There will, of course, be a clothing line with vintage and new looks modeled on Mr. James’s own neo-Edwardian sartorial signature. “I’m so sick of baggy pants hanging off your bottom,” he said. “This is more refined. It goes back to a time when people had some dignity.

“It’s a new day.”

Some of us may soon find ourselves back to the future/forward into the past in a James West/Artemus Gordon minute [YouTube]:

The Wild Wild West TV intro (1965)

James West and Artemus Gordon are two agents of President Grant who take their splendidly appointed private train through the west to fight evil. Half science fiction and half western, the Artemus designs a series of interesting gadgets for James that would make Inspector Gadget proud.

[indie-music fans, cf. also Montreal's superb Victoriana-flaired band The Arcade Fire ]

Update:

Ran Prieur, whose “100 things about me” had me howling in self-recognition (#1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 18, 22, 52, 60, 69 and 91, with 86 and 96 as non-intersecting ribticklers extraordinaire, esp. the Ripley’s-style incredulous italics-with-exclamation closing 96), modifies the NYT take on steampunk:

“The other day the NY Times had an article about Steampunk, but you can tell they failed to understand it because they put it in the fashion section. The correct and more radical category is technology. If you look past the Victorian frippery, Steampunk is a technological ethic that trades the factory for the garage, standardization for uniqueness, and “progress” for a mix of tools from every age.”

Taking it away from the style thrust of the NYT article, unto the technological plane – and by implication, to the sociopolitical, not really touched on or quoting the protagonists on, which could link to, e.g., Blake, Ruskin, Morris, Chesterton, Belloc, Gill, Schumacher, &c., and the whole decentralist/appropriate technology schools. The yeoman ethos of Longfellow’s “Village Blacksmith”

And he looks the whole word in the face

For he owes not any man

and the Wright Bros. also came to mind.

Meanwhile, in the Great Minds and So Do We Dept., commenters over at the Reason “Hit & Run” blog are all over the Wild, Wild West connection, recalling the series’ opening-theme sequence, above, to which my nine-year-old heart thrilled c. 1971, and does still thirty-seven years on.