The Films of Celine Sciamma: Petite Maman

            The fifth film in my analysis of The films of Celine Sciamma is the childhood fable, Petite Maman. Sciamma shows complete command of the medium as she unfolds a fantasy about coping with grief, the human fallibility of our parents, and the importance of cultivating relationships based on equal power and authority. This short paper will look at the creative wake after Sciamma’s previous film:  Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the impact of COVID-19 on the development of this story of familial friendship between mother and daughter; before subsequently breaking down and applying the specific Sociological idea of Socialization, and the rites of passage experienced through one’s family and peer groups; social mechanisms which shape our understanding of the world and help us foster a sense of self-identity that carries us through into adulthood.

 

PLOT

            After the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother’s childhood home to remove her grandmother’s belongings and settle affairs. The morning after their arrival, Nelly’s mother abruptly vanishes leaving her father in charge. That same day, as she is walking in the woods, Nelly comes upon a young girl named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) who is building a fort between a small grove of trees. Nelly quickly deduces Marion to be her mother’s 8-year-old self.  Over the next three days, both girls have interactions and adventures in the past and present. Through these adventures they grow closer, learning about and from one another, until the magic that brought them together dissipates, returning to their own time; happy, accepting, and more contemplative.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            The two most significant historical events that impacted the expression, interpretation and craft of Petite Maman were the COVID-19 pandemic, its lockdown, and the dissipation of the acclaim and success of Sciamma’s previous venture. The combination of the critical financial and populist wave for Portrait climaxing at the end of the award season circuit, and immediately after, the world transitioning into lockdown due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, for Sciamma, was the creative equivalent of a high-speed car crash. The film at once speeding down this highway of accolades, which abruptly ceased when the world shut down. However, with that time, Sciamma crafted what some have called a necessary pandemic picture.

            Production

            When Portrait of a Lady on Fire was released in 2019, it sent Sciamma on an unexpected whirlwind media tour that continued to build with each viewing. Her sapphic period romance struck a chord with critics and fans alike. The raw emotion and devastation of Portrait[1] spoke to the audience as it pulverized their collective metaphoric hearts. Soon, an entire fan culture was built up around the film bringing together those with an affinity for the period drama. People began to share memes, engage in cosplay, and get a variety of tattoos to commemorate the film. In true death of the author fashion, Sciamma’s quasi-biographical revisionist story of an artist falling in love with the subject of her painting became owned by the public. It was a community that had formed around the enjoyment of the film. Fans would immortalize their favorite scenes in paint, as they reproduced specific shots from the film. Additionally, critics heaved high critical praise on the film. These lauding accolades launched the film into one of the best of 2019 with Sight and Sound ranking it one of the 30^th greatest film of all time. Never had Sciamma experienced this level of success and acclaim, discussing it makes her feel outside herself. In an interview with Director Joachim Trier for the Petite Maman Criterion edition Blu-Ray, Sciamma described this experience as “the best most intense years of her life” even if she was overwhelmed by the response (Criterion Collection 2023). While the festival circuit and press junkets certainly feel like their own siloed cyclone of self-indulgent propaganda for a director; they do taper off and eventually expel their energy upon the shore. Yet, after March 2020, around when all of the production advertising for the film was ending, the world shut down. There was no other wave to ride. However, it turned out to be the perfect recipe for Sciamma’s next venture.

A COVID Era Film[2]  

            The period of the COVID-19 lockdown was devastating. Uncertainty and mass death loomed as collective interaction became literally toxic. With almost 1.2 million people dead in the US by March 2022, those of us who survived (either the virus, lockdown or both) became accustom to social distancing (6 ft) washing our hands consistently, repeatedly, for at least 28 seconds (everyone had a different song in their head), having “driveway” meet ups and greeting each other with our elbows. For those lucky enough to get through relatively unscathed, it was a very weird time. The culture shift was immediate and encompassing. The sociological study and analysis of this period will be forever a rich window into human behavior under stressful conditions that ran the gamut of: holding an introverted secret that some people liked the pandemic excuse to not have to go places or see people, to the right-wing “libertarian” political caricatures who protested state and federal buildings with guns over having to wear a mask. For films and the industry, it was equally challenging and overwhelming for all involved.

            The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown also meant that movie theaters were shuttered, barring a short window of ill-advised reopening, from March 2020 until April 2021. This left a lot of people in the industry scrambling. Most films had some type of delay (as in the beginning few people knew how long restrictions and lockdown were going to last). Drive-ins became popular again, and helped indie theaters stay afloat, Streaming Services were launched with the promise of new release movies directly to customers homes, and Christopher Nolan thought he could single handedly save the theatrical experience with Tenet. Like the social programs put in place during the great depression, no one single fix for the industry worked to stave off massive financial losses, and inadvertently created a culture of anti-theater going that theater-owners are still trying to correct today. Yet, under these conditions, art was still being made, and Petite Maman, from its inception to its premiere is a paragon of pandemic filmmaking.      

            Land locked in France in March of 2020, Sciamma went to sleep and dreamt of two young girls building a fort in the forest; one of those girls was the mother, and the other was her daughter. When she awoke, she knew that she had the idea for her next feature. As Sciamma developed the script, the pandemic raged: no vaccines, and not a lot of hope on the horizon. Some of the real-world loss began to bleed into the script. The story’s inciting incident of the loss of an elderly loved one who you “didn’t have a good goodbye” with, became practically prescient given how many loved ones expressed last words through alienating cell phone communication because of the risk of infection. Those same loved ones would eventually be piled into refrigerated trucks because the death toll was so high they could not process all of the bodies quick enough. A poor ‘goodbye’ indeed. Still, in this context, Sciamma wanted to show us a way forward, and this is often easily done through the eyes of a child.

