Talk to Me -- Dillon Aretz
Petey knew his audience. He understood what they wanted to hear and what they needed to hear. But, his audience was mostly limited to Blacks. Dewey, on the other hand, dreams of being on the tonight show because it is representative of mainstream society. He understands that to make it big in the world, one must achieve success with a white audience as well. The encounter between Petey and this white audience is clearly a conflict. It isn't a matter of stagefright, as he claims, because he has performed in front of people before; instead, it is his having to approach and subjugate himself to white mainstream society in order to gain widespread acceptance. As they say in the movie, if you get Johnny Carson's approval, you're destined to be a hit. The movie then is a choice between being a hit with the Black community, or becoming acceptable to a white audience. Yet, it is Petey who is afraid of this because he says he knows who he is already, and any compromise to that, in order to be accepted by more people, would compromise himself.