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Tesla CEO Elon Musk loves pop culture. He’s constantly drawing upon allusions and visual imagery to persuade his 228 million social media followers and the public at large that futurism is all. It’s clear that Musk’s merging of popular culture with business resonates with audiences.
If you think such pop culture references are harmless, though, reconsider his puerile approach to communicating as a way to reimpose historic economic conditions from a colonialist, imperialist past. Could his love of fantasy and his purported appeals to save humanity actually be intertwined with a dystopian, win…
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk loves pop culture. He’s constantly drawing upon allusions and visual imagery to persuade his 228 million social media followers and the public at large that futurism is all. It’s clear that Musk’s merging of popular culture with business resonates with audiences.
If you think such pop culture references are harmless, though, reconsider his puerile approach to communicating as a way to reimpose historic economic conditions from a colonialist, imperialist past. Could his love of fantasy and his purported appeals to save humanity actually be intertwined with a dystopian, winner-take-all form of extreme capitalism?
Yes, Musk has just about single-handedly pushed the world to transition from fossil fuel-powered cars to electric vehicles. Then again, he has built his core brand while masking his antipathy for democratic discourse. His Orwellian language seeks to dismantle public protections. His promotion of right-wing authoritarianism has had devastating ripple effects around the globe.
There are so many examples of ways that Musk has wielded pop culture, largely through visual imagery, to persuade naysayers. Let’s check some out and try to uncover some meanings behind his messaging.
A Homage to Pop Culture, Musk Style
The ‘anything goes’ nature of parody. Tesla’s 2015 P85D Model S had an upgrade option to access Ludicrous Mode, which allowed the cars to go from 0 to 60 in just 2.8 seconds. That name is from Mel Brook’s (1987) Spaceballs, which parodies the original Star Wars trilogy, Star Trek, Alien, The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, and Transformers.
It’s outta this world. In 2018 a Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with Musk’s Roadster on board. At the wheel of the electric vehicle, a mannequin nicknamed “Starman” sat upright as a tribute to David Bowie. A dashboard screen flashed, “Don’t panic!” as homage to British novelist Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. The genesis of the stunt was the animated (1981) *Heavy Metal, *which featured a convertible cruising through interstellar space. Musk’s passion for science fiction has roots in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, which tells the story of the fall and then the resurrection of a civilization. That text, in turn, was drawn from Edward Gibbon ‘s (1776) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Don’t do as I say. Due to allusions to Blade Runner 2049, Alcon Entertainment, the film’s production company, sued Musk, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Tesla over elements in a 2024 self-driving “Cybercab” marketing campaign.
Intertwining History and Politics: Musk’s Visual Imagery
In Greece, wise men speak and fools decide. “Astra inclinant, sed non obligant,” Musk muttered on X, invoking the heroism of ancient Greek warriors but intentionally forgoing the translation to English. “The stars incline, but they do not bind.” As Bond and Wong write on Hyperallergic, Musk loves to reference the Roman Empire. His brand of neoliberal absolutism and its social media iconography “has roots in the work of 20th-century European fascists, who were themselves fixated on Ancient Rome.” Military tradition can serve as a means of reinforcing a conservative construction of masculinity.
Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Musk revealed on a recent conference call that 80% of Tesla’s valuation moving forward will be attributed to its Optimus humanoid robots. Then he used the term “army” to reference this futuristic vision; did the statement have a literal or a figurative meaning? Was the reference merely a form of self-preservation at a time in which Musk is vying for the largest pay package in history? Or, as Amsterdam-based design researcher Tamar Shafrir wonders, “In the case of Elon Musk, do we want to collapse the distance between those who can make intelligent machines and those who decide what they are used for?”
Like other technologies, AI is a double-edged sword. Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, xAI, saw 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 company deleted. Musk has trained his “un-woke” AI bot, Grok, on texts that turned it into a Nazi. This process of using selective texts for AI training creates an echo chamber of omission and prejudice.
I cannot be mistaken — what I say and do is historical. Musk’s heil hand gesture during a speech on US President Donald Trump’s inauguration day was celebrated by right-wing extremists, while others who were morally disengaged excused Musk’s action as the product of a socially awkward person. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” Musk posted on X several hours after he left the stage. Shortly after the Nazis came to power, the heil salute became the official German form of greeting and quickly spread to public events. By 1934, those who refused to perform the salute could be subject to intimidation fines or even imprisoned in concentration camps. Even the font on one of Musk’s MAGA caps has been compared with Nazi typography or “blackletter.”
As classicist Simon Goldhill observes, “Tradition not only presents the past as self-evident but brings with it a set of normative claims about value, status and belonging. Tradition is how cultural ideology writes its history.”
Musk’s Middle Earth — Not So Centrist
JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels have become a source of Musk’s allusions — those implicit references to literature, history, or pop culture that contain shared social meanings. A philologist, specializing in the study of language and literature, Tolkien’s trilogy and his associated works — which sold millions of copies — describes a world in constant conflict due to powerful leaders who are corrupted by rings of power.
Tolkien’s vivid imagery world is full of archetypes of good and evil. However, it’s likely Tolkien is turning in his grave as Musk draws upon dwarves and dragons, trolls and tiny people to affirm his right-wing, greedy world view. “Those of us who love what Tolkien really stood for despair at the misuse and misunderstanding of his works by folks who only seem to have given them a surface reading,” says Janet Croft, editor of the peer-reviewed journal Mythlore. “They become blind to the deeper moral issues and implications of his life-long project.”
In support of anti-immigration policies, Musk [rationalized](http://The hobbits were able to live their lives in peace and tranquility, but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.”), “The hobbits were able to live their lives in peace and tranquility, but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.”
As John Semley writes on Wired, “Plenty of Musk’s reply guys pointed out that his post propagated a total misreading of the novel.” Instead, a more authentic reading of the Tolkien trilogy gives hobbits ascendance due to their “humility and noble earnest virtues,” Semley clarifies. “Not because they had tough guy warriors running defense for them.”
Robin Anne Reid, editor of the Studies in Tolkien scholarly volumes, says she and other academics who study Tolkien “have been horrified by the appropriation of his work by the alt-right and the Silicon Valley technocrats.”
Of course, culture war appropriations of Middle Earth have been around as long as Tolkien himself. Like many archetypes , Tolkien’s works have been appropriated across a multitude of pop culture and political arenas. It’s just that every utterance from Musk carries so much weight — we who have loved the Tolkien trilogy cringe to think of Musk’s use of our beloved text for his own dastardly purposes.
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