What does steampunk and multiculturalism have in common? A lot more than you think. Ay-leen the Peacemaker, proprietress of Beyond Victoriana, explains the connection between what we learn in school to how we engage with steampunk in a theory that might change everything you thought you knew about steampunk subculture.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay will be posted in its entirety in the upcoming first issue of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and will be reproduced at the website of Steampunk Magazine. Thank you to Ay-leen for allowing me to post the separate parts here first.
Part 3 Stirring up the Melting Pot: From Assimilation to Multiculturalism
In the case of the US and Canada, the issue of mass education in a society inhabited by multiple immigrant groups came to the forefront, and like their European powers, they stressed the theory of assimilation into the dominant culture. In the United States in particular, that idea was conceptualized as the "melting pot"--the idea that all cultures and peoples could be rendered into one harmonious stew of American nationality. The term was first coined in 1915 in a popular play of the same title by Israel Zangwill, where the protagonist David, a Russian Jew, declares:
"America is God's Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the race of Europe are melting and reforming! Here you stand good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to--there are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchman, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians--into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American!"
The reality of the "melting pot" of course, has been proven to be severely flawed and resulted in the emphasis on the Anglo-European upon North American society as opposed to all groups showing their own contributions. This idea has also been shown as flawed in light of the fact that during the heralding of the "melting pot" during the same time, many quotas against the immigration of certain ethnic groups (like the Chinese) or the use of this idea to advocate Anglo-superiority (like the "English Only" movement). Even in the original text, emphasis is placed upon the formation of a stronger, American identity from Judeo-Christian European types, making no mention of other people of color or faiths.
In a book addressing multicultural educational policy, Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education, educational theorists Mary Kalantis and Bill Cope point out in their article "Multicultural Education: Transforming the Mainstream," that assimilation policy overall was ineffective partly because of racism: "The name of the game, at least in part, was a structural racism designed to keep difference the way it was, rather than that more honest project of socio-economic assimilation that would have attempted to provide equitable access for all immigrants, and, in the New World, for indigenous peoples as well."
The idea of multicultural education was the first step in a new way of rethinking diversity in education. Started in the 1960s as part of the civil rights movement in the US, the policy of multiculturalism was based on the ideal of expanding education beyond its Western Eurocentric focus (and here is a brief history for the curious). Versions of multicultural educational reform have also sprung up in other Western nations. In Canada, the government enacted an official government policy of multiculturalism; it is the only Western nation to possess one.
The results of the multiculturalism educational policy in the West, however, have been mixed. In terms of application, the policy has faced flaws in its implementation; Kalantis and Cope explain how many acts to implement multicultural initiatives in the mid-1960s and 1970s, were often underfunded or deemed as separate, supplementary educational initiatives that became the first to be cut during budget squeezes. They mention that many multicultural initiatives are often programs were ones made for communities of color with little resources or guidance, and not integrated into the general curriculum that would be beneficial for all students to know, especially the white majority. As a result, Kalantis and Cope explain that previous standards of Western-European hegemony in education remained unquestioned:
"[Multiculturalism] does not mean that educational authorities have to rethink they way mainstream public institutions or school curricula operate. It can construct the 'ethnic' or traditional 'other' as exotic in order to marginalize it, or, returning to the Greek roots of the word exotic as connecting the outside, in order to keep that other out."
Only in the late 1980s has multicultural educational theory shifted again, to emphasize multicultural education that both solidified students' ethnic identities while also helping out the community socially. Multiculturalism projects became community-based with a focus on how cultures intersect with daily life. This combination of grass roots social justice and education is far from being implemented as of today's educational standards.
In terms of multicultural education in Western nations, however, the best sum-up has been made by Britologywatch in a discussion about multiculturalism in reference to Britain: "This involves saying that people of non-indigenous cultures are free to continue expressing their original cultural identities but must subordinate the beliefs, values and behaviours characteristic of these cultures to an overarching acceptance of, and submission to, 'British values' and British norms." Multicultural policy in many Western nations has also faced scrutiny, and there have been recently flare-ups about its relevance to education, or fears that a multicultural education would mean the destruction of a cohesive national identity.
With so many hurdles multicultural initiatives had to go through in order to be implemented, how effective has it been since the ideas had been first advocated fifty years ago? As the anti-racist blog Restructure points out, multicultural policy as it is today has been used to treat communities of color in a paternalistic manner where they are only confined to talk political issues in terms of cultural initiatives. Discussion about other issues that are connected to systematic racism--such as poverty, job discrimination, criminal profiling, unaddressed concerns about violence against women and children of color, and hate crimes -- and not encouraged in any other political sphere, because "multiculturalism masks them, it glosses them over, and it has become a policy of governing and managing communities of colour, so that those politics only get articulated in the name of culture, and culture is defined in highly patriarchal terms."
