June 9, 2008, - 5:28 am
Whitewashing Chante Mallard
By Debbie Schlussel
Maybe you remember the story. If you don’t, political correctness is to blame.
The mainstream media simply didn’t give this racially-charged horror story the attention it deserved because the races of perpetrator and victim were inconvenient to the usual Jim Crow America narrative.
In 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks–which the media told us would unite Americans of all colors against a common Islamist enemy–Chante Jawan Mallard murdered a homeless man in Texas.
Mallard, a young Black woman in her twenties, embodied everything wrong with the sleazy hip-hop, gangsta lifestyle–especially its inhumanity and insensitivity to the value of all human life. She was high on gin and Ecstasy–not Snoop Dogg’s proverbial “Gin & Juice,” but close enough–while driving home in the middle of the night after partying a club. Gregory Biggs, the homeless man she hit and ultimately murdered, was White.
Mallard drove home with Biggs’ body stuck half through her windshield. He was alive, but injured and bleeding to death from the injuries and shattered glass sticking into his body. Mallard, a nurse’s aide, knew how to administer first aid, and she certainly knew–like the rest of us without that training–how to drive to a hospital.
But she did neither.
Instead, Chante Mallard drove her car, with Bigg’s body writhing in agony and dripping blood, into her garage and shut the door behind her. Despite a promise to Biggs to call for help–the first of several such empty promises–she went inside her house and had sex with her boyfriend, while Biggs lay suffering and dying. Biggs returned to the garage several times to check on Biggs, each time promising help . . . and each time doing nothing. Finally, Biggs died.
After Biggs’ death, Mallard called two friends of hers, also Black, to help her dispose of Biggs’ body in a park. Mallard got away with it, until months later she bragged at a party, “I killed a White man,” and repeatedly laughed about it. Uh-huh, that’s “hilarious.” Yes, the life of a cracker or honky simply wasn’t worth that much to Chante Jawan Mallard. Neither was the fact that he suffered and died a slow, painful, bloody death at her hands.
And Mallard would have gotten away with it. But an enemy of hers was at the party and informed police. In 2003, a guilty verdict resulted in Texas v. Mallard, and she was sentenced to 50-years in prison for second degree murder. She stood to do life, but now she will be eligible for parole 25 years after she began serving her sentence. While Mallard’s victim, Gregory Biggs, died a cruel, cold-hearted death at her hands, she could be out of jail in her mid-50s.
But now a second injustice has been done. It’s “Stuck,” a major motion picture just released in theaters. It is almost 7 years after the murder. Yet, 7 years later, Hollywood still cannot face facts when the race narrative is not the one they want it to be. If the evil White man convention doesn’t fit, we must acquit, er . . . lie in the script?
While the movie is almost completely faithful to the story, Chante Jawan Mallard–a racist Black murderer–is now Brandi Boski, a White chick played by the fair-skinned Mena Suvari. There is no racism in the on-screen story, no comments about “I killed a cracker. Hahahahaha.” But most other things are the same, from the nurse’s aide job of the perpetrator to the Ecstasy pills to the lengthy sex scene, while a homeless man is dying in her garage. Even the look of the house on set is virtually identical to Mallard’s.
Ironically, the few who object to the racial make-over sound like they are on the same Ecstasy pills Mallard was on the night of the murder. An idiotic, uber-liberal White reviewer writes that he is upset that make-up artists styled the obviously White Suvari with cornrows and made her look and sound “African-American,” which he found “insulting and completely racist.” Um . . . Hello? Several Black bloggers lamented that “yet another Black role goes to a White woman.” From White, guilt-ridden liberals to Blacks lamenting they don’t get to play murderers, these card-carrying members of DENSA would be hilarious . . . if they weren’t so sad.
Yes, there are a few other differences in this well-done horror thriller. But they are minor in comparison to the Mallard White-wash and help bring the story along.
Gregory Biggs is now Tom Pardo, a 50-something homeless man who has the day from hell, which begins with being thrown out of his dumpy flophouse efficiency to being given the runaround by government employment agency bureaucrats, and being roused from sleep on a park bench by police, to the horror of being hit and left to suffer by the newly-White version of Chante Mallard.
One appropriate embellishment is the scene in which an illegal alien mother and son find the dying man in the garage and endeavor to save him. But when they reach their home, the husband tells them to ignore him and let him die because, “it’s not our business. Beside that, do you want to be deported?” While it’s not the intended sympathetic-to-aliens sentiment, so much for the public image of illegal aliens as “loyal citizens” who just want to “do the work Americans won’t do.”
And the ending to the Hollywood version of this movie is far more satisfying than the sad, real-life ending to Biggs’ life, making it worth seeing.
But while “Stuck” is a great–though depraved–movie, and well done from almost every standpoint of suspense, misery, and just revenge, one giant injustice rings through:
Bleaching the perpetrator of this horrible murder doesn’t just bleach the truth. It adds insult to injury of the memory of murder victim, Gregory Biggs. If he were a Black man, his life might have been worth more to his racist Black murderess.
May he rest in peace, instead of turning over in his grave.
@THINK BEFORE U SPEAK
NEWS FLASH but Slavery ended 150 years ago so please STFU! Ive done nothing to you or your people, neither has my family so stop your whining and move on with your life. You dont hear Jews hating on the Germans who systematically slaughtered them less than 100 years ago and you damn sure dont hear Mexicans and Filipinos hating on the Spanish who laid waste to their native people centuries ago either so really get over yourself! the truth is that history is laden with a shit ton of atrocities and in case you didnt realize it wasnt the blacks who were always the victim…
..Anyways about this movie I really had to comment because I understand both the director Stuart Gordons reason for what he did and I also understand where Debbie is coming from. If Stuart casted a black woman, lets say for shits and gigs Halle Berry than can you even imagine how pissed off the black community would be for seeing her go up in flames in all her ghetto attitude, drug use, cornrows and all? it would be disastrous for Stuart Gordons career, but I also notice that if stuart told it like it really was, than it would potentially be the first film to inspire black guilt and shine light on the hip-hop lifestyles insensitivity to human life and especially a white mans life. These are all messages that are very real but also too deeply complex for our emotionally primitive culture to understand in a way that doesnt inspire hatred. It shows me that even though we are technologically advancing at unprecedented rates we are also moving backwards on a cultural and emotional level. New questions now arise as in how do we deal with our power responsibly? I really do fear the worst for mankind…
Michael on November 12, 2012 at 3:38 am