            Principal Photography on Petite Maman began in November 2020 and shot for 25 days, ending in December 2020 just around the time that the first COVID-19 vaccines were released, and well before the federal mandate. At the time, heavy restrictions were placed on film productions in order to maintain the spread, before the number of inoculated reached parity. According to the European Film Commissions at the time, a film production operating during COVID (but after the lockdown order was lifted) required:   

·         Test for Actors and Related Professionals- Everyone needed to test negative before filming.

·         The Use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)- face mask, respirators and latex gloves for everyone on the crew

·         Personal Disinfectant- For extensive and long takes. Crew members must carry disinfectant wipes or a 30 ml. bottle of personal disinfectant to wipe areas clean during filming set ups.

·         Onsite Organization- There needs to be larger spaces made available to maintain safe distances when crews work and eat; to maintain a 6-foot distance.  

·          Temperature management- Everyone on the crew must have their temperature checked before the start of the shooting day.

·         Catering- All the food needed to be packaged for take-away so that they could eat it while engaging in social distancing.

·         Securing the Location- When scouting locations assume the place is infected; and cleaning crews should go ahead of time and clean everything.

·         Necessary Documentation- In contracts there needs to be an expression of the risk of exposure, so that if anyone contracts COVID-19 they cannot sue the studio.

·         Management during Filming There needs to be a coordinating and supervising of anti- contagion measures by a safety specialist  

·         Focus on Waste Management-All possibly infected equipment needs to be properly disposed.

These were the strict conditions under which Petite Maman was filmed. According to the Criterion (2023) interview, Sciamma mentioned that there was so much distance and protocol keeping the crew and the actors apart that it felt very alienating at times, especially considering the French child actor labor laws, that only let child actors work for three hours a day. These restrictions, both in European countries and around the world, created a collective experience that linked all films in production at that time; whether they decided to continue principal photography, shutter production, or wait it out and come back when normalcy was thrust upon us.

 COVID era filmmaking had some surprising similarities because of these parallel restrictions. Regardless of plot, genre, and style that might make them seem more diverse, many films were structured in a similar way

 Films shot entirely during COVID, often:

·         Were shot in a single location or multiple isolated locations.

·         Involved few actors

·         Blocked scenes with three or fewer people interacting at a time

·         Had a limited crew  

·         Included camera techniques to try to make up for the production difficulties

These similarities point to the fact that shooting under the Pandemic restrictions lend to a certain type of genre filmmaking, specifically Dramas, that can be introspective and thoughtful rather than bombastic because that added risk. The films that did not fit this criterion that were being shot during COVID were most likely the films that were already in production prior to lockdown, which resumed once restrictions were lifted.[3] Some of the films mentioned the pandemic, while most others ignored it.

For Petite Maman, since Sciamma conceived it just prior to lockdown, when they were allowed to begin principal photography, she knew how and where she wanted to shoot the film. It has two primary locations: The woods and the grandmother’s house (set dressed to look like the past and the present). The set had few rooms and there were no more than three actors in a scene together at any one time; and only 5 total actors in the main cast. The story moves back and forth from the house, with each room having scenes in both the present and the past. It is economical, terse and brilliant for the conditions the world was under; and gives credence to the arts’ ability to thrive even in the worst circumstances.

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

 According to Sciamma, one of the major influences on the development and style of Petite Maman was Hayao Miyazaki, more specifically My Neighbor Totoro[4]. The Ghibli-esque childhood whimsy while experiencing hardship is fully embodied by Sciamma’s 2021 film. Its circumstances and casual acceptance of the extraordinary with little interrogation mirror Miyazaki’s work in beautiful way.  Both films provide some amount of magical realism, and both films deal expertly with the themes of fear, grief and loss.

 Grief and Loss

Sociologically, grief and loss are rarely touched upon, as these subjects are often monopolized by Psychology, and its derivative variants. Yet, grief and loss are something we all collectively deal with, it is a feature of all cultures and life in general. There are aspects of collective grief that create and bind communities, cults and collectives together. Empathy allows for a clearer understanding of others regardless of cultural, generational, economic or other identity barriers. We all grieve. We all experience loss. And yet, we often, by choice or by circumstance, endure grief alone.

The Sociological theoretical perspective that is often used to talk about the more social psychological aspects of life is symbolic Interactionism (SI) and more specifically the social construction of reality. Briefly, symbolic interactionism is a sociological conceptual framework which emphasizes the creation, meaning and application of various symbols (usually language and gestures) through social interaction and observation. Constructionism, a derivative of SI, understands that meaning is conditional to the historical, cultural and social context that is present. So, through these lenses, by living in society we understand grief and loss by how we interact and react to people experiencing it; while recognizing that other cultures, societies and nations throughout time have a different but equally respectful (usually) process for dealing with death.

According to Maciejewski, Falzarano, She, Lichtenthal, and Prigerson (2021) there are three basic principles of bereavement: Void in the Social State, Void Filling, and collective acceptance. The “Void in the Social State” refers to the monumental shift that happens micro socially to individual lives when experiencing loss. There is a massive context shift for the individual(s) who are left behind. In the case of spousal loss, the bereaved has to content with being single again, adopting the roles and responsibilities that were once shared with the deceased partner. Additionally, they also have to reconfigure their position in the various external relationships that they are a part of. This restructuring may increase in difficulty depending on how those relationships were established, which may also cause disruption (Maciejewski et.al. 2021).

