Tevun-Krus #5 - DecoPunk

Twists and Turns

Twists and Turns: Navigating the opposing forces of decopunk

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Let me be the first to say that I am as unfamiliar with decopunk as the rest of the Ooorah crew. Honestly, probably even more so considering I am not a comic book enthusiast (Superman), nor a hard-scifi fan (Fallout). I am much more likely to be caught watching The West Wing than Star Trek, Once Upon a Time than anything on the SyFy channel. 

Calm yourselves. My dvd library is packed with the new Star Trek movies, the original Star Wars, and my shelves are teaming with urban fantasies, classic science fiction, and space thrillers. Just none, I repeat, none of it happens to be Decopunk.

But this little, tiny subgenre still stirs something inside of me. I may not be able to tell you the premise of any of the works listed above, but the string that connects my interests to this month's subgenre of Decopunk is the element that makes it shiny and new. 

"The finishes?" you ask. "All the sparkly things? Chrome? Flappers? Sequins and champagne?" 

Well no, actually. 

The people.

And I know nothing if I do not know something about people (two degrees and a life time of experience. You're welcome?). 

Everything that I have read over the pas four to six weeks concerning decopunk has declared that it is a utopian subgenre--that it is much more likely that the plot and the people in the story are doing great, rich, dancing in opulence leaving waves of sparkles and chrome in their wake. 

My first thought is a shallow, 'Well, that's cool" (ha); but this side of heaven, I (we) know that type of world-wide perfection doesn't exist. 

Think back to Superman-- 

Everything is in its place, a pristine environment down to the people's smiles (anyone ever seen Christopher Reeve's teeth? Beautiful.). But a utopian world, especially in a storyline, is just BEGGING for conflict. 

Isn't that the very opposite of the perfection of decopunk? 

Nay, it is the essence of it, I think. 

Let me explain. 

In Superman, the world keeps on ticking in it's Plesantville-type-way, but what about when Metallo enters the picture? He honestly doesn't give two flips about the way things are done. 

The goal of decopunk seems to be to stay as close to the equilibrium as possible. 

Decopunk stories seem to sweep the problem at hand as far in the corner as possible. Superman takes Metallo down, but he does so in the most tasteful way possible, as much out of the public eye as he can oblige. It's this idea that if we don't see the problem, don't acknowledge that it is there, then we can go on pretending that it isn't. 

Decopunk is what we wish our lives were: perfect, shiny places where the issues were pushed aside and handled successfully in a quiet, approved manner. 

Doesn't this make you think? What have these people gone through to make them feel as though their social script is made up of nothing but prim and proper purpose? It makes me think of the city of Camazotz in a Wrinkle in Time: everyone the same, all deviations from the norm brutally whipped back into shape at the CENTRAL Central Intelligence Headquarters by IT. The thing is, we know perfection may be the goal, but it is definitely not our everyday lives. The very definition of decopunk is shattered by the very characters that make up its stories. 

But if you look at it from a writer's perspective, such grave conflict dropped into such a stable situation could yield one heck of a story. 

Hmm... maybe I will go drop a bomb on Pleasantville. See what happens.