The Elon Musk Inside us all
“- What does Tony Stark, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all have in common?
They are all fictional characters.”
That is how Olly Thorne starts his YouTube video titled Elon Musk. The video is not really about the South African “self-made” billionaire, but about how allegedly progressive personalities profit from consumer capitalism and the harm that brings to the causes they appear to defend.
Oliver Thorne has a complex argument to make. He uses the image of Elon Musk to address a problem that is not only faced by multimillion-dollar companies and their CEOs, but leftist youtubers just like him. When an anti-capitalist comes across the possibility to profit from their anti-capitalist content, what should they do?
The first alternative, as Thorne presents in the beginning of the video, is to wash their hands and dive in. What made me choose Oliver Thorne as my speaker for this piece was how he presented that possibility.
He makes a theatrical connection between Pontius Pilate and 21st Century comprehensive designers – synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategists[1] – like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. People who, as Thorne notes, are usually men and profit from the image of antiestablishment figures, while profiting from establishment structures, increasing the vicious cycles of pain they seem to fight against.
Elon Reeve Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. Having previously owned a slice of pay-pal and now the CEO of both Tesla and Space-X as well as having fingers in many other pies, Musk is the 53rd richest person in the world with a net-worth of about 20 billion US dollars.
Pontius Pilatea is a real historical figure that is supposed to have lived at the time of Jesus Christ. He served as prefect of Judaea from A.D 46 to A.D 36. Both he and his wife, Claudia, have both been venerated as saints at one time or another by various orthodox churches though his role in the fictionalized bible story is usually represented by someone who seeks to avoid responsibility for the death of Jesus through the symbolic washing of his hands before giving the death sentence.
Just before he says these words, there is a cut scene of sorts, where Thorne is in what looks like a stage presenting the Roman Empire through a series of slides, as if it was the newest Iphone. He is dressed like Steve Jobs, and as he gets to the end of the presentation, blood drips from his hands amidst thunderous applause. No one seems to notice.
[1] This concept is cited in the video by Thorne both on screen and in the description as originally presented by Turner in “From counterculture to cyberculture”
Figure 1 Olly Thorne in the cut scene from his Elon Musk video
On the next scene, “Olly” continues to make his point, talking head style, as if nothing happened. He contextualizes the birth of the comprehensive designer figure, placing it in 1960’s counterculture, when the new communalist hippie scene started to think about virtual spaces as counter authoritarian ground, and the digital commune became an ideal for both computer developers and seekers of a world free of capitalism. “Gradually, people came to see computers, not as scruffy corporate authority, but as the digital frontier that would set people free”, he notes.
Thorne goes on to discuss the concept of backlash, and how, although it seemed like computers would lead us to a new age, it was a world still structured by profit, marginalized populations and an already privileged minority who greatly benefited from it.
A lot of the physical labor of actually assembling computers was done by undocumented immigrants, women and people of color who didn’t really get a slice of the tecno, shining, utopia that was promised on the box.
He questions the notion of Elon Musk as a self-made man, pointing the incongruencies of him having wealthy parents and technology being an inherently collaborative process – both because people learn from technologies used before and, in Musk’s case, there is a team behind every invention – making it so that Elon Musk can be divided into two: a man and a myth. The nonexplicit question Oliver is addressing in his video is: What solace are we searching for when we collectively build the myth of Elon Musk?
Why Oliver Thornes’ style is different from most political speeches
One might argue that a theatrical YouTube video does not constitute political speech. The traditional political speech is composed of a continuous journey of introduction, argument and conclusion, made with the intend to persuade. Verses and art, for its polysemic character, wouldn’t only disrupt the flow of a speech but because of its complexity, it would not help in trying to convince someone of an argument. In Oliver Thorne’s case, it does.
If we imagine his video in the form of a traditional text it is almost impossible to think of the citations and labor-intensive parables necessary to make the connections Pontius Pilate, Elon Musk, Comprehensive Designer, Capitalism, Youtubers. If one respects the writing tips of most college professors, those comparisons wouldn’t be succinct, and seen through political lenses, it would be highly recommended not to compare Elon Musk with the man who gave Jesus Christ his death sentence. Nonetheless, it works.
I would argue it works because Thorne embraces the video format using it to his advantage, making daring connections with humor and elegance that could not have been done in a traditional podium or in a TED talk. Moreover, he convinces not despite of the theatricality but because of it. The Pilate piece in the middle of his talking head, lecture style video, brings the “certain motion of the soul” described by Aristoteles as the pleasant. One seeks pleasure to avoid pain and Thorne can talk about painful concepts because of the theatrical involvement offered by the cut scenes.
In Wells vs State of Indiana political speech is described as a comment of societal matters and not of individuals. “Where an individual's expression focuses on the conduct of a private party — including the speaker himself or herself – it is not political.”. One could say Oliver made a video about the person Elon Musk and therefore it is not a political speech, but Thorne starts from Elon Musk and transitions into a societal matter almost seamlessly. He gathers from multiple references, both factual and fiction, mythological and academic, to be able to transition through complex topics in a logical manner but to also make it bearable for his audience. The colorful cut scenes, or the purple light and sexy saxophone that comes on when he is making a point on flirting, directly contrast with the white background and supporting text that appears when he is citing authors that help him make his point.
