Abroad - Do-It-Yourself Culture Thrives Despite Globalism - NYTimes.com

Abroad - Do-It-Yourself Culture Thrives Despite Globalism - NYTimes.com: "Generally speaking, culture operates within the mainstreams of power. The myth of an avant-garde serves the same market forces avant-gardism pretends to overthrow. Art may challenge authority; and popular culture (this includes clownish demagogues like Glenn Beck) sometimes makes trouble for those in charge, the way Thomas Nast’s cartoons did for Boss Tweed in Tammany Hall. But art doesn’t actually overthrow anything except itself, and never has, not in 19th-century France or 20th-century Russia or 21st-century China or Iran."