rebelliousness in genre

[marycatelli]

It's an amazing thing about calls for subversion and rebelliousness in literature (or probably any other art).

No one really means it.  Indeed, a call for subversion and rebelliousness tends to be more rigorous and prescriptive than most calls for anything in literature.  Because, of course, what they really are is calls for propaganda to subvert and rebel against that other guy over there -- and the call usually has a neat laundry list of what you are to rebel against, and if you do not obey it, you are not rebellious -- or so it says.  (The hypocrisy of saying that which toes the line is rebellious and that which does not is not -- well, it's funny at first, but it wears off very quickly.)

For some reason, I've run across a number of calls for this in steampunk.  Prescriptions, in fact, that the "punk" suffix means rebellion and if you don't rebel against certain social structure, you aren't doing steampunk.  More arguable than most claims, but there is such a thing as semantic drift.  The number of fairy tales with actual fairies in them is vanishingly small.  And while generally I have sympathies with trying to preserve a meaning, I don't think limiting the views that steampunk can express actually benefit the genre.

Comments

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It's much the same in literary criticism and its offspring.

At an academic conference, I once heard an unintentionally hilarious paper that deconstructed the annual Bastille Day celebrations in Philadelphia, an event sponsored by the city's French restaurants and featuring waiters doing relay races with loaded trays, etc. Okay, I will concede, there's nothing terribly revolutionary about those festivities, but the author of the paper seemed to be arguing that you couldn't have a proper Bastille Day without a guillotine. I kept expecting her, any minute, to say something like, The problem with these relay races is an insufficient body count.

[marycatelli]

Academics do have to pretend to say something to publish.

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the annual "You're Getting Cinco de Mayo All Wrong" protests.

[marycatelli]

Sounds like fun.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

At one point '-punk' as in 'steampunk' had come to mean fiddling around with details of something -- neepery? wonkery? So, not necessarily rebellion.

Before that, I'm told a 'punk rock band' meant the players required no credentials, no instruction.

[marycatelli]

ain't semantic drift grand!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Because, of course, what they really are is calls for propaganda to subvert and rebel against that other guy over there -- and the call usually has a neat laundry list of what you are to rebel against, and if you do not obey it, you are not rebellious -- or so it says.

OH YES. This is so true. Subverters rival censors in their demands for orthodoxy--it's just a different orthodoxy.

[marycatelli]

And they do not get it. I have seen one such person, called on her strictures, claim that they were merely observations.

[noahdoyle.livejournal.com]

Steampunk, derived from cyberpunk - which was something of a 'rebellion' against the more 'classic' SF (in tone, if not in substance), and became its own genre, complete with hackneyed plots and tired, oft-repeated elements.

Interestingly, from this reader's perspective, cyberpunk is pretty much dead. Gibson still puts out a novel now and then, but people like Stephenson have moved on to writing what is essentially classic 'grand idea' scifi, and much of the rest of the shelves is taken up with that, military SF and the current craze, dark urban semi-erotic fantasy.

I'd argue that 'steampunk' is more common as a theme on the internet, than it is on the shelves of a bookstore.

[marycatelli]

Steampunk is, however, more common on the shelves than cyberpunk is, because of cyberpunk's limited affect and emotional palette, which resulted in the death you note.

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

...And Gibson's last few novels are based on extant technology, not sci-fi versions of "virtual Reality."

[marycatelli]

Writers who keep on mining the same vein frequently run about things to say. But then, cyberpunk was a narrower vein.

[noahdoyle.livejournal.com]

Steampunk, derived from cyberpunk

Hm. I wrote that in haste, and now have to consider it. Steampunk is derived from cyberpunk, but only, I think, in the word, not in the nature. I haven't noticed steampunk having that quality of a grungy, banal existence that good cyberpunk evoked. Not that steampunk has failed - it just doesn't do that. Cyberpunk was an alternate future, in opposition to the (perceived by the cyberpunk authors) Gernsbackian Bright Future of Science! Steampunk seems to be an alternate past, in which we had cooler stuff. Were there to be a 'cyberpunk' steampunk story, I think we'd look at it and call it...Dickenspunk? David Copperfield we've seen before, even if he is in an orphanage that services an enormous Babbage Engine.

[marycatelli]

Some of the early stuff did do that. And some of the complains are that people don't toe the line and produce the grungy, banal stuff that is really punk, though most tend toward the rebellious aspect.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

But only in the word ... like beatnik from sputnik.

[marycatelli]

Yeah, that sort of logic is common all over the place in words.

[alivion.livejournal.com]

Go far back enough and punk means prostitute. So yeah, semantic drift.

[alivion.livejournal.com]

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=punk

[marycatelli]

Sexual euphemisms are like that.