They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
9/10
A lot of viewers have compared They Cloned Tyrone, directed by Juel Taylor from a script co-written with Tony Rettenmaier, to Boots Riley’s magical realist take on class exploitation, Sorry to Bother You. While the latter offers sharper politics thanks to Riley’s explicitly communist worldview, They Cloned Tyrone might be an even better movie. It’s a classic example of science fiction as social allegory, using the technology of cloning as a metaphor for structural racism and inequality under capitalism.
Fontaine (John Boyega) is a drug dealer in a neighbourhood called the Glen, located in an unidentified American city. He mourns the death of his younger brother and lives with his mother, whom he rarely speaks to. One of Fontaine’s customers, the pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), owes him money. Fontaine goes to confront Slick, who has just had a fight with one of his prostitutes, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris). After claiming his money, Fontaine is shot to death by rival dealer Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson). The next morning, Fontaine wakes up with no visible injuries and again tries to claim his money from Slick, who is shocked to see him alive. Along with Yo-Yo, they investigate the mystery and uncover a vast government cloning conspiracy.
There’s a clear blaxploitation influence on this film, not least in how it presents negative stereotypes of Black people. The three main characters are a drug dealer, a pimp, and a prostitute. Their neighbourhood is plagued by drugs and crime. Fontaine enjoys a daily bottle of malt liquor. When we start seeing repeated fried chicken commercials, you start to wonder if the filmmakers are going a little too far. But the stereotypes are the point. Without giving too much away, the cloning project is linked to a deliberate effort to ensure Black communities stay trapped in a cycle of poverty and violence. Human experimentation on oppressed groups, including Black people, sadly has a long history. One of the most notorious examples was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in which the U.S. Public Health Service gave placebos to nearly 400 Black men with syphilis, without informing them, in order to observe the effects of untreated syphilis. More than 100 of these men died.
Within its science fiction context, They Cloned Tyrone shows how even when people become aware of the oppressive system they live under, it is one thing to understand and quite another to revolt. Besides the threat of counter-revolutionary violence, the film’s ruling class has ensured mechanisms are in place to turn the masses against each other if they try to rebel—and even to turn them against themselves. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the ways in which the capitalist class tries to prevent the masses from uniting and rising up against their shared enemy.
Capitalist ideology, such as the “American Dream”, also encourages those who are suffering to blame themselves. We’re told that capitalism offers equal opportunity, that anyone can get rich through hard work—and that if you can’t, that’s not the result of systemic problems, but your own failures as an individual. This simplistic ideology justifies the rule of the rich and blames the poor for their own problems. While it’s easily belied by the facts, all too many people will blame themselves for problems that are outside their control, which in extreme cases can lead to suicide.
Another interesting theme in They Cloned Tyrone is how capitalism wastes human potential. Yo-Yo proves to be highly intelligent. An inveterate Nancy Drew fan, she plays a key role in helping our protagonists solve the mystery of Fontaine’s apparent resurrection. We see in Yo-Yo’s bedroom that she has a poster of the periodic table of the elements on her wall. Despite her smarts, she is forced to work as a prostitute to survive, reducing her body to a commodity bought by clients and sold by pimps like Slick Charles. How would Yo-Yo’s life look different in a society based not on profit, but on the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”? Would she be a doctor? A scientist? Trotsky’s question about class society is pertinent here: “How many Aristoteles are herding swine? And how many swineherds are sitting on thrones?”
The perspective of They Cloned Tyrone is closer to identity politics than Marxism, which in this case means it views oppression primarily through the lens of race. The government scientists are mostly white men, with one key exception. Racism is an integral part of capitalism—“You can’t have capitalism without racism,” Malcolm X noted—but Taylor mostly avoids talking about class. Here’s one area where Sorry to Bother You was superior. With his grounding in Marxist theory, Boots Riley was able to more explicitly address class and racial oppression and how the two are connected.
Still, They Cloned Tyrone has a revolutionary spirit. It shows the oppressed masses overcoming divisions and uniting against their common oppressor, which is always a welcome theme. It also boasts great performances from Boyega, Parris and Fox, while Kiefer Sutherland makes an impression in a supporting role with relatively little screentime. Despite weighty themes and emotional moments, such as when Fontaine discovers the truth about his mother, the film is consistently funny and entertaining. It continues a long tradition, from Plato’s cave allegory to The Matrix, of stories about people dispelling illusions and discovering the truth about the world they live in. And as Trotsky said, “The truth is always revolutionary.”