Bittercon: the Moral Aesthetics of Steampunk

[attackfish]

Steampunk is frequently realized as an idealized, shiny version of the Victorian era, with quite a few of the nasty bits missing or obscured. The real Victorian age was a mix of great wealth and progress with poverty, workhouses, and more. What does it say about us when the latter are left out?

For a previous round of bittercon, I wrote about history and fantasy in which I touched briefly on the moral ramifications of using real world histories as a basis for fantasy worlds, which generated the most discussion.  When I saw this topic, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to write a follow up.  Recently, there have been several writers posting about how it can hurt when their own histories are played with.  Steampunk I think shows the other side, how it can hurt when someone plays with a history they insist is not yours.

The Victorian era we read about and feel the sort of longing for that it prompts genres like Steampunk is the product primarily of the writings of the wealthy.  This, combined with the natural filter of nostalgia means that it was almost inevitable that most Steampunk fans want the good parts version of history.  People like shiny things.  That’s why they’re expensive.  We also like to play, and this is a fun genre.

However, just underneath the surface of the gilded age was a foundation of poverty, starvation, oppression, inequality, conquest, and colonialism.  In America, the beginnings of the Victorian era were propped up with slavery and destitute urban labor, and the end was propped up with sharecropping and destitute urban labor.  The tide of immigrants that flooded int the country outstripped even the speed at which the Federal government wrested land away from American Indians.  In England and much of Western Europe, they sucked resources from the colonies, including Ireland, itself part of Western Europe, to prop up the homefront, and the poor choked the cities, desperate for work while the wealthy sprawled out in the country.  In Russia, they didn’t need colonies, because the majority of people at home were still surfs.  This was the era that so horrified Dickens and Marx and prompted attempted revolutions all over the continent and the colonies.  Women held almost no power, and people with disabilities were treated with scorn and pity.  Protestants called the Pope the Antichrist, missionaries tried to get natives to stop worshiping idols, and anti-Semitism was natural and acceptable.

When we ignore this to play in the Victorian Era, we say that those stories, the stories of the oppressed, don’t exist.  The world is cooler without them.

None of this means that Steampunk is rotten at the core, any more than other fantasy and science fiction, which has an interesting history of erasure to say the least.  Aside from the fact that it’s the right thing to do, there are some seriously amazing stories to be found in the underbelly of a Steampunk society.  Steampunk in Victorian India, in the colonial cities of China, in colonized Africa, in places the Europeans were never quite able to subdue, Indian tribes using Steampunk, the women’s suffrage movement with pneumatic robots.  Steampunk that maybe just acknowledges that someone’s servants aren’t happy and adoring.  There is some of this out there.

Steampunk is in some ways a complete paradox.  It is a product of a certain unconscious nostalgia, a sense that things were better then (or more interesting) and yet the Victorian era itself was full of great thinkers who touted the wonders of progress.  The Victorians, especially the late Victorians, where most of the Steampunk I have come across focuses, had a very linear view of history with the industrialized west at the pinacle of human development, in which constant progress and universal betterment was the assumed outcome of the passage of time.  This fit in well with their colonial aspirations, and is responsible in part for their belief in the “white man’s burden”.  They had made it, they could teach others to make it, and then everything was going to just get better and better for everyone.  This wasn’t of course to say there wasn’t a lot of nostalgia in Victorian times, especially for the middle ages, as evinced by Gothic revival architecture, books like Ivanhoe, the popularity of the King Arthur legend, an emerging Pan-German Nationalism (oh dear) and the entire romantic movement, but in general, like 1950’s America, progress was the word of the day.

Steampunk may itself be reflective of a larger darker movement of nostalgia in which subsets of the Religious Right talk about returning the country to its core values and deliberately invoke the Victorian era (and the 1950’s) for their supposed good behavior.  Thankfully, most people who enjoy the genre probably know better than to fall for that, but does this adoration of the past help their cause?  Nostalgia is natural and normal, but it can be dangerous.

Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Worldcon.

Comments

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, most people who enjoy the genre probably know better than to fall for that, but does this adoration of the past help their cause?

