CHAPTER

STEAMPUNK:
DISCOVERING OLD AND NEW
ATTRACTIONS
ANDREEA VERTE-OLTEANU
1. What is steampunk?
The future aint what it used to be. Yogi Berra

Peculiar inventions that one might come across in Jules Vernes

novels, tones of sepia, things that make you feel the savour of the
19th century, all characterize the artistic genre known as steampunk,
fascinated with craftsmanship and retro flavours. It is the subculture
which blends Victorian-age steam-engine aesthetics with modern
technology in an atmosphere of romantic and, at the same time,
fantastical sensibility. There is also a bit of rebellion and
transgression to it, but, mainly, a touch of technology with a pinch
of antiquity and perhaps a dash of the macabre (Kuksi, in
Moskowitz 2010). Steampunk is a re-envisioning of the past with
the hypertechnological perceptions and tools of the present.
Steampunk is a vibrant culture of do-it-yourself crafters, writers,
artists, and other creative types, each with their own slightly
different answer to the question: What is it, to be steampunk?.
Even the genres name, steampunk, brings to mind a fiery
anachronism: steam is outmoded, no longer in vogue, whilst punk,
especially at the time of the terms coinage, evoked something
modern and contemporary. Steampunk depends, as a genre, on a sort
of double awareness, in which we perceive the Victorian era as
simultaneously different from and identical with our contemporary
times.

Some say that steampunk is appealing because there is a close

connection between the Victorian world and our own (Sweet 2001;
Standage 1993), a similarity close to near-identity:
More so than other historical periods, the 19th century,
especially the Victorian era (1837-1901), is an excellent mirror for
the modern period. The social, economic, and political structures of
the Victorian era are essentially the same as our own, and their
cultural dynamics the way in which the culture reacts to various
phenomena and stimuli are quite similar to ours. This makes the
Victorian era extremely useful for ideological stories on subjects
such as feminism, imperialism, class issues, and religion, as well as
for commentary on contemporary issues such as serial murderers
and overseas wars. (Nevins 2008, 8)

However, in the case of steampunk, nostalgia equals denial.

Denial of the painful present. The name for this denial is Golden
Age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is
better than the one ones living in. (Paul, Midnight in Paris (2012)).
People turn to the past to escape in many ways, from taking part in
historical re-enactments, to attending Renaissance fairs or even
reading books, depicting long-gone eras. Steampunks turn to the
Victorian era, with its inventions and awe before technology, in
order to escape the present-day consumerist society of simulacra and
disposability (Jones 2010, 103), to which they oppose the aura of
hand-crafted objects.
In this respect, Victorians have been compared with rearview
mirrors: we look forward to see what is behind us, paradoxically
quite the opposite of what we do when reading history in order to
catch a glimpse of the future (Joyce 2007, 4). We thus come to a
steampunk text in order to find a confirmation of our own
superiority to the sexist/racist past, only to find ourselves tangled up
in an atemporal ambiguity.

2. The history and development of the steampunk

genre
To some, steampunk is a catchall term, a
concept in search of a visual identity. To me, its
essentially the intersection of technology and
romance. Jake von Slatt

The origins of steampunk, along with SF as a genre, can be

traced back to the early years of the scientific romances, Victorian
penny dreadfuls and Jules Vernes Voyages Extraordinaires.
An increasingly literate public took advantage of the
opportunities for adventure and high romance offered them by
Verne, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, George Griffith, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, Garrett P. Serviss, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and
Edgar Rice Burroughs, who were themselves inspired by the likes
of Charles Babbage, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and the growing
age of technology, colonialism, scientfic exploration and heavy
industry. (Gross 2006)

According to Cory Gross, a steampunk critic, the genre began at

the turn of the 20th century, finding its roots in the works of two
European authors H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Even if nobody
disputes the two historical antecedents, there is however one feature
that distinguishes their fiction from the steampunk movement: the
latters affection for creative anachronism, while there was nothing
retro-Victorian about both Wells and Vernes retro-Victorian
scientific fantasies since they were writing about their own time
period.
Furthermore, Gross believes in the existence of varieties of
steampunk experience, these varieties also dating back to these two
authors, with Jules Verne inspiring a more kitschy, nostalgic
Victoriana, while Wells political fiction has an impact upon those
steampunks who make socialist statements with their work.
In Nostalgic Steampunk we find the creation of the Victorian
Era as a Romantic myth infused with utopian desires and generally
ignoring the more uncomfortable genuine history of the era.
Nostalgic Steampunkwhich can operate under the guises of most
other terms for Steampunk, such as Victorian Science Fiction,
Scientific Romance, Industrial Age Science Fiction, and so on
makes technology the portal of elegant exploration rather than the
industrial torture rack of the poor, as brave soldiers and scientists of
the Crown go on expeditions which dont enslave and destroy the
cultures they come across. The patron saint of Nostalgic Steampunk
would easily be Jules Verne himself. The world of Verne was the
world of the Voyages Extraordinaires... (Gross 2007, 62)

