Steampunk Explained By PBS

Nothing kills the uniqueness and authenticity of an underground art form faster than seeing a documentary about it.
 
bucket said:
Nothing kills the uniqueness and authenticity of an underground art form faster than seeing a documentary about it.
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Somewhere a steampunk just shot himself with a reverse polarity rifle....
 
Wait... this is serious? :eek:

Oh, yep it is. That one guy said it was "sexy". Another attempt at getting chicks. ;) Move along!
 
I have kinda-sorta followed the "Burning Man" event for a few years and that's the only place I see steampunk fitting into. It definitely fits that place for sure.

Outside in a city or something, it's just odd.

There is a huge following of it though apprently from things I've seen on TV the past couple years, so I do not know much about it, it seems.
 
Steampunk is cool and all, but i've never really got it. I mean its not really based around music or a game or movie or time period or really anything, its just kind of like we wanna wear old timey clothes and put gears on shit. I mean there is no real base for it, i guess its just a style of dress. Maybe i just don't get it, but i mean i get cosplay, i get goth, i get punk, i get all the things that steampunk is usually mingles with, but steam punk itself is pretty much just "i'm gona walk around wearing shit with gears on it".
 
It's a fantasy genre, there are also these old-timey things called "books" and "stories" centered around it, although maybe no games or movies. ;)
 
thyshallsmite said:
Steampunk is cool and all, but i've never really got it. I mean its not really based around music or a game or movie or time period or really anything, its just kind of like we wanna wear old timey clothes and put gears on shit. I mean there is no real base for it, i guess its just a style of dress. Maybe i just don't get it, but i mean i get cosplay, i get goth, i get punk, i get all the things that steampunk is usually mingles with, but steam punk itself is pretty much just "i'm gona walk around wearing shit with gears on it".
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ROFL! Yeah, I feel ya, but we I assume we just don't "get the whole picture" :cool: :p
 
thyshallsmite said:
Steampunk is cool and all, but i've never really got it. I mean its not really based around music or a game or movie or time period or really anything, its just kind of like we wanna wear old timey clothes and put gears on shit. I mean there is no real base for it, i guess its just a style of dress. Maybe i just don't get it, but i mean i get cosplay, i get goth, i get punk, i get all the things that steampunk is usually mingles with, but steam punk itself is pretty much just "i'm gona walk around wearing shit with gears on it".
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Weird how you can "get" so many styles, but fail to observe the ridiculousness of them all.
 
Well, at least the women in the documentary are somewhat attractive and slim, unlike the "women" you see at those SCA medieval reenactment festivals. Talk about cramming an elephant into a corset! :p
 
dandirk said:
Fallout, Bioshock are 2 games with a heavy steampunk feel.
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Yeah... Though I haven't played in years.. the first game that came to mind was World of Warcraft. The little engineer dudes definitely wear steampunk style shit
 
Warehouse 13 on SciFi (no I will not call it ScyFy or whatever crap they want nowadays...) also have a bit of Steampunk in it.
 
Steampunk is sort of "what if"...

What if... technology advanced but the materials used didn't in the days of tesla etc. Brass, gears, steam etc etc etc.
 
I like SP. The industrial vibe it creates is very cool, but it's a very niche iconoclastic style that very few people can pull off and like any sub-culture genre, you can't do it half-assed. Either you are in it or you just admire it from afar.
 
I think it was on the [H] a while back, but the guy who makes those f'ing beautiful steampunk keyboards that sell for over a grand, the genre definitely can make some very attractive looking stuff, even for those not "into it." If I had that kind of discretionary income, I'd definitely grab one of those.
 
Not that I don't appreciated people's right to be as fucked up as they want to be, but every time I see someone like this, all I can think is "nutbag".

To each their own I guess.
 
.
.I like creativity. If you like that kind of thing go for it. I think it would be better for occasions at bars and places with bands, festivals, fairs and such than a job interview however. :D
..
..There is a good anime called "SteamBoy" that is all about steam machine tech in the steam-engine locomotive era. Its one of the better "western style" storyline anime's out there. I could see stephen spielberg making a movie like it in the back to the future vein.
..
The movie, with adverts on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf-s-Po7Vx8
 
TwistedAegis said:
It's a fantasy genre, there are also these old-timey things called "books" and "stories" centered around it, although maybe no games or movies. ;)
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City of Embers is a steampunk movie. Haven't seen it yet though!
 