Thus, multiculturalism has been identified as a progressive stance, but the results of implementing such a stance can be very different when it is not fully embraced.
MONDAY: Part 4 Steampunk Subculture & Modern Education: Teaching Yesterday's History Today
Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
GUEST POST: Steampunks Around the World, Unite: Multiculturalism in Steampunk, Part 2
What does steampunk and multiculturalism have in common? A lot more than you think. Ay-leen the Peacemaker, proprietress of Beyond Victoriana, explains the connection between what we learn in school to how we engage with steampunk in a theory that might change everything you thought you knew about steampunk subculture.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay will be posted in its entirety in the upcoming first issue of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and will be reproduced at the website of Steampunk Magazine. Thank you to Ay-leen for allowing me to post the separate parts here first.
Part 2 The Learning Factory: the Development of Mass Education in the Victorian Era
Modern English education reform began in the nineteenth century after the Industrial Revolution came in full swing. Previously, the most common form of public education were in parishes where children were taught to read (in order to learn the Bible) and usually very little else. Further vocational education came in the form of compulsory apprenticeships to learn a trade skill. The upper classes, of course, had the opportunity to send their children to be educated at the oldest universities or sent them overseas to France or Germany. Ideas about education, though, began to change in the 1800s. The promotion of technological growth, however, did not come hand-in-hand with the idea of secular, compulsory education. In fact, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution was well underway, most children growing up in rural and urban areas remained on the farm in or factories. It was more practical to have children earning money for their families than the costs of extensive education. Furthermore, the aristocratic classes did not see any usefulness in educating the masses and it was hard to rally support for public education in the realms of the law.
Measures were taken to increase education of the poor majority of English society, starting with Robert Raikes' Sunday School Movement which began in 1780 and by 1814, had taught 1.25 million children. Throughout the 1830s other law measures put public education to the forefront, building schools for the poor, and establishing non-denominational schools. In 1840, the Grammar School Act expanding the school curriculum to include not only basic maths and reading, but science and literature too. The English government, however, became more concerned about educational reform because of increasing social unrest. Know Britain gives a thorough outline about the development of education and points out that,
"In the second half of the 19th-century crime and pauperism increased, so did riots strikes and social unrest. The commercial and manufacturing supremacy of Britain was in decline and this was seen to be mostly due to the fact that other European countries had a more developed technical education system. Political stability and economic prosperity now seemed to be associated with the education of the people."
A formal educational system was established in 1870 with the passing of the Forster Act, which established a system of boarding schools for English children. The creation of the modern textbook was also a Victorian innovation. Though textbooks have existed as early as the ancient Greeks, with the rise of compulsory education, the need for standardized educational materials became more important. Textbooks became standardized not only in England but throughout the Western world around the same time; in England and the British Empire during the nineteenth century were a number of classical textbooks written by Dr. John William Donaldson; in America the McGuffey Readers became popular. France, Germany, and other countries also developed their own formal modes of education, though in the Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden and central European countries like Germany and Prussia had started more modernizing reforms slightly earlier than England.
Mass education, of course, played a major role in colonial territories, primarily as a system where the native population can be subordinated and assimilated as part of the colonialist government and strengthening imperialist rule, both for practical economic and political reasons.
This education model has spread throughout with world through British colonialism and has had great impact on the development of educational curriculum in other English-speaking nations (ex. United States, America & Australia). Many European models also developed their own systems of education, and, for those that held colonial territories, those educational systems all had something in common with the British system. Among other things is that the way they, too, were replicated in their colonial territories and used as part of a system to 1) manage the native population into alliance with their colonial rulers and 2) contributed to idealizing Western canon in the humanities and social sciences and Western innovations in the maths and sciences over any native-born contributions or non-Western alternatives.
For example, in the case of the British Raj, one historical study commented that:
"The vacillating expansion of British-style education in the Central Provinces over six decades provided a small Indian elite with education, though British administrators had intended, in the early 1860's, for education to produce far greater direct and Indirect changes among the population. As noted earlier, education was intended to achieve three objectives: first, to instruct an 'agricultural middle class;' second, these in turn would serve as a "lever" to raise the lower classes; and third, to train some Indians (especially those classified as Maratha Brahmins) for subordinate administrative posts."