Nostalgic steampunk is the mythologized Victorian Era, the 19 th

century as it ought to have been. It revels in the elegance and the
spectacle of the Empire. It chooses to close an eye over the dirtiness
and imperialism of this same Empire. On the other end of kitsch is
melancholia: while nostalgia is based in the reconstructed conscious
reminiscence, melancholia is based in the intense unconscious
remembrance.
Nostalgia and melancholy represent two radically opposite
perceptions of experience and cultural sensibilities. One, traditional,
symbolic and totalizing, uses memories to conceptually complete
the partiality of events, protecting them with a frozen wreath from
the decomposition of time; the other, modern, allegorical and
fragmentary, glorifies the perishable aspect of events, seeking in
their partial and decaying memory the confirmation of its own
temporal dislocation. (Olalquiaga 1998, 298)

Melancholic kitsch (patronized by the other father of SF, H.G.

Wells) deals with the routine, the everyday, the plain experience of
an event or a historical time, choosing to re-experience rather than to
reinterpret. Through the eyes of melancholic steampunk we see the
things that the nostalgic steampunk desperately tried to ignore:
corruption, decadence, poverty and intrigue. We see them as an
indictment of our own times, even though intermediated by a
critique of our societys Victorian roots.
The middle of the 20th century witnesses a large development of
the SF genre with, however, quite few contributions to the
steampunk aesthetic, as it would later become known. Victorian
science fiction goes through a short-term revival period, but in the
movie theatres only, Jules Verne and Wells fiction being kept in the
public eye: Disneys adaptation of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea
(1954), Vincent Prices Master of the World (1961) and City Under
the Sea (1965) or George Pals War of the Worlds (1953) and The
Time Machine (1960). We should not forget to mention Georges
Melies inspired Trip to the Moon, itself a scientific romance
masterpiece, released only a year after Queen Victorias death!
Coming back to steampunk, the genre really began taking shape
in the late 80s and early 90s, when authors originally rooted in the
cyberpunk genre, such as K.W.Jeter, Bruxe Sterling or William

Gibson, to mention but a few, started creating alternate-history

narratives, set on a Victorian background and rich on science,
technology and incongruities in time.
K.W. Jeter is the author responsible for having coined the term
steampunk in 1979, in a letter to the editors of the SF literary
magazine Locus. Arguing that fantasies set in Victorian times were
the next best thing in literature, Jeter suggested that the editors name
the genre after the technology on which the stories were based:
steam. Due to his suggestion, Jeters 1979 novel Morlock Night is
considered the first steampunk novel. Jeters Infernal Devices
(1987), in which a young man discovers that his clockmaker father
has built clockwork humans, introduces another first and,
subsequently, popular element of the genre: robot technology with a
twist, namely high-tech robotics executed with 19th century
materials.
In 1990, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling co-wrote The
Difference Engine, perhaps the most popular and well known of the
genre, unintentionally legitimizing the label steampunk. The two
writers created a mid-Victorian world in which Charles Babbage,
the real-life British mathematician-engineer, was able to realize his
plans of a programmable and mechanical computer. It was in this
novel that the Information Age first met the Steam Age, as the
computer revolution happened a century earlier than it did in our
world, with the subsequent societal and political changes that result
from this technological intervention. And despite the fact that
Gibson did express his biggest desire: I'll be happy just as long as
they dont label this one. Theres been some dire talk of
steampunk, but I don't think its going to stick (Gross 2007, 58),
the name did indeed stick.
Following the success of Gibson, Sterling and Jeter, steampunk
expanded in the 1990s into other textual practices, such as the roleplaying game (or RPG) circuit. In 1988, Frank Chadwick created
Space: 1889, a role-playing game scenario in which Thomas Edison
ventured to Mars on an ether-flyer and opened the inner solar
system to colonial exploration. In the new scenario, outer space
becomes accessible in Victorian times, allowing live-action game
players to step into steampunk shoes. Space: 1889 ceased
publication in 1991, but the mantle was picked up by the fantasy
game Castle Falkenstein, taking place in the Steam Age of the

