Musk’s Use Of Visible Imagery Tells Us A Lot About The Man

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk loves popular culture. He’s continually drawing upon allusions and visible imagery to influence his 228 million social media followers and the general public at giant that futurism is all. It’s clear that Musk’s merging of widespread tradition with enterprise resonates with audiences.

If you happen to assume such popular culture references are innocent, although, rethink his puerile method to speaking as a solution to reimpose historic financial circumstances from a colonialist, imperialist previous. May his love of fantasy and his purported appeals to avoid wasting humanity truly be intertwined with a dystopian, winner-take-all type of excessive capitalism?

Sure, Musk has nearly single-handedly pushed the world to transition from fossil fuel-powered automobiles to electrical automobiles. Then once more, he has constructed his core model whereas masking his antipathy for democratic discourse. His Orwellian language seeks to dismantle public protections. His promotion of right-wing authoritarianism has had devastating ripple results across the globe.

There are such a lot of examples of ways in which Musk has wielded popular culture, largely by visible imagery, to influence naysayers. Let’s verify some out and attempt to uncover some meanings behind his messaging.

A Homage to Pop Tradition, Musk Fashion

The ‘something goes’ nature of parody. Tesla’s 2015 P85D Mannequin S had an improve choice to entry Ludicrous Mode, which allowed the automobiles to go from 0 to 60 in simply 2.8 seconds. That identify is from Mel Brook’s (1987) Spaceballs, which parodies the unique Star Wars trilogy, Star Trek, Alien, The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Area Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, and Transformers.

It’s outta this world. In 2018 a Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Kennedy Area Middle in Florida with Musk’s Roadster on board. On the wheel of the electrical automobile, a model nicknamed “Starman” sat upright as a tribute to David Bowie. A dashboard display screen flashed, “Don’t panic!” as homage to British novelist Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy collection. The genesis of the stunt was the animated (1981) Heavy Steel, which featured a convertible cruising by interstellar house. Musk’s ardour for science fiction has roots in Isaac Asimov’s Basis, which tells the story of the autumn after which the resurrection of a civilization. That textual content, in flip, was drawn from Edward Gibbon ‘s (1776) The Historical past of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Don’t do as I say. As a result of allusions to Blade Runner 2049, Alcon Leisure, the movie’s manufacturing firm, sued Musk, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Tesla over components in a 2024 self-driving “Cybercab” advertising and marketing marketing campaign.

Intertwining Historical past and Politics: Musk’s Visible Imagery

In Greece, smart males communicate and fools determine. “Astra inclinant, sed non obligant,” Musk muttered on X, invoking the heroism of historical Greek warriors however deliberately forgoing the interpretation to English. “The celebs incline, however they don’t bind.” As Bond and Wong write on Hyperallergic, Musk likes to reference the Roman Empire. His model of neoliberal absolutism and its social media iconography “has roots within the work of Twentieth-century European fascists, who have been themselves fixated on Historical Rome.” Army custom can function a method of reinforcing a conservative building of masculinity.

Hazard, hazard, Will Robinson! Musk revealed on a latest convention name that 80% of Tesla’s valuation shifting ahead will probably be attributed to its Optimus humanoid robots. Then he used the time period “military” to reference this futuristic imaginative and prescient; did the assertion have a literal or a figurative which means? Was the reference merely a type of self-preservation at a time by which Musk is vying for the most important pay bundle in historical past? Or, as Amsterdam-based design researcher Tamar Shafrir wonders, “Within the case of Elon Musk, will we wish to collapse the gap between those that could make clever machines and people who determine what they’re used for?”

Like different applied sciences, AI is a double-edged sword. Musk’s synthetic intelligence agency, xAI, noticed its flagship chatbot Grok declare itself a super-Nazi, referring to itself as “MechaHitler.” As Blake Montgomery reported on the Guardian, it made racist, sexist, and antisemitic posts, which the corporate deleted. Musk has skilled his “un-woke” AI bot, Grok, on texts that turned it right into a Nazi. This strategy of utilizing selective texts for AI coaching creates an echo chamber of omission and prejudice.

I can’t be mistaken — what I say and do is historic. Musk’s heil hand gesture throughout a speech on US President Donald Trump’s inauguration day was celebrated by right-wing extremists, whereas others who have been morally disengaged excused Musk’s motion because the product of a socially awkward individual. “The ‘everyone seems to be Hitler’ assault is sooo drained,” Musk posted on X a number of hours after he left the stage. Shortly after the Nazis got here to energy, the heil salute grew to become the official German type of greeting and shortly unfold to public occasions. By 1934, those that refused to carry out the salute might be topic to intimidation fines and even imprisoned in focus camps. Even the font on one in all Musk’s MAGA caps has been in contrast with Nazi typography or “blackletter.”

As classicist Simon Goldhill observes, “Custom not solely presents the previous as self-evident however brings with it a set of normative claims about worth, standing and belonging. Custom is how cultural ideology writes its historical past.”

Musk’s Center Earth — Not So Centrist

JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels have change into a supply of Musk’s allusions — these implicit references to literature, historical past, or popular culture that comprise shared social meanings. A philologist, specializing within the examine of language and literature, Tolkien’s trilogy and his related works — which offered tens of millions of copies — describes a world in fixed battle because of highly effective leaders who’re corrupted by rings of energy.

Tolkien’s vivid imagery world is stuffed with archetypes of excellent and evil. Nonetheless, it’s seemingly Tolkien is popping in his grave as Musk attracts upon dwarves and dragons, trolls, and tiny folks to affirm his right-wing, grasping world view. “These of us who love what Tolkien actually stood for despair on the misuse and misunderstanding of his works by people who solely appear to have given them a floor studying,” says Janet Croft, editor of the peer-reviewed journal Mythlore. “They change into blind to the deeper ethical points and implications of his life-long venture.”

In assist of anti-immigration insurance policies, Musk rationalized, “The hobbits have been in a position to dwell their lives in peace and tranquility, however solely as a result of they have been protected by the arduous males of Gondor.”

As John Semley writes on Wired, “Loads of Musk’s reply guys identified that his publish propagated a complete misreading of the novel.” As an alternative, a extra genuine studying of the Tolkien trilogy provides hobbits ascendance because of their “humility and noble earnest virtues,” Semley clarifies. “Not as a result of they’d robust man warriors operating protection for them.”

Robin Anne Reid, editor of the Research in Tolkien scholarly volumes, says she and different lecturers who examine Tolkien “have been horrified by the appropriation of his work by the alt-right and the Silicon Valley technocrats.”

After all, tradition battle appropriations of Center Earth have been round so long as Tolkien himself. Like many archetypes , Tolkien’s works have been appropriated throughout a mess of popular culture and political arenas. It’s simply that each utterance from Musk carries a lot weight — we who’ve liked the Tolkien trilogy cringe to think about Musk’s use of our beloved textual content for his personal dastardly functions.