The idea that the natives at best would only be fit to run as minor cogs in a greater colonial system also goes along with the idea of Social Darwinism that was also popular in the nineteenth century. The effect of colonial education in the non-West had been long-lasting, especially as formerly colonized countries mentally, as well as socially and politically, untangle themselves from the legacy of imperialist bias. As Kenyan theorist and academic Ngugi Wa Thiong'o states in Decolonising the Mind, such an education: "...annihilates a peoples belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves.”
TOMORROW: Part 3 Stirring up the Melting Pot: From Assimilation to Multiculturalism
EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay will be posted in its entirety in the upcoming first issue of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and will be reproduced at the website of Steampunk Magazine. Thank you to Ay-leen for allowing me to post the separate parts here first.
Part 2 The Learning Factory: the Development of Mass Education in the Victorian Era
Modern English education reform began in the nineteenth century after the Industrial Revolution came in full swing. Previously, the most common form of public education were in parishes where children were taught to read (in order to learn the Bible) and usually very little else. Further vocational education came in the form of compulsory apprenticeships to learn a trade skill. The upper classes, of course, had the opportunity to send their children to be educated at the oldest universities or sent them overseas to France or Germany. Ideas about education, though, began to change in the 1800s. The promotion of technological growth, however, did not come hand-in-hand with the idea of secular, compulsory education. In fact, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution was well underway, most children growing up in rural and urban areas remained on the farm in or factories. It was more practical to have children earning money for their families than the costs of extensive education. Furthermore, the aristocratic classes did not see any usefulness in educating the masses and it was hard to rally support for public education in the realms of the law.
Measures were taken to increase education of the poor majority of English society, starting with Robert Raikes' Sunday School Movement which began in 1780 and by 1814, had taught 1.25 million children. Throughout the 1830s other law measures put public education to the forefront, building schools for the poor, and establishing non-denominational schools. In 1840, the Grammar School Act expanding the school curriculum to include not only basic maths and reading, but science and literature too. The English government, however, became more concerned about educational reform because of increasing social unrest. Know Britain gives a thorough outline about the development of education and points out that,
"In the second half of the 19th-century crime and pauperism increased, so did riots strikes and social unrest. The commercial and manufacturing supremacy of Britain was in decline and this was seen to be mostly due to the fact that other European countries had a more developed technical education system. Political stability and economic prosperity now seemed to be associated with the education of the people."
A formal educational system was established in 1870 with the passing of the Forster Act, which established a system of boarding schools for English children. The creation of the modern textbook was also a Victorian innovation. Though textbooks have existed as early as the ancient Greeks, with the rise of compulsory education, the need for standardized educational materials became more important. Textbooks became standardized not only in England but throughout the Western world around the same time; in England and the British Empire during the nineteenth century were a number of classical textbooks written by Dr. John William Donaldson; in America the McGuffey Readers became popular. France, Germany, and other countries also developed their own formal modes of education, though in the Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden and central European countries like Germany and Prussia had started more modernizing reforms slightly earlier than England.
Mass education, of course, played a major role in colonial territories, primarily as a system where the native population can be subordinated and assimilated as part of the colonialist government and strengthening imperialist rule, both for practical economic and political reasons.
This education model has spread throughout with world through British colonialism and has had great impact on the development of educational curriculum in other English-speaking nations (ex. United States, America & Australia). Many European models also developed their own systems of education, and, for those that held colonial territories, those educational systems all had something in common with the British system. Among other things is that the way they, too, were replicated in their colonial territories and used as part of a system to 1) manage the native population into alliance with their colonial rulers and 2) contributed to idealizing Western canon in the humanities and social sciences and Western innovations in the maths and sciences over any native-born contributions or non-Western alternatives.
For example, in the case of the British Raj, one historical study commented that:
"The vacillating expansion of British-style education in the Central Provinces over six decades provided a small Indian elite with education, though British administrators had intended, in the early 1860's, for education to produce far greater direct and Indirect changes among the population. As noted earlier, education was intended to achieve three objectives: first, to instruct an 'agricultural middle class;' second, these in turn would serve as a "lever" to raise the lower classes; and third, to train some Indians (especially those classified as Maratha Brahmins) for subordinate administrative posts."
The idea that the natives at best would only be fit to run as minor cogs in a greater colonial system also goes along with the idea of Social Darwinism that was also popular in the nineteenth century. The effect of colonial education in the non-West had been long-lasting, especially as formerly colonized countries mentally, as well as socially and politically, untangle themselves from the legacy of imperialist bias. As Kenyan theorist and academic Ngugi Wa Thiong'o states in Decolonising the Mind, such an education: "...annihilates a peoples belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves.”