alternate world of New Europa, a game which was sold out and
followed up by a steam-tech book of weird inventions and weapons
and a horror-steampunk supplement called screampunk.
Graphic novels extended steampunks reach into the visual until
the genre finally invaded mainstream culture through the 1999
publication of the illustrated series The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen. Written by graphic novelist Alan Moore, and illustrated
by Kevin ONeill, the series, based upon fictional technologies and
operating out of Victorian England, created further appreciation for
the genre.
The internet, with its superabundance of message boards,
discussion forums and websites, enabled steampunk to fuse from its
varied forms of manifestation by allowing fans from all walks of life
to find common ground in what was, in fact, a shared love of retroVictorian SF literature. Thus, steampunk becomes an international
genre. Japanese anime start including steampunk-influenced
elements such as Steamboy (2004), in which a young tinkerer guards
a powerful steam-producing ball from his corrupt inventor father,
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (2005),
an Australian animated short received an Academy Award
nomination in 2005, and the highly artistic French film City of Lost
Children (1995), in which a mad inventor steals childrens dreams
by means of elaborate mechanical contraptions, brought the
steampunk style to a larger audience after it became an indie foreign
film hit. Blur Studios also created a computer generated short, A
Gentlemen's Duel (2006), where a seemingly innocent tea party is
transformed into mega technological mayhem when two imperious
aristocrats, British and French, compete for the affections of a lady.
With increasing numbers of authors embracing the genre, the fan
base has grown dramatically. It is the moment for the mainstreaming
of steampunk, although the reception has been mixed, both inside
and outside of the subculture. Steampunk, despite its core aesthetic
and ideology, becomes a box-office success: the Will Smith and
Kevin Kline summer blockbuster Wild Wild West (1999), in which
two cowboys try to stop a rogue Confederate general, Dr. Loveliss,
from holding the U.S. government hostage with his superior
hydraulic and mechanical technology, alongside with The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), despite its deviation from the

comic books and the cold reception from critics, to mention but a
few.
The cultural phenomenon of steampunk has so much penetrated
the mainstream culture that even Comic Con International, the fourday SF and fantasy convention held in San Diego, California, has
felt its impact. The Saturday of the event has unofficially been
called Steampunk Day, where fans celebrate through fashion, art
and music.
The early years of the 21st century also witnessed the creation of
SteamPunk Magazine, which began publishing in 2006 and which
operates a website http://www.steampunkmagazine.com, containing
articles devoted to the steampunk subculture, as well as readers
forums and discussion groups, and whose main mission is putting
the punk back into steampunk, thus placing it in stark opposition to
Hollywoods steampunk productions or artefacts such as the
steampunk skin for a Mac Powerbook, offered on etsy.com.

3. Steampunk postmodernism, anti-modernism,

futurism,
ecocriticism
or
anti-cyberculture
movement?
Its sort of Victorian-industrial, but with more
whimsy and fewer orphans. Caitlin Kittredge

When trying to analyse the genre, one is bedazzled by the variety

of sources from which steampunk draws its inspiration, ranging
from Dickens novels, futurist SF and modernist art to cyborg
theory. Steampunk cannot be circumscribed as modern, postmodern,
anti-modern or futurist and yet it has a little bit of everything.
Up to a certain degree, one might say that steampunk is
postmodern due to its appetite for and use of previously existing
styles of physical technology and ideological modes of
technological engagement (Onion 2008, 142). Steampunks love the
innocence and the perceived sublime of 19th century technological
and scientific knowledge, illustrated by the gentleman-scientist,
tinkerer or inventor, times when the machines were more visible,
fallible, permeable, human even, and thus keep looking back to
Victorian times. However, steampunks do not share the same awe
for the technology of their own time, which they hate and despise.

They see modern technology as offensively inaccessible to the

ordinary men and women, thus echoing the rage of the late 19 th
century and early 20th century anti-moderns who, with the Arts and
Crafts movement, fervently pleaded for a return to a pre-modern
middle landscape.
We see this soft antimodern tendency in the emergence of the
craft movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris. Driven by a strong
anti-industrialism, Ruskin, Morris, and other less well-known
English figures encouraged a movement toward handwork and
cottage industries, toward printing and woodworking and textile
manufacture, in a way that was consciously opposed to mass
production. They imagined a new non-industrialism that could be
based on quality of life, not quantity of production. () American
Arts and Crafts ideologues . . . usually came from among the
business and professional people who felt most cut off from real
life and most in need of moral and cultural regeneration. () the
movement tended ultimately to offer the illusion of escape rather
than any authentic transformation of society. (Versluis 2006, 100)

