FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE – The image of the Tesla vehicle that exploded at the foot of Trump Tower in Las Vegas offers a vision of what the America of tomorrow could be: a place where power is collapsing from within, undermined by its own allies , comments the author Ophélie Roque.
Ophélie Roque is a French teacher in the Paris suburbs. She published Black Mesa (Robert Laffont, 2023), his first novel.
Two images have been circulating in a loop since the day before yesterday: the first is obviously that of the victims of the attack which took place in New Orleans, the second shows the explosion of a strangely rectangular vehicle in front of the entrance of a building flocked with the brand “Trump“. Aesthetically, the image offers a striking monochrome in gray and gold. In a single shot, we obtain a shortcut (certainly biased but all shortcuts are!) of American society. The smoke, the writhing flames, the rays of sunlight that illuminate the hall of the Trump Tower, the matte and dull gray of the car… everything combines to offer the viewer not the simple capture of a news item but the metaphorical representation of American society as it is seen (or fantasized) by a part of his detractors.
Let’s get back to the facts. The 1is January 2025 (at 8:40 a.m.), a Tesla Cybertruck explodes in front of the entrance to the Trump Hotel located on the legendary Las Vegas Strip. The driver was killed instantly while seven other people were slightly injured. Here we are still in the factual but, quickly and insidiously, symbolism gets involved. Firstly, in the choice of car: the Cybertruck (in addition to being a Tesla) is above all the emblematic vehicle of the brand since the latter is inspired by a model already present in the video game Cyberpunk 2077, which depicts the dystopian future of an America fragmented under the influence of a new secession and bathed in a climate of insurrection. In short, the Cybertruck seems strangely at home in this cliché which places it, de facto, in a universe that is its own. Which means we have to pay attention to what inspires us.
-So of course, Elon Musk – concerned about his reputation as well as the profitability of his companies – immediately wanted to reassure the public and potential buyers by posting on X that the explosion was in no way due to a vehicle failure . Tesla cars can implode but never by their own doing! As the group takes care to point out that only 0.01% of Cybertrucks produced are involved in serious accidents, it would not be a question of bad distrust spreading, which would cause the stock market price to waver.
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The choice of target (Trump Tower) as well as the choice of weapon (not one but the Tesla, emblematic of the vision carried by Musk) offers a potentially premonitory image of the fate of America: the destruction of Donald Trump by Elon Musk. But behind this interpretation lies another: that of a political world torn apart by the massive arrival of new technologies. Behind the tragedy lies (almost) a happening. The explosion is the illustration of a power which is collapsing from within, undermined by its own allies, leaving behind only ashes and flames. There is no man in the photo (except the body of the one who voluntarily immolated himself in his car but that is almost, already, another story). The irony of the situation is that this promise of apocalypse is, in fineoffered by a madman who carefully chose the effects to expect from his staging. The images are cruel in that they manage to convey a narrative that is sometimes completely different from reality.