TOMORROW: Part 3 Stirring up the Melting Pot: From Assimilation to Multiculturalism
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
GUEST POST: Steampunks Around the World, Unite: Multiculturalism in Steampunk, Part 1
What does steampunk and multiculturalism have in common? A lot more than you think. Ay-leen the Peacemaker, proprietress of Beyond Victoriana, explains the connection between what we learn in school to how we engage with steampunk in a theory that might change everything you thought you knew about steampunk subculture.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay will be posted in its entirety in the upcoming first issue of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and will be reproduced at the website of Steampunk Magazine. Thank you to Ay-leen for allowing me to post the separate parts here first.
Part 1 Multiculturalism: One compass, many directions
When one thinks of the words "steampunk" and "multicultural," there's a moment of head-scratching. Since steampunk has existed as an aesthetic style, first identified as a form of British Victorian aesthetic expression, the word conjures up images of stuffy, pale-skinned aristocrats donning goggles on their top hats while flying about in their dirigibles. "Multicultural" sounds too modern, too varied, too irrelevant to associate itself with the likes of what is steampunk, standards that are quickly-becoming formalized as the subculture becomes exposed to the mainstream and examples of the subgenre's style become more pop-culture friendly (when Lady Gaga dons goggles and twisty pipes on her head, you know it's a sign that people are Getting It). Multicultural steampunk, however, is not only another variant of steampunk, but, in my opinion, is intrinsic to the definition of steampunk as it exists as a form of creative expressive subversion. Thus, the average steampunk engages in more aspects of multicultural steampunk than one would assume; while likewise, multicultural steampunk is a prime example of how someone can grasp the "punk" banner by the handle and wave it for themselves.
Unlike the term steampunk, multiculturalism can be very simple to define--here's the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition:
Main Entry: mul·ti·cul·tur·al
Pronunciation: \ˌməl-tē-ˈkəlch-rəl, -ˌtī-, -ˈkəl-chə-\
Function: adjective
Date: 1941
: of, relating to, reflecting, or adapted to diverse cultures
Like steampunk, however, the concept and application of multiculturalism is ever-evolving. In addition, unlike its common mainstream perception, multicultural isn't always about race and non-European cultures. Multiculturalism, in fact, is a constructed concept created to counter another constructed concept: that of the "dominant culture," the one that the majority of people are told they identify with. In the case of North America and Western Europe, the "dominant culture" is that which caters to the perspective of the white, middle-class, CIS-gendered, straight, able-bodied, Christian male. Already, we can call the dominant culture a bunch of bull, because a majority of us do not identify with what is considered the "dominant perspective." We are women, of color, of different faiths (or atheist or agnostic), of various sexual and gender orientations and economic backgrounds and with different physical capabilities. One can see how there are many aspects of our lives exist outside of the dominant framework and that in itself reveals the relevance of multiculturalism to many people. I'll get back to this point later.
But for the sake of this post, I'll be talking about multiculturalism primarily in relation to race and non-Western cultures, and in relation to an Anglo, Western-European dominant culture. A large majority of steampunk subculture exists in areas where this is the dominant culture; furthermore, as one speaking from an observational standpoint in a larger community, it's also the dominant culture I’ve grown up in. Besides, I certainly don't possess the life experiences and educational background to speak about the steampunk community as it functions in, say, Japan or southeast Asia or even Eastern Europe.
First of all, in order to define the importance of multiculturalism and its impact on steampunk (in ways which may surprise you), let's go back to how multiculturalism has developed and its largest impact upon society: as an educational method in reaction to modes of Western education created during the nineteenth-century.
THURSDAY: Part 2 The Learning Factory: the Development of Mass Education in the Victorian Era
EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay will be posted in its entirety in the upcoming first issue of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and will be reproduced at the website of Steampunk Magazine. Thank you to Ay-leen for allowing me to post the separate parts here first.