However, unlike the anti-modernists, steampunks prefer the

technological world to the natural one,
() it is the physical nature of SteamPunk that attracted us to it in
the first place, however we first heard of it. We love machines that
we can see, feel, and fear. We are amazed by artifacts but are
unimpressed by high technology. For the most part, we look at the
modern world about us, bored to tears, and say, no, thank you. Id
rather have trees, birds, and monstrous mechanical contraptions
than an endless sprawl that is devoid of diversity. (emphasis added)
(Ratt 2006, 2)

Ratts critique has a kind of environmentalist polemic aroma to

it; it is very close to a refutation of overdevelopment and
reminiscent of the joy brought along by nature and its elements in
the pre-development scenery.
In their awe for the powerful and sometimes fearful machines,
steampunks might be compared to the futurists who, led by F.T.
Marinetti, reverenced what they saw as the beautiful violence of the
new technologies of transportation and production. However, unlike

Marinettis followers, steampunk is far more interested in the very

process of the building of the machines, rather than in the
experience of their use.
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and
rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity
and revolt. ()
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and
revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in
modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the
workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous
railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended
from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap
of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers:
adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted
locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with
long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose
propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of
enthusiastic crowds. (Marinetti 1909)

Since Marshall Berman attempts to create a new and atypical

category, namely modernists of the 19th century
() understood the ways in which modern technology and social
organization determined mans fate... but they all believed that
modern individuals had the capacity both to understand this fate,
and, once they understood it, to fight it.... Even in the middle of a
wretched present, they could imagine an open future (Berman 1982,
27),

one could apply it to steampunks as well, thus comparing them to

19th century modernists, fascinated by technology and deeply
persuaded of its capacity to provide man with a more powerful sense
of his own humanity and his links to the material world.
The last genre that steampunks completely delimitate themselves
from is the cyberculture movement, which they strongly and bitterly
criticize.
The so-called machines of this era seek the cleanness and sleekness
of thought, platonic forms unsullied by the earth from which they

come. Floating beyond us in mathematical ether far above us and

the golems of iron. These abstract replicated technologies ultimately
seek in their purity a Nirvana of emptiness. ()
The difference between the machines of then and now is the same as
the difference between an old-growth forest and a soulless tree farm.
While it is true both are made up of trees, one strikes us as missing
something: a spirit, or will, which speaks to us of intention.
Intention that demands to be respected and understood, not for what
it can be (or do) but for its simple existence. This intuition should
enlarge our humanity, not reduce it. We should feel free to promote
it in unlikely domains, including the mechanical. (Calamity 2007, 5)

Despite their obvious clashes, mainstream readers usually

classify steampunk as a subgenre of SF, a neo-Victorian branch
within the wider universe of cyberpunk writing. Steampunk and
cyberpunk do share common traits: they are both modes of a genres
autocritique: cyberpunk rigorously decomposes the bloated space
operas and techno-futurist dreams of post-war science fiction, while
steampunk disports in the literary and actual histories of the 19 th
century in order to throttle the can-do optimism of late 19 th and early
20th century popular fictions about science (Jones 2010, 103). And
yet, steampunk predates its parent.
Steampunk and cyberpunk differ in their views on the present.
Steampunk believes that the present should be dominated by the
Victorian attitude of the 19th century, yet maintaining the importance
given to machines and steam force. Meanwhile, cyberpunk sees a
present dismantled by the future of a hypertechnologised society, the
starting point of a consumer society in which what is consumed is
information. In the 1970s a fundamental third shift in the nature of
society was initiated: from agricultural to industrial and, now, to
informational societies. It is claimed that the key resource at the
beginning of the 21st century will be knowledge, and universities
and research centres will play the role that mines and foundries did
in industrial times. Even with only this vague description, it seems
highly likely that cyberspace, a place made of information, will be
important to societies based on information. Cyberpunk could thus
claim to be a continuation of steampunk, especially if we consider,
as asserted by Castells, that subsequent to the moment of
production, what follows is an information society,

I argue that information, in its broadest sense, e.g. as

communication of knowledge, has been critical in all societies,
including medieval Europe which was culturally structured, and to
some extent unified, around scholasticism, that is, by and large an
intellectual framework. In contrast, the term informational indicates
the attribute of a specific form of social organisation in which
information generation, processing, and transmission become the
fundamental sources of productivity and power, because of new
technological conditions emerging in this historical period.
(Castells, 1996, 21)

