Steampunk Phone: Steampunk is Dead
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009I had high hopes for steampunk. By combining the technological with the hand-crafted, it might have carved a path into a pleasant future. It circled back into the Victorian era but even that was forgiveable. Sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward. Steampunk, I thought, just needs to mature. But, like all high hopes, mine are proving to be wrong.
As evidenced by this phone, it’s just a cumbersome and ridiculous affectation. It’s an aesthetic done by rote. A geekish dogma. It serves no purpose other than to make something “steampunk.” It’s aesthetic does not emerge organically from the logic of its function. Instead it’s just pasted on top of something else. It’s just copper bullshit.
When I look at the phone, I cannot think of a single way that all that effort has improved the device. It’s made it heavier, larger and clunkier. The thing is not better. The phone has just become a weapon in identity politics, an assertion of tribal loyalty to the cost of function. “I’m a steampunk,” it screams. “Pity me!”
Beauty always emerges from function. A bird’s plumage or the shape of tiger is striking because it is efficient. This phone is an ugly contraption and too crude a flag to wave. And this is what steampunk has become.
These problems were once forgiveable as growing pains. But steampunk has had time to grow. Now it’s like a twenty year old with the mind of a two year old. Its retardation is cause for concern.
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (bad science fiction), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap. He's a bit of a dick.
