Cultural absorption neutralizes even the most extreme cultural protest

Evidence

And finally to mention a third example, it is all too evident in 1972, a few short years after the much ballyhooed birth of an alleged counterculture, that the new infant, if not strangled in the crib, has proved easily domesticated in the ways of its elders. Here too the mechanisms of absorption and cooptation have shown themselves to be enormously effective. … One response has been an ever more frantic flight into cultural extremism, a desire to shock and provoke by going beyond what had previously been the limits of cultural tolerance. These limits, however, have demonstrated an elasticity far greater than anticipated, as yesterday’s obscenities are frequently transformed into today’s bromides. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 72

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Spiritual and countercultural protest gets absorbed harmlessly by the system; Spiritual and bohemian protest is absorbed as harmless ceremony by system — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 137; Genuine critical gatekeeping cultivates rather than restricts cultural vitality — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 863 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Spiritual and countercultural protest gets absorbed harmlessly by the system #corroborates (0.95)
• Resistance to the culture industry is absorbed as diversification within it. #corroborates (0.95) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 873
• Spiritual and bohemian protest is absorbed as harmless ceremony by system #corroborates (0.92) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 137
• Genuine critical gatekeeping cultivates rather than restricts cultural vitality #complicates (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 863