"Devo envisioned American culture evolving in the wrong directions, or devolving: dumbing down, losing individuality, succumbing to corporate imperatives..."

"... and treating people as machines while anesthetizing itself with consumption. Those trends, to put it mildly, have not reversed. 'We were noticing an exponential increase in a certain kind of dysfunction going on. And we labeled it,' said [Gerald] Casale, who is 75.... 'But it was mostly, you know, a smartass college guy being clever. I didn’t really think that we’d go where we went, because de-evolution is real. And this is beyond my worst dystopian nightmare.'"

Writes Jon Pareles, in "Devo’s Future Came True/Half a century after Devo began singing about cultural De-Evolution, the visionary new wave band would have preferred to be wrong" (NYT).

"I called Lena Dunham... She said, 'Oh my gosh, it’s the coolest thing. It’s so subversive. You’re going to be in drag.'"

Said Allison Williams, who plays a character on Dunham's "Girls" and who got cast in the role of Peter Pan. Quoted in "The Cast of ‘Peter Pan Live!’ Knows You Hatewatched ‘The Sound of Music’/Allison Williams, Christopher Walken, and the cast of ‘Peter Pan Live!’ talk about bracing themselves for hate-tweets and our collective PTSD from last year’s ‘Sound of Music.’"

“I have full faith that this will happen.... People will hear the opening strings of music that they know deep, deep down in their heart, and it will make them nostalgic again. And they’ll crumble. And they might get one hate-tweet out really quickly, and then we won’t hear from them for a while—because they’ll have been sucked into the sense memory that hopefully will be Peter Pan.”

Is it "cool" to watch "Peter Pan Live!" on the theory that you are "hate-watching"? Or is the message that it's "cool" — that you're only hate-watching to snark and follow tweets — a device put out there by the network to overcome the defenses of those who really actually want to watch it because deep down somewhere they love the musical "Peter Pan" and they feel like rooting for the earnest efforts of actors performing it live on television but they're afraid it might be uncool? Well, you know, it's not cool to try to be cool or to think about being cool and there's always the old theory that the coolest thing is the straightforward, sincere embrace of something requires disdain from people who are insecure in their sense of personal coolness.

Oh my gosh, it’s the coolest thing. It’s so subversive....

What does "it" refer to?

ADDED: The relevant meaning of "subversive" in the OED is "hat challenges and undermines a conventional idea, form, genre, etc., esp. by using or presenting it in a new or unorthodox way." Example:

2007   Guardian 16 June (Guide Suppl.) 23/3   Enjoying commercial success with herky-jerky pop based on the ideas of Noam Chomsky and Thomas Pynchon,.. Devo were the most subversive band to ever crack the mainstream.