Part 1 Multiculturalism: One compass, many directions
When one thinks of the words "steampunk" and "multicultural," there's a moment of head-scratching. Since steampunk has existed as an aesthetic style, first identified as a form of British Victorian aesthetic expression, the word conjures up images of stuffy, pale-skinned aristocrats donning goggles on their top hats while flying about in their dirigibles. "Multicultural" sounds too modern, too varied, too irrelevant to associate itself with the likes of what is steampunk, standards that are quickly-becoming formalized as the subculture becomes exposed to the mainstream and examples of the subgenre's style become more pop-culture friendly (when Lady Gaga dons goggles and twisty pipes on her head, you know it's a sign that people are Getting It). Multicultural steampunk, however, is not only another variant of steampunk, but, in my opinion, is intrinsic to the definition of steampunk as it exists as a form of creative expressive subversion. Thus, the average steampunk engages in more aspects of multicultural steampunk than one would assume; while likewise, multicultural steampunk is a prime example of how someone can grasp the "punk" banner by the handle and wave it for themselves.
Unlike the term steampunk, multiculturalism can be very simple to define--here's the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition:
Main Entry: mul·ti·cul·tur·al
Pronunciation: \ˌməl-tē-ˈkəlch-rəl, -ˌtī-, -ˈkəl-chə-\
Function: adjective
Date: 1941
: of, relating to, reflecting, or adapted to diverse cultures
Like steampunk, however, the concept and application of multiculturalism is ever-evolving. In addition, unlike its common mainstream perception, multicultural isn't always about race and non-European cultures. Multiculturalism, in fact, is a constructed concept created to counter another constructed concept: that of the "dominant culture," the one that the majority of people are told they identify with. In the case of North America and Western Europe, the "dominant culture" is that which caters to the perspective of the white, middle-class, CIS-gendered, straight, able-bodied, Christian male. Already, we can call the dominant culture a bunch of bull, because a majority of us do not identify with what is considered the "dominant perspective." We are women, of color, of different faiths (or atheist or agnostic), of various sexual and gender orientations and economic backgrounds and with different physical capabilities. One can see how there are many aspects of our lives exist outside of the dominant framework and that in itself reveals the relevance of multiculturalism to many people. I'll get back to this point later.
But for the sake of this post, I'll be talking about multiculturalism primarily in relation to race and non-Western cultures, and in relation to an Anglo, Western-European dominant culture. A large majority of steampunk subculture exists in areas where this is the dominant culture; furthermore, as one speaking from an observational standpoint in a larger community, it's also the dominant culture I’ve grown up in. Besides, I certainly don't possess the life experiences and educational background to speak about the steampunk community as it functions in, say, Japan or southeast Asia or even Eastern Europe.
First of all, in order to define the importance of multiculturalism and its impact on steampunk (in ways which may surprise you), let's go back to how multiculturalism has developed and its largest impact upon society: as an educational method in reaction to modes of Western education created during the nineteenth-century.
THURSDAY: Part 2 The Learning Factory: the Development of Mass Education in the Victorian Era
Friday, August 6, 2010
GUEST POST: Japanese Steampunk
Adam Heine is well-known around these parts as a regular commenter, fellow Steampunk writer, and a stellar beta reader. He recently published a short story, "Pawn's Gambit," at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and discusses his journey toward publication of his Steampunk novel "Air Pirates" and other Steampunk-y goodness at his blog Author's Echo.
Matt has been doing a fantastic job with his informative posts on the history of steampunk and steampunk in history. I hope you don't mind if I complement his posts with something slightly less historical: steampunk in modern Japan.
What I love about Japanese media is how different it is from Western media. Even with our oldest tropes, the Japanese have a different way of thinking, resulting in some of the most imaginative and engrossing worlds I know. I'm going to look at a few so we can see what steampunk looks like outside the box.
Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind (1984) and Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
In America, Hayao Miyazaki has become one of Japan's most famous directors. In a medium already known for its unique settings, Miyazaki's are unmatched. Nausicaa takes place in a fantasy dystopia with a steampunk flare. Humans live in isolated pockets, defending themselves from the poisonous spores and giant insects that are slowly spreading across the world. Their technology ranges from windmills and gliders to machine guns and gigantic cargo planes.
The setting of Laputa is much closer to what
we think of as steampunk, strongly influenced by Welsh coal mining towns during the Industrial Revolution. It combines military conspiracies with lost civilizations whose technology is so advanced as to appear magical. The world is also peppered with every kind of airship you could imagine, from gliders to blimps to massive warships held aloft by reams of propellers.
Final Fantasy VI (1994) and Skies of Arcadia
Steampunk is not relegated to movies. Many of the Final Fantasy video games have a steampunk flavor to them, with Final Fantasy VI being the strongest. The game takes place in a world of trains, carrier-pigeon communications, primitive chainsaws, and a high society similar to that of the late 19th century.
