Steam Punk & Colonial Nostalgia

Asylum Steampunk Festival (Lincoln 2019)

If you walk around the streets of Lincoln during the annual Asylum Steampunk Festival (the largest and longest running steampunk festival in the world), you will hear that the steampunks – easily identifiable by their dress – speak in many different languages. While the appeal of steampunk has certainly broadened its horizons, one cannot help but feel that it is most warmly received by white Europeans, nostalgic for empire. 

Clad in pith helmets, these intrepid explorers lament that America has overtaken the European powers to become the dominant global superpower. Steampunks long for a return to the good old days of European supremacy that were only ever possible because of colonisation. Steampunk as a fantasy where Europeans continue to dominate the world using (new) pre-digital technologies. Outsourcing labour leaves Europeans with a nostalgia for the days when they could actually make and repair things. Nostalgia is evident in the dressing up (not just literature) – people want to have a go at living this alternative reality. 

Dr Arliss Loveless

Critics will rightly point to the reception that steampunk has in the United States. Films such as Eli Roth’s The House With a Clock in its Walls (2018) and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Wild Wild West (1999) are testament to steampunk’s popular appeal in America. Arliss Loveless, the baddie in Wild Wild West, is a racist played by a British actor. The British baddie is, of course, a Hollywood tradition who (potentially) represents the way that contemporary Americans continue to view the old world as a threat. On the surface racism in Wild Wild West (both the British and confederate varieties) is a bad thing to be combated. However, this belies the colonial nostalgia of Wild Wild West and, indeed westerns more generally. Will Smith’s character James West might be black, but the metanarrative here is that, together with the white folk, he will wipe out the indigenous peoples to establish a white European colony. 

It should not be surprising that the Antebellum South is receptive to steampunk ideas. This analogue era was prosperous because of slavery; this was halted by progressive new ideas and technologies. The Antebellum South was an agricultural society, somewhat resistant to the industrial north. As such, it represents a pre-industrial, and therefore pre-steam power, mentality. This seams not to matter in Wild Wild West, where white colonial nostalgia takes precedence over nostalgia for steam power. This illustrates my first point: steampunk’s nostalgia for the analogue is a proxy for its nostalgia for white European supremacy. 

In the United States, this means European ways and traditions supplanting indigenous and non-European customs – the zenith of which is reached in The House with a Clock in its Walls, which depicts a mainly white New England society underpinned by ancient European superstition, magic and folklore. All of the main characters are white, and the architecture speaks not to America (the Art Deco Empire State Building, Diners and so on) but to Britain. In Europe, the difference is that America itself becomes a proxy for that which supplanted European supremacy, adventure and colonial expansion. After all, steampunk is trapped in the Victorian age – the peak of European colonial domination. 

Ideology

Ideology

In Hegelian and Marxist philosophy, ideology has a pejorative sense that denotes "false consciousness". For Hegel, we are all influenced by forces that we cannot understand (ideology): we are "instruments of history". This sounds like Marxist historical materialist, but Marx criticised Hegel for what he perceived to be a fatalistic worldview: why try to change the world if we are being controlled by forces that we cannot recognise or understand? (The German Ideology, published posthumously in 1932). Marx's conception of ideology differed to Hegel's in that he believed in human agency to overturn ideology and in that he believed that all idea systems are products of economic structures. 

Today, some thinkers (Richard Rorty) have suggested we're are in a post-ideological age. Žižek argues that the conception of a such a post ideological world is evidence that the dominant ideologies have finally "come into their own."

In medieval times, serfs were told that kings and noblemen had been put there by God and, likewise, they had a place (at the bottom) in the cosmic order. Everybody was told to accept their fate, as it was part of God's plan and that suffering in this world world be rewarded in the next. 

Today, Liberal capitalist democracy might be seen as post ideological, only because it convinces us that it is the only viable, natural order. Therefore, liberal capitalist democratic ideology influences us psychologically so that we think it is natural: this is a "false consciousness" about the world, how it works, and their place in it, according to Marx.

Žižek takes Marx's conception of ideology and combines it with Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. For Lacan, we do not intact with the world as such, but with linguistic representations of the world. 

In this view, "different ideologies are different representations of our social and imaginary 'reality'"... not the world itself. For example, medieval ideology worked because it represented the social imaginary reality of the time.

If people think coffee is taken black (English, black coffee; Italian, caffè nero) they do not think of it as lacking milk. But if they think of it as "coffee without milk" (e.g. Spanish, café solo or coffee on its own) they do. This demonstrates how language plays a part in ideology. Žižek uses the following joke to explain further:

"A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, 'Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.' Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?'"

