Reactions to the Victoriental issue of the Gatehouse Gazette have been pretty fierce in the wake of its release earlier this month. The opinions of those provoked by it may best be summarized by Ay-leen who noted that using the phrase “Victorientalism” to imply a “positive, transcultural blend” of cultures is “misguided.” Others have been less nuanced in their renunciations of our supposed position.

To understand the indignation, part of the issue’s editorial deserves reiteration. In it, I opined that steampunk allows the “incorrigible aficionados of Oriental romance [...] to reject the chains of reality and all the racism and guilt” associated with the imperial experience. Indeed, I asked, “Isn’t this, after all, steampunk’s very premise? To delve into a past that never really was.”

The concept of “Victorientalism” is only part steampunk however; it borrows heavily from nineteenth century Orientalism—the full spectrum of art, literature and academic studies of “the East” as perpetrated by Westerners during the heydays of empire.

Modern day scholars of area studies are forever indebted, and forever haunted, by the condemnations of Edward Said who wrote Orientalism in 1978 as a passionate charge against what he described as the invariably racist attitude of Westerns toward the people who formerly inhabited their colonies. According to Said, nineteenth and early twentieth century artists, authors as well as historians and researchers shared a paradigm that stressed Western superiority and engendered all of Asia as the unequivocal representation of otherness. Every European therefore, blasted Said, “in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.“

In a review of Robert Irwin’s For Lust of Knowing (published in the United States as Dangerous Knowledge, 2006), American scholar Martin Seth Kramer described how Said set out to substantiate his indictment. He “cherry-picked evidence,” said Kramer, “ignored whatever contradicted his thesis, and filled the gaps with conspiracy theories.” Irwin’s work, on the other hand, provides a much more complete, and a much more neutral study. Orientalism may be premised on a terribly flawed approach, and many past Orientalist studies may lack terribly in both facts and analysis, but the concept is not steeped in bigotry, nor was its purpose ever to facilitate the colonial subjugation of non-Western peoples. Irwin amply, indeed, exhaustively, proves the sincerity of nineteenth century Orientalists and how much they were smitten with the East and its cultures. Many of them failed at impartial study, but they were no Great White Hunters.

Jaymee Goh makes a good point when she determines that Orientalism is “really about what Europe thinks about the East,” which means; “it’s all about Europe, not about Asia.” This is precisely so and it is from this perspective that part of Issue #11 of the Gatehouse Gazette was written: to redeem, if only for a moment, if only in the space between our computer screens and our imagination, the inaccurate, the imperfect and the improper but the oh so romantic and beguiling fantasy that was Asia before we actually knew it.

Is this disdainful and snobbish and patronizing? Perhaps. But then, isn’t all of steampunk? We blissfully reminiscence about imperial grandeur, shuffling aside the slavery, the segregation, the tyranny and the bloodshed that were also part of it. We are only too willing to recreate, in our writings and in our costuming, the tastes and sensibilities of the Victorian upper class, ignoring, very often, the misery of the poor and the desolation of the oppressed. Is it obnoxious? Probably. Is it offensive? No. Because steampunk is fiction, not research.

As much as the average steampunk enthusiast doesn’t pretend to fully nor faithfully reconstruct the past, Victorientalism makes no claim at objective study of Asian cultures. Ay-leen believes that there would be no problem, “if the political and social effects of Orientalism were dead and gone,” but should we feel embarrassed for telling certain stories and enjoying a distorted nostalgia because there are still plenty of xenophobic imbeciles out there who might think we’re serious? Surely not!

Welcome back, true believers! Did you read the latest Gatehouse Gazette yet? The writing is spot on, and I truly believe this to be the strongest issue yet.

When you’re finished reading it, there’s more to check out at Dieselpunks. We don’t have a printed piece (although we should for prosperity’s sake), but we do have our finger on the pulse of the dieselpunk movement.

The big celebration this week was in honor of musician and future world emperor Doctor Steel. March 4 was Toy Soldiers Day (March Forth... get it?) and we spotlighted some of the good Doctor’s music, as well as some of his inspirational roots in 1920s Jazz. We hope you get a chance to listen to Dr Steel, because it’s loads of fun and his art style is iconic dieselpunk.

To recoup from the party, a ton of our members must have hit the couch because I got buried in movie suggestions. Larry tossed in his two cents on Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and the WWI flying ace flick Flyboys; and Scott wants people to watch Zorro Rides Again now that it’s in the public domain. Me? I’m checking out Two Fisted Tuesdays with Philip Marlowe and this week’s episode of Sherlock Holmes.

Those that weren’t in front of the tube were hitting the (virtual) library instead. We received news on a treasure trove of WWII era comic books, the upcoming steampunk Iron Man artwork from Marvel, and the completion of the Popular Science Library at Google Books. If you haven’t heard about that last piece yet, Popular Science just completed uploading every issue of their long-running magazine series, and it’s all for free via books.google.com. That’s hundreds of issues stretching back to 1926 complete with classic articles and even the original ads from yester year.

Lord K has been busy reporting from the front as always. His articles this week included a history of the Canon camera, a photographic essay on Italian sports cars of the diesel era, and a thoughtful look back on the 74th anniversary of the Hindenburg explosion.

Thanks for tuning in! We’ll be back again next week with more action, more adventure, and even more Dieselpunks!

For many centuries, the interaction between East and West has been a fabulous dwell for art and storytelling. From the days of medieval merchantmen to the era of the great white hunters of imperialism, to our modern day fascination with Japanese cyberculture and the much debated rise of China, the East has lingered in Westerners’ minds as an irreplaceable image of otherness.

Unlike our present day of interconnectedness, globalization and what-not, up until the nineteenth century, the Orient was very much a place of mystery, inhabited by people alien to Europeans’ experience, an exotic, cruel, and barbaric refuge for Western imagination. Critics of Orientalism have done much to cast shame upon our often patronizing and bizarre representations of Eastern life and tradition, but fortunately for those incorrigible aficionados of Oriental romance, steampunk allows us to reject the chains of reality and all the racism and guilt associated with it, to explore anew this imagined world of sultans and saber-rattling Islamic conquerors; harems and white slavery; samurai, dragons and dark, bustling bazaars frequented by the strangest sort of folk. Isn’t this, after all, steampunk’s very premise? To delve into a past that never really was. The Orientalists’ world may never have existed but its history is so powerful that up to this very, Westerners are smitten with it. With this issue, the Gatehouse Gazette is no exception.

As the yet undiscovered realms of Asia are so vastly different, so Victoriental steampunk must differ depending on where it takes place. The deserts of Arabia and the forbidden mountain ranges of Afghanistan may evoke visions of ancient citadels and fata morgana and deserted monasteries atop barren peaks; the jungles of India and Indochina invite adventurers to search for booby trapped remnants of lost civilizations while temples and palaces of spectacular wealth loom beyond, in the lands of Cathay.

In this issue, we, too, travel throughout all of the Eastern World, from Meiji Era Japan to Colonial India to Chinese magic in nineteenth century London.

There is non-Victoriental content on offer as well however, including an interview with Hugh Ashton, author of Beneath Gray Skies, an alternate history novel that is reviewed in this issue. There are your regular columns and a contribution from Sir Arthur Weirdy-Beardy, our correspondent in London.

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