Another element which persists in the common thinking of the

two genders is that of the machinery. However, unlike steampunk,
which targets a peaceful coexistence of man and machine,
cyberpunk creates the cyborg, the man-machine. This would be the
man whose life depends upon the machine, an indication of modern
life psychopathology: the desire for a fantastic immortality and
omnipotence which might inspire fear. Contrary to the steam
powered neo-Victorian themes found in steampunk, cyberpunk takes
people into the dystopian future where technology is mans
lifeblood. While the hype on technology may bring to mind space
exploration and plasma guns, cyberpunk is usually set on Earth,
where corrupt governments reign over black markets and ghettos
litter cities, and people are targeted for being fully human, since
becoming a cyborg is the new thing. Hence, the cyberpunk hero is
generally more of an anti-hero. The blurred line between human and
machine, real and virtual reality is a distinctive feature of the genre.
To conclude, whilst cyberpunk is a genre of nihilism and revolt,
steampunk is, at its core, a genre of hope and idealism, aware of the
various ways in which peoples dreams can be abused, but implying
that if everyone were to cooperate with an old-time sense of selfreliance and fair play, the world could be transformed into a better
place.
In order to bring our analysis to an end, steampunk does have an
ideology, one which is grounded in a culture that greatly values both
science and technology and worships the self-reliant, do-it-yourself
inventor or artist. Furthermore, even it is a nostalgic movement, it
doesnt seek to return or recreate the past; instead, it seeks to recycle
the most desirable aspects of the past and combine them with the
most desirable aspects of the present (Pagliassotti 2009). By

reusing and rethinking historys lost dreams and vestigial

technologies, steampunk is determined to offer the world, with
tongue in cheek and a shiny brass-and-wood carrying case, a vision
of the future that offers restrained optimism instead of dystopian
hopelessness.

4. Steampunk fear and awe

We want to sing the love of danger. F.T. Marinetti

Steampunk practitioners restore the sense of awe in the face of

technological achievement, awe that the Victorians felt many a
times in front of the tools and inventions of the Industrial
Revolution. The degree of awe very much depends upon the
steampunk viewers visual, auditory and even tactile experience of
the object. Such a direct interaction creates the much desired
profound connection that cannot be reached by means of the
intellectual detachment of the 21st century technology and its
microscopic or even totally invisible actions.
I fear it cannot be denied that Mr. Thackeray has actually gone and
written a poem, wrote Charlotte Bronte to a friend. The whole of
the May Day Ode is not poetry that I will maintain it opens with
decent prose. But at the forth stanza I felt a thrill of love and
awe it begins to swell. And the opening of the Great Exhibition
which, for a brief moment, made a poet even of Thackeray, gave
millions of others too a thrill of love and awe. They were so
fortunate as to see it, said The Time next day, hardly knew in
what form to clothe the sense of wonder and even of mystery which
struggled within them. And the Queen, in her Diary, recorded the
same impression. There was but one voice, she wrote, of
astonishment and admiration. (Bronte in Luckhurst 1951, 413)

But this awe is not solely British. The theoretization of the

technological sublime as a concept is attributed to Perry Miller who,
in The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil
War, traces the appearance of sublimity in the rhetoric surrounding
technological artifacts. Another influential theoretician of the
American technological awe is John Kasson, whose monograph,
Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values (17761900), testifies for the emergence of awe in relation to industrial

spectacles, especially in 19th century America. Kasson argues that

Americans intense aesthetic response to technology and their
desire to discover beauty in utility were firmly rooted in republican
values (Kasson 1976, 143) and that modern machinery became
manifestations of the sublime, achievements of mind that challenged
the powers of comprehension and description (Kasson 1976, 47).
Discussions of the sublime as an aesthetic category can be traced
back to the 18th century: Edmund Burkes A Philosophical Enquiry
into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756)
highlights an essential new element in the definition offered to the
sublime, namely terror and fear. In his turn, Immanuel Kant, in his
Critique of Judgement (1790), argued that the sublime could by no
means be an opposite of the beautiful due to the fact that it induced
both pleasure and pain.
Some of this sense of fear, terror and pain is associated with the
possible harm that technology might cause to the human body.
Steampunk seems to obsess about this likelihood, re-casting danger
as evidence of the aliveness or volatility of technology (Onion
2008, 149). At the same time, steampunk perceives danger as a
criticism of the modern world, overly catastrophe-proof. In this
respect, as mentioned earlier, steampunks seem to reflect the
Futurists, whose first principle in their manifesto wrote: We want
to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness
(Marinetti 1909).
Steampunk is very much interested in the failures and
breakdowns of different 19th century technologies, apprehending
these disasters as evidence of the valour of the people of the time.
One of the technologies that have proven devastating to human life
(after the spectacular explosion of Hindenberg, in 1937) is, at the
same time, an object that steampunk fetishizes about: the zeppelin,
also known as the dirigible. In The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen (the film), the Fantoms gang raids a zeppelin factory
outside Berlin and destroys it in spectacular fashion, with the help of
harpoon guns. In Scott Westerfelds Leviathan (2009), the most
iconic image is that of Leviathan, a zeppelin of its own kind, namely
a genetically modified mass of creatures, the most recognizable one
being an enormous whale that makes up the zeppelin shape. Some of
the safety issues arise in connection to the caution that is heeded
with the flammability that is imposed with using hydrogen gas.