New Contemporaries 2018

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, 

Liverpool School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University

14 July 2018 - 9 September 2018

Radiohead and Waiting

Just lying in a bar with my drip feed on Talking to my girlfriend, waiting for something to happen And I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen 

(the bends, 1995) 

I cannot think of any lyric that better sums up my experience of growing up in the 1990s than the one above, from Radiohead’s the Bends. I had a niggling feeling that nothing was happening. My parents had seen men land on the moon, but the Apollo programme has ended before I was even born. My parents had also see the invention of Concorde, whereas I only saw supersonic passenger flight decommissioned, as it was too expensive. You might argue that I have lived through a communications revolution, witnessing the birth of the internet and mobile phone technology, but this seems a somehow inferior experience to me. My parents could catch a flight out of Heathrow and land in New York before they had even taken off, while I can access Facebook on my phone. Indeed, these technologies, although they were born in the 1990s, didn’t really come into their own until the new millennium.  

I am not really interested in a debate about whether advancements in travel or communications is more exciting. This is only a metaphor for a lingering feeling of disquiet – that nothing was happening in the 1990s. It was not long after the ‘90s ended that things did start to happen though. It started when a man living in a cave orchestrated the largest ever coordinated attack against the USA on its own soil. Using World War Two Kamikaze-style tactics he destroyed icons of American imperial capitalism, military might, but failed to reach his last target in Washington. That a man in a cave in Afghanistan (or a house in Pakistan) could do this seemed unbelievable. What’s more unbelievable is that the most powerful country in the world, with the largest military budget was unable to catch him (or execute and dump him in the sea) for a decade. It was as it we had entered a Bond film.  

The Bond film continued when a computer programmer with white hair founded a global organisation to gather and release the world’s secrets. He even defied the world’s most powerful country at a time when it was run by a cowboy out to avenge the attacks by the man in the cave (house in Pakistan). Kim Jong Un is the most recent Bond baddie threatening to turn the world order upside down.  

Scotland’s near secession from the United Kingdom, Brexit, the election of Donald J. Trump, Catalonia’s vote for independence... things have started to happen and maybe there’s a bit too much happening, as if making up for the lack of activity in the 1990s. 

Skyfall and Brexit Britain

I watched Skyfall on TV this Christmas (December 2017). I first watched it at the cinema, when it came out in 2012. I was abroad and watched it on my own. I got the last seat in a packed cinema in Amsterdam, suggesting that James Bond still has appeal outside the anglophone world. I was struck by the film's sexism, nostalgia and jingoism then, as I was in 2017, and much more so than in other, recent, James Bond movies. I confess that at times I found the patriotism exhilarating, but in a dirty secret pleasure kind of way. There are constant references to how things were better in the past, or how "the old ways are the best ways". The key motif is the return of the Aston Martin DB5 - symbol of British engineering and design icon, but one might also recall how Bond is issued with a gun and a radio - no fancy new gadgets necessary. Skyfall appears to be a call to return to traditional British values and, writing in 2018, the film seems like an uncanny poster-boy for Brexit. I will elaborate with a few examples.

When the new Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), sticks his nose into MI6 business his understanding of life "in the field" is brought into question. It is then revealed that he has seen active service in Northern Ireland. Since the Bond films are always set in the present, and given Mallory's age, we might guess that this active service was in the 1970s or 1980s. It is unlikely that M (Judi Dench), who is of a similar age to Mallory would have seen such front-line action. The implication is that she, as a female, could not have the same understanding and experience as either Mallory, or Bond. Indeed, this is confirmed as the film comes to its climax. Bond (Daniel Craig) takes M to Skyfall, not to hide from villain and ex-agent Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), but to fight him on their own terms. There, she does see active service, and she is killed, because she is a stupid girl. Note that, against all odds, Bond and his elderly game keeper (male) both survive. What was Dench thinking when she accepted this role? The look in Bond's eye when he acknowledges Mallory as the new M is one of relief - now we can go back to normal and do things properly. The female M was tolerated for a while, but in her final film she is shown to be weak. When there is an existential threat (MI6 is blown up), the atavistic need for a public school-educated male to fill the role is apparent. The retreat to Skyfall is a reminder that Bond's blood is aristocratic and that he has ties to the landscape: no foreigner would know where it is, or understand about its priest holes and secret tunnels.

