Help! I Don’t Know How to Feel About Steampunk!
Last night halfway through dinner I decided I was officially done with the Decembrists. My iPod was playing some song about the plenary and the cassowaries and Birkenau, and out of nowhere my tolerance for Colin Meloy’s vocabulary just evaporated.
Anyway, apparently my cultural sensors are razor sharp, because today the New York Times Style Section has a piece about the rising trend of steampunk, in which kids who might otherwise be dressing up like that guy from AFI instead pretend to be Jules Verne. The Decembrists weren’t mentioned, but the word “dirigible” appears in the fourth paragraph.
I feel like I’m supposed to hate steampunk because a) the name is ridiculous and b) as one woman told the Times, it’s like goth but “not so much eyeliner and fishnets,” i.e. less gender-bending, which was always the best thing about goths anyway. But even though I’m taking a break from all songs about wee chimney sweeps (wee-chimney-sweepcore?), I can’t imagine getting sick of the Victorian aesthetic. The 19th century refurbished computer in the Times slideshow (pictured) totally kills me. I own about twelve high-necked lacy blouses. And even if The Prestige hadn’t been a pretty good movie, I still would have seen it just for the combination of Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, and David Bowie.
See also: Kelly Link and the whole appealing slipstream genre of fiction, which can get very Victorian. See also: The inside of Freemans Sporting Club. See also: That time in high school when I watched Delicatessen roughly every Thursday for an entire year. How can I turn my back on these things just because some girl in the newspaper is wearing deeply problematic boob-suspenders?