Furthermore, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper

Morello, a 2005 Australian short film, portrays a world with an
extensive use of airships. In addition, steampunk jewellery creators
offer zeppelin bracelets and steampunk interior designers offer to
design rooms with an airship theme.

5. Steam Gear Lifestyle

Steampunk is what happens
when goths discover brown. Jess Nevins

Steampunk seems nowadays determined to conquer the world of

fashion as well. The style, which is said to blend the gaslight
romance of Victorian London with a frisson of H.G. Wells and Jules
Verne-inspired fantasy (Murphy 2013) is likely to go from niche all
the way to mainstream as fashion labels, accessories suppliers and
jewellery houses are set to incorporate steampunk looks into their
own original designs. We are therefore warned about a possible
avalanche, in the near future, of corsets, petticoats and aviator
goggles, platform lace-up boots, lace veils, velvet, frock coats and
bowlers onto the high street.
Recent catwalks confirm it. John Gallianos new Dior collection
(summer 2013) introduced Victorian hats and outfits inspired by
horse riding, whilst some of Hollywoods leading actors, such as
Gary Oldman, Jamie Bell and Willem Dafoe, dressed for adventure,
in Prada menswear, have been seen wearing heavily tailored,
double-breasted, pin-stripe steampunk-inspired suits. Hugh
Jackman, in 2004s Van Helsing, Robert Downey Jr., in 2009s
Sherlock Holmes, as well as Lady Gagas onstage and offstage
appearances, to mention but a few, all point towards the fantasy
genre set in an alternative Victorian era.
Steampunk Magazine, one of the most successful magazines
devoted to the steampunk subculture (online and print, semi-annual)
included in its summer 2007 edition a clothing and style guide, as
well as an illustrated advisory column about the kinds of facial hair
a male steampunk might be interested in. Libby Bulloff gives a very
detailed outline on how to dress streampunk and on the various subtrends contained within this fashion. We are thus introduced to:
The Tinkerer/Inventor:

well-designed garments with straps, pockets, et cetera, some

sort of protective eyewear (the ubiquitous goggle goodness or other
such spectacles)... perhaps lab coats or clothes that are impervious
to spills and grease? I picture the tinkerer in more utilitarian garb,
and the inventor in an eccentric amalgamation of cast-off lab wear
and well-worn Victorian pieces. () Stitch cogs on or to your
clothing. Carry your tools of trade as accessoriesmake yourself a
leather belt with pockets or straps to harness useful implements. The
steampunk inventor believes in form and function.

The Street Urchin/Chimney Sweep:

Were talking tatters, filth, safety pins, old leather, bashed-in
derbies, and the like. This style of dress is functional, can be
mucked about in, costs little to hack together, and nods smugly to
the lowest classes of Victorian and steam society. It looks good
dirty. Torn stockings puddled around ones knees or tacked up with
garters and pins are most delicious

The Explorer:
Think tailored garments, but more military-influenced and less
I-bought-this-at-the-suit-shop. Leather, silk, linen, tall boots, pith
helmets, flying gogglesthe list of explorer gear goes on.
()Ladiessearch Ebay or vintage stores for old-fashioned
medical cinchers with fan lacing. Gentlementuck your trousers
into the tops of your boots and hang a compass and pocketwatch
from your belt or rock a kilt and sporran. Mod your own steampunk
ray gun from a water pistol and some aerosol paint and wedge it
into your belt or your stockings.

The Dandy/Aesthete:
As close to aristocracy as steampunk gets, which isnt that close at
all. These are the fellows in nicely rendered Victorian and
Edwardian suits, brainstorming infernal machines over cigars and
brandy, and these are the ladies in high-button boots who dabble as
terrorists when they arent knitting mittens. () Dainty goggles or
pince-nez scored at antique shops are a must, as well as simple
corsets, handkerchiefs, cigarette cases, gloves, et cetera. By all
means, do invest in a top hat or derby with some attitude. (Bulloff
2007)

While the look still seems to be more costume-focused than

something for everyday wear, still it wouldnt come as a great
surprise to see some aspects of steampunk gain traction in the
coming years, something that would in a way distress the genres
initiators. The explanation is quite simple: any aesthetic movement
is vulnerable to misinterpretation and a possible transaction of a
niche and punk style towards widespread success might bring
about accusations of decline into superficiality and consumerism,
thus contradicting the very essence of steampunk which, at its core,
is as anti-commodity as it can possibly be.