Skies of Arcadia, meanwhile, takes steampunk down a more magical path. Islands float above an uninhabitable planet, and travel is achieved by airship. The airships are unique in that they float using moonstones, and come in the shapes of Earthlike sea-going ships, from old sloops to modern battleships. Meanwhile, the story is more like Treasure Island, with air pirates, treasure, and swashbuckling adventure.
Full Metal Alchemist (2001)
Like a lot of steampunk anime, Full Metal Alchemist is set in a fantasy world similar to Industrial Revolution Europe. But in this world, alchemy is one of man's most advanced scientific techniques. A skilled alchemist could replace lost limbs, store a man's soul inside a machine, or even bring back the dead.
Steamboy (2004)
Where most of my examples take place in fantasy worlds infused with magic, Steamboy is classic steampunk in the Western sense. Ray Steam is caught in a struggle between his father and grandfather (both inventors like Ray) that ultimately threatens to destroy 19th-century London. It's got mad scientists, political conflicts, and an overdose of creative steam-powered inventions – everything a good steampunk movie needs.
Looking at its history in the West, it's easy to believe steampunk is just historical fiction with a little advanced technology thrown in. But steampunk can be fantasy as much as sci-fi, future dystopia as much as history, and adventure as much as mystery or horror. Looking at how other cultures treat the genre reminds us that, with a few constraints, steampunk can be whatever we make it.
Matt has been doing a fantastic job with his informative posts on the history of steampunk and steampunk in history. I hope you don't mind if I complement his posts with something slightly less historical: steampunk in modern Japan.
What I love about Japanese media is how different it is from Western media. Even with our oldest tropes, the Japanese have a different way of thinking, resulting in some of the most imaginative and engrossing worlds I know. I'm going to look at a few so we can see what steampunk looks like outside the box.
Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind (1984) and Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)In America, Hayao Miyazaki has become one of Japan's most famous directors. In a medium already known for its unique settings, Miyazaki's are unmatched. Nausicaa takes place in a fantasy dystopia with a steampunk flare. Humans live in isolated pockets, defending themselves from the poisonous spores and giant insects that are slowly spreading across the world. Their technology ranges from windmills and gliders to machine guns and gigantic cargo planes.
The setting of Laputa is much closer to whatwe think of as steampunk, strongly influenced by Welsh coal mining towns during the Industrial Revolution. It combines military conspiracies with lost civilizations whose technology is so advanced as to appear magical. The world is also peppered with every kind of airship you could imagine, from gliders to blimps to massive warships held aloft by reams of propellers.
Final Fantasy VI (1994) and Skies of Arcadia
Steampunk is not relegated to movies. Many of the Final Fantasy video games have a steampunk flavor to them, with Final Fantasy VI being the strongest. The game takes place in a world of trains, carrier-pigeon communications, primitive chainsaws, and a high society similar to that of the late 19th century.
Like a lot of steampunk anime, Full Metal Alchemist is set in a fantasy world similar to Industrial Revolution Europe. But in this world, alchemy is one of man's most advanced scientific techniques. A skilled alchemist could replace lost limbs, store a man's soul inside a machine, or even bring back the dead.
Where most of my examples take place in fantasy worlds infused with magic, Steamboy is classic steampunk in the Western sense. Ray Steam is caught in a struggle between his father and grandfather (both inventors like Ray) that ultimately threatens to destroy 19th-century London. It's got mad scientists, political conflicts, and an overdose of creative steam-powered inventions – everything a good steampunk movie needs.
Looking at its history in the West, it's easy to believe steampunk is just historical fiction with a little advanced technology thrown in. But steampunk can be fantasy as much as sci-fi, future dystopia as much as history, and adventure as much as mystery or horror. Looking at how other cultures treat the genre reminds us that, with a few constraints, steampunk can be whatever we make it.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
GUEST POST: STEAMPUNK! It's the wave of the past
Does the drawing style below really need any introduction? If it does, why in tarnation aren't you following the adventures of K. Marie Criddle over at C'MERE already?
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
GUEST POST: Crystal Palace Park
Tom Slatter is a composer, singer and songwriter who writes records, plays and teaches in London. His first solo album, Spinning the Compass, is a mixture of acoustic indie with a steampunk theme and a hint of prog rock experimentation. The album explores themes of love, flying machines, nightmares involving cable cars and steam engine related body horror. You can find Tom on Twitter (@tomslatter) and on his website, http://www.tomslatter.co.uk.
One of the themes my favorite steampunk artworks share with their namesake cyberpunk is that of urban decay. The novels of China Mieville in their depiction of New Crobuzon, for example, epitomize this squalor. Living next to Crystal Palace park in South London, I get to see a lot of it first hand.