The construction of his persona help him make those transitions smoothly. His ethos is mostly one of professorial authority, a talking head that cites Slavoj Zizek and emits enough power that the audience does not dismisses him when he applies the Dialectic of Enlightenment to contemporary scenarios:
Nowadays, capitalism sells us symbols of anti-capitalist resistance. Because as long as we are consuming those symbols, wearing the Che Guevara, watching the movie where the bad guy is an evil corporation, praising wealth hoarders for their generosity or praising people who are where they are because of their workers as people who did it alone… as long as evolution is sold as revolution, the substantive break with everything that has come before is delayed. That doesn’t mean that those movies, artwork or even Teslas aren’t great fun. But it does mean that the Tech Daddy isn’t a figure of counterculture, he is an advertising mascot for backlash.
On the other corner of his ethos resides a playful kind of transformist, which allows him to make the Pilate piece, without having to cite all sources that allow him to rationally make that comparison. It is a ludic intervention, but the persona Olly Thorne has developed online allows for both and they complete each other. They give him the authority to talk about philosophy, but the magnetism to keep us watching without causing outrage or boredom.
Figure 2 Some of Oliver Thorne's characters in Philosophy Tube
Why Oliver Thornes’ style is different from most political speeches
In most political content on YouTube, the professorial ethos leads the ride, trying to be impermeable to criticism and questions. The discourse is monosemic and it feels like embarking on a propaganda and not a journey of curiosity, wonder and grief over a certain theme.
The triumph of Philosophy Tube consists on presenting a solid argument without the handcuffs of academic stiffness or the eye-rolling, screaming, pattern of angriness and closed speech encountered when controversial topics are being discussed on the YouTube platform. Individuals with channels like Thorne’s often find themselves in a terrible position: either they cave in to a boring but sound complete classroom-like discourse or they appeal to a borderline propagandistic speech. Often, those appear to be the only way to be on the internet, in a place where vulnerability is clear and rare are the defense mechanisms against the public’s scrutiny.
Thorne does what a video allows one to do. Journey through space and time, creating connections. He is allowed to do so successfully by his ethos as actor and professor, the pathos offered by a man – whom later we see– is tormented by the blood on his hands and the logos of a consistent path that goes from the myth of Elon Musk to the ideology of Liberal Communism [1] so many people adhere to without noticing its harm.
Finally, one might ask: “Ok. But did the speech worked?”. A traditional political speech can be measured by thunderous applause, or one might argue, likes. Although worth noticing that the video has over 600 thousand views (as of 10/06/2019), it is more compelling to ask, before declaring victory: who is this video for?
At the end, Oliver Thorne leaves us with a question:
“is the same process of counterculture into backlash happening to us? To YouTube? To leftist Youtube, in particular?”
The argument made over the origins and prevalence of liberal communism and how artists like Thorne can easily fall into those traps does not offer easy answers. The video Elon Musk is mostly a reminder to stay vigilant on how one contributes to a system of oppression. It is directed to anyone interested in discussing a way out of capitalism, but mostly, taking into consideration the final question, it is directed at the thousands of Youtubers who share Thorne’s worldview and now face the dilemma on how to profit from their internet success.
In the comment section, YouTuber and bestselling author Hank Green makes a humorous response to how nervous the video made him. That could be, even more than the views or likes, a sign of success to the speech. A visceral response to Thorne’s point and the truth it carries with it. To quote Aristotle once more: “things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites” (p.6). Because of Thorne’s clever use of ethos and the possibilities offered by the YouTube format, the questions asked had a greater impact on the viewers than if he had approached us with ready-made answers.
His unique ethos, ludic interventions and his combination of classroom and theatre take an advantage of the YouTube format, but also, through its techniques, promotes the advantages of the platform. Differently from other sources, collaborative platforms have the advantage of proposing solutions, criticizing itself and collectively discussing its path. Although the idea of a digital utopia is obviously a fallacy, the idea of videocracy, as an agora of debate and provocative discussions, can happen in specific settings such as an Oliver Thorne’s video. Instead of an invitation to a screaming match, a speech like his seem to want to provoke conversations, even if in the small universe of leftist YouTube. If that was the goal, it has been met.
Sources:
Allocca, Kevin. Videocracy: How YouTube is changing the world… with rainbows, singing foxes and other trends we can’t stop watching. London: Bloomsburry. 2018.
Turner, From Counterculture to cyberculture.
Wells v. State, 848 NE 2d 1133 (2006)
ZIZEK, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology (Essential Zizek). New York: Verso. 2008.
[1] Thorne brings the oxymoron coined by philosopher Slavoj Zizek Liberal Communist as a way of portraying the actions of individuals who contribute to capitalism, but disavowal it (like Bill Gates, who has a huge industry but contribute millions of dollars to charity. In Zizek’s words: (p.17) “So their goal is not to earn money, but to change the world, and if this makes them more money as a by-product, who’s to complain? … The catch, of course, is that in order to give, first you have to take — or, as some would put it, create.”