Discussion on Steampunk Aesthetics/Politics, Military Fetishism in Fashion and Slash Politics

[x_los]

me: Decent NYtimes article on steam punk w/ some pretty pics

blinkidybah : yeah no I thought that was cool
Actually I was surprised to see the top picture -- I've seen a fair number of Asians, but very few AA in the steam fashion comms so it's kind of a nice surprise?

Me: esp. as they have some NICE clothes!

 blinkidybah : yah totally

Me: it made me realize how Andre 3000 sort of has that aesthetic come to think of it

blinkidybah : oh yeah
  Man okay so nerding out time:

Me: Oh do tell

blinkidybah : like how much would I love to see somebody take a historical view and write a paper about steam punk as a "return to ritual and manners" and what about RIGHT NOW is prompting these people to do that
Because it is becoming huge in a very short time in a weird way and I don't think it's just the fashion aspect
Especially since it's so referential to the Victorian era, which was SO formalized and mannerized and all that jazz

Me: mm, I think you'd need a lot of concrete information about age, background, political breakdown of the community

blinkidybah : yeah no it would probably be a lot of mucking about in original research but I'd love to even just read some meta on it from people who are really into the community

Me: mm, see, but if it's a regressive return to social control and as sort of '*SIGH* THINGS MADE MORE SENSE BACK IN THE OLD DAYS" that would gross me out a bit, and make me feel the culture was functioning as bullshit appropriation on the level of a ren faire, a la 'social issues? What social issues? People were polite and wore teh pritteh!'
  So I HOPE that's not it

blinkidybah : meh I don't even care if it is, it's not my subculture and I can appreciate the aesthetics without agreeing with what they're thinking
Like all what I've seen people say is they want to regain the sense of adventure, of new discovery and expansion and a great wide world but why the 1880-1900 period

Me: like, a conflation of the hyper-mannered Gentry behavior with Uncomplicated Good ignoring how the entire system was a stop-gap preventing the class and sex tensions from exploding...would gross me out
  Mm, true, I guess 1880 would plot into Scramble for Africa and the high Brit Raj?

blinkidybah : yeah so why this period of HUGE racism and classism and sexism when there's 1) LOTS of historical periods of exploration where the people doing the adventuring/whatever were less part of the establishment and 2) the community itself seems really progressive/open/queerfriendly/etc?

Me: I would be troubled by appreciating their aesthetics as much as I do if their ideology was wikkity-wack, b/c like, for example, the Corseting not as a subversion but as an earnest gesture? WAY CREEPY

blinkidybah : well I don't think a lot of the people necessarily get wtf they're doing it

Me: you're really right, esp. as racism/classism/sexism were at a LOWER ebb before then, back in the Romantic era?

blinkidybah : yeah

Me: Yeah, but an inarticulate mass of opinion is still an ideological underpinning?

blinkidybah : oh no I know

Me: but yeah, now I crave meta!

blinkidybah : I'm just sort of fascinated by it and I want somebody to write a fucking paper for it or something
  Yeah

blinkidybah : and I still wouldn't have a problem getting the pretty of the clothes/items/etc while disliking possible negative connotations though
  maybe that's 'cause I've fetishized military gear/equipment for too long at this point? dunno. hm.
 UM WHY ARE THESE PANTS 200 DOLLARS

Me: Is detaching military aesthetic from its violent associations sort of 1) desensitizing yourself and condoning or 2) reclaiming/neutering the violent source of the clothing, like subaltern populations claiming 'nigger' and 'queer'?
  They ARE? WTF PANTS?!

blinkidybah : DUNNO
also I'm really not sure, especially since at least for me the military kink is sort of still tied into the violence/war thing, but only in the case of like, south american guerillas and countergovernment insurgencies and science fiction? I don't understand it at all but damn are camo jackets and smuggled/illegal machine guns hawt D:

me: yeah, but that's sort of anarchic leftist freedom fighting romanticism rather than lulz mah jingoizmz, let me show u them

blinkidybah : mostly it's just "IT'S A KINK W/E W/E IT DOESN'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE" but I've gotten pretty good at detaching aesthetic movements from the social movements they're connected to because of it
  tru tru
  I r not a total traitor to the left xD

me: mm. I guess though I'm interested in the mechanisms behind kinks of all kinds lately
  I started to wonder abut the amount of dubious consent I'm down with in fic

 blinkidybah : ahhh yeah hmm.

