Talk to Me, Katherine Lung
Talk to Me is an important film because it depicts African American disc jockey and their role within society and their power they had over their listeners. Through the real life depiction of Ralph “Petey� Greene, the film managed to capture the socio-economical status of African Americans and the division of integrated black and white American society by economical strata. Petey Green an ex-convict, who knows the hard life and what it’s like to be living in the bottom and seeing drug addicts and hustlers, manages to get a job through Dewey, an African American who has a fairly respectable job in the radio station. Despite Dewey’s economical success relative to other African Americans, he seems to be constantly holding his real self back and trying to blend in with the White folks in the station. He works for a White boss, he watches the Tonight Show to copy the attitude and behavior of a white man. Despite having more economic freedom, he is still much tied down to racial hierarchy. On the opposite, Petey Greene lives free-er, than any other Black characters on the film. He says what he thinks, despite of raging White superior within the station, and through his bravery and stubborn ways to “keep it real� he ultimately gains the respect from Black and White folks alike. In this sense, Dewey looks up to Petey and because unlike him, he is not “afraid to say the things�. Dewey who dress and mannerism emulates White Americans, admires Petey for being able to dress like a Black man, and talk like a Black man, because Dewey too comes from the black neighborhood and roots from there. Petey’s word reflects exactly what society is like from a black man’s stance, and if anyone calls him a racist for saying whatever he did, that person would most likely be not black and is ignorant to racism.
The power of Petey is especially apparent when Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated and Washington D.C. goes up in flame. He understood the emotional status of his listeners, and despite desires to rely on violence and aggression, he is able to calm the mass down and to act in much more peaceful manner because violence would only lead to bad things.