I'm not so sure of this. I think steampunk is like the Tolkien-esq fantasy world in stereotypical fantasy, it's become repeatedly xeroxed to the point that the historical root doesn't matter any more. It might as well be copying the aesthetics of Star Trek. Things as disparate as colonialism and the Pullman Strike don't enter into the equation. If there's any grounding in history, it's of the Hollywood or 'ironic' type.

There's a quote by Elizabeth Kostova that's really stuck with me since I first read it, and it sums up why I personally find it hard to separate steampunk from the era that spun it off: "The thing that most haunted me that day, however...was the fact that these things had - apparently - actually occurred...For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away."


(BTW, Your essay reminded me of a lot of the points Charles Stross made in this post (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/the-hard-edge-of-empire.html) about steampunk.)

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! Hey, he even mentions Dickens and Marx the same way I do. And the end results of the Nationalist fervor emerging. Brain twins! Only he sees less hope for the genre. Seeing fantasy choked for so long on equally revisionist medieval fantasy with even more adulation of the monarchy as a governmental form means that A) I think it's a perfectly viable subgenre, B) aren't all subgenres a little follow the leader, and C)Damn, see my note about the stories I would like to see told and D) My whole genre is a mess, but God, I love it.

Wonderful quote. I've been a history buff my whole life, and I used to astonish my teachers in middle school, when I said, honestly out of all the periods of history, I really would rather live right now. A lot of people don't realize there's anything beneath the pretty dresses and shiny buildings.

I should probably mention that I have issues with medieval fantasy too.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Excellent, well-written essay.

Among other major events of the Victorian era was the American Civil War. Secession and the founding of the Confederate States of America were undisguised white supremacy, the perfection of a race-based slave society into eternity. The CSA purified and perfected the Philadelphia constitution which verbally obscured that slavery, the slave trade, and federal representation was based on individual wealth, of which the 3/5ths clause made clear that slaves were money -- not people.

Also secession and the CSA were reactions to the progressive movements in Europe, and even up north in the U.S. They were part of the regressive political thinking of the ruling elites of South America and other parts of the world that managed to defuse or otherwise circumvent the revolutionary - progressive movements and revolts of the 1840's.

Steampunk to me is deeply troubling, particularly when any troubling thoughts expressed provoke the response, "This is just fun, and anyway Name Writer of Your Choice is writing African steampunk."

Love, C.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Most Steampunk seems to take pace in the late Victorian era, thereby in some people's eyes, probably sidestepping slavery, despite the fact that race relations actually worsened from a small high point in the years directly following the Civil War (though race relations weren't exactly good then either) to the deep lows that categorize the late Victorian age, sometimes called the nadir of American race relations. Also, a number of Steampunk stories take place in the American west, for the most part ignoring or glossing over A)the numbers of former slaves and B) the number of former Confederate soldiers who went West. Also, part of the reason that I want to smack any Southerner who talks about states rights (other than that it's really disgusting) is the simple fact that they were actually railing against state's rights. In the South Carolina succession declaration that the other Confederate states adopted, they complained about the Northern states' noncompliance with Federal fugitive slave laws, and this was he only mention of states' rights. And even if they had given a flying you know what about states' rights, it would have been a story of them putting the rights of the government above human rights. this is part of why I was never able to stomach Firefly. The browncoats were meant to be a parallel to the numbers of former Confederate soldiers walking around, but they were treated by the show as the righteous but failed revolutionaries. The writers bought into the Confederate lie.

I think the reason Steampunk doesn't trouble me so much is that that venerable fantasy subgenre I grew up on, medieval fantasy grossly distorts medieval realities to clean it up and erase the histories of the oppressed already. I don't see how Steampunk is any worse in that regard. However, it means that like medieval fantasy, I eagerly hope for better. And there are multiple examples of the genre that I just can't stomach. In other words, it's not tat Steampunk doesn't have a lot of fail, but I'm so used to fail in SpecFic that it doesn't make me lose any more faith in humanity.

"This is just fun," is a close cousin to "This is just fiction," both of which prompt me to want to give a long lecture about societal myth-buiding, culture, and identity.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Hollywood has always bought into the southern revisionist view of the Civil War and history, particularly in the locii and periods post the American Civil War. I'm actually writing a book about why and how. Eeek!

Whedon bought into it naturally, as can not be missed in Firefly -- like all those neo-cons who insist that hundreds of thousands of slave fought on the confederate side.