Continuing the bereavement process requires a “filling of the void” left by the departed. Typically, this is understood as a mental distraction, and people throw themselves into work, hobbies or home projects as a form of avoidance from dealing with grief and processing the loss. However, this urge to avoid and process, while common, leads to isolation which creates a self-destructive spiral of internalized blame. While more difficult, it is much healthier to do the opposite and not only lean on already established relationships but do best to create new ones which will develop new roles for the bereaved and challenge them to reconfigure their relationships (Maciejewski et.al. 2021).

Collective acceptance is achieved through the understanding that while specific grief and loss is unique to the individuals involved, the general experience of grief is socially shared. Life exists and therefore also death. It exists every day, even if we are not its current target, either directly or indirectly we all will know death. This collective acceptance of death can be comforting. This is unfortunately hindered by our cultural individualism, which reinforces the uniqueness of persons rather than all of the overlapping experiences we all share.

Petite Maman sees Nelly and her family go through these bereavement stages. The first shot of the film is of an empty hospital bed. The camera then follows Nelly as she walks through all of the rooms of the Nursing home saying “Goodbye” to all the residents there. It will later be revealed the greater significance of this moment, but in the film’s opening, it is showing us a visual representation of “the void in social state” by showing us the wake of what the dead leave behind; and as it is removed, the emptiness that is left. This continues through the establishment of the grandmother’s house in the present; it too is emptying throughout the film’s run time. Nelly and her parents also seek to fill the void by understanding their roles after their loss. While Nelly’s parents are direct and extremely candid with her about their lives and what they can remember from their childhood, it is the establishing of Nelly’s relationship with Marion that allows Nelly to process not only her own grief but understand her mother’s process through loss as well. Thus, by the end of the film, both Nelly and the adult Marion understand each other as they have come out of this process, filling the empty space left by their loved one.

Socialization- The Family and Peer Groups

       Socialization, the process of social learning that begins prior to birth and continues throughout a person’s life, is guided by individuals, groups and institutions that break up this necessary information into digestible and “age appropriate” pieces. This process is divided for better comprehension and scaffolding through childhood into adulthood by using cultural rites of passage that provide a smoother transition into more responsibility and give greater amounts of freedom.  Two of these mechanisms that assist in this process of socialization are the family and peer groups.

As a mechanism of socialization, the family provides a filtered glimpse of the social world. It does not give the children a complete and full picture of reality out of a sense of protectionism. It is through the family that a child’s world first gains structure- one that is fluidly designed by the parents’ values, choices and experiences; to give their children a since of creativity through fostering their imagination and exposing them to the broader social world to prepare them for adulthood. One particularly difficult part of this process is the slow relinquishing of control that results in both parents and children recognizing each other, both outside of the roles they were originally given, and seeing each other as a person. By befriending Marion (the younger version of her mother), Nelly begins to see her mother as a person outside of her familial role. Marion reveals to her future daughter that she wanted to be an actress but eventually gave up on that dream. Nelly also comes to realize that the bouts of depression that overtake her mother were never her fault. Marion assuages her daughter’s guilt by saying “It is not about you... I can’t stop thinking about you...I can’t wait to meet you. But sadness is something that is always there.” Setting aside the magical realism that allowed this friendship to blossom, many children come to these realizations, that their parents are also flawed fallible people from either a crystalized moment of disappointment through therapy, or both. Sciamma just contextualizes through the power of cinema the realization that all parents are people and not the center of anyone’s universe.

Peer groups are another mechanism of socialization that is integral to the social learning process of socialization. The fundamental importance of friends, colleagues and others in the same age group in understanding the social world can be explained through the difference between sympathy and empathy. While often used as synonyms, these terms have a fundamental difference that highlights the value of peer groups to the overall process of deciphering the ordered chaos of any social reality. Often, when sympathy is invoked, there is a lack of similar context involved. A person who sympathizes has likely been through a similar/same experience, but not within the current context, with the same pressures and demands levied on a person. Additionally, when someone is being sympathetic, there is likely an air of judgement or sense of superiority built from feelings of pity and privilege. Their emotional or social investment is miniscule, or contaminated by classist, racist, sexist or ethnocentric pedestaled posturing.  Empathy is generated when individuals either experience the same context as another person or can accurately place themselves in the emotional and social state of others. Out of all the mechanisms of socialization, peer groups lend themselves to empathy more easily than other groups.  There is power in the solidarity of experiencing the world in the same place and time as other people. Collective experiences allow us to form bonds and have a collective conscience for how the world is interpreted and known.    

Nelly and Marion have their first meet cute in the forest and strike up a quick friendship over the building of a fort in the woods. The forming of this peer group, and the comradery that is built from it, allows for an understanding of each other and a grounding in an acceptance of personhood beyond the roles they were assigned in their original familial relationship. Over the three days they are together, they are able to connect in ways that were not possible with Nelly and adult Marion. Both children see the world similarly. Through play, cooking, and conversations they talk through fears, long held desires, and experiences in the future. Because of their similar age, this can be done without criticism, providing a strong support system. Marion is worried about a surgical procedure that she must endure to eliminate the chances of a hereditary disease. Nelly helps her talk through these fears and is supportive of her until she leaves for the hospital.  Nelly, getting over the loss of her grandmother and the feelings of alienation from her mother, is assuaged by young Marion that neither are her fault.  Knowing Marion as her 8-year-old self contextualizes for Nelly her mother’s experiences. This empathy results in a nontoxic sympathy at the end of the film when mother and daughter are reunited in their own time. Each character is richer with understanding and a sense of gratitude from the other; both for the roles that they inhabit, and their individual personalities that illuminate them.   

