Ahh steampunk. I love it. And yet an eco-freak0 like myself wonders a little about the romanticized glorification of the smog-belching industrial age. But that’s not such a worry. As soon as such a thing gets romanticized it’s usually an indication that it no longer has any real power over the world. For example, the craze over pirates is surely a sign that pirates aren’t a threat any more. I mean, back when pirates were really scary, who’d have thought they’d ever become so cute. An Arrr here and a Salty Dog! there.
But steampunk is something a step beyond a renaissance festival party with a more recent setting. While renaissance festivals and the like make at best a sort of embarrassed acknowledgment of the anachronisms that crop up, the steampunk movement actively embraces them. And if steampunk survives as an aesthetic movement, this will be why. No one’s pretending that computers or electric guitars were around during the Victorian era, but look at these steampunk beauties! [see below]
These anachronisms point to a deeper drive in steampunk: it’s not just about a romanticization of an older day. Rather, it’s an attempt to reunite our modern technological lives with a crafts-based, hands-on engagement with the materials of our lives. While it can glorify a smoke-burp or two, it seems to me that the focus is more on investing in a slow-materials movement. It neither denies materialism nor does it celebrate disposable materialism. In this regard, it brings to mind the crafts movement of William Morris (naturally) but most crafts movements tend to suggest an allegiance with agrarian cultures. This one, instead, is focused on a non-plastics aesthetic that is steeped in a future-looking salute to technological benefits. 
If it’s true, as Kim Stanley Robinson contends, that we are already living in a sci-fi world, that we are creating a real-time collaborative novel, then are we to just accept the plastic confines of our modern technological world? Nevermind the potential effects on the economy and food system of a near-term peak oil scenario; imagine the loss of inexpensive plastics and its effect on technology!
Of course the loss of inexpensive plastics is only good news to those of us who are environmentalists. Steampunk is defining a technology-positive aesthetic that at least moves us away from the petroleum synthetics. Can we proclaim a 21st century technology based on polished woods and brass, brocade and wool? Probably not, but the marriage of these desires in an aesthetic that both grabs the future and the past at the same time offers a beautiful opening of our aesthetic imaginations.
And if anyone has a doubt about the exciting potential of this world, I recommend everyone attend the not-quite-steampunk-but-kissing-cousin Maker Faire which is coming to Detroit this summer!
03:59, 19.05.2012
15:17, 14.03.2010
Nice essay, I never considered steampunk from an environmental perspective. But one corrective: pirates are still very much a threat, and by some estimates worldwide sea-borne piracy peaked in 2003.http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2008/03/080303_pirates_prog2.shtml
16:04, 14.03.2010
Not sure why you think pirates aren’t a threat any more…commerce and tourism is increasingly threatened by pirates around the world. Just because the popular media romanticizes something doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=pirate+attacks
09:11, 16.03.2010
I stand corrected. Even so — clearly they aren't the same pirates at all. I mean anyone could see that with the Somalia pirates last year right. If they'd had the decency to at least wear the right outfits and say "Arr" then it all would have been different, wouldn't it? I think my next career should be Pirate Fashion Consutant! What were they thinking? In all seriousness, if they'd have dressed like the mythic pirates "of yore" then I truly think public reaction would have been different and Americans at least would have been much more confused about what to think — and many might have actually rooted for the Somalian pirates! Which only further points out the difference between the 17th century pirate mythos and true piracy….
21:38, 17.03.2010
On further consideration, my pirate reply may be too flip. What you’re both calling into question is the issue of whether my initial claim is true: that once something is romanticized it’s usually an indication that it’s no longer a threat.
But i think it might be an indication of who it’s a threat to. Would I be correct in guessing that Americans (who probably lead the adoration of pirates) are far less threatened by modern day piracy than folks in other parts of the world?
And perhaps the same holds true for the industrial revolution’s smog-belch. While it’s romanticized in America where that particular expression of early-day and rustic industrialism is less prevalent, it’s probably not romanticized in places that are undergoing massive industrialization right now…..
Thoughts?
10:27, 18.03.2010
I think you’re hitting on it there; I don’t think it’s the technology itself that is romanticized, but the emotional approach people took to the technology then. Everything was considered a wonder no matter how awful and crappy and horrible it really was. The word “meh” had not been invented because there was no place for it in the world. And as you say, this technology was a hands-on endeavor (is it a coincidence that Steampunk has ascended at the same time as hipster knitters?). The technology itself is just associated with those qualities. But I think you’re right, the romanticization is more likely in the absence of the threat (although 1950′s Atomic Age optimism comes to mind as a counter-example).
20:50, 18.03.2010
FYI… the conversation continues over at http://www.lagomorph.org/
20:50, 19.03.2010
FYI… the conversation continues over at http://www.lagomorph.org
18:10, 02.04.2010
You guys shouldn't overlook the possibility that the "pirates" are at least in part just defending their waters from illegal fishing and other illegal activities from foreign corporations. That in effect they are not "pirates" but the Somali "navy". Before the pirates foreign fishing fleets were decimating the waters off the shores of Somalia destroying the livelihood and living of Somali fishermen. They felt like they could get away with it because Somalia has no acting government. So the necessary response was the Somali fishermen started "pirating" in order to survive. As a result of their "pirating" activities foreign fishing fleets have become too afraid to poach in Somali waters. Since then the fish populations have boomed and Somalis have food again. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html
18:19, 02.04.2010
http://horseedmedia.net/2010/01/kenya-fishermen-see-upside-to-pirates-more-fish/
19:52, 17.08.2010
[...] not the first to question the eco-viability of the steampunk movement. Jacob Corvidae waxes philisophical on the romanticization of the steam era while pointing out that perhaps, [...]