The avant-garde is absorbed and neutralized as entertainment by advanced industrial society

Evidence

The efforts to recapture the Great Refusal in the language of literature suffer the fate of being absorbed by what they refute. As modern classics, the avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will. This absorption is justified by technical progress; the refusal is refuted by the alleviation of misery in the advanced industrial society. The liquidation of high culture is a byproduct of the conquest of nature, and of the progressing conquest of scarcity. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 319

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the absorption of counterculture by consumer capitalism; connects to attention-economy co-optation of critique. — connects to: Technology’s unification of all arts will expose the identity behind industrial culture; The avant-garde sought to dissolve art into life praxis, not integrate art into it; The avant-garde attacked art’s institutional status, not merely artistic styles — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 233 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Avant-garde culture thrives where administration has not fully taken hold #qualifies (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 166
• Avant-garde events explicitly rejected entertainment as their purpose #contradicts (0.80) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 187
• Avant-garde form compels even critical content to endorse the counterculture. #expands (0.80) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1247
• Avant-garde theater concepts reached mass audiences through political street action #complicates (0.70) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 2038