What is Dieselpunk?

After my recent blog post on Captain America: The First Avenger, I got a couple of questions about the terms "dieselpunk" and "decopunk." There's a pretty nice description of dieselpunk here, but I thought I'd talk a little about what it means to me.

I've come across a forum post where someone described dieselpunk as a scene rather than a genre, mainly, if I understand correctly, because of the dirth of actual dieselpunk fiction out there. I'll grant you that there aren't as many movies and TV shows with the elements that make up dieselpunk than there are capitalizing on the popularity of steampunk, but I think it's incorrect to say there aren't very many. In the last few months I've watched eight movies and two anime tv shows (notably Last Exile, which perhaps due to the fact that I watch it at 3am when I'm giving the baby his bottle and I have the sound turned almost all the way down, has come to a point where it is incomprehensible to me, unfortunately. I still really enjoy the soundtrack, though)--and of those eight movies, none were in the Indiana Jones series. There are also quite a few books that qualify, at least according to my definition.

So I should probably get to that.

To me, dieselpunk is fiction genre (or, more broadly, a scene) that draws on sci fi from the 1920s-1940s. Dieselpunk differs from steampunk in that its machines have internal combustion engines. You don't see airplanes in steampunk--at least, not unless they are some sort of steam-powered clockwork. You do see airplanes in dieselpunk--prominently so. But you also see other, weirder vehicles like the vanships in Last Exile. Also, very often you see robots. The idea with dieselpunk is that the tech is retro-futuristic (a combination that I find delightful). Lots of dials, knobs, gauges, levers, and grease, but I could see a story where these old-fashioned machines allow for (minor) space travel or teleportation--much like Telsa's inventions in The Prestige are steampunk yet futuristic.

The time period encompasses the decades of history I find most interesting to study--the 1920s, especially in the U.S. due to Prohibition, are fascinating because they represent the moment when westerners entered the modern age. Probably because of that, much of the pulp fiction of the time involved exploration of nonwestern parts of the world--the exotic, mysterious places most threatened by extinction in the modern age. More on that in a moment, as it raises a rather thorny problem.

The 1930s provides the concept of noir--film noir, detective stories, and the rise of fascism in several locations around the world.

And the 1940s gave us World War II--a terrible time, of course, but also a time people remember as a golden age of victory gardens, radio programs, and shared purpose. In our memories, everyone was in agreement in the 1940s--the Allies were working together to oppose the evils of the Axis Powers, who in turn were working together to destroy everything good in the world. Through a simple lens, World War II is the most ethically accessible war, because there are such clear bad guys, especially in Europe. (Please understand, I'm saying this as a writer, not as a historian. As a historian, this sort of thing does not fly.)

So dieselpunk has a rich playground to run around in. Add to that all of the bright optimism and faith in science that preceded the dropping of the atomic bombs and the discovery of the death camps. Think of the excitement of the World's Fairs. And to top it off, dieselpunk has its own artistic style: art deco. In fact, a subgenre of dieselpunk (itself a subgenre of steampunk, of course) is decopunk--basically everything dieselpunk is without such an interest in the machines.

But back to the exotic lands, for a moment, and the problem they pose.

I may eventually devote an entire post to this minefield, because it's a doozy, and it's one I'm particularly concerned with because I'm liable to get caught in the middle of it one of these days. Orientalism.

What, you ask, is orientalism, and what does it have to do with dieselpunk?

In a nutshell, orientalism is the representation of nonwestern cultures (most often Middle Eastern, but it's just as valid for various Asian areas as well as any other part of the world where people are predominantly brown, in my opinion) through the filter of western ideas, desires, opinions, prejudices, etc. It's a form of racism with a long history in fiction. Probably one of the best examples of a movie that is both dieselpunk and orientalist: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. One of the big problems with orientalism is that writers who fall prey to it often misrepresent cultures or conflate two or more cultures. In the case of Temple, for instance, the goddess Kali is depicted as evil and ruling the underworld, which is inaccurate. Much of the cuisine is probably closer to Chinese than Hindu, as well. The attitude in days gone by among writers and fans of orientalist fiction was to shrug and say something along the lines of, "It's all the same anyway." (In case that's your attitude, try turning it around and imagining what it would be like for a Hindu or Chinese film to depict your culture as the same or at least jumbled with some other culture--usually belonging to a historical enemy. Now imagine that happening over and over in every book and movie that depicts your culture for hundreds of years.) For more on Temple's issues specifically, go here.

Nowadays I see a deep uneasiness in movies like Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow--they so desperately want to be able to depict grand adventures like those of Allan Quatermain (a character who was originally more steampunk than dieselpunk) but they don't want to come under fire for racism. It's a pickle. I love stories of treasure hunts, dungeon crawls, scary jungles and survival in ice storms. But how do you write about exotic lands without othering those people the main characters, who by nature of being dieselpunk characters will be westerners, will encounter there? How do you portray a culture respectfully while simultaneously making it mysterious, sinister, and, in many cases, somehow mystical? What's a white writer in love with the retro-futuristic fiction of the1920s-1940s to do?

