Steampunk timeline

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While scrolling through the twitterverse this came to my attention. It's yet another attempt to explain steampunk. This time from a less practical perspective. The author definitely if having fun playing with his words in this one.

The Great Steampunk Timeline

Stephen Hunt

Here’s how you understand steampunk, how you really understand steampunk.

It’s a reaction, and like all reactions, for its boiler to begin burning, steampunk needed something to react against.

Let’s skip back to the 1960s and 1970s. There was peace, and love. Everything was groovy, baby. Where there was war, it could be protested; where there were bayonets on campus, flowers could be hung from that sharp steel. Even if you weren’t there, kids, you kind of were–it was Mad Men, it was Swingtown, it was Life on Mars, and it was Forrest Gump, baby. READ THE REST HERE

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Dead and Breakfast a Zombie Musical.

 

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A friend recently recommended a great B movie to me. I was wondering if there were any zombie westerns and she suggested Dead and Breakfast.

It's not quite a western, and it's not quite a zombie film, but it's loaded with gory campy fun. It's also streamable on Netflix so you can watch it right now.

Dead and Breakfast uses fairly traditional plot devices to move the story along. A group of 20 something travel through the back roads to a friends wedding, and get lost. They arrive for the night in a small Texas town, Lovelock, which happens to be the home of some very creepy people and of course demonic spirits.  I know this device seems pretty cliche', but it is used quite effectively for this campy gore fest. They take the traditional trappings and turn it on on it's head by adding even more camp, like a guitar playing musical narrator.

The narrator makes the movie, he's across between Mojo Nixon the free credit report band, and absolutely pulls the audience through the movie --- with great punk rock a billy songs and and a sense of humor that puts the bad acting and camp into perspective.

Dead an Breakfast isn't scary, isn't well acted, and isn't well written. That's a great thing, it's not supposed to be. It is gory, funny, and filed with musical numbers, and definitely worth watching.

So go a head and crack open a lone Star or a Shiner Bock, and enjoy this, almost, zombie filled western musical. You won't regret it.

Is there a use for the Steampunk Aesthetic?

 

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I keep looking at Steampunk and wondering if there is a use for it or if it's meerely art. Art for arts sake is great, but there is such a technological component to Steampunk I have to wonder if the artistic eye has a use as well as beauty. The return to the Victorian era that wasn't seems, to me, to be largely driven by a backlash towards today's culture, or just a simple appreciation for beauty. The more I think about it, though, the more I think it offers a little more.

Steampunk is the culture of tinkerers, people who modify and retrofy(My own word) gadgets to make them beautiful. What if we took that a step further and in stead of just making things that looked steampunk made things that were functional, and steampunk in aesthetic.

The vistorian Era, which steampunk examines, despite all of it's flaws -- classism, racism, sexism, colonialism -- really did have some thing going for it. Everyone knew how their possessions worked. And many people could actually fix things. Also despite being the antithesis of our current green movements, it was green in a way. Most things were local, most people knew, or could know, the people who grew their foods.

I think we should take these aspects of the Victorian era and try to blend them into current steampunk. Let's take it beyond the aesthetic and try to turn it into a real movement. I for one am re-examining my indoor garden and seeing ways I can make it as beautiful as it is functional, a very Victorian goal.

What can you do?

Here's a great blog looking at steampunk as a modern way of life. HERE

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