me: and not that I'd ever go all Dworkin about it, but it's interesting to me how I'm not like, equating slash rapefic with the HORROR I'd feel watching a porn about a similar scenario with a girl

blinkidybah : ah yeah.

me: but then, if I read a rapefic it would have emotional connotations for at least one of the characters that such a video wouldn't, in all liklihood

blinkidybah : well I think it sort of elevates issues of consent and power structures and sex and all that above the patriarchal influences that we have to work under that would ruin it?
I dunno like I won't read rapefic with women getting raped

 me: yeah, I dunno that I have either?

 blinkidybah : and I think at some level it's all, "lulz take that menfolks" which is kind of idiotic but w/e
hurting fictional boys to get my lulz is so far below anything that happens in the real world on the horrible scale that I can't bring myself to care that it's a dumb reason
also it's hawt so.

me: well, no, really? how idiotic is it? I mean not as a sort of radical feminist gesture, but if current structures of pornography are so not geared to/unsatisfying for women, then radically re-imagining it, and stepping outside of the patriarchal binary where there's not that accumulated weight and personal 'I as a woman am writing about a woman having sex, thus it will reflect my patriarchal sexual reality almost immediately' complication seems like a fine way of going about it
thus the extremes you go to are fundamentally ABOUT characterization, rather than the detached, amorphous force of Rape or Whatever

blinkidybah : yeah
well I think I separate the desire to move out of the rape culture in order to sort of re-imagine a situation where this can be porn and not some power fantasy being pressed down onto us and the lack of guilt I have over writing that rapefic, at least in terms of some sort of sympathy for the character in question
  if that makes sense
the former is perfectly understandable but I do think my justifications for not being like, "aw, poor so-and-so, I'm a dick" are dumb.

me: I get the first one totally, but I'm a little unclear on the second, re: writing it?

 blinkidybah : well like theoretically you should feel bad for your characters when you do horrible things to them? (not just rapefic, but w/e)
...or should you? maybe this is not a concern most people have

me: I dunno, actually? I feel worse for a character in emotional pain than one being hurt/raped, perhaps because the second type of pain is 1) distant when you're cozily pounding ot fic on a mac and 2) less a part of my experience--and I mean, Kim could smack and throw stuff, so it's not like I'm completely insensitive to the politics of physical abuse, it's just that regardless of that--remember that bit of New Dawn Fades with Simm!Master torturing Jack? Admittedly, I kind of dislike Jack and have deep affection for Master (though not so much her version of him, weirdly)? But: I felt worse for Master's emotional hurt than Jack's pretty grotesque torture. And I wonder if that's me, or a function of the act of reading, or everybody?

blinkidybah : well I'd equate rape with emotional torture more than physical abuse

me: I think that's a function of how it's written?

blinkidybah : ah tru mebbe.
  well IN MY stories let's say.
  which nao we are getting into ridiculous specifics and sort of out of the realm of usefulness

me: Like, is the character in question someone with a history of any kind with their rapist? Are they taking this act as a violation of that? Or is it some random person and thus a physical act of violence? It also depends heavily on the use of force vs. cohesion, whether it's an act of physical vs. emotional violence?
  Primarily, I mean, obvs. it's both, on a basic level



And then here's a really good answer to the steampunk question by prettyarbitrary.

Comments

[shadowmoonsedai.livejournal.com]

I loved reading this, not only because the article was kind of cool, but also for the Erin!Voice in my head that narrated your part and Kelly's completely random inserting of 'net speak. :D No Kelly!voice, though... that would have been ever cooler.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Ha. I'm always a little weirded out when people tell me I have a distinct Voice. I never think I do. Which is probably a result of, y'know, living in my head and such...

