Media and popular culture glorify and indulge the aberrant personalities of men like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, making them more intriguing for their narcissism and cruelty. This image is a surprising exception.
This photo by Mark Mahaney has become even more prophetic since Cara and I discussed it in October 2023. Initially leading a New Yorker review of Walter Isaacson's Musk biography, it now serves as a haunting preview of Musk's unprecedented influence over American governance.
What started as criticism over Musk's corporate power has evolved into grave concerns about his role in American democracy. His record-breaking $290 million contribution to Trump's campaign, coupled with his DOGE team's unauthorized access to federal systems, has transformed him from a controversial business giant into democracy's most dangerous private citizen.
This image is quite the departure from Mahaney’s other portraits of Musk, including his cover photo for Time Magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year or the boy genius portrait by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on the cover of Isaacson’s biography. Instead of celebrating a visionary, it captured something more disturbing - a man whose psychological instability would come to mirror the axe he is taking to American democracy.
In the video, we explore the photo’s haunting power. The disconnect between body and mind, the predatory features, and the alien-like quality - all speak to both personal and societal madness. Like the disturbed figures in classical paintings, Musk appears simultaneously powerful and unhinged, his mental instability expressed through his racism and love for the wrecking ball. These unsettling parallels reveal a stark reality: our democracy is being actively dismantled by leaders whose delusions and trauma, fueled by hate and thirst for dominance, have unleashed an onslaught of totalitarianism.
Chatting the Pictures is a podcast for pictures. In these 3-4 minute videos, we closely examine essential news photos complemented by related imagery. The videos feature writer and photo historian Cara Finnegan and psychologist and Reading the Pictures publisher Michael Shaw. Liliana Michelena produces CTP. You can see the archive on our legacy website and recent examples on our Instagram feed.
Chatting the Pictures is a feature of Reading the Pictures. Despite our visually saturated culture, we remain among the few sources for analyzing news photography and media images. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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