Near the beginning of the film, a female agent, Eve, watches Bond fight a villain on the top of a train. She has a partial shot and is ordered to take it by M: she does, but shoots Bond. Dench's M does not lack the metal to make such calls, she just gets it wrong, as she did when sacrificing Silva. The consequences catch her up in this film. When Bond and the female agent later meet in London, Bond ribs her for the miss: "you gave it your best shot". He quips that field work is not for everybody. At the end of the film Bond asks if she is not returning to the field. Eve replies that she is not. She has realised that fieldwork is not for everybody. She then introduces herself as Eve Moneypenny, before taking up the role of secretary (or PA) to M. That's right, she had a go at being the hero, but mucked it up because she is a stupid girl. Realising that she could not cut it, she took up a desk job. Not as an analyst or similar, but as a secretary: she now knows her place. Previously, when in Macau, Moneypenny assumed a submissive role when she shaves Bond. She knows her place.

Mallory is one example of a renewal of the old system. Bond is another. He fails his medical when returning to active service (after having been shot by Moneypenny), but he is reinstated nonetheless. Why? Because M instinctively knows that he is the best. The fact that others might score more highly in tests is irrelevant - Bond must get the job. Dench's M must make way for new male "talent", all that remains of her is her porcelain bulldog with a union flag on its back. Moneypenny must get back behind a desk. From now on, jobs in MI6, we can presume, will be reserved for the old school tie. Public school boys have always comprised the British secret service, as represented in Bond and in real life. The implication is that the only people truly allowed to do the tops jobs are old, public school educated, men. This is made abundantly clear when Bond first encounters the new Q: "you have to be joking... you still have spots". Q fulfills his role with distinction, however. Apparently being a young male need not hold you back after all, but you will still have to put up with prejudiced remarks and no one will take you seriously.Is this the Brexit Britain that we can look forward to?

Grants not Loans, but Remember to Fund Arts and Humanities Degrees too!

Jeremy Corbyn has gained such ground that even those of a more conservative position are seriously debating the abolition of university tuition fees and reinstating grants. With the abolition of fees comes great emancipatory potential for those from underprivileged backgrounds, but there also comes a great threat to the arts.

The arts at university, despite under funding, are currently somewhat protected. They are protected because people still want to study them and are willing to pay £9,000 a year to do so. A move away from this model to one fully publicly funded has re-opened a debate around how many students we should fund and even how many universities we should have. A sub-set of this debate relates to which subjects we should fund. Those who only see the world in economic terms appear to feel that we have too many students in Higher Education, too many universities and that we do not need so many students of the arts and humanities. Dominic Holland embodied this position today on Channel 5's The Wright Stuff. He claimed that many degrees do not need to be three years long and that humanities degrees could be completed in only one year. This is like a parent telling their child that they will not pay for a year's driving lessons, because you can learn to drive in a month: if you cannot learn in a month, you are not good enough an should not drive! While it is clearly possible to demonstrate every manoeuvre and explain every situation covered by the test in this time frame, it takes time for this information to sink in. I could show Mr Holland how to play a guitar riff in thirty seconds, but would he be able to learn it in one minute? How long does it take to learn to play or compose music? How long does it take to learn to draw? You certainly could learn arts at university in one year - but not to the same level. The same is true of the humanities. Arts and humanities degrees are not about learning a set amount of information in the quickest possible time. Students learn new ways of thinking and seeing the world, but it takes time for these ideas to sink in and become fully formed.

Public funding of Higher Education is socially responsible because it removes financial barriers to education and our graduates benefit the whole of society in uncountable ways. If I get run over by a bus, I want the very best doctor to treat me - not the best who could afford to take on the debt or the best who came from a social background where going to university was an option. If I am falsely accused of a crime I want the State to provide me with the very best possible defence lawyer. I want our brightest and best scientists and engineers working on ways to improve our lives. But I also want critical thinkers who can interpret and challenge the so-called fake news and post-Truth climate we live in. I want creative thinkers who can imagine new ways of living in and running the world. I also want new generations to contribute towards new modes of cultural production. There is a cost to sending people to university, but the benefits are far greater. France has a huge tourist industry based on its historic place as a haven for artists. People visit Monet's garden in Giverny and Aix-en-Provence to see where Van Gogh lived and the Mont Sainte-Victoire that Cezanne painted for about fifteen years. Paris is perhaps even famous as the place where great artists such as Dali, Picasso and the Impressionists once lived. All these reasons for France's art economy have nothing to do with the artists' economic success in their lifetime: France did not invest in and foster these artists for a short term payback. All of my examples had their success (or at least their break through) between the turn of the last century up until around the Second World War, but France continues to reap its reward. However, continuing to view this debate in purely economic terms is misguided. We should fund education so that everybody who gains the entry criteria can study if they want to without the fear of being saddled with £50,000 of debt; a debt that will affect the graduate's ability to buy a home, as Student Loan repayments are considered as outgoings on mortgage applications.

