Living in the Museum Museum

When Desi tells the tale of the "museum museum" we are left with a sense that, as absurd as this might sound, it's no different than the kinds of cultural recycling we are encountering today in movies, music, and fashion. All around us, people with the means to produce new cultural objects are choosing instead to repackage and represent the same old content. Comic books, blogs, and soon Tweets will be recycled into movies (I confess, I loved the Iron Man flick). Fair enough, if it sells, right? Still, at some point we need to leave the museum, step out of the box, and find new ways to build new cultural capital. The means of doing so are all around us (you probably have an HD camcorder somewhere within reach). When Queen Victoria opened up the Crystal Palace in 1851 (photo), she started a century and a half of museum building. At the time it was extraordinary. Now, it's just lame, particularly when you are surrounded by cultural objects directly from the museum museum that has become our cultural engine.
photo URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Palace_-_Queen_Victoria_opens_the_Great_Exhibition.jpg