6. Steampunk and film

Id imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines
never come with any extra parts, you know. They always
come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the
entire world was one big machine, I couldnt be an extra part.
I had to be here for some reason.
(Hugo Cabret, Hugo (2011))

Steampunk is not just a literary style. Mortified by the

consumerist society, steampunk creators seek to perpetually invoke
the aura and sublime of the hand-crafted object, not only in the
culture of makers or vernacular crafts, but also in cinematography.
Modern cinema, as well as current literary works, is infused with
genre-slipperiness and there are some who argue that certain forms
of anachronism are a consequence of such fusions (Jameson 1991,
287). Jameson goes on claiming that nostalgic cinema has trained us
to consume glossy references to the past, familiarizing us with
both historical and futuristic tropes, thus allowing new and more
complex forms of post-nostalgia to become possible. Some good
examples are the Back to the Future trilogy (where the main
character is transported to the 1950s, the 1850s and into the future),
the British television series Life on Mars (where a 21st century
detective wakes up in 1973) or even the Harry Potter series. Yet,
even if nostalgic and genre-slipping through time, these films do not
belong to the steampunk genre because they do not possess the
aesthetics of (tech)nostalgia.
A great number of films, however, some of them enjoying a
worldwide box-office success, make use of steampunk elements or

aesthetics. The first steampunk cinematographic experiences were

inspired or even properly based on the works of steampunks literary
predecessors, namely Jules Verne and H.G.Wells: the dramatization
of their novels, from the very first attempts, have included the
technical and mechanical features so characteristic of the genre:
from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with its fantastic submarine
world and 10 (!) dramatizations, the first one dating as back as the
beginning of the 1900s (1905) to The Time Machine - a Victorian
Englishman travels to the far future and finds that humanity has
divided into two hostile species whose 1960s version, with Rod
Taylor, even got an Oscar for special effects, whilst the 2002 one,
starring Guy Pearce, only got an Oscar nomination for make-up.
A steampunk movie tends to bypass the traditional course of the
industrial revolution and makes use of anachronistic technologies
that employ steam power and clockwork in a fashion that goes way
beyond its traditionally accepted uses.
Some might argue that even Fritz Langs Metropolis (1927)
belongs to the steampunk genre. It mixed many sources in its
eclectic delivery: Biblical Old Testament references, the skyline of
Manhattan, H.G. Wells The Time Machine, Art Deco designs of the
1920s, the angular sets, labyrinthine passages, Norse mythology and
more. Even if Metropolis is an ultramodern city of the future which,
from the very beginning, contradicts steampunks retro-futurism, in
their turn, the costumes and interior designs are far from being
Victorian, but what does fit the steampunk description is the giant
Moloch M-Machine, the enormous machine pumping pistons,
flywheels, a rotating crankshaft, and an off-center disk - all parts
thrusting, moving, pounding and turning. Even if Metropolis is more
dieselpunk than steampunk, with machines, oils and underground
labour force, we can however include it in the steampunk avant la
lettre category.
There are a few more films which, because of their atmosphere,
colour, mystery and aftertaste, gather under the steampunk
umbrella: Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunets City of Lost Children
(1995, Cit des enfants perdus), which, together with Delicatessen
(1991) have both created an extremely hard to follow atmosphere:
the first film is 100% steampunk: Krank, who cannot dream,
kidnaps young children to steal their dreams. The devices used in
the film show heavy wear as well as corrosion, suggesting that