 

CONCLUSION

            Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman is a masterpiece. A condensed whimsical magically realist minimalism in the style of early Hayao Miyazaki, this film embraces feelings of hope and familial bonds at a time when the eminent and immediate threat of a global pandemic siloed individuals into bubbles to stop the spread of a virus. Sciamma is the first director in my director analysis series where I did not like their earlier work, but they managed to win me over with the latter half of their filmography. Regardless, their contribution to cinema, especially the focus of the non-objectifying camera through “the female gaze” needs to be heralded as the cultural shift needed to encourage more cis/transgendered females and nonbinary people of every fluid sexual disabled and neurodivergent identity to become writers and directors to tell their own stories.

 

REFERENCES

Paul K. Maciejewski, Francesca B. Falzarano, Wan Jou She, Wendy G. Lichtenthal, Holly G. Prigerson 2021. “A Micro-Sociological Theory of Adjustment to Loss” in Science Direct  retrieved on: 4/26/2025 retrieved at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X21000889  

The Criterion Collection 2023. “ A Conversation with director Celine Sciamma and filmmaker Joachim Trier” in Petite Maman Blu-Ray (Spine 1181) Dir Celine Sciamma.     

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[1] Seconded only by the work of Wong Kar Wai and Linklighter’s Before Trilogy

[2] It needs to be mentioned that COVID is still around and continues to be a persistent threat.

[3] The one notable exception to this is Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” a revenge action film that was able to be filmed because production were incarcerated in  a strict 500 person COVID- bubble.

[4] Which I reviewed in April of 2020

The Curious Case of Tony Stark and Elon Musk: 'Sigma Male' Masculinity and the Myth of the Benevolent Billionaire

 

            The development of Sociology as a discipline has always run parallel to the rise of western Capitalism; both being born out of industrial revolutions that spanned between 1760-1850 and gained prominence through the social changes those revolutions created. These ideas also coincided with the independence of British colonies that would become the United States. These fraught fraternal fledglings became fatefully intertwined. Whereas Sociology would use historical events, and political/economic analysis to criticize capitalism; the United States, primarily built by white wealthy landowning men seeking a regress of taxation, would embrace it. This began our propagandistic and irrational fetishizing of Capitalism for over two millennia, creating one of the more corrosive spurious correlations between wealth and intelligence. This is because in a capitalist system, economic success has become a chief indicator of intellect[1]. Colloquially, people state: “How’d they make so much money if they weren’t smart?” without factoring in a variety of social factors like family inheritance and opportunities born out of an overabundance of intersecting privileges (class status, Whiteness, cisgendered maleness, sexuality and ablebodiedness). Popular culture has been one of the most effective tools to spread this false claim into every crevice of our social order and thereby germinating this insidious amalgamation between one’s bank account and their IQ[2]. One of the more understated examples of this, that has collectively had the wildest impact recently, is the deification of Elon Musk through the lens of The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s portrayal of Tony Stark by Robert Downey Jr.  The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the power of this comparison on public perception and examine the dangers of manufacturing the myth of the ‘benevolent billionaire’ which has contributed to our current socio-political (constitutional) crisis in the US.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            The histories of Elon Musk and Marvel Studio’s representation of Tony Stark embodied by Robert Downey Jr. have orbited one another, each intersecting the other’s trajectory at a variety of points throughout Musk’s and the character of Tony Stark’s life course. However, the impact of these intersections has unfortunately had grave real-world consequences that are difficult to disentangle.

            Brief origin on Elon Musk  

            Born in 1971 Johannesburg, South Africa, Elon Musk grew up in a wealthy family whom benefited from racist Apartheid and neo- Nazi laws of the country at the time. The blood mineral industry born out of such policies enriched the Musk family as Elon’s father made a deal to receive a portion of emeralds produced in three small mines. This wealth and privilege allowed Musk to immigrate from South Africa to Canada and eventually study Physics and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania earning a bachelor’s degree in both, conferred in 1997. After two internships in Silicon Valley, he was accepted into the materials science graduate program at Standford. Upon declining to enroll, Musk lacked the legal authorization to live and work in the United States until he secured an H1-B visa.

            Concurrently with his education and work experience, Musk began a history of corporate virulence. With money lent to him by his father, Musk and his siblings created Zip2, an online yellow pages in the early days of the internet. Zip2 was acquired by Compaq in 1999. Musk took his 22-million-dollar buyout and spun it into an online financial services and e-mail payment company called X.com. X would eventually become PayPal when it merged with Confinity. When Musk became CEO, technological problems and a poor business model led to the board ousting Musk and replacing him with Peter Thiel. When PayPal was eventually sold to Ebay, Musk being the majority shareholder was paid 175.8 million dollars. This began a pattern of Musk buying/acquiring companies or organizations, gutting them of personnel and regulation and then hoping to sell the pieces into his next venture.[3] Musk took his PayPal payout to the Mars Society and founded Space X in 2002.

