Dieselpunk Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Futurism is an aesthetical movement exalting speed, conflict and the rise of the era of the machine; abandoning anthropocentrism and its idea of the human body as the highest beauty achievable, it celebrates the pinnacle of perfection embodied in those machines that liberate men's existence from its earthly shackles. Human body itself is now seen as a machine.

Futurism is also extremely anticonventional and destructive; it celebrates the beauty of war in its role as world's sole hygiene, exalts madness as in "Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna" and advocates the destruction of museums.

Starting its "official" course in 1909, it will see its visions of irrational annihilation of man through machine realised in "the war to end all wars", where mechanical artefacts offer the only way to escape existence as human mice for the meatgrinder of trench warfare.

Being an Italian movement, Futurism can't resist the call of authoritarianism, as Fascism and its Duce seem more and more the only organised force able to master the masses through masterful use of the new, technological ways of hammering ideas in the skulls of people. Liberty is discredited and the motto "Marciare per non marcire" promotes organised political violence as the only alternative to rotting in the obsolete forms of traditional society.

But when the atomic fungi emerge from the proud cities of Imperial Japan the singers of war are blinded as anybody who stares directly at the face of this new era of of human-made extermination. There are no more heroes to be sung, only rational decisions wether to press a button and cleanse the Earth from civilisation or wait and live another day; the spirit of civilization leaves Europe, now disillusioned and rejecting any positive value, and drives the rise of colonised peoples against their former masters. The era of the dreams of a reckless industrial future is over, the era of pop-dreams emerge.

Advertisement