Thanks for being patient with me, Readers! This is the first video I edited with a new software, and I'm a bit confident that I'll be able to go back to a more frequent release schedule between both channels pretty soon!
Growing up in LA, cinema was always my refuge, and this movie hit close to home. Films like this are crucial, shedding light on systemic issues like redlining. As someone who's witnessed the effects of redlining on LA's education firsthand, this movie's portrayal deeply resonates. And the concept of clones, while dark, weaves fact with science fiction in a chilling way. Overall, it's refreshing and essential to see our stories, struggles, and resilience depicted on screen. Eager for more films like this.
Anytime I try to talk about the problematic aspects of Tyler Perry’s filmmaking with my mother, she loses her shit on me instantly 😅 Maybe we can sit down and just enjoy this one together as a decent flick with a clearer message than, well you know.
As a Black actor from The Bronx, They Cloned Tyrone really made me think of the commodification of Black bodies and Black thought. Throughout the film there are depictions of we are objectified. I also love how in the third act Fontaine faces the idea of a version of himself pushing such nasty ideals and taking autonomy and ended it all. Like you I thought it would be a negative portrayal of these things in the hood but I was so happily shocked to find out that the end of the movie is all about us galvanizing and fighting back. The reveal of Tyrone fits into some subtextual stuff but that was just cool and one of the best post credit scenes I have ever seen.
It took me waaaaay too long to get around to watching They Cloned Tyrone but it was so worth it, even more so since it meant I could finally watch this video :D All of the sociopolitical commentary in They Cloned Tyrone was phenomenal but the greatest joy of it was how it spoke deeply to me in the realm of facing a loss of identity and fighting off the nihilism that comes from you being a cog in a larger machine. I'd like to highlight one part in particular, one that took a good week to settle into my brain. It was the way that Fontaine's existential crisis was relieved through the presence of Junebug. At his lowest, believing that he as a living individual didn't really matter or exist, merely implanted memories of a dead brother he personally never had and a mother who was never there, the kid strolls up and does 2 noteworthy things: He reminds Fontaine of that brother, Ronnie, in a way that was still emotionally resonant despite it "Not Being Real," showing that the feelings aren't false even if the reason for those feelings are. And he connects and bonds with Fontaine through Spongebob and Patrick, characters *in a TV show that isn't real.* Spongebob and Patrick don't exist in any actual way. They're made up. There's not even a physical actor you could point at and say "that person is still moving their body even if its in service of something they're not." They're fake cartoon people. *But that doesn't mean that they can't be meaningful.* At the end of the day, knowing for a fact that all of the people climbing out onto the surface are "false" people, literally clones, didn't stop the residents of the Glen from seeing their humanity, giving them water, blankets, shelter, and welcoming them into the community. It doesn't matter that you came from a vat; you are now a person and you deserve to be treated as such, with kindness and support. I find that very comforting :)
Always good to see Black movies with real analysis and reckoning of the way that the system negatively impacts people, rather than just playing into negative stereotypes and colorism (looking at you Tyler Perry). Great breakdown, as usual, Ron.
Surprisingly "Renfield" was one that took me a bit to click why I liked it so much. Saw it in theaters, & ended up dragging a friend to see it a week later, & wasn't till I was putting in a journal entry for school about what I did over the weekend that I realized that I loved it, because I've been Renfield, both times I watched it, I was filled with feelings of wanting to cry with him at the end of the movie, genuinely proud of Renfield, & it didn't click till I really thought about it afterwards. It's a silly movie that handles the aspect of toxic codependent relationships surprisingly well for a film using Dracula & his familiar as the representatives of that relationship.
I'm so glad you made a video about this movie! I watched it the week it came out and was absolutely blown away and it's upsetting that it's not getting a ton of buzz.
I'm always (t)here for a neurodivergent-fixation-fueled deep dive into film. 💜 They Cloned Tyrone reminded me of the worst example of predatory redlining I've ever seen - the specific subject matter may trigger powerful and painful emotions regarding the ancestral pain of African-Americans, and I don't want to mention it by name unless you have the emotional energy to engage with it. It also reminded me of the segregation between a high school in my hometown - a boarding school for Alaskan Indigenous folks who live remote - which is located on an island across the bridge from the main town, and the dominantly-White high school I attended. The schools are rivals, pitted heavily against each other, and the racism is blatant; the indigenous neighborhoods here also display segregation and marginalization along similar lines to what you've discussed in this video. (for full disclosure, in case it wasn't apparent, I'm White, and thus cannot understand this firsthand; my experiences with it are based on observation and the treatment of people I knew when I was a kid)
Found FD from Khadiji, and now you from FD. I appreciate you all. I've been trying to for years to find more quality black voices on here, and all I really had was Brianna Joy Gray and Tim Black. Everyone else fell off if they were ever on. Happy to get to support a Detroiter. Thank you!
