[Marxism] 'Talk to Me': A Political Movie that Lacks Politics

[Louis Proyect]

'Talk to Me': A Political Movie that Lacks Politics
By David Corn, AlterNet
Posted on July 17, 2007, Printed on July 17, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/57029/

There are two straight-to-the-gut scenes in Talk To Me, the new biopic 
in which Don Cheadle slam-dunks his portrayal of Ralph Waldo "Petey" 
Greene, the ex-con, street-sassy, Afro'ed-out deejay who brought black 
power to the radio in Washington, DC, in the 1960s.

The first occurs the night Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. 
Greene, who had fast-talked himself into an on-air job at WOL-AM, goes 
into the studio to try to calm down the city, which is in flames, as 
blacks are rioting and destroying their own neighborhoods. "I don't know 
if I'm more sad or angry," Greene tells his audience. And Greene is 
walking a line. He pleads with his listeners to resist the urge to 
strike: "That's your city ... That's not what Dr. King would've wanted." 
Then he says, "The truth is, if they can do it to him, don't think for a 
minute they can't cut you down like a dog." But he counsels, "Put away 
your anger."

When he walks out of the studio, the other African-American employees 
embrace him. They all looked stunned and exhausted. Then they spot in 
the corridor the white station owner (played by Martin Sheen) sobbing. 
Greene and the other blacks are each processing this cataclysmic event, 
calculating the right proportion of outrage and sorrow. But for the 
white guy, it's simple: he's pegged the needle at tragedy. This awful 
event has not brought the two sides of the racial divide together. It 
has illuminated the gulf between black and white. The station owner has 
the luxury to feel only grief. Greene and the rest have a more 
complicated emotional and psychological task. They walk past the station 
owner, shrug, and go home for the night.

In the other scene-a few years later when Greene has gone national with 
a television talk show, records, and nightclub appearances-the onetime 
prison deejay is booked on Johnny Carson's show. This is it, his 
manager, Dewey Hughes (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) tells him. Greene has 
made the big time. It's gonna be Cosby, Pryor ... and Greene. And 
Greene, as the movie has proved by this point, has the chops (the voice, 
the acerbic wit, the killer instinct of a social critic) to go 
one-on-one with these other rising black luminaries.

But minutes after Carson has finished joshing with Bette Midler, Greene 
hits the stage and stares at the white audience. He doesn't launch into 
the expected routine. Instead, he tells the crowd, "I'm just an ex-con." 
And he explains that when he does his radio show for black people, "I 
know they're laughing with me, not at me." He goes on: "All I see is a 
room full of white folks waiting to hear some nigger jokes. I have 
nothing to say to you." He mutters, "sorry" to Carson and walks off the 
set. His career (as portrayed in the movie) is over. Greene could not 
take the final step into respectability-that is, the world of white 
respectability.

These two interactions between white and black America mark the most 
dramatic interludes in the movie, which was directed by Kasi Lemmons, a 
rare commodity in Hollywood: an African-American female director. (In 
1997, Lemmons directed Eve's Bayou, a film about a black doctor and his 
family in Louisiana in the early 1960s, starring Samuel L. Jackson.)

But Lemmons, who is 46 years old, was not interested in turning Petey 
Greene's short life -- he died of cancer in 1984 at the age of 55 -- 
into a race-driven tale of blacks and whites. She opted to turn it into 
a different exploration of race, one involving blacks and other blacks. 
That is, she examines the dilemma often faced by minorities: confront 
the system or work within it. Talk To Me zeroes in on the face-off 
between Greene and Hughes, the sole African-American executive at WOL 
who found and nurtured Greene and who tried to shoehorn him into the 
realm of establishment acceptability. This makes for a winning movie, 
but that focus has an unfortunate side effect; Talk To Me is something 
of a political movie with little politics.

The arc of Petey Greene's life is classic movie material: rags, riches, 
downfall. Cheadle superbly captures Greene's badass strutting and his 
not-too-far-from-the-surface insecurity. This performance will spark 
talk of a Best Actor nomination. But Talk To Me is a pas de deux, with 
Greene and Hughes each struggling as a black man to find his place in 
American society during times of change.

Hughes, a son of a local housing project, wants to be legit. His role 
model is literally Johnny Carson -- the emcee of white America. 
(Watching Carson, Hughes says, "showed me there was a world far away 
from the Anacostia projects.") Hughes first sees Greene, who has street 
cred and plenty of verbal skill, as the means to higher ratings for his 
struggling station. Hughes is looking for an authentic black voice 
because he understands the potential commercial value of such authenticity.

Out of jail -- where he was serving time for armed robbery -- Greene 
needs someone on the inside to help him monetize his natural talents, 
which includes the ability to connect with his brothers and sisters with 
tell-it-like-it-is humor. He looks up Hughes (whose brother is also in 
jail) and badgers Hughes into giving him a chance on the air, which, of 
course, Greene blows.

But Hughes realizes the guy deserves a second chance and, if guided, can 
make the station a bunch of money. Eventually a blacked-owned media 
empire (that survives to this day in Washington) is born. But first 
Greene and Hughes have to work out some issues.

Greene slams the ever-aspiring Hughes as a "Sidney Poitier-ass nigger." 
Hughes is pissed at Greene for being too much like his no-good 
brother-the-convict: a discredit to their race. Greene calls Hughes a 
"house nigger." Hughes fires back and tells Greene he's a "field nigger."

Since Talk To Me is a Hollywood film, they both have to be right to some 
degree. And, of course, they can only succeed together: taking on The 
Man and working with The Man. (Greene and Hughes are both damn happy 
when a bunch of white TV executives sign up Greene's television show for 
national distribution.) At one point, Hughes tells Greene, "I guess I 
need you to say the things I'm afraid to say, and you need me to do the 
things you're afraid to do." It's the message moment, and Greene 
replies, "You ought to put that shit on a greeting card."

Lemmons probes this yin-yang dichotomy of black life with flair and 
humor. The film has its formulaic moments, but it poignantly and 
respectfully captures the rhythm, spirit, and clothes--especially the 
clothes!--of black American life of the 60s and 70s. And Lemmons hands 
Cheadle a meaty role, befitting one of Hollywood's best actors. (Cheadle 
has become a true leading man with emotionally rich performances, such 
as in Hotel Rwanda, and with his save Darfur activism.) But what's 
missing is the political content of Greene's life and work.

In Talk To Me, Greene barely interacts with the civil rights struggle or 
the antiwar movement. In real life, Petey Greene was a community 
activist who railed against poverty and racism. Cheadle's Green mounts a 
protest against WOL before it hires him. On the air, he makes fun of the 
foibles of his fellow blacks, and he speaks to his audience from the POV 
of an angry black man. He refers to a local black politician as a pimp.

But the most controversial remark Greene makes in the movie is a 
put-down of Motown impresario Berry Gordy. What the real Greene had to 
say about Vietnam, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, the civil rights 
movement, the women's movement, drugs, elections -- and I'm presuming he 
had some things to say on these and other hot-button subjects -- is not 
in the movie.

The movie ends with Greene's funeral. Thousands of his fans are there 
(as was true in real life). Dewey Hughes, who bought WOL after splitting 
with Greene following the Carson debacle, tells the crowd, "He said the 
things we were afraid to say." Talk To Me, an engaging film, would be 
more powerful if it showed more of what Greene had actually said.

David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author of 
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq 
War and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush. He writes a blog at 
davidcorn.com.