Steampunk’d episode uno - Color versus Gray

We all knew it was coming. A realityshow about Steampunkmakers on GSN and produced by Produced by Kimberly and John Erhhard of Pink Sneakers.

It’s trailer has been circling around steampunk groups and forums for a few months now and has be anticipated by many people since. So after all the hype of these last few months can Steampunk’d live up to the hype?

Each week, hosted by Jeannie May (The Real), two teams must both make a room for this manor. The best makers will be made next weeks captains and the two worst ( If you can call them that) will be send home by the jury. The rooms will than be judged by Kato (Steampunk Couture), Matt King (Producer of World of Steam) and Thomas Whileford (Writer of Steampunk Gears and Gadgets).
This week the two teams must make a kitchen, fitted with a Rube Goldberg device (or machine) and a fitting costume, in three days time.

a Rube Goldberg Machine

I really enjoyed watching Team JW from the start. JW is a really hands on man. Loves to work what is in front of him and taking charge. I like that. Also I really liked that he wanted to do something different rather than the typical brown and brass you see everywhere. So I really appreciated his contributions.
As for team Eddie, aka Team Clusterfuck. Oh boy. Steampunk Eddie is not a bad guy, but he was just a horrible captain, which created a toxic atmosphere. Soon Ave became the ‘secret captain’ appointed by the team. By day 2 the conflict came to a head, but was quickly resolved. But how about their kitchen.

Team JW's  kitchen (dubbed countryesque by Whileford) came with a butler-automaton. The Rube Goldburg device was lacking because, well JW didn’t care about that part (neither do I) and Tobias, a young Maker from Kent, wasn’t up to the task of building one.
Team Eddie made a gray kitchen with some original idea’s like a platespinning Rube Goldberg Device and a robotic maidcostume. But it was unfinished and I thought it was rather bland with all the gray tones.

I like team-JW's creation best. Colorfull, the theme came together and I love the automaton costume. Team Eddie had a better RB-device, but it didn’t impress me. The other teams sucked, but I still liked it better because of how flawed it was.

So, who won? Well, your going to have to watch it for yourselfs.

As for my opinion of the premiere itself, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I really didn’t like the trailer.
All thou I like they call Steampunk, ‘a retro futuristic style inspired by the Victorian era,’ it isn’t free clichés like ‘Were the past is the future and the future is the past’ … What does that mean? What really bugged me was the whole discussion about one of the kitchens not being steampunk-enough. I hate that! But I’ll get back to that in a later episode I expect.

As for what the show is really about, it ain’t about Steampunk or how to make Steampunk. It’s about Steampunk-makers and their conflicts. It is a realityshow, through and through with all the clichés that come with it. The quick camera cutaways. Zooming in on people’s faces when somebody says something they don’t agree with. The personal interviews about how everybody on their team sucks. Sure, conflict is a part of the creative group process. But it detracted from the actual making of things. I really want to see what they made and how they made it! Because there are some really awesome idea’s here that can easily be executed by the layperson. But these don’t get explained! 

But I’ll watch the next episode and probably write a review on that too, because there is some worth while content here. And I would be lying if I said all these personal vendetta’s, that are evolving, didn't drag me in. But I am kind of worried about the input of the jury. But we will see how much influence they will have on the assembly of the manor in the course of the series.

Till next time and please let me know If you would like a episode by episode review of this series, on facebook or here in the comments.

For a full step by step summary, take a look at the Airship Ambassadors blog *Spoiler Alert*

Steampunk and Postmodernism

Inspiration comes from the strangest places. When I was thinking about a new subject in a post-Castlefest season I watched a review of an art film. It’s one of those ‘love it or hate it’ productions with many abstract images that have no rhyme or reason to them. It’s a prime example of something people would call pretentious or artsy. Art for the sake of art with no entertainment value.
This is what many associate with Postmodernism. It’s often weird, unhinged and so detached from reality it rarely makes any sense. Movies and music are often so abstract few people have the patience for it or fall asleep during the experience. But these kinds of productions belong to a stream of radical Postmodernism that few people care for or indulged in.
Yet Postmodernism defines our era, even thou many don’t realize it. A matter affect, many consider Steampunk a Postmodernist expression. But is it?