[shadowmoonsedai.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's that you have a "distinct" voice - I think it just comes from practically living together and having discussions a lot.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Oh that's true enough as well, and I do tend to go on ad nauseum. x_x

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

Following on yesterday's "holy shit I had no idea people had that goddamn much to say" conversation on my LJ, this is really interesting on a lot of points. Some scattered thoughts...

like, a conflation of the hyper-mannered Gentry behavior with Uncomplicated Good ignoring how the entire system was a stop-gap preventing the class and sex tensions from exploding...would gross me out

I'm reminded very specifically of Michael Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams books, which were steampunk before steampunk even bloody knew it existed, but which also kicks around the notions of race, sex, and class in some detail. They centre on a Fine Specimen of British Manhood named Oswald Bastable, who in the first book gets yoinked out of a imperialist adventure in India and tossed into an alternate 1976 where there are airships and steampunk pretteh ... and then he makes the Horrible Discovery that the whole thing is built on the backs of savage colonialist behaviour. The rest of the book and the trilogy involves Bastable being forced to confront his own racism and prejudice while getting tossed willy-nilly through the multiverse. I think, were I to bump into the kind of people you describe, I'd be throwing that book at their heads. Hard.

Re splitting aesthetics and ideology: See also Bryan Ferry and his comments about admiring the Nazis' style. On the one hand, I think he was an idiot for not realising how his comments would be received. On the other, I can almost see what he was trying to say (what I hope he was trying to say). But if anything, the whole affair just shows how complicated that kind of fetishism, or, heck, even design sense can be.

thus the extremes you go to are fundamentally ABOUT characterization

I think this is the key to the whole discussion, but I'm not sure if I can properly articulate how. It relates to something I've often thought about, how fiction operates as a space in which you can address the dark and scary; but also the worrisome and indefinable point at which "I'm giving this an honest look and serious thought" shades into titillation or worse. And I think that point hinges on characterization, and respect for the characters in spite of what one's doing to them.

Ooof. My teal deer, let me show you it. Sorry about that, but this whole thing is very interesting.

I am thinking of opening up a ranch for all my teal deer to frollic and play on.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Oh, I should read that!

Well, I dunno if I'd describe anyone that way, per se, as I'm just not terribly aware of anyone more deeply involved than the fringes of those communities. I mean, I read some ljs/message boards because I deeply love the aesthetic, but I just don't know what's up because I don't know anyone deeply invested in the community by which I can gauge for myself.

But if anything, the whole affair just shows how complicated that kind of fetishism, or, heck, even design sense can be.

Yeah, completely. For me it ties into what someone was saying on your blog the other day re: fetish not being an opaque blanket, behind which nothing needs examined, though. Don't we have a kind of moral responsibility to ourselves that holds us up to examining what we read/write/enjoy? Not that we should be in a PC position of judgment over ourselves, but more that we should be able to think and talk about what we're doing an why, rather than just brushing it off as 'well it's my fetish, so there.' Not understanding and having an open dialog about why you do what you do is an unattractive position to be in.

I think a lot of people agree that it's complicated and sort of throw up their hands? Maybe we shouldn't let ourselves off that easy. Are people afraid that in trying to examine the reasons behind kink we'll automatically drift to a regressive/condemnatory mode of viewing their behavior as aberrant? Obviously that'd be full of crap. I'm interested in mechanisms, not evaluating the correspondence of the resulting behavior to some index of the norm.

I think this is the key to the whole discussion, but I'm not sure if I can properly articulate how.

I'm struggling with that articulation as well. Because to some degree you simply MUST be able to take a character to those extremes and have it be about them rather than about the action, esp. if you're doing something with fantasy, sci-fi or even historical fiction, and that action is something that's heavily socially constructed/NOT atemporal (we don't even have a solid inter-cultural definition of what rape is/means, how can we expect to apply that to a character outside of our social framing?).

And yet, people read dubious con in fic because the emotional dynamics/power imbalances of the whole scenario does something for them--for me at least, as you say, the saliency of those emotional dynamics are entirely predicated on characterization. But how different is that from titillation? I mean, I don't enjoy brutality in those scenarios, and some of the harder fic even in my fav pairing, because bringing the character to this abject place where they don't have any power/self-worth/remnants of their identity squicks me out, disinterests me (if they're so reduced as to not be the character I'm interested in anymore, why am I reading this?), and seems counter to the grain of the pairing. But I want to know how what I'm doing/the fic I'm enjoying functions, both in terms of difference and similarity.

Ooof. My teal deer, let me show you it. Sorry about that, but this whole thing is very interesting.

...it is possible we may be geeks.

