Identity, Control, and Rebellion: Takeaways from They Cloned Tyrone
Tupac is alive, Michael Jackson ain’t dead, and Toni Morrison might just as well be sitting at a coffee shop nodding, I told you to everyone that passes by. Her presence certainly seems to loom large over They Cloned Tyrone, where you very quickly learn that almost no proclamation is unworthy of consideration, if only for an infinitesimal amount of time.
She, Morrison, articulated the searing effect the white gaze has on black life, giving voice to something that for centuries was a constant, but was so potent and lethal that it was unspeakable. Here it is, recaptured in the film’s opening image of an advertisement with a white man grinning obscenely, overlooking a group of black people having this very debate (about Tupac and Michael Jackson). It sets the stage for the inevitable clash between history and perception, ready to play out in the fictional neighborhood called The Glen.
With art, oftentimes one must at least wonder, if not ask who is the audience, or to put it another way, who did the artist have in mind when they made this? It is assumed, pejoratively, that black movies are made for black audiences and that there is no category called white movies. Movies like Oppenheimer are less impressive to me for the technical feats they accomplish than their ability to craft a historical narrative about post World War II America and what follows that is somehow completely devoid of black people. But alas, it is a movie, made for the movie going audience. Black movies must exist for the supplication of some other category of people.
This particular film (Tyrone) offers commentary on the issue of whether or not things naturally are the way they are, or if they were made to be that way, and swallows up the entire category of living with its questioning. It drops you into the lives of its characters and instead of asking you to wonder why they are like this, which is less of an honest question than it is a silent judgement, it forces you to consider who really stands to benefit from these people’s lives being this way?
Everyone has their own unique response to the question as the answers are revealed. Fontaine (John Boyega), Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), and Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) cycle between moments of doubt, denial, and defiance towards their encroaching reality as they take stock of how complex the machinery of what is happening to them really is.
What it means to have a self, and whether that self is a creation, or the by-product of circumstances is another central theme. Does it even matter, is what the film seems to be asking, because in the end, the self may only be a set of ideas, yours, or mine, made to fit together and promulgated through the body. The trailer and title make it known that clones play a part in the film, in the literal and metaphorical sense. Fontaine discovers he has been cloned, but even before this physical manifestation is shown, the ideas that he embodies appear to be nothing more than the repackaged ideas of someone else, which seems to be true for most of the people surviving in The Glen.
In this way, trauma becomes a common occurrence, and writ large, the private theater of the mind becomes a communal hive. Characters wrestle with what has happened to them and the burden of their nearly forgotten possibilities. Whether one becomes a hero, or a villain seems to hinge on the manner in which they resolve these issues.
Some people never recover from the loss of innocence. One death in particular crystallizes this, but regardless, most characters seem to have had to give birth to an identity much too soon and are thus forced to cling fiercely to it given their vulnerability. Parents are conspicuously absent, and everyone must become their own mother or father much too soon with far too little guidance. Perhaps this is part of the message—parents are, after all, are one step closer to being elders, who function as the collective memory of a community. Memory is a form of safekeeping, without which any group of people is rendered unable to remember the brilliance and tragedy of their history, and thus makes themselves vulnerable to the most wicked ignorance. This is personified by a character whose life is a reminder of what happens when your entire history, past and future, is overshadowed by your worst experience.
The women in the film are the ones who display the courage and intelligence to fight back and injure the cycle that is harming so many, and perhaps break it entirely. They seem to never lose sight of who exactly this is for, and thankfully the film spares them from the fate of being cast as nothing more than accessories to the salvation of men. Yo-Yo dares to dream despite conditions that threaten to suffocate her very existence.
The story is entertaining and even heroic in some moments and fails only if neat and clean resolution is what one seeks, which is certainly forgivable, and fitting given the nature of what it deals with. A quest to discover one’s identity, in this instance, benefits from the inclusion of clones and science fiction but would be no less perplexing without them.
Blonde as Becoming: Frank Ocean and the Time It Takes to Be
On July 10, 2012 Frank Ocean released what would go on to become his critically acclaimed album Channel Orange, subsequently changing his life with its massive success. Excitement about the release of the album was buffered not only by the content, but by the fact that just days before, Ocean released a letter to the public in which he openly talked about his first love being a man. Both the letter and the album were revelatory, and emblematic of Frank Ocean’s style of art, as well as the way he chose to communicate his art.
Frank Ocean’s current predicament is interesting because it highlights the relationship between the artist and their fans. It is a mutually agreed upon relationship in which the artist consents to make and share their art with fans in exchange for what the artist seeks, whether it be fame, fortune, or something else.
A figure as seemingly unique as Frank Ocean is still not immune to the pressures of fame. Indeed, his uniqueness may very well render him more susceptible to the trappings of fame, as society loves to ensnare rarities of all kinds, and observe them on societies terms before moving on to something else. So it comes as no surprise that three years later, many fans and individuals in the music industry seem ready to do just that—they seem ready to quit Frank Ocean after embracing him initially. Months of delayed promises of a new album, with little indication as to when it will arrive will do that to a fan base.
The relationship between Frank Ocean and his fans resembles other relationships in the sense that the qualities that initially attract us— Ocean’s uniqueness and commitment to doing things his own way—begin to repel us as the love bloom fades. Most if not all of that bloom has worn off after three years of waiting. Clearly Frank Ocean is working on his own time, and this is an absolute necessity for any artist deeply engaged in their craft. Rushing the work would produce unsatisfactory results for both Ocean and his fans. It would be a disappointment for Ocean because he will not have remained true to himself, and what becomes of an artist no longer capable of truth? They are no longer capable of art.
Frank Ocean’s current predicament is interesting because it highlights the relationship between the artist and their fans. It is a mutually agreed upon relationship in which the artist consents to make and share their art with fans in exchange for what the artist seeks, whether it be fame, fortune, or something else. Not every relationship is the same, and as a brief comparison, the singer Adele, under somewhat similar circumstances, has not been subjected to the same sort of questioning and heckling by her fans. Adele’s last album was released in 2011, and until October of 2015 she had not released any new music, apart from a song written and performed for a James Bond film in 2012. She had not performed live in three years. Rather than derision, her choices were respected and when she did release new music, it was treated like a godsend. Why has the same amount of patience and respect for privacy not been afforded to Frank Ocean?
The extent to which Frank Ocean’s reputation has changed for the worse, and whether he even cares what others think of him are all unknown at this point. From his previous actions one can surmise that Ocean is more concerned with his creative process than his fame. This is not to say that he does not care about fame at all, and he may even care a great deal about it. What I am saying is that Frank Ocean’s relationship to his art and the process by which he creates that art seem to be paramount, while his relationship to his fans is peripheral. At best, all we can do is guess about what motivations currently guide Frank Ocean, and not fully understanding the intricacies that underlie Ocean’s art because the most we have access to are his albums as finished products, which are not always equal to the sum of their parts. But we should know about the artist as an identity, one that history tells us exists independently of fans who wait patiently or not. Frank Ocean will release his album when he is ready to, and not a day sooner, regardless of those who complain—perhaps he will be better off for doing so.