            The founding of Space X marks the time when Elon Musk begins to orbit US politics. At the time, President Obama both increased NASA’s budget (by $ 6 billion) but decided to cancel  the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft while committing to the privatization of launch vehicles to the Orbiting Space stations under the COTS program. Space X got the contracts. Space X continued its relationship with the government through their next venture “Starlink” a consumer internet business that sends batches of internet-beaming satellites into orbit. Since 2022, Space X has had the Federal Communications Commission contract for 13,500 satellites that would make up the Starlink Internet Network which pulled Musk deeper into the political sphere.[4]   

Musk’s association with his Pay Pal compatriots would eventually be known collectively as “The PayPal Mafia.”  This group of “tech bros” all have ties to South African Apartheid (recently giving them the nickname “broligarchs”). As their wealth and status increased, these “broligarchs” began to criticize US social programs, women’s right to vote, and regulatory policies. These ideals would put them on an intersecting trajectory with Donald Trump’s re-ascension to President in 2024 in the form of VP running mate, insult to the poor southern community and genuine couch connoisseur, JD Vance; as Vance was one of The Pay Pal Mafia’s (Peter Thiel) protégés.

In addition to an alignment of ideologies, Musk’s political interest is mostly financial. This is because the companies that he helms would be in constant financial jeopardy without government contracts. Musk thereby ideologically shifts towards whichever political wind will net him the most revenue. Yet, since aligning with Donald Trump, he has seemed emboldened to express various levels and varieties of hate speech: from misinformation, general technocratic dehumanization (Eugenics) , Trans discrimination, sexism, antisemitism, and white pride that culminated in Musk giving a “Roman Salute” at Trump’s Second Inauguration that was interpreted by White Power Groups, and most of the general public, as the Nazi Zig Heil. At the time of this writing, The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the Agency tasked with reining in Government bureaucracy and spending that Musk (sort of, but not really, only actually) leads, is dismantling the regulatory agencies of the government that were directly overseeing his companies. Yet, even with all this veiled history, to the pain he is currently inflicting on millions, there are those that still see him as a savior and a genius, including himself. To understand where that comes from, we need to investigate the MCU portrayal of Tony Stark.

The MCU’s Tony Stark

  In the early 2000’s, there was a fraction at Marvel Comics regarding the adaptation of their characters to TV and Film. In the years prior, to stave off bankruptcy, Marvel Comics had sold the adaptation rights to some of their biggest characters. The X-Men were at Fox, The Incredible Hulk was at Paramount and Spider-Man was at Sony, each with their own complicated legal entanglements of where, when, and how these characters can appear on screen. In 2002, upon the landmark success of the Fox Studios produced X-Men and Sony’s Spider-man,  executive David Masiel met with the President of Marvel, Ike Perlmutter (at Mar-a-lago of all places), to try and convince him that Marvel was leaving money on the table by licensing their characters rather than producing their own films (Robinson, Gonzales and Edwards, 2024). However, since selling off their best assets, which in the early 2000’s were way too profitable to let go,[5] Marvel had to start with lesser known, C and D-list heroes at the time.

Originally conceived by Stan Lee in the early 1960’s and modeled after Howard Hughes, the comic book portrayal of Tony Stark was, at its inception, a hard drinking, war-mongering misogynist.

According to DiPaolo (2011)

“[Lee] deliberately designed Iron Man to be everything the readership hated as a creative challenge to see if he could convince a liberal reader to find a “Military Industrial Complex” billionaire protagonist likeable despite his conservative politics…Lee said that he was not trying to change his readership’s politics, but to see if…[an] inventor and munitions maker could be successfully presented as a redeemed anti-hero.”     

It is unclear if Stan Lee knew the indelible cultural impact this would have. His whimsical wager against writers’ block contributed to the chipping away of the public’s disdainful animosity for the wealthy elite, and convinced readers that wealth, weapons and womanizing can make a hero. This unfortunately laid a problematic foundation for how Tony Stark would be portrayed on-screen.

            Another problem came in November 2001 when Karl Rove had a meeting with the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack Valenti. The Bush Administration needed a unified response to terrorism for the purposes of national security:

1.      The US campaign in Afghanistan was a war against terrorism, not Islam

2.      People can serve in the war effort and in their communities.

3.      US troops and their families need support

4.      9/11 requires a global response.

5.      This is a fight against evil

6.      Children should be assured that they will be safe

While not stating this as propaganda, Rove did declare that leaders of the industry have ideas about how they want to contribute to the war effort. (Robinson et al, 2024: 61).

Rove’s actions speak to the way the media is used by the government to shape public perception. But, instead of news reels and cartoons playing before films as they did during WWII, the mechanism of propaganda has become far more incestuous in years since. Regularly, film production and video game developers are provided with military consultants that control the depiction of the government and the military in that medium. For film, this means a lower production budget in exchange for script approval and distribution access. Therefore, during “The War on Terror.” the undercurrent of major studio productions was to encourage support for US foreign policy.

During the development of what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the United States was in two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and had a former weapons manufacturer as a Vice president (Robinson et al 2024). With the Bush Administration’s approval ratings on a steep and steady decline, Tony Stark was the perfect choice to be propped up as the propagandic paragon of US military efforts to show that “[even a merchant of death]…has a heart”. Thus, the writers for Iron Man (2008) recentered Tony’s backstory around being captured in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam and had him be injured by his own munitions; thereby centering him in the current moment and fulfilling the criteria set by Rove. However, they still needed to make him likeable. Enter: Robert Downey Jr.

At the time of his casting, Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ) seemed to have just come out of auditioning for Tony Stark in real life. Considered a commercial failure and substance abuser, RDJ had been recently fired off of Ally McBeal, and even though he was clean and sober in 2007, he was on probation as early as 2005, and that made the producers nervous (Robinson et al 2024). Director Jon Favreau went to bat for Downey. When it was clear that the studio had no intention of hiring Downy, Favreau leaked the news of RDJ’s casting to the press which was met with fan enthusiasm (art was imitating life after all). Once he was cast, both Downey and the writers went to work on fleshing out who Tony Stark was going to be for the MCU.