technological advancement has halted. The ocular implants are

seemingly futuristic, but their art-deco styling and analogue output
are clearly anachronistic. Kranks dream stealing machine is fitted
with suction cups, vacuum tubes and pneumatic bladders.
Delicatessen, set in an apartment building in a post-apocalyptic
France of an ambiguous time period, focuses on the tenants of the
building and their desperate bids to survive. It is less technological
or mechanical and yet possesses the same retro-futuristic taste
mentioned earlier.
Pitofs Vidocq (2001) takes place in a steampunk version of 19 th
century Paris, pitting the historical figure Eugne Franois Vidocq
against a supernatural serial killer. Even if the story if extremely
Sherlock Holmes-like, the atmosphere, the colours, the lights and
the contrast between the outer, magical, shady world and the
underground, steampunk world.
Christopher Nolans The Prestige (2006) is a superb tale of
resentment and jealousy set against the gaslit theatres of Victorian
London and the Colorado laboratory of a genuine historical figure:
famed physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla, who lends a hand in the
teleportation illusion act by inventing a splendidly steampunk
machine which can teleport a human for real. Somehow similar to
The Prestige, but enjoying less favourable critics, is another film
released in 2006, Neil Burgers The Illusionist, which has the same
aura of magic so characteristic for the neo-Victorian steampunk.
Terry Gilliams Brazil (1985) tells the story of a bureaucrat in a
retro-future world who tries to correct an administrative error and
becomes himself an enemy of the state. Is it steampunk? Probably
one of the most steampunk films ever made if we count ductwork as
steampunk. The weird dedicated line phones plugged into different
ports for different calls, the magnified computer screens, the
ridiculous personnel transport Sam drives and subsequently loses,
the inner parts of Sams air conditioning system churn and bubble to
create something very Gilliam, but also extremely steampunk.
Strangely, Guy Ritchies Sherlock Holmes from 2009 and 2011
also fit the steampunk description.
Sherlock Holmes is, more than anything else, a feast for the
eyes. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes will feed your erotic
tweed fantasies, and the CGI backgrounds recreate a rich, believable

Victorian London of hulking industrial projects and factories.

Director Ritchie deliberately stages this world to feel like
steampunk: This isn't the quaint, twee land of Victoriana; it's a
modernizing urban world of science and steamships and
laboratories. Even when Holmes is fighting, we watch through the
lens of rationality. In a couple of truly great fight scenes, we hear
Holmes planning the trajectory of his punches in voiceover before
he executes them perfectly. Though it's a little hard to swallow this
asskicking version of Holmes, it's still amusing to imagine that his
great mind allows him to plot out the perfect way to knock out a
thug. (Newitz 2009)

And then we can mention steampunk-inspired films with

tremendous box office success: Stephen Sommers Van Hellsing
(2004), Stephen Norringtons The League of Extraodinary
Gentlemen (2003), The Golden Compass (2007), Hellboy (2004,
2008), (2009), Barry Sonnenfelds Wild Wild West (1999) or The
Mummy Returns (2001). Almost all of the above mentioned films
prove that, even though steampunk definitely started as an adultoriented genre, it is increasingly visible in childrens media as well.

7. Conclusion
A clockwork heart cant replace the real thing.
Dru Pagliassotti

Victorian machines were visible, human, fallible and, above all,

accessible. Steampunks interest for the physicality of the machine
points at its main aesthetic purpose, namely fighting against the socalled black boxes of the 20th and 21st centuries: instruments or
laws which are immutable and unquestionable. Steampunks see
modern technology as offensively inaccessible to the ordinary
person and, thus, yearn to return to that age when, they believe,
machines were vulnerable.
Steampunk machines are real, breathing, coughing, struggling
and rumbling parts of the world. They are not the airy intellectual
fairies of algorithmic mathematics but the hulking manifestations of
muscle and mind, the progeny of sweat, blood, tears, and delusions.
The technology of steampunk is natural; it moves, lives, ages, and
even dies. (Catastrophone Orchestra and Arts Collective 2006, 4)

Steampunk is an efficiently applied anachronism. It represents

the peaceful coexistence of past, present and future within the
boundaries of the same space. We see instances of steampunk when
television channels cover stories about countries in which coal
locomotives and space programs coexist or about skyscrapers built
in places where some people do not have access to hot water or
electricity. Steampunk means buying sheep cheese directly from the
farmer and Camembert straight from the supermarket.
According to Ilfoveanu (2013), steampunk occurrences are the
scenes from Huysmans rebours where Jean des Esseintes avidly
inspires the natural fragrance of factory pollution or nuisance and
the empty Coca-Cola cans left behind on Mount Everest. Steampunk
means using stoves in the era of central heating. It means getting out
of ones car at an exhibition, after having heard the latest hits on the
radio, in order to listen to gramophone music. Steampunk means, in
fact, understanding how it all began and how we got here.

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1999. Film

ANDREEA VERTE-OLTEANU (born December 17th, 1979) is

Assistant Lecturer at the Faculty of Law and Administrative
Sciences within the University of the West, Timioara. She holds a
Ph.D. in English Literature, with a thesis on Law in William
Shakespeares Comedies. She has published over 20 articles and
studies in specialized journals, both in Romania and abroad. Fields
of interest: British literature, culture and civilisation, legal language
(co-author of the volume The Language of Law, 2006), translations
(translator of the art albums Lux Lumen, 2005 and Silviu Oravitzan,
2009), and interdisciplinary studies.