Elon Musk, Roland Barthes, and Saturday Night live
Musk's appearance on SNL was laughable, but not because it was funny
Elon Musk is a hilariously bad comic book villain. There is almost something remarkably uncanny about him, about just how much of a living parody he is. Musk feels like something out of Ayn Rand’s wet dreams, a cheesy villain from a Phillip K Dick novel. The strange thing about obnoxious liberal pundits calling Musk a real life Tony Stark is that it is unfortunately quite accurate. That is, both Stark and Musk are morally bankrupt billionaires, rich at the expense of others, as well as greedy and bloodthirsty sleazebags that would do anything to get a quick buck, or worse, a painfully cringey publicity stunt. Elon Musk is nothing but a charlatan to the highest degree. As much as he and his fans paint himself as the savior of humanity, he is nothing but a con man and a parasite; he is a true symptom of a cultural malaise that plagues our conception of who should be idolized.
Mass media has crafted Elon Musk into this larger than life figure, portraying him as a revolutionary figure, someone who is changing all the industries (for the better apparently), as a visionary, a true prophet for humanity. There is an almost theological nature to the worship of this man. Musk is completely deified, almost to the point where there is no longer a real Musk; rather, the deity of Musk remains, and to put the icing on the whole postmodern cake, Musk embraces this. Musk’s companies do not really produce anything of real value, rather just pump out flashy trash. Elon Musk does not produce anything himself either; he is just a parasite, a parasite that takes credit for the research done by the real scientists and engineers that work 50-60 hours a week, and benefits from the factory workers that slave away in brutal conditions. Ironically, it is constantly written about how hard of a worker Musk is, how Musk puts in “100 hours a week” and even “sleeps on the factory floor. While definitely a load of horseshit, these kinds of remarks are a harmful re enforcing of bourgeois ideology, arguing that you too can be this rich and famous simply by working really hard and putting in many hours! Musk has even publicly endorsed the idea of working 80 hours a week, because, after all--”No one working 40 hours a week changed the world.” Except the point is not to change the world, and it has never been to change the world. Musk should just be open and say “work 80 hours a week to line my pockets.”
In the true fashion of the societies of control we live in, no one is actually forcing anyone to work long hours, or at least not in the ways of the traditional disciplinary society. Rather, there is an ever permeating and coercive culture within Musk’s companies. You do not have to work 60 hours, but if you do not, do you really care about the company? Are you really working your hardest? Musk reinforces it, your co-workers reinforce it, the culture and vibe reinforce it, there really is no choice-- just the illusion of choice. Musk and his deranged fanboys are part of an incessant culture hellbent on the destruction of the labor rights that people in the early 20th century fought and died for. Whether it be unions (which Musk has purposely spread misinformation about), safe working conditions, reasonably length work week (abolish work! But that's a different conversation) etc, Musk and his cult desire of unraveling it all (Once again Spinoza’s question of why men seek their own oppression remains so relevant!).
Musk also maintains a neurotic internet presence. With the power of just one tweet Musk can drastically change the stock value of Tesla. Musk constantly posts the most unbearable reddit tier memes which make any sane person want to gouge their eyeballs out with a rusty spoon. Whether it be some confusing and dreadfully unfunny meme about pronouns (I guess Musk does not have those?) or nonsense tweets about Dogecoin (to the moon!), the insanely eerie, almost hyperreal aspect of the internet is that Musk can tweet about big chungus and then tweet in support of an imperialist coup in Bolivia. Of course, Musk is still the typical capitalist villain: crushing unions, exploiting workers, benefitting from coups, etc., but his public presence is quite different from all the other tech bro assholes. Sure, Musk probably is not any worse of a person than other parasites like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, but they do not act like spoiled toddlers on a daily basis.
Musk is desperately trying to hide the truth-- that he is not really different from the other billionaires with blood on their hands. Approximately two-thirds of the world's cobalt comes from the Congo; Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss mining company, owns the largest plants and hires thousands and thousands of workers within the Congo-- these workers being just children, who are paid dollars for full weeks labour. Close to half a million Tesla cars were made while having a deal with Glencore. Elon Musk is getting incredibly wealthy off of blood cobalt. No matter how goofy or done to earth he tries to be he cannot change this. It’s all a PR stunt, and a painful one at that. As Mark Fisher notes in Capitalist Realism: “In capitalism, that is to say, all that is solid melts into PR, and late capitalism is defined at least as much by this ubiquitous tendency towards PR-production as it is by the imposition of market mechanisms.”