1) I find it interesting that White millenials have come back to the cities that their grandparents left in White Flight. (and all of the sudden food deserts disappear) 2) I will never forget that about 35 years ago a father of a friend said that universities let the neighborhoods around them fall a part by not investing and helping improve them in order to buy the surrounding property cheaply. The University of Pennsylvania did exactly that.
As a metro detroit white poor child, I went to Hazel Park, Clawson, Madison Heights, and Troy schools. So I've seen firsthand the difference in funding
They Cloned Tyrone: 👍👍 The way that (seemingly) all of the citizens turn on a dime after seeing Nimona go phoenix and prevent the mass destruction of the city was a bit head tilting. I do really like that movie though.
Wow, cool. I'd always wondered what redlining was, I'm no American and always assumed segregation was an organic outgrowth of people being shitty and racist, had no idea how structural it was
Andrew, if you took someone who knew nothing about it at all and gave them a series of books detailing what happened over the last 150 years as fiction, they’d say the series was not enjoyable to read since it’s too unbelievable to think that would actually happen. Like he says, truth is far stranger than fiction.
16:26 funding for public education and teachers wages etc is always something I’m just… when I went to middle school there wasn’t much funding. And they kept cutting funding. I moved to Kansas and people would complain about the funding for the high school and I was always like… y’all are fucking RICH. What are you talking about? And a lot of how schools get funding is such bullshit. A lot of their funding is based off of property taxes. So if the value/taxes of a property isn’t thag high no matter how the budget is allocated there won’t be enough for the local schools.
One of the best (and most important) books any of us can read in the early 21st century is THE COLOR OF LAW by Richard Rothstein. Absolutely here for this one. Cheers. Edit: I'ma have to come back after watching the film doh LMAO lemme do that first...
I've found similarities in the Downtown Eastside (DTES), a neighborhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to what is depicted in this film, which leads me to believe that the DTES, like The Glen, is a victim of redlining. And honestly, if this is true, this makes me sad. Because a lot of people, including my parents, see the DTES as a place of urban blight and crime, not unlike how historically Black neighborhoods in the US that were a victim of redlining have been percieved.
23:54 I’ve not known about this association of apartments with sex work before tbh In some ways it makes sense, you turn to sex work for various reasons one of those being low income, another being disabled, another being homeless, a lot of people do it cuz they have limited options. When you have limited options you have limited income. There’s also the fact that sex workers, whether they’re doing legal/mostly legal work like porn or whether they’re doing criminalized work like full service, are constantly debanked and a lot of landlords require a bank account. There are morality clauses with a lot of housing and banking institutions as well prohibiting people from doing porn or selling sex or anything in between without getting kicked out. Idk if they include strippers in that but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people getting evicted solely cuz their landlord found out they worked at a club. Also, until you’re giving away your kidneys to pay rent, you’re not selling your body.
This sounds really stupid but for the longest time, I couldn't watch Mean Girls because it hit close to home for me and yet it was very specific for me to go 'Uh...'.
they cloned tyrone was such an obvious representation of not only redlining, but how the government/outsiders of black communities has continuously undermined the capabilities of our people to thrive as a society and how they've tricked our people to believe that as well over time... there's so much that goes into it, including for me the chicken and music control.. our people has been used as pawns in so many different ways and aspects, and has in so many ways conditioned people in the "hood" to partake in an endless rat race that just leads to our values as overall human beings to be undermined over and over, even with things like gentrification taking place.. all in all, they cloned tyrone is also a representation of what can happen when we as a people CHOOSE to not be undermined and to come together to oppose the actual problem.. in real life, these things are easier said than done, which is why they cloned tyrone deserves more appreciation fr.. this was also a great analysis showing the real life hinderance that outsiders have tried to implement on indigenous folks for centuriesssssss. it goes so deep. thank you for this🙏🏾
Just finished watching They Cloned Tyrone a few hours ago and immediately came here to see your thoughts! Loved the movie and the review ^_^ The reveal of who was behind the cloning and his reasons for doing it made me feel a little iffy because of what it could imply about the whole colorism and proximity-to-whiteness discourse going on these days, but I think that was also part of the movie's point. He was a villain, after all, and his logic was definitely flawed. Fantastic movie, super nuanced and absolutely will be something I rewatch several times & talk about with my friends
Great video, thank you for the education! I’m not from the US so I’m not deep in this topic but I’m interested if anyone else was reminded of the series Black Lightning. I feel like it speaks on very similar issues as They cloned Tyrone just not radically enough maybe
