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Do steampunkers need a lifestyle?On the Internet, but especially off line, many people are concerned about their lifestyle. You have to have one, it seems, to fit in somewhere. It’s obvious that there are many different lifestyles possible, based on religion or on idealistic ideas. There are hippies who care about nature and Christians who live according to the bible, there are yuppies who live under the rules of money, and punks who are basically anarchists.The neo-punks from the early nineties were in a way weird, because what bound them was more the music than the way they were thinking. Of course, they are not the only group that is bound by music and dress code. It’s done before and after. Each style of music has its own lifestyle attached to it. You are mod or rock or very jazz, disco or new wave. Now I’ve noticed many youngsters take a literary genre as lifestyle. You are science fiction or fantasy or gothic. I’ve never met anyone who claimed to have steampunk as a lifestyle. What would that look like? Is it possible at all? To start with fantasy, the umbrella genre that wraps all others... what is a fantasy lifestyle? According to what I’ve seen from it, you dress in funny clothes, basically mediaeval style, listen to dreamy music like new age, or folk, or traditional Celtic music. You read, of course, fantasy books and like fantasy movies. Your home is decorated with small statues of elves and dragons, the walls show Bob Ross style paintings, or posters from aforementioned movies. Is that enough to be a lifestyle? Is there a way of fantasy life, a political direction, typical fantasy food, a social code? If any, fantasy tends to be more Celtic/mediaeval decorating than a true lifestyle. On gothic, I’ve written some kind of manifest (in Dutch) about what binds the Goths. The Gothic lifestyle is more defined by ideas than by style. There is no proper gothic food, gothic dress is so loosely defined anything you wear could be gothic... But then, Gothic has always been more a social movement than defined by dress and music. Could there be something like a steampunk lifestyle? If we take steampunk for what it is, a literary genre, we could also ask about a romance-lifestyle, a thriller or crime lifestyle, a horror lifestyle. These are, in my opinion, non-existent. I don’t think many crime-lovers run around in shabby trench coats like their heroes, and poke their noses in all corpses they can find. Nor will the horror-lover be the typical slashing creep in the dark woods. They clearly keep apart reality and the world in the books they read. Maybe they take to chance to do some reenactment or live-action role-playing to live out what they read about, but it will never be in their daily life. But the fantasy lovers are busy fading the line between fantasy and reality. Many are interested in witches and wicca, because it is magic in reality. They tend to make fantasy real and turn it into a lifestyle that defines their lives. In science fiction, it usually is not that specific. There are of course the Trekkies that dress in Federation uniforms and have their living room decorated like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. They live according to the rules of the Federation as if it were a religion. But those are only Star Trek fans. To have science fiction as a genre turned into a lifestyle, they should integrate other novels, movies and TV-series in their lives as well. The sci-fi sub genre of Cyberpunk is sometimes made into a lifestyle. You get a job in the information technology, take the hacker code as a religion, and decorate yourself and your home in the most modern way with all the fancy gadgets and shiny chrome, listen to electronic music with your mirror shades on. What can it look like?
Does steampunk lifestyle include the Christian virtues of Victorian times, and the hypocrisy of that time? Or is religion replaced by believe in modern techniques? Can you believe in modern techniques when they are actually techniques of the past, i.e. steam powered? Is it the Victorian social life -the tea parties and the smoking in the lounge of the club- that is appealing or rather the crazy inventions of fiction? How can crazy inventions be a lifestyle, by the way? Do steampunkers eat the food (potatoes) from the Victorian poor, the extreme diners from the upper class, or super-tech canned food? What kind of music do you listen to when you’re a proper steampunk fan? Opera’s from back then and classical music in general? Soundtracks to so-called steampunk movies? You have a phonograph playing old 78 rpm records? Or the modern bands that are inspired by steampunk, maybe even electric industrial music? And what social code do you have? Behave like a gentleman? Does it matter anyway? Given these thoughts, I think steampunk is so multi-sided, everyone has his or her own style of living it out - if at all. Where fantasy rubs with a new age lifestyle, steampunk is on it’s own. It’s not easy to find steampunk decorations if you don’t want to copy the past, and like the lifestyle, you have to make the props yourself. I’m really interested if you have a steampunk lifestyle and how it looks and feels like. Please leave your opinion and ideas in the forum. © Yaghish 2004 |
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