Musk’s whole brand is useless spectacle after useless spectacle. He launched a car into space for no other reason than he could (maybe he just wanted to waste billions of dollars.) He introduced useless products like “not a flamethrower”, $250 bad Tesla brand tequila, and Tesla short shorts. And of course, no one could forget the hilarious unveiling of the cybertruck, which looked like someone brought PS1 graphics into real life. Elon Musk is just another gilded age showman, who can waste boat loads of money for no other reason than he can.
In the first essay in Mythologies, Roland Barthes analyzes the spectacle of professional wrestling. A spectacle of excess, a total theatre production, remnant of that of Ancient Greece, professional wrestling is yet another myth that symbolizes the values we want to see. The wrestlers represent the different virtues that we want to believe in, the wrestling match is the triumph of good over evil we wish to see in real life. Why watch a real court case (and possibly be hit with the realization that “good” does not triumph over “evil”) when we can watch wrestling or crime shows that feed us what we want to see? Elon Musk is the myth of the good guy businessman people want to see: cool, down to earth, likes memes and contemporary culture, visionary, tech bro, true genius, hard worker, etc. We want to see Musk as a different kind of billionaire, not some soul sucking corporate ghoul, but as a true philanthropist who wants to help bring humanity forward. We as a culture want to see Musk as this genius figure, who rose to prominence on the virtue of his genius and hard work (not apartheid emerald mines.)
Musk is the symbolization of the so-called “hustlers mentality”, that is, regardless of your situation you can do anything you want and be anyone you want with enough “hustling” or “grinding.” The hustlers mentality is one of the key myths that continues to help propagate capitalist society and ideology and an essential aspect of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism has a massive emphasis on the individual (as Fisher recognized with his analysis on mental health, under neoliberalism there is a “privatization of stress”, that is, YOU are sick because of YOUR behavior or YOUR brain chemicals, no political, economic or social causations) you are responsible for where you end up in society. Anyone can make it if they just work hard, and should you not make it (like the majority of people unfortunately) it is all your fault. This myth is the core of neoliberal ideology: why give a higher wage, why give welfare or some sort of social safety net, why care about exporting all jobs to poorer countries? Simply work harder, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and be better. There is a really toxic onus placed upon the subject of neoliberal capitalism, that one must simply give up any aspirations of a healthy social life, or a healthy family dynamic! Sacrifice it all for work! Ignore the millions in poverty, tens of thousands dying because they cannot afford healthcare, the millions starving, because Amazon was started in a garage! So you can do it too! Mark Fisher recognizes that the big lie sold to us by neoliberalism was that if you took away everyone's social safety nets they would work harder and produce more. In reality, this just made people anxious and depressed, not more creative. When you strip people of any sense of security they turn all of their creative energy into how they can make enough money just to survive.
Musk also represents the myth of the free market as a solution to everything. Following the rise of neoliberalism with Reagan and Thatcher in the US and UK respectively, they underwent a massive slew of privatization, the deregulation of industries, the slashing of any social safety nets, and the mass export of labour to third world countries. Musk and his brands are the perfect example of the myth that everything would be solved if you just left it to the corporations. Who needs NASA when there is SpaceX, who needs the government to take action on climate change when there is Tesla and SolarCity. Everything from space colonization and interplanetary travel to brain implants (I guess Jameson was really right about capitalism’s colonization of our very unconscious), Elon Musk is the future! Fredric Jameson characterized the cultural significance of the subgenre of cyberpunk as a shared sense of paranoia in the wake of the rising power and monopolization of capital, as well as rapidly increasing technology. Movies like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost In The Shell once served as a warning for where capital was going. These films warned against the dangers of powerful corporations combined with advancing technology and cybernetics. But the things once warned against seem to be lovingly embraced by Musk and his loyal fans. All powerful tech corporations ruling society, cybernetic implants in one’s brain, unrealistic desires for space colonization and advancing humanity “forward”, using technology to make the world better for the rich should all be things people are skeptical towards, not in favor of. Once again, Musk and his crazy desires seem all too characteristic of that of a science fiction villain. Maybe Elon Musk really is our real world Eldon Tyrell.