I brought this icon over from my JF account just for this. >_>

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

I feel obligated to note that the Nomad books haven't got Moorcock's best prose ever (for that I'd actually recommend the Dancers at the End of Time series, which I adore), but the ideas are pretty damn interesting.

Anyway, just followed links over to prettyarbitrary's post on the subject of the steampunk ethos, and that was exceptionally enlightening, I thought.

Don't we have a kind of moral responsibility to ourselves that holds us up to examining what we read/write/enjoy?

Exactly. And I think people do often lose sight of the fact that honest examination does not necessarily equal judgement. (Although it doesn't help that there are a lot of people out there who trot out the harshest judgements under the rubric of "honesty". There are problems on all sides.) It's more of a "know thyself" thing, which also puts one in a better position to stand up for oneself when a reader does flip out on you. There's something in there about William S. Burroughs and his commitment to honesty in what he wrote, in giving his own demons a hard, clear-eyed look; now I need to go ping my friend Howard and go over all this again, as he's the Burroughsian in my circle.

That shit is scary, and you learn some uncomfortable things about yourself that way, but I think it's necessary for anyone who wants to be a writer/artist of integrity.

But I want to know how what I'm doing/the fic I'm enjoying functions, both in terms of difference and similarity.

Yeah, and I have no easy answers or clear thoughts on that yet myself. Obviously. Is there, perhaps, a sense in which pushing one's emotional/psychological boundaries through what one reads or writes functions not so much as a titillation but a catharsis? In the old-fashioned classic-Greek-tragedy sense, anyway. And maybe that's where the necessity of characterization ties in: you can't have a cathartic experience without a fully realized character through whom you experience the event.

Oh Jesus Christ, did that make any sense?

...it is possible we may be geeks.

Ya think? ^_^

Oh man, I wanna steal that icon, b/c it's always so appropriate.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Anyway, just followed links over to [info]prettyarbitrary's post on the subject of the steampunk ethos, and that was exceptionally enlightening, I thought.

Yeah, I am completely sold on her argument.

Is there, perhaps, a sense in which pushing one's emotional/psychological boundaries through what one reads or writes functions not so much as a titillation but a catharsis?

Makes total sense! It's true that fully realized characters make better experiential avatars, because the fic situations only seem real in their ramifications if the person affected by them is full enough to feel and think her way through everything. I dunno about the word catharsis though, b/c catharsis indicates that at some point you'd be Healed of your interest in reading that kind of thing, or that it's a deviant interest to have, which isn't necessarily so? Though I'd totally buy boundary-pushing as developmental. It sort of ties into how you can grow up in fandom at this point. I've been reading and very occasionally writing since, god, I dunno when, maybe 12? So in the ten years since, fandom's obviously been a medium through which I negotiated those boundaries of what I was interested in reading/thinking about vs. what I wasn't.

Feel free to gank it; I'm rather pleased with it and wouldn't mind it being in circulation. ^_^

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

I dunno about the word catharsis though, b/c catharsis indicates that at some point you'd be Healed of your interest in reading that kind of thing, or that it's a deviant interest to have, which isn't necessarily so?

Possibly so; I admit my understanding of the word may be fuzzy, but I sort of take it to mean an emotional release that doesn't necessarily involve expiation of those interests. It's like ... experiencing hunger, maybe -- for whatever reason, one has this desire for a certain type of experience best handled through reading or writing fiction, and like bodily hunger, it never goes away, nor is it necessarily wrong -- it's just a fact of life, as it were. But I definitely buy the "developmental" interpretation as well -- testing one's limits is absolutely a way in which people grow.

On a semi-related note, the concept of growing up in fandom is sort of fascinating to me -- at least in the way it's possible to do so now. I'm in my early thirties (ack), and when I was a wee geek in the late 1980s, I experienced it mostly in isolation, save for a few other fellow weirdos in high school and middle school. I did write some pretty terrible Trek and Who fanfic even then, but I had no idea there were other people out there doing it. The landscape of fandom has changed so dramatically in the last decade due to the internet, and it's just very interesting to see how it plays out with You Kids Today. ;)

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

I...oh, damn. Ran out of room. My response will be over on my blog. Once I finish it.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Augh! *runs off to read* I lurve meta!