Love, C.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It's a good story. Too bad it's wrong. And so very racist.

And then there are the neo-cons (probably the same ones) who talk about how blacks were better off as slaves. Nonononononononono...

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the winners don't write history. The idea that they always do is a useful propaganda tool for the neo-Confederates, of course, much like their beloved myth of the "liberal media."

To be fair to Whedon, I think he was deliberately modeling the world of Firefly not on post-Civil War America, but on Hollywood's version thereof; the gray and butternut just came along for the ride.

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going to say, steampunk does to the Victorian era pretty much what high fantasy does to the Middle Ages; and I'm not sure one is any worse than the other. Either way, I suppose, if the story is enjoyable enough I can suspend my disbelief long enough to ignore the huddled masses in the background. And yes, that is perilously close to an "it's just fiction" argument -- I guess I'd modify it to "but it's good fiction." Good storytelling offers absolution for a multitude of sins. (E.g., I'm as much of a Union partisan as you'll find anywhere, but I'm still willing to forgive Firefly's crypto-Confederacy.)

Steampunk's unique flavor of nostalgia does bother me, though. Verne and Wells weren't writing knowing, ironic, retro-futurism; they were writing science fiction, plain and simple, with their knowledge of the science of the day. Steampunk's worldview condescends to everyone who lived in the era being depicted, of whatever social status, by treating them as quaint objects rather than as people doing the best they can with the world they have. Good fantasy and SF don't do this.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The quality of writing also often lends a sense of realism and compassion to the narrative, so that those huddled masses become real. That's the fantasy I want to read.

I want to see more punk in the Steampunk, less ideological contentedness. It can be done well (just as medieval fantasy can) but I'm not sure I like the collection of tropes the subgenre is collecting. As for condescention, much of that is the way a lot of Steampunk present snaphots of the Victorian world, and a view of a static society.

[amyraine.livejournal.com]

"The browncoats were meant to be a parallel to the numbers of former Confederate soldiers walking around, but they were treated by the show as the righteous but failed revolutionaries."

Really?

I see it now, since hello, Amy! Wild West meets Space? What did I think it was supposed to parallel? But because they didn't say much about the motivations of the colonists IIRC, I didn't make the connection. And the movie Serenity said "Big Brother goverment made slaves of people because of drugs and mind experiments so obviously Mal and co were right!" so that blinded me further.

I still like cowboy mercenaries in space. :(

I think I also miss the days when I didn't see deeper messages in shows. Innocence lost makes for sad Amy. It's good that I do see it now so that I can encourage competing narratives of the underrepresented, but I think there will always be a part of me that wishes a show was just a show and a book was just a book. I know that's crap, but still.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I miss those days too. But, What Is Seen Cannot Be Unseen.

Or, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see one of the favorite tropes of alternate history fantasy, steampunk, mashup whatever you call it these days -- if you really want to re-imagine a world in which the indigenous populations weren't destroyed, Africans weren't brought to be slaves, etc. -- how about the 'New' World invade the 'Old' World? You'd have to do some serious thinking about history and the hinges. You'd have to really KNOW something.

Pretending that this usual re-imagining can do it without Indians, African slaves and all the rest, does NOT work. We still have Indians, but this time they're, oh, well -- trolls, with brightly colored feathers -- still not human Like Us.

Love, C.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Oh, Mammothgate, I remember you well. Writing the people who were oppressed out of history doesn't eliminate the problem. It exacerbates it. Yeah, in this world, the white guys didn't commit genocide... because you did it for them.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Big parts of Kim Stanley Robinson's sf alternate history, The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) comes the closest to doing that severe re-imagining. It wasn't the most popular of his works -- it was considered boring also, by many. Nevertheless, this novel "in which neither Christianity nor the European cultures based on it achieve lasting impact on world history." It won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2003.

That's a lot harder to do than genre mashups with lots of handwaving behind which the author hopes the reader won't notice that really it is the same stuff, just given not even very different clothes.

Love, C.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Have you read GURPS Alternative History II?
It has one parallel, Ming-3, where China under the Ming Dynasty decided not to stop with ocean travel and exploration and is now (1857) controlling or influencing large part of the world.