Returning to the target of this article, Dominic Holland stated that he had two degrees and a Masters degree - all of which were "a complete waste of time". This is evident in the lack of sophistication of his argument. Holland simply cannot see that his successful career in comedy and television might be, at least in part, due to his formative years at university. Rather than write off arts and humanities Higher Education for future generations, Holland would do better to ask himself why, when he had access to a great library, a network of peers and expert academics in his chosen field, he considers his time to be a waste. Perhaps it is he who wasted his time, or perhaps he needed a lot longer than three years for the information and experience to sink in, develop and become useful to him.

Reflections on a Visit to a Stately Home: We are all in this Together (but Not in the Way You Thought)

I recently visited a stately home, Doddington Hall near Lincoln. Entrance to the gardens and the hall will set you back £10.50. I was lucky enough to have a tour of both.

Doddington Hall

The house was built in the Elizabethan period and has stayed in the same family ever since, although their surnames have changed through marriage. Having never been sold, the house has never been emptied and the guide explained that the house is littered with treasures. One chair was worth £40,000 - the complete set of four is worth much more. The family did not know this until a delegation of antiques experts from Christie's, Sotherby's, Buckingham Palace and the Swedish royal family arrived to investigate what might be lying around. The delegation found four sets of the chairs I refer to, scattered about the mansion. The family did not know how many they had. The same room had chandeliers made our of Venetian Murano glass (surely the most garish and overrated manufacturers of glass in the world). The guide explained that there were some important and expensive paintings, some by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Example of a Sickening Murano Chandelier

It's nice to know that if this family ever falls on hard times the worst they will have to do is sell a chair or two, a garish chandelier, fell a few trees or... if the worst comes to the worst... a Reynolds. Of course, it doesn't need to come to that if you are rich. While we were there we saw two people restoring the families collection of tapestries. Apparently they have already spent over 80,000 hours working on this. I asked who was paying for the restoration work: a charitable grant. I wonder what my chances are of gaining a charitable grant to upholster a sofa or restore some paintings? I won't hold my breath. On the gardens tour we were told that, since this is not a National Trust property, they have fewer restrictions. One garden was reclaimed from agricultural use - that must have been expensive. Not to worry, it was funded by a National Lottery Heritage Grant. Presumably I am entitled to the same fund to redesign my garden, so long as I open it up to the public for £5 a ticket. I won't hold my breath.

Our Painting, by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Later on the tour we saw a portrait of "the man who saved Doddington Hall". We were told that this great man made the "brave decision" to repair the roof when it was leaking in the 1950s. At this time, just after the war, we were losing stately homes like this at a rate of knots. The landed gentry were struggling to keep up with the cost of running such massive buildings - especially since they rarely had jobs. But what is so "brave" about saving your home? It would have been expensive to repair such a big roof, for sure, but you can either afford the repairs, or you lose your house. He couldn't sell the chairs. Remember, the family were ignorant to their value and even their quantity. Did he bravely did into his own pocket? Not exactly. He bequeathed a Reynolds to the nation in return for the funds. That must have been tough - losing a valuable painting... and one that is of a family member too. Not to worry though, the painting remains in Doddington Hall of course. The guide explained that the painting is the reason that we are able to visit the house - because we paid for the roof (and we own the painting). Fair deal, but why then do we still have to pay £10.50 to see it?

In one way or another we have paid for the upkeep of this house, its grounds and its contents, which are still (with the exception of the Reynolds) privately owned. Our taxes, charitable donations, lottery tickets and entrance fees all prop up this millionaire family. My final observations on the tour of the house were two photographs, presumably of Anthony Jarvis (the previous owner of Doddington Hall, who has now passed it to his daughter). In one he was meeting Margaret Thatcher. In the other David Cameron is pouring champagne for him. Under the photographer there is a caption that reads "More Bollinger? Excellent policy Prime Minister". Seeing Mr Cameron again reminded me of his dictum that "we are all in this together". So I see. Indeed we are all in this together, but not in the way that we thought. We, the 99%, have banded together to support the 1%. We are all on the same team.