            In 2022, Iron Man (2008) writer Mark Fergus explained to New York Magazine that one of the inspirations for the characterization of Tony Stark in the MCU was Elon Musk.

“Stark was as if “Musk took the brilliance of [Steve] Jobs with the showmanship of [Donald] Trump,” adding: “He was the only one who had the fun factor and the celebrity vibe and actual business substance.”

 For his part, RDJ was encouraged by Favreau and others to draw upon personal experiences, and producers would hope that his face would be “a visual shorthand for the character.” (Robinson et al 2024). Thus, the MCU’s Tony Stark has the wealth and social awkwardness of Elon Musk, Showmanship of Donald Trump, the charisma and humor of Robert Downey, all wrapped up in a personification of US Militarism. Unfortunately, as this version of Tony Stark grew in popularity, so did the lines between the character, actor and their inspiration (Musk).

When Art imitates life, and back again

               Pop Culture and film are always used as a truncated reference and explanation for the social world around us. We compare individuals, people, and social situations to characters and plots of film and TV; especially when those situations are hard to explain. When Iron Man exploded onto the screen, RDJ’s portrayal of Tony Stark as a brilliant wisecracking do-it yourself superhero who flouts international laws and commits war crimes by murdering brown terrorists with precision and prejudice was a smashing success. This annihilation of blatant terrorism was the cinematic wish fulfillment that the public thirsted for after 9/11. Tony Stark/Iron Man was the white male savior that was using weapons and militarization to make the world a better place. Whom, in future installments, would quip that he “wanted to put a suit of armor around the world” and “privatize world peace.” Sentiments that have henceforth been reiterated by various people in power.[6] This is because superheroes like Tony Stark “constitute an appealing form of pro-war propaganda, that across the board, encourages a militarist view of the world and represents a form of American Fascism.” (DiPaolo 2011: 19). We have commodified and coveted this image enough for billionaires to use it as both rationalization and shield for their crimes.

Tony Stark’s popularity in the public consciousness and the overall cultural zeitgeist, caused people to start looking for his real-world proxy. Given their biographies were already ingredients of Tony Stark’s psyche, Musk and RDJ started to become deified as the real Tony Stark themselves; RDJ allowing his public persona to be taken over by the character so completely that it is difficult to find a difference between character and actor in interviews and public appearances. Meanwhile, Musk promoted and internalized these comparisons to Stark which were furthered by his brief cameo in Iron Man II (2010). Musk even went  so far as to create a 3-D model of Space X rockets similar to the way the films would depict Stark’s designs. These manufactured parallels allowed the public to fantasize Musk to be that real life white savior, jumping from the screen to save them, while simultaneously obfuscating the danger he poses as a real world threat.

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

            The power of the comparison between the MCU portrayal of Tony Stark and Elon Musk is found not only in how the popularity of the character shapes public opinion, or in the expectation of hero worship as an escape from the continuous monotony/occasional terror of our daily lives, but also in the confluence of our conditioning to the myth of the benevolent billionaire coupled with an emergence of a neurodivergent masculinity labeled in online circles as the  “Sigma” male. This combination of traits furthers the embroglio between the image of Tony Stark and Elon Musk.

The Myth of the Benevolent Billionaire

In a Capitalist system, money is a superpower. It creates opportunities and access to resources, it whitens, masculinizes and “ables” peoples’ bodies; meaning it minimizes the barriers that people experience for being a member of a marginalized group. Money is the catalyst for transformation as much as various forms of irradiation, or the mutation that follows in many superhero origin stories. Therefore, it is not surprising then that the heroes that grace the pages of comic books that are touted as “just human with no superpowers” are almost always wealthy. Money bridges the chasm of physical, psychic or supernatural abilities and puts humans on par with Gods in these stories.

The combination of wealth and altruism was fueled through both a billionaire’s own desire for legacy and the misinterpretation of capitalist cautionary tales that isolate billionaires as being heroic. The savior complex for billionaires is never built upon self-sacrifice, but trades on its belief in perpetuity. Many of the wealthy American Families at the turn of the 20^th Century had a history of giving to charities and other “worthy causes”, not because they were selfless and cared about “their fellow human”, but because of tax breaks afforded to philanthropy, and the desire to maintain the legacy of their name. Thus, names like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Wrigley, JP Morgan, and Vanderbilt grace the side of concert halls, stadiums, office buildings, and plazas. The founder of The Nobel Peace Prize, Alfred Nobel, made his fortune through dynamite production. This has continued today with billionaires starting charities, giving away millions of dollars while simultaneously hiding billions in offshore accounts and stock dividends to avoid taxation. These practices then combined with the popular misinterpretation of cautionary tales of capitalism.

One of the most common stories that manufactures this benevolence in billionaires is the character of Ebenezer Scrooge in the Dickensian classic, A Christmas Carol. Throughout the story, the reader rightfully is presented with the interpersonal dangers of capitalism. Greed begets isolation, loneliness, and bitter emotional stagnation that makes you cruel. While this anti-capitalist messaging is important and valid; this story is one of the first that also presents readers with the idea that the billionaire can be reformed, as every depiction of the end of A Christmas Carol presents Scrooge as still an economically wealthy man; his charity changing the lives of the people around him; and they love him for it. This reinforces that money can be used for emotional manipulation and still presents relationships as being transactional.