The best I've come up with is to take the story off of planet Earth altogether, and set the dungeon crawls, barroom brawls, and mystical encounters on other planets entirely (Firefly, anyone?). And don't even think about basing the alien cultures on specific (stereotyped and misrepresented) Earth cultures. Lucas did that and it's painful to watch. Of course, the real problem with that solution is that you've pretty much left dieselpunk behind once you leave Earth or at least an Earth-like setting. Yes, it's sci fi, but it's limited sci fi. Dieselpunk is not atomicpunk, and I can't see diesel engines powering even the most fun retro-futuristic space ships farther than a trip to the moon, maybe.

What do you think about dieselpunk? Do you like stories set in the 1920s-1940s?
How would you handle the orientalism problem?

A Morbid Taste for Bones, by Ellis Peters

No, A Morbid Taste for Bones is not a horror book and it's in no way a part of the current zombie craze. It's actually the first book of the Cadfael mystery series. In case you've never run into this series in its television incarnation, Cadfael is the name of a monk who solves murders. The show is a lot of fun and popular among those who've seen it. I enjoy a good mystery series, so I thought I'd give the first book a try.

Cadfael became a monk in later life after participating in the Crusades and having several love affairs, so he's a lot more worldly than your average monk. It's probably why he's prone to looking at situations more practically and why he's willing to examine bodies and investigate murders. In A Morbid Taste for Bones, Cadfael travels as part of a group of monks to claim the bones of a Welsh saint. As a Welsh man himself, he has sympathy for the villagers who would rather not give up their saint. The first half of the book focuses on this conflict, and then a murder complicates matters a great deal.

The best thing about A Morbid Taste for Bones is it had a Pillars of the Earth quality--it's set around the same time, and of course there are the monks. If you haven't read Pillars, stop reading this review and go buy it. And read it. Now. Don't look at the jacket description, either. You just can't get a sense of how engrossing that book is by reading the description, trust me. Just read it.

Anyway, back to Cadfael. The book was sleepy; not exactly a page-turner, I'm afraid. If all I had to do was read I might have enjoyed it more, but these days I squeeze precious minutes out of my day here and there for books, often only reading a page or two at night right before going to sleep. So it felt a little like I was wasting my time when I could have been reading a really fascinating book like Pillars of the Earth, for instance. Don't get me wrong, it was a pleasant book, but I won't be buying the next one until I'm really desperate for another book to read.

However, if you're just looking for a light mystery and you enjoy period pieces set in the 12th century, give A Morbid Taste for Bones a try. You can buy it here.

Why losing All My Children and One Life makes me a sad panda

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Really, Sophia? Soaps?" Well, I love soaps. I'll proudly admit it. Here's why.

1. I was raised on them. My mother used to have them on while she painted. I'd watch them sometimes with her.
2. When I moved to Paris as a teenager, the soap Santa Barbara had made it across the Atlantic and was one of the few American tv shows. I loved it, and I discovered one of my favorite actors on it: Robin Wright. Oh, also, A. Martinez.
3. I love the way soaps work. I love their internal logic (if a character gets pregnant, the paternity WILL be in question at some point, regardless of any other consideration, and there's an 85% chance the baby born will be separated from its rightful--not necessarily biological--parents within an hour of its birth--this goes up 1% with each passing hour) and their consistent morality. I'm not saying they're highly moral, just that their morality is consistent. You have characters you can always count on to be good, characters you can always count on to be evil, and characters who move in a more gray area--but there are clear cues as to which hat they are wearing in any given storyline.
4. I love the extraordinary weirdness they get away with. Plastic surgery: not only is it possible to completely pass for someone else, but all the people who have known and loved the original will be fooled, even after the imposter makes monstrously huge mistakes. And don't get me started on the surprise family relations--only in Victorian classics do people turn out to be related coincidentally as often. And some soaps took this to an extreme. Ever heard of Passions? They had storylines with animated dolls, trips to hell, and witches.
5. I love that they are on every day of the week and are seemingly endless. It's consistent and reassuring. So I've had a crap day at work? I can turn on my soap and watch the characters make horrible decisions with their lives and feel like, yes, I, at least, am not about to sleep with my sister's new boyfriend because we got stuck in an abandoned mine shaft together.
6. I love that they take a topic and try to educate their audience with it--to me, watching a soap is a way of gauging what people are thinking about things going on in the world. Which brings me to the next reason:
7. Soaps can be cutting edge. No, seriously. They can! Anyone who is interested in how gays are represented in the media has probably heard of All My Children. They had the first lesbian kiss on daytime television. They also had a whole storyline around a transgendered character. One Life to Live had a storyline about a male gay couple struggling to adopt a child. This is very cool stuff, people, and it's reaching out into the homes of average Americans. An exciting new show about food is not going to do that.

So I am sad to see AMC and OLTL go. I realize there's no sense in fighting it--people who fight the inevitable baffle me. But what I'm going to hope is that ABC will lose lots and lots of money with this decision. And when, as a result, they realize what a stupid thing they've done, they'll either bring back these two shows or start new ones. Because while soaps may rightfully be known as low brow, they are also immensely valuable.

Do you agree? Or do you think of soaps as trash, and think, "Good riddance"?