Another one is Caliph where a scientific revolution in the 9th century has made created space travel and interstellar colonies in the 17th century.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I burned out on gaming when I was in high school. Never read either. Though I did read a set of essays about what would have happened if Zheng He were the one to colonize the Americas.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

My stuff isn't steampunk, but it has the same problem of good-parts history. You can't write in an recognisable alternate history 1930s without the Nazis, and the Rape of Nanking, and the colonialism, and lynch-mobs in the USA. You have a period of change and uncertainty, and looming war, and there's a lot you can do with that, as well as the new technologies.

And you can put characters into those settings who can really be heroic, trying to do the right thing, because we know that so many of the bad things were defeated, if not quite destroyed.

It's sometimes difficult trying to depict the 1930s USA, because so much of what was there is so wrong. We were lucky that the other side won that battle, even if they weren't always clearly the good guys. There's a movie coming about the Tuskogee Airmen, and the way it seems to mess with the reality is worrying, but they were a sign that the USA was moving away from the lurking evils.

But I am biased. I'm not an American. I'm not one to panic over the word "socialist". I'm not viewing that history through a lens warped by current American media.

Colonialism? Just which colonial country's Indians are the ones with nuclear weapons and a space programme? History is complicated.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

You could do without the and, for example, going off on a tangent to write about the Rape of Nanking in a story that takes place in the American south might be a little unnecessary, but you better have the racism, rape of black women, and lynch mobs. And, you know, the Great Depression.

This is true. The Nazis and other fascists were so unspeakably evil that it make anybody fighting them (Except maybe Stalin) look like saints by comparison.

I hadn't heard of any new movies about the Tuskegee airmen, and google tells me nothing.

You should probably know that the current American news is warped, but the actual storytelling apparatus isn't all that much warped than anywhere else. Of course, they're all pretty warped. I mean, look at Europe's outright racial panic, and the German prime minister saying that multiculturalism is an experiment which has failed. That would never fly in the US. We say things that would never fly in Europe, but it goes both ways. And it's only a certain age/socioeconomic status/set of regions that go into panic over the word socialist, but since they're pretty high up on the scale and the Republicans have been catering to them for so long, their impact on the political discourse is disproportionately loud.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of any new movies about the Tuskegee airmen, and google tells me nothing.

"Red Tails": due out January 2012, trailers on YouTube.

The specific time and place I'm working on isn't the American Deep South, and the whole mess in China is rather more immediate as a threat. At the same time there's also the Spanish Civil War, and there are quite a few African-Americans visible in photographs of the Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigade.

Heck, I'm calling it a mess. It was worse than that. There was Civil War in China, paralleling the chaos of the Russian Civil War, with people such as the Mad Baron taking part in both. and the series of "Incidents" in the 1930s were just another name for a Japanese invasion. That changed when the Chinese government decided to formally fight, and proceeded to lose, big-time.

One of the weird details was that China was getting help from Germany.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Do you know any steampunk in a German setting?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld spends time in Austria and Switzerland, and one of the two main characters is a Hapsburg prince. The main setting is a British airship, though.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

thanks

[corrinalaw.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I've been working on a steampunk series and when I started out with my worldbuilding, I thought of my friend who writes Regencies and how we noted that most (but not all) of those stories center on the ruling class especially in a romance.

So when I went to the Victorian Age, I was thinking far more along the lines of Sherlock Holmes, where you do get a sense of London as a dangerous place with glass differences and serious social problems. (Not perfect, of course, but at least Doyle was writing about his contemporary world, not a romanticized view of it.) The annotated versions of Doyle's stories point out these things. The existence of the Baker Street Irregulars and several lower-class clients in Holmes' stories seem deliberate.

Hopefully, my world touches on a lot of the class and racial differences not only because that's my inclination but because why take out stuff that can create such lovely story conflict. Who's got all the cool gadgets? Only the rich kids? Who is benefitting from all these great science inventions? Are more people being fed or are they just being used to create dirigibles? And what if you happen to be a talented scientist at heart but your father is in a debtor's prison?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Those problems to me say lovely lovely conflict. Why wouldn't we dig into them?

I eagerly await your series.

[corrinalaw.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Right now, it's in the submission format. Soon, though!