This idea of benevolence is furthered in our superhero media. Comic books and their TV/Film adaptations depicts these rich oligarchs as brilliant crime fighters; furthering the idea that social problems can be solved by wealth and individual determination rather than collective action. This presents wealth as no longer a corruptible force (as the intended message of Ebeneezer Scrooge’s plight) but as a tool for righteousness. Iron Man and Batman are among the richest and most popular characters that parlay their wealth into an unfathomable network of gadgets, equipment, and training for their own private war against their understanding of injustice. Sure, at the same time they also engage in various amounts of philanthropy; but their true work is always outside of the system. This was astutely pointed out by Mathew Alford in his original review of Iron man:  

 

The Emotional appeal of Iron Man (2008) rest on the idea that Stark, the self -confessed ‘Merchant of Death’, has changed his carefree attitude towards arms manufacturing…These readings of the film ignore the blatant fact that Stark actually continues to build weapons, only now they are more hi-tech and produced covertly as a part of his own bodily attack armor.”

                                                                                                                        (Robinson et al 2024).

One dangerous commonality of billionaire crimefighters in superhero fiction is their egocentrism. The MCU’s Tony Stark always believes himself to be the smartest person in the room and the one who will always have the right answers even after he is blatantly proven wrong. In Iron man II, the character stands up in front of Congress and says that he “Privatized World Peace.” because he was the only one smart enough to come up with the arc reactor technology. After he is proven wrong in that same film, he later believes that he can create artificial intelligence that can act as “a suit of armor around the world” and promptly created the AI villain Ultron. After that failure, he does submit to government oversight and regulation in Captain America: Civil War. However, that regulation is short lived, eventually culminating in his self-sacrifice at the end of Endgame. Thus, through Tony Stark’s entire arc in the MCU, his billions and bravado culminate in benevolence. Part of the appeal of Elon Musk is that many were expecting the same trajectory. Political pundits, talk show hosts, elected and appointed officials of the US government all have compared Elon Musk to Tony Stark, opining on Musk’s charities and companies as if to manifest this benevolence upon him. Yet, whenever Musk is given a chance to show the world that he may be a hero, he turns out to be a supervillain.

In addition to all the hate speech, bigotry and deregulatory crypto fascism Elon Musk is currently producing/regurgitating through his leadership/consultation/leadership with DOGE, he also decided to buy the social media platform because people made fun of him. Afterward, he then turned that platform into a cesspool of vitriolic and violently racist, misogynistic hate speech causing both advertisers and Users to flee; all under the guise of being a champion of Free Speech. However, Elon Musk’s supervillainy lies in the control of his businesses and the erratically sociopathic apathy with which he wields that power. This came to light in 2022 with his Starlink system and the ongoing Ukrainian Russian War. Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, falsely claimed that Elon Musk “turned off” Starlink during a Ukraine counterattack. While this would certainly count as supervillainy, Isaacson, regardless of the statement’s invalidity, emphasizes Musk’s potential power and influence over the region through the Starlink system; that on a whim, Musk could change the scale and trajectory of the war. Much like the egoism of Tony Stark, this is not benevolent, it is hostage taking for the purposes of kowtowing. This is evidenced by Musk’s attitude change on the war after aligning himself with Donald Trump during the 2024 election; stating that he believed that Ukraine had gone too far. A point Donald Trump and JD Vance doubled down on in their explosive meeting with President Zelensky.  Additionally, Musk has used his money to repeatedly fuel constitutional crises by bribing people for votes both in the 2024 national election under the guise of a lottery and then again in the Wisconsin race for DA. Thus, while Tony Stark is no benevolent billionaire (because even in fiction there is no such thing) Musk is less like Tony Stark and more like Justin Hammer from Iron Man II, where his wealth shields him from his own stupidity, and allows him to fail upwards while disassociating from the human rights and dignity of others.

Neurodivergence as ‘Sigma’ Masculinity

    In a patriarchal system, a person’s masculinity status is perceived as royalty. Within this [often]-binary structured set of organizations and institutions, those that have been assigned and openly perform the status of male and masculinity are venerated; believing that their gendered position exempts them from behaviors, labor, and expressions they think are beneath them. Thus, in a masculine dominant society, the ideals, presentation, and behaviors surrounding masculinity are the first to be policed; and men, are the first to be dominated (Bourdieu 1998).

As a part of that mechanism of control and domination, masculinity turns inward, and like the ouroboros, men begin consuming each other through the building of an irrational and harmful dominance hierarchy. This hierarchy is peddled through the unfathomably profitable popularity of “The manosphere”: the sprawling web of groups, belief systems and lifestyle gurus that promote these irrational, erroneous and dangerous ideas of toxic masculinity (Bates 2021).

  The hierarchy begins with the highly contested and debunked concept of “The Alpha” male. This group has the characteristics of a lot of traditional masculinity: Strong, athletic, loves sports, cisgendered, sexist, emotionally vacant, and anti-intellectual. These individuals perceive themselves to be leaders and reinforce these claims through cherry picked biological pseudoscience and erroneous myths about the pack mentality of animals.

 

 The next status in this cannibalizing hierarchy is “the beta male”

As I explained in a previous essay (2018):

“Beta” males are defined as men who don’t identify/ fit the toxic forms of alpha male behaviors. Some men embrace this position as a way to show how they are morally and intellectually superior (the qualities they are using to define their masculinity) to the “alpha” male. This superiority impacts their views on women. Because they believe themselves to be superior to the “alpha” male, they should be garnering the attention of women and not them

The attention from women here is an important detail, as regardless of where men are on this corrosive carousel of status and identity, they all perceive themselves above women. It is their misogyny that binds them. Recently, there is a new emerging status of masculinity, the “Sigma” male, and it seems to incorporate autism and neurodivergence in its assessment of masculinity.

