Focus on this artwork and discuss the Popular culture references.
The demigod/Baphomet-like pose of Washington is portrayed in Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Lost Symbol (2009), in which the author describes a hypothesis according to which Washington and the other Founding Fathers decorated the national capital full of Freemason or occult symbols.
The statue appears near the beginning of the 2013 first-person shooter, BioShock Infinite, set in an alternate 1912 where Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are worshiped by the inhabitants of the floating city of Columbia.
The Lost Symbol Freemason Benjamin Franklin Dan Brown first-person shooter demigod BioShock Infinite Thomas Jefferson Baphomet national capital Founding Fathers