The anime "Metropolis" has a steampunk style too, though it is more futuristic than the typical"steampunk-future" at the same time.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdxJHPucC8I

wiki
this cinematic adaptation of Tezuka's story integrates far more elements from the Fritz Lang film Metropolis. When making the original Metropolis manga, Tezuka said that the only real inspiration he got from Fritz Lang's Metropolis was a still image from the movie where a female robot was being born. [5] In addition to adopting set designs of the original film, this version has more emphasis on a strong and pervasive theme of class struggle in a dystopian, plutocratic society and expands it to examine the relationship of robots with their human masters.
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LeninGHOLA said:
Weird how you can "get" so many styles, but fail to observe the ridiculousness of them all.
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Thats the thing though, most of the styles have a base to em, steampunk has no base. Dress goth, well its has to do with the music and musicians and their style of dress (you dress dark and angry). Cosplay, people are dressing up after the characters in games movies anime or whatever. Dress steam punk your just slapping on gears, there is no music following there is no book there is no game there is no anything, its kind of like the lady gaga thing where she just throws on whatever. Don't get me wrong it looks cool, but its not a culture its not a movement, there are no real rules on what is or isn't. For example that one girl was wearing a Victorian style dress and claims thats steam-punk a guy is wearing a bowler hat and a vest and is now apparently steam-punk cause theirs goggles on his hat, i mean i have a gear tattoo, guess that means i'm steam punk too. See what i mean there's no lines or what not, i mean most of these people i'd say they're Victorian era, but they say no i'm steam-punk.
 
Wild Wild West was Steampunkish.

I know a lot thought it sucked, but I thought Will Smith's movie version was hilarious.
 
Reminds me of the movie Brazil. Old tech, but made crudely futuristic. A 3" TV made big with a 30" magnifying glass, lol.
 
TechLarry said:
Wild Wild West was Steampunkish.

I know a lot thought it sucked, but I thought Will Smith's movie version was hilarious.
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I totally forgotten about that movie. I'm putting it on my Netflix queue!
 
thyshallsmite said:
Thats the thing though, most of the styles have a base to em, steampunk has no base. Dress goth, well its has to do with the music and musicians and their style of dress (you dress dark and angry). Cosplay, people are dressing up after the characters in games movies anime or whatever. Dress steam punk your just slapping on gears, there is no music following there is no book there is no game there is no anything, its kind of like the lady gaga thing where she just throws on whatever. Don't get me wrong it looks cool, but its not a culture its not a movement, there are no real rules on what is or isn't. For example that one girl was wearing a Victorian style dress and claims thats steam-punk a guy is wearing a bowler hat and a vest and is now apparently steam-punk cause theirs goggles on his hat, i mean i have a gear tattoo, guess that means i'm steam punk too. See what i mean there's no lines or what not, i mean most of these people i'd say they're Victorian era, but they say no i'm steam-punk.
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Think Borg in a Victorian era dress suit.
 
TechLarry said:
Wild Wild West was Steampunkish.

I know a lot thought it sucked, but I thought Will Smith's movie version was hilarious.
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Very much so. The NiN video "closer" would be another.

The documentary is told through the narrow perspective of a few people who somewhat missed the point. The PBS snippet is of late comers to a falling scene.
 
The mechanisms are supposed to function (or has the visage of such), not to appear like junk hung on a TGIFriday's wall.
 
I can appreciate art, but that gets easily ruined by obsession. Making movies, pictures, gadgets is cool. Larping it though?
 
I don't ever remember steampunk being about dancing. While some woodwind instruments look a bit steampunk, they aren't steampunk music. If someone wanted to create real steampunk music, they'd use a steam organ.
 
Why was that dude on the video sooooo annoying?

Steampunk is kind of interesting, but this dude with the beard and glasses.
 
Underground art form?
1990 Michael J Fox said:
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Goth is from way before rock bands took it up along with devil/demon iconography.
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wiki
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story". The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.

Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the Gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.

The ruins of Gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic institutions such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).

Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, Transgression, Excess, secrets, and hereditary curses.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, dragons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
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elvn said:
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Goth is from way before rock bands took it up along with devil/demon iconography.
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Devil/demon iconography? Which gothic bands are you listening to? That would be way more death metal than goth. Vampires, The Crow, black velvet and fetish attire sure, but demons and devils, not so much.
 
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