What is Postmodernism? It’s a reaction to ‘modern idea’s,’ that speak of the greater good and destiny of nations or mankind. In other words, religious and ideological philosophies; Christianity, Islam, Marxism and Capitalism.
There were always critics and atheists that doubted the idea of a ‘single truth’ all men had to abide by. But no event was as influential as the Great War of 1914-1918. It ended empires and lay waste to a whole generation of men. In countries like England and Germany the public had lost it’s faith in traditional idea’s and religion. They turned to new authoritarian ideologies and new forms of spirituality, like the New Age movement (Little known fact: certain elite members of the New Age Movement heralded Hitler as a messiah even before he came to power).
Next to this radicalization of mainstream politics, artists and poets radicalized in there own way. Not only did they blame world leaders for the Great War. They questioned the very nature of reality and especially the idea of truth. To them, God was Dead, and their era was the end of civilization. I hope my readers can imagine how these idea’s evolved from that point on, through the Second and Cold War, till today.

Postmodernists reject the notion of truth and objectivity. Everything we perserve is filtered through our state of mind and emotions. So, in order to understand anything, we must lay bare (deconstruct) everything to it’s inner workings. This means they try to create a new vision on mundane subjects. Terry Pretchets Discworld novels are a good example. For example, he compares insurance (Inn-Sewer-Ants) with gambling and the meddling of the gods, in mortal affaires, to a game of Dungeon and Dragons.
In a sense Postmodernism is about injokes. So you get movies that are about movie-making, videogames about making videogames and stories about storytelling. Sounds boring? Well, The Matrix-movie was basically a Postmodern story about how we view reality. How can we truly be sure we aren’t living inside a computer program?
Postmo can be a powerful tool to make people question, not just art, but our very surroundings. That all we perceive is subjective. Now, they are not even wrong, but it is a very impractical way of trying to make sense of reality. Some Postmodernists even gone so far to claim science, especially history, is bunk because everything we perceive is subjective and therefor can’t be investigated. Now science already had a tools too overcome our flawed nature, called the scientific method; ‘It works, bitches’. However, the Postmo’s ask a number of interesting questions regarding people’s tendency to accept old claims and traditions as the status quo.

Despite it’s critics and impracticality Postmodernism became very prevalent in fiction. Cyberpunk questioned to notion of progress as a purely positive force. No wonder with the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the looming threat of a third world war and the possible dangers of the coming digital age. The world was changing and all change leads to conflict. The time was ripe for the dystopian settings of Cyberpunk in which technological progress has turn society itself into a dehumanizing machine. From that arose Steampunk. But has Steampunk inherited the Postmodern tendencies of it’s predecessor?

Traditionally Steampunk is Cyberpunk in the past. However, it’s more about alternate history then the dark side of technological process. It tries to put historical figures and parties into a position in which they have advanced technology available to them. Now, here it gets interesting. I often talked about Traditional Steampunk versus Fantasy Steampunk. Fantasy writers tend to care little for historical accuracy. They love the idea of the gentlemen and Victorian esthetic. Here it clashes with the traditional writers, who want to debunk the idealized Victorian era and society. Like in the Difference Engine were technological radicals have pushed for their version of the digital age with no regard for the lower classes. So, traditional Steampunk has a Postmodern streak to it. But how about its community.

The Steampunk-movement is, odd. It embraces the old and traditional, but rejects modernity and conformism. Steampunk is very materialistic, but rejects mass production. It embraces industry but rejects wastefulness and created it’s own brand of eco-activism.
Within the community itself there are plenty of people that are inspired by Postmodern idea’s, but it doesn’t represent the goals and ambitions of the community itself. Steamers try to create a sense of timeless esthetic, inspired by history and archaic technology. Many designers perceive their designs  simply to be a continuation of olders schools, like Arte Deco and Populuxe, and not a throwback to the eighteenth century.
As for me, I consider Steampunk to be a product of the twentyfirst-century. As a person I am very much a Postmodernist (I just discovered). I reject big idea’s and religion. I consider myself to be an individual and not a representation of the Steampunk community at large (please correct me if you think I am wrong). I feel that Postmodernism has had a great impact on Steampunk. If not directly then by the fiction that inspired Steampunk to begin with. But to call the movement Postmo is taking it to far. If anything, it is a continuation of Postmodern idea’s into a whole new direction.