Crystal Palace park is a Steampunk's dream -- the whole place is stuffed with decaying Victoriana and apart from the 1970s concrete monstrosity of the central athletics stadium, the park looks as if it hasn't been touched for over a hundred years.
The Crystal Palace itself was originally built in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, an industrial world's fair designed to showcase the Industrial Prowess of Imperial Britain. The Palace was dismantled and moved to Sydenham Hill in 1854, eventually giving its name to that area of South London.
The Palace was used for various purposes after being moved to Sydenham Hill, including the training of RAF servicemen for World War I, however in 1936 in burnt down and as it was uninsured there was no money to rebuild. All that remains are ruins and the tantalizing remnants of past glories.
The Victorians had incredibly high opinions of themselves -- they saw themselves as the most civilized and advanced nation on the planet, and their architecture reflects this. Royal palaces in central London all bear classical columns and Latin mottoes in a blatant attempt to associate with the heights of ancient Greek civilization. The Crystal Palace ruins include statues of Indian nobles and four concrete Sphinxes, complete with hieroglyphs. These sit at the top of Crystal Palace hill, one of the highest points in London, and can only be reached by climbing the crumbling weather-beaten steps that are all that remain of the building.
Further down the hills even more exciting remains can be found. The Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park are a showcase of both the wonder and interest Victorians had for science and the natural world, and a reminder of how little we knew then compared to now.
Sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in 1854, the Dinosaurs and other extinct creatures are shown in various poses across several islands. They were unveiled a full 6 years before the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species and could be said to constitute the first ever theme-park. There was even tie-in merchandise available in the form of educational dinosaur toys. The dinosaurs are in fact quite innaccurate, but nonetheless there is something quite wonderful about the idea of the first ever theme park being dedicated to cutting edge biology.
A handy audio guide, targeted at kids, has recently been produced at www.audiotrails.co.uk.
The twentieth century additions to the park are far less exciting -- sterile 1960s concrete and weathered plastic. The Victorian parts, while still hinting at the grandeur of the times, have fallen into disrepair that to me seems thoroughly steampunk.
The steampunk part of me wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
One of the themes my favorite steampunk artworks share with their namesake cyberpunk is that of urban decay. The novels of China Mieville in their depiction of New Crobuzon, for example, epitomize this squalor. Living next to Crystal Palace park in South London, I get to see a lot of it first hand.
Crystal Palace park is a Steampunk's dream -- the whole place is stuffed with decaying Victoriana and apart from the 1970s concrete monstrosity of the central athletics stadium, the park looks as if it hasn't been touched for over a hundred years.
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| The crumbling steps in Crystal Palace Park |
The Palace was used for various purposes after being moved to Sydenham Hill, including the training of RAF servicemen for World War I, however in 1936 in burnt down and as it was uninsured there was no money to rebuild. All that remains are ruins and the tantalizing remnants of past glories.
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| One of the Sphinxes that sits at the top of Crystal Palace hill |
Further down the hills even more exciting remains can be found. The Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park are a showcase of both the wonder and interest Victorians had for science and the natural world, and a reminder of how little we knew then compared to now.
 |
| Two of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's dinosaurs |
A handy audio guide, targeted at kids, has recently been produced at www.audiotrails.co.uk.
The twentieth century additions to the park are far less exciting -- sterile 1960s concrete and weathered plastic. The Victorian parts, while still hinting at the grandeur of the times, have fallen into disrepair that to me seems thoroughly steampunk.
The steampunk part of me wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
Monday, August 2, 2010
GUEST POST: Ada Lovelace -- Countess of Steampunk?
Patty Blount is a New York City-based technical writer by day. She blogs about her novel "Send" at To Tell a Compelling Story ... and on technical-writing matters at Write Trends. Patty is on Twitter in two places -- @PattyBlount for her fiction and @PattyBlount2 for her technical writing work. A Kindle edition of her novel "Postpartum Deception" is available on Amazon.
When Matt and I first discussed a possible guest blog post, I was stumped for ideas. After all, I’ve only just learned about Steampunk and what I know of the genre, Matt taught me. So, Matt suggested I tap into my roots as a technical writer and write a profile of Augusta Ada Byron King, The Countess of Lovelace. I rubbed my hands together and squealed in glee. I already knew history claims this daughter of poet Lord Byron as the world’s first computer programmer, so as computer software writer myself, writing her profile appealed to me on both a professional and a personal level. But as I immersed myself in research, I realized Ada’s achievements epitomize Steampunk itself.
