DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 07 August) – The protagonists went searching for something that has bothered them. This leads them to a church, filled with wild singing about salvation. But they later snoop around further and found an elevator, which leads them underneath to something that has trapped their community for so long.
This is a scene from the Black comedy/sci-fi/suspense film They Cloned Tyrone (streaming on Netflix, this is not a plug by the way) about three Black persons: a hustler, a pimp and a pro running into a conspiracy. But those scenes remind me of another movie, which also has an elevator and an underground shenanigan.
If you ever watched that Pinoy classic Kakabakaba Ka Ba? by Mike de Leon, you might also see the similarity of Tyrone with this film, a mad caper of a movie about two yuppie couples that run into a Japanese opium smuggling syndicate that operates under a church where nuns sing with glee: “Pagbigyan niyo kami ng tinapay!” Bread, dough, powder, drugs, and that Marx dictum that religion is an opium — makes you marvel at the film writers’ wit
Whether They Cloned Tyrone copied these scenes from Kakabakaba would be another story, or conspiracy, (but this gives me the chance to write that these two films could be cousins or neighbors, like a Fil-Am community) with similar themes of cultural exploitation and control.
I don’t know if you readers enjoy watching Black films. Perhaps your impression of Black culture is what you see in movies and videos: sex, violence, gangs and profanity. But if you go for the Jordan Peele horror, then Tyrone is his funny cousin. This movie challenges us viewers, and the Black community as well, to look at the stereotypes and ask: what if all this is pacification?
That leads us back to the elevator, where the characters go deep down to the conspiracy, a government laboratory where the products they’ve been consuming – hair straightening cream, fried chicken and juice – were controlling their minds! And there is CCTV monitoring their “development.” There are members of the community kidnapped and experimented on. And as the title mentioned clones, they did discover they have clones in storage!
What is happening! The people are the product, there goes one current dictum about how social media has controlled our minds and our economy and politics. And as the film reveals the mastermind, he utters: “assimilation is better than annihilation”. It’s much like the premise of Peele’s Get-Out.
Kakabakaba, which is quite dated as it was released in 1980, also works on similar themes of culture. One of the characters flies back from Japan, unknowingly carries a cassette tape laced with opium dropped by a fellow Japanese passenger for safe keeping in transit, and ends up being chased by Japanese and Chinese syndicates once he and his friends arrive in the country. The mastermind is a Pinoy adopted by Japan because of his love of all things Japan. Cassette tapes are already obsolete to today’s audience. But I’m thrilled to see the Chinese vs. Japanese wars resonate. Today’s youth never had the joys in our younger years owning a Sony Walkman and cassettes that are produced by Japan – Sony and TDK. But look at what they are consuming: android phones owned by China. And they watch K-Dramas and listen to K-pop. So the cultural gadget and media wars continue to keep us pre-occupied.
They Cloned Tyrone seems to have a more current message about the culture in America (that gets to be amplified thru Netflix and other media) – discrimination, class divide, subjugation through hair color and the things we consume. Ain’t it also true here? Jollibee and McDo ads want us to make them part of our memories, from moments of family bonding to meeting your first crush shared with French fries. When a friend cuts or dyes her hair, we ask : nabuIagan kag uyab?
These films, disguised as comedy, hit hard on culture as a tool, either to control or to awaken us. Cloned ends on a positive note when the gangs got together to smash the machine that controls their community literally underneath, or as one gang leader says: there’s “trapping underneath” that shackles the people’s minds.
I just wish more people would get to watch these two films rather than that Barbenheimer hype (although Oppenheimer is a must see). But somehow we just want to go to the trappings of the next hit song or the next blockbuster. (MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Tyrone A. Velez is a freelance journalist and writer.)