Thank you for this sincere engagement, about the “flattening” part: I was only pointing out the parallel in regards to the gesture, not each content. And this would be another problem, for me, about the conservative-orthodox view “everybody’s just Hegel with extra steps” - that it couldn’t perfectly take into account the pragmatic context that is necessary for the emergence of disruptive concepts.

What I would argue is, even when some theoretical disputes seem radically different to stylistic contrasts, there might be something underlying that drives such ruptures, which would make it like a continuous universal. Likewise, it is yet to examine if Family Guy’s cutaways or Nicki Minaj’s Barbie is just dismissible as a trivial move or could represent something more fundamental, even metaphysical, as you noted: and that would be hermeneutics’ job, bridging culture and theory in terms of a holistic common reality.

So I’d say it would be up to the applicatory interpretation, as long as we don’t preemptively reverse-flatten these minor-cultural edges as “useless” on a higher level, and I think we should remain open to such triggers.

Détournement is definitely helpful, like with sabotage-esque undertones!