Steampunk, as Matt defines it, is a genre in which contemporary technology (real or imagined) is set in Victorian England, the age in which steam powered an Industrial Revolution. Melding historical stories with science fiction elements, Steampunk stories feature futuristic technology housed in ornate brass and glass fixtures. Think of The Prestige, in which Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale vie for a Tesla-coil to pull off the ultimate magic act – the Vanishing Man. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is another popular example of the genre.
In 19th century England, Augusta Ada King’s love of mathematics and abundant intelligence were qualities appreciated only so far as they were capable of ensnaring a husband. She did marry and later become the Countess of Lovelace, which should have been the end of our story for a lady of that time. But Ada’s interest in math was too strong to ignore. She eventually met and worked with Charles Babbage, a man credited with designing the first programmable computer. Babbage, frustrated by the sheer quantity of errors found in manually generated mathematical tables, designed his Analytical Engine saying, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.” Of course, such calculations would have taken several minutes to perform with his design, which would have weighed over three tons, had it ever been built.
A little thing like the device’s existence did not stop Ada from extending Babbage’s work. Computer historians claim Babbage’s design would have worked and been what today we call Turing-complete, an expression that means in its simplest terms that the device could be programmed to solve any problem. To accomplish this programming, Babbage adapted the concept of punch cards from the Jacquard Loom. Ada is credited with writing the first computer program for Babbage’s engine, an algorithm that could generate Bernoulli numbers. (Don’t ask!)
Historians debate the veracity of this claim. Most believe Ada did no more than transcribe Babbage’s own program while others insist the punch cards bear proof of Ada’s analyses. Which claim is right no longer interests me because I credit Ada with documenting the world’s first computer program. That’s right. Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, wrote the first software user guide. I like imagining it written on aged parchment and bound between heavy leather covers trimmed in brass. That she did so in an age when women were expected to do no more than host successful dinner parties is eye-brow raising. That she that nearly a hundred years before the design was built is downright jaw-dropping.
When Matt and I first discussed a possible guest blog post, I was stumped for ideas. After all, I’ve only just learned about Steampunk and what I know of the genre, Matt taught me. So, Matt suggested I tap into my roots as a technical writer and write a profile of Augusta Ada Byron King, The Countess of Lovelace. I rubbed my hands together and squealed in glee. I already knew history claims this daughter of poet Lord Byron as the world’s first computer programmer, so as computer software writer myself, writing her profile appealed to me on both a professional and a personal level. But as I immersed myself in research, I realized Ada’s achievements epitomize Steampunk itself.
Steampunk, as Matt defines it, is a genre in which contemporary technology (real or imagined) is set in Victorian England, the age in which steam powered an Industrial Revolution. Melding historical stories with science fiction elements, Steampunk stories feature futuristic technology housed in ornate brass and glass fixtures. Think of The Prestige, in which Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale vie for a Tesla-coil to pull off the ultimate magic act – the Vanishing Man. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is another popular example of the genre.
In 19th century England, Augusta Ada King’s love of mathematics and abundant intelligence were qualities appreciated only so far as they were capable of ensnaring a husband. She did marry and later become the Countess of Lovelace, which should have been the end of our story for a lady of that time. But Ada’s interest in math was too strong to ignore. She eventually met and worked with Charles Babbage, a man credited with designing the first programmable computer. Babbage, frustrated by the sheer quantity of errors found in manually generated mathematical tables, designed his Analytical Engine saying, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.” Of course, such calculations would have taken several minutes to perform with his design, which would have weighed over three tons, had it ever been built.
A little thing like the device’s existence did not stop Ada from extending Babbage’s work. Computer historians claim Babbage’s design would have worked and been what today we call Turing-complete, an expression that means in its simplest terms that the device could be programmed to solve any problem. To accomplish this programming, Babbage adapted the concept of punch cards from the Jacquard Loom. Ada is credited with writing the first computer program for Babbage’s engine, an algorithm that could generate Bernoulli numbers. (Don’t ask!)
Historians debate the veracity of this claim. Most believe Ada did no more than transcribe Babbage’s own program while others insist the punch cards bear proof of Ada’s analyses. Which claim is right no longer interests me because I credit Ada with documenting the world’s first computer program. That’s right. Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, wrote the first software user guide. I like imagining it written on aged parchment and bound between heavy leather covers trimmed in brass. That she did so in an age when women were expected to do no more than host successful dinner parties is eye-brow raising. That she that nearly a hundred years before the design was built is downright jaw-dropping.
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