            “Sigma” coded masculinity arose first from a 2010 blog post by Science fiction writer, Jon Beale, who, in addition to espousing a myriad of racist and sexist beliefs, expressed his frustration with the generalization of the “alpha and beta” structure and what he considered “the losers” underneath them ( Just to go down the list: deltas gammas, lambdas and omegas). Thus, he coined the term “Sigma male” which is collectively understood as the introverted “lone wolves” and outsiders that seemed to be on par with Alpha males, but maybe didn’t express their level of bravado while remaining intelligent and stoic.  One characteristic of this “Sigma” type of man that is often glossed over is their expressions of neurodivergence. Many of the character names that are often proselytized as “Sigma males” are John Wick, Walter White, Tommy Shelby, Jason Bourne and Tony Stark. Those unconventional Heroes/anti-heroes, that do not exhibit hyper masculine qualities, are brilliant but are able to become singularly focused, mission driven, obsessive, have skilled pattern recognition, able to be a social chameleon but unable to read social cues all the time. Thereby incorporating qualities of neurodivergence on the autism spectrum into this questionable masculinity quagmire.

            In addition to the co-opting of neurodivergence into a masculinity latticework that reinforces misogyny and toxic self-destructiveness, “The Sigma male” archetype is also a new form of “supercrip” stereotype. The “Supercrip” stereotype is a type of disability stereotype often found in action, fantasy and superhero media where a person’s disability is the source of superpowers which negate the persons physical and or mental disability. Clear examples of this in comic book media: Daredevil, several of the X-men, Barbara Gordon, Cyborg, and yes, Tony Stark. With the “Sigma Male” however, their “superpower” and what makes them a good assassin, drug kingpin, gangster, government agent and “Genius, Billionaire, Playboy Philanthropist Superhero” is their neurodivergence.     

      The overall contradiction of the Sigma male supercrip, outside of its lack of social and scientific evidence, is that much of the “Alpha and Beta” status criteria are flimsily supported through a pseudo-scientific biological argument of men’s innate nature (which also allows them to justify their frequent transphobia and discrimination). However, a simple internet search will reveal “the sigma male grindset” a quasi-self-help guide to becoming a sigma male. This idea of “becoming” leans more into the social construction of gender than those arguments often used by these groups that tend to be more based in biological determinism. Granted, the identification of this hypocrisy should not be revelatory, many belief systems that have cultlike qualities, as those in the misogynistic manosphere do, are both convoluted and hypocritical. Because, having a clear set of principles, and the conviction of those principles leads to accepting consequences for those beliefs. In short, it takes courage, and these men and their allies have none.

            Elon Musk has become the literal posterchild for “Sigma male” masculinity, gracing the cover of a seminal text on the subject. With the help of the myth of the benevolent billionaire, he has been deified by “The manosphere” as their current and most fervent paragon, and in their mind, a real life Tony Stark. Yet, when you look at the basic comparison, it is only the sigma male archetype, and the billionaire myth that connects them. This, as I have argued above, is more of a function of the use of Musk in the updating and creation of the MCU’s Tony Stark. When looking closer, they are also leagues apart. Tony is shown to be an inventor and engineer. Meanwhile, the only thing Musk has designed, not even engineered, is the Cyber-truck. An ugly eyesore of an automobile that has had so many flaws and recalls that even Tesla dealerships won’t take it as a trade in. Tony has built his company on his ingenuity, Musk is a corporate vulture that raids and consumes companies, destabilizes them and then sells off the pieces into his next venture, which is more akin to the corporate robber barons of 1980’s cinema, than the Superhero populism of today.   

 

CONCLUSION

            Elon Musk is not Tony Stark. However, the MCU’s Tony Stark being a symbol of American Militarized Fascism is a low bar for a comparison. Regardless of the invalidity of this contrast, its repetition online among the media illiterate masses shaped the public perception of Musk enough for him to be elevated into the halls of political power in ways that his billions could not give him access so expeditiously. Although, as Musk continues to dismantle government infrastructure through these robber baron tactics, many of his supportive public have reassessed their opinions of him. Yet, we may be in a situation where the damage he has already done is irreparable, with no superheroes around to save us.

 

REFERENCES

Bates, Laura 2021. Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists The Truth about Extreme Misogyny Naperville: Sourcebooks.

Bourdieu Pierre 1998. Masculine Domination Standford: Standford University Press

Dipaolo, Marc 2011. War Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film. London: McFarland and Company.

Robinson, Joanna, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards 2024. The Reign of Marvel Studios New York: Liveright Publishing

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[1] It should also be mentioned that this is usually invoked once someone has a lot of money. Rarely are poor smart people given the confidence that they will have economic success. If you are not wealthy, it is perceived that you are ‘not that smart’ or you’re lazy.

[2] IQ tests aren’t a measure of Intelligence either. I just wanted to not have to say intelligence over and over.

[3] As he did with Twitter

[4] Yes there is Tesla and Neuro-link and the purchasing of Twitter. But the acquisition of government contracts and its leading to his nebulous political position as the maybe Not, but actual leader of DOGE (Dept of Government Efficiency)  this is the most direct route if I don’t want the thesis to get lost or have this essay be gargantuan

[5]   Fox, Sony and Universal would consistently put films into production just so that the rights would not revert back to Marvel Comics.  Many films were rushed, announced before they even had a creative team, and in the “doomed” The Fantastic Four (1994) that was never intended for release.  

[6] Including Musk himself