In Mythologies, Barthes introduces us to the conceptions of “denotation” and “connotation”. The denotation being the surface level meaning of something, while the connotation is the true meaning hiding beneath the surface. In the terminology of Barthes, denotation is a sign consisting of a signifier and signified. Connotation takes that signifier and signified and turns it into a signifier, adding a second signified, a second order meaning so to speak. Barthes gives the example of a propaganda poster with a black soldiers on it. The first order meaninging is simply that France is militaristic and one should be patriotic, but the second order meaning is far more sinister than that. The second order meaning is about France's colonial rule, being a world empire, that all subjects regardless of skin color should bow down to the empire and her flag. Connotation produces the illusion of denotation, which then goes on to justify existing oppression, naturalize institutions as “common sense”, and interpellate ideology to the reader. On the surface level, Musk is a hard working businessman that just wants to help humanity, who just wants to make the world a better place. This denotation hides the true nature of Musk, a greedy, exploitative billionaire who symbolizes much of what is wrong with contemporary postmodern capitalism.
The only thing worse than Musk's wretched personality and criminally unfunny internet presence? His obsessive fans. Musk has a horrid, obsessive, sycophantic horde of unwavering supporters, quick to defend whatever horrible things Musk might say or do, or any blunders that he might have. When Musk slams the heroic diver that saved those boys trapped in a cave in Thailand, calling him a “pedo”, his fans defend his repulsive behavior. People will defend their prophet even though he pushed the false narrative that everything would be safe to open back up again in just a couple weeks during the pandemic (Don’t worry guys! All statistics show it’ll all be over soon!) and decried COVID lockdowns as fascist. When metal and toxic debris from failed SpaceX projects destroy crucial ecosystems for wildlife this is all okay! For he is going to save mankind! No matter how absurd his proposed solutions to problems (many of times whose only solution is the abolition of capitalism) his fans will just label you as a hater for pointing out their ridiculous nature. Once again, Elon Musk is the epitome of Barthes Myth in today's culture.
In his powerful speech on why modern life causes depression, Mark Fisher calls out the real parasites of society-- the ultra wealthy and high earners. The parasites of today's society are not immigrants, or people claiming welfare, rather, the super high earners, getting tax breaks, exploiting labour, and getting rich and powerful whilst contributing nothing. All the people valued and obsessively talked about in society, who we are supposed to admire, are nothing but parasites. Steve Jobs? Simon Cowell? They’re just charlatans and parasites. These people aren’t good at anything besides making money, which Fisher says should be its own reward. In his words: “If thats what you want to devote your life to just fucking do it, but don’t expect us to also admire you….and for you to be the model for everyone else.” If Musk wants nothing else but to make money that’s one thing, but the deification and obsession with him is a new level of absurdity and cultural malaise.
As if the media did not have to prove even harder that they are nothing but a psy-op and that satire is not just dead, but was reanimated just to be killed again, Elon Musk had the “honor” of hosting Saturday Night Live. Parody is dead, long live Pastiche! In his monumental, discipline changing work Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Fredric Jameson introduces us to the conception of pastiche. Pastiche is a blank parody, imitation without any snarkiness or bite to it. Pastiche does not have the underlying critique or parody or anything of that nature that parody has, rather just plain, boring, repetition. For years SNL has succumbed to this aspect of the postmodern condition. Devoid of any real humor, SNL skits are just painful blank parodies. For years SNL has been dreadfully unfunny and nothing but pastiche, but Musk’s antics were a new level of horrendous. Musk had a horrendous skit mimicking “gen z” culture, having ridiculously dressed actors talk in internet slang. Not only was it not funny and showed that anyone involved in that skit has probably never talked to a teen before, it also came under criticism for using a bunch of African American Vernacular English just to laugh at it, following a long history of affluent white people laughing at Black culture. There was another horrible skit about an astronaut on Mars who had to sacrifice himself and Musk jokingly says “I told you people were going to die”, only reinforcing how Musk would be willing to send others to their deaths for his gain. Maybe most painful of them all was Musks skit where he dressed up as wario and spoke in a horrible Italian accent (He couldn’t have been more stereotypical unless he yelled “Ay Tone, want some gabagool.”) Every character, every skit, his shitty monologue, all were just there to praise the genius myth of Musk. Elon Musk’s SNL appearance was yet another painful reminder of just how dead and corporately dominated our culture is. How we’re forced into a painful dominant cultural logic that exists only to maintain the image of capital.