{"id":83,"date":"2026-05-27T10:43:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:43:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:43:35","slug":"elon-musk-is-losing-the-culture-war-he-just-doesnt-know-it-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk is losing the culture war \u2014 he just doesn\u2019t know it yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Elon Musk has been busy: SpaceX filed for a blockbuster IPO. On Monday, a U.S. jury dismissed his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. And last Wednesday, he accompanied President Donald Trump, and an entourage of tech moguls, to China for an elaborate state visit.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s anti-nap manifesto comes back to haunt him<\/a><\/p>\n

And yet, the richest man in the world spent much of the past week heckling a movie he hasn\u2019t seen yet, directed by one of Hollywood\u2019s most successful and celebrated directors, and starring a small army of A-list actors, including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Tom Holland, and Jonathan Bernthal. He seemed especially angry that a woman of color was cast in two roles.<\/p>\n

In a just-dropped Time Magazine interview, director Christopher Nolan confirmed that Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong\u2019o is playing two iconic roles in his $250 million adaptation of the Greek myth \u201cThe Odyssey.\u201d In the ancient poet Homer\u2019s epic \u201cThe Iliad,\u201d which precedes \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d the Trojan prince Paris abducts Helen, wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, sparking a 10-year war with Greece that ends in tragedy.\u00a0 Nyong\u2019o will portray Helen, \u201cthe face that launched 1,000 ships,\u201d as well as Helen\u2019s sister, the murderous Clytemnestra.<\/p>\n

Musk quickly took to X to voice his displeasure with this casting choice: \u201cChris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award.\u201d Never mind the fact that the Academy\u2019s eligibility criteria have nothing to do with casting. <\/p>\n

Musk also reposted conservative commentator Matt Walsh, who wrote, \u201cNot one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong\u2019o is \u2018the most beautiful woman in the world.\u2019 But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called a racist if he gave the \u2018most beautiful woman\u2019 role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nolan\u2019s casting of Zendaya as Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and rap superstar Travis Scott as a bard has also angered Musk toadies and assorted online bots. The trans actor Elliot Page was also cast, causing some hysterical right-wingers to (apparently incorrectly) suggest the actor is playing the great Greek warrior Achilles, slain by the Trojans, and who Odysseus briefly meets in the afterlife. Musk\u2019s minions are so desperate for engagement that they have to work themselves into a lather over mere speculation.<\/p>\n

All of this points to a clear conclusion. Elon Musk is losing the culture war; he just doesn\u2019t know it yet. His whiny, white grievance and anti-DEI posts are becoming predictable. Boring. Viral filler. He has an enormous platform, but his messages are increasingly small-minded.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s one-man battle against \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is another symptom of his waning influence on the world outside the hothouse of X; his Cybertrucks aren\u2019t selling, Grok, his AI product, is lagging behind rivals, and the man can\u2019t decide whether Trump is his bestie.<\/p>\n

Another sign that he\u2019s losing his grip: Musk took a break from insulting Nolan and Nyong\u2019o to petulantly criticize the series finale of Amazon Prime\u2019s hit superhero parody \u201cThe Boys,\u201d which he called \u201cpathetic\u201d for killing off the show\u2019s MAGA-coded villain, Homelander, but not before he murders a parody of the billionaire. Musk admitted he hadn\u2019t actually watched<\/em> the show, though. He\u2019s just sitting in one of his mansions angrily scrolling, and getting bent out of shape.<\/p>\n

At least \u201cThe Boys\u201d showrunner seems to be to having fun sparring with an increasingly humorless Musk on X.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s tariff relief money to farmers is duct tape on a broken pipe<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the two people Musk is targeting in his crusade against \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d also seem to be taking his harassment in stride. Nolan hasn\u2019t commented. But Nyong\u2019o did chime in. \u201cOur cast is representative of the world,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk frequently posts bigoted opinions to X, which is his prerogative, I suppose. He owns that dumpster fire. But his current attempts to shame Nolan and suggest that the director, whose action and sci-fi movies are beloved by dudes, is indulging in nontraditional casting to win another Oscar feel transparently pitiful.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When it was first rumored that Nyong\u2019o had been cast as Helen back in January of this year, furious users on X called it an \u201cinsult\u201d to Homer. Musk later posted that \u201cChris Nolan has lost his integrity.\u201d This underlying thesis is not only racist, but it\u2019s also so ignorant that I wonder if Musk can tell the difference anymore between what is real and what is make-believe.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an expert in ancient history, but I\u2019m pretty sure \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is fictional. There is no such thing as a man-eating Cyclops. And like all classic literature, Homer\u2019s works are open to interpretation.<\/p>\n

Another of the arguments against Nyong\u2019o\u2019s casting is that it isn\u2019t historically accurate, never mind that both African and Middle Eastern countries border the Mediterranean. These critics seem to think the ancient Greeks really looked like ripped Scottish hunk Gerard Butler in director Zack Snyder\u2019s cartoonish Spartan action film \u201c300.\u201d<\/p>\n

You want realism? Helen of Troy\u2019s father is Zeus, the god of thunder. Zeus, who transformed into animals and seduced mortals. What are we doing here?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite Musk\u2019s musings, \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is already the most buzzed-about movie of the summer. The 70mm IMAX screenings are a hot ticket: opening weekend sold out within minutes of going on sale 12 months in advance. This isn\u2019t surprising. Nolan remains one of the entertainment industry\u2019s most dependable and respected directors of blockbusters, from 2023\u2019s Oscar-winning historical phenomenon \u201cOppenheimer\u201d to his formidable Batman trilogy to 2014\u2019s emotional space opera \u201cInterstellar.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also a director who has never worn his personal politics on his sleeve, although many of his movies have what could fairly be called conservative vibes. In 2012\u2019s \u201cThe Dark Knight Rises,\u201d for example, a billionaire puts down a populist revolution led by a cross between Darth Vader and a communist guerrilla.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everything I know about \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d I learned in high school. I guess I was lucky enough to have an English teacher who knew this epic was full of action and romance, so he always emphasized the good parts. But while Musk might not want to admit it, at its core, \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is really an anti-war story about the ultimate wife guy on an endless, dangerous road trip back home. Through his hero\u2019s journey, Homer teaches that smarts and grit matter more than brute strength. \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is a 2600-year-old message passed from storyteller to storyteller about what really matters in life. It\u2019s a message a man like Musk could learn from \u2014\u00a0if he\u2019d only stop whining long enough to listen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Indiana Republicans refused to be put in a gerrymandered box<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musk\u2019s one-man battle against \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is another symptom of his waning influence on the world outside the hothouse of X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nElon Musk is losing the culture war \u2014 he just doesn\u2019t know it yet - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=83\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elon Musk is losing the culture war \u2014 he just doesn\u2019t know it yet - 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