As a “thirty-something” wife and mother, my Saturday nights out clubbing are now somewhat less frequent than they used to be. These days, on Saturday nights you are far more likely to find me, a glass of red wine and a slumbering Nave of Albion, in front of the TV watching “CSI New York” or “Law and Order” on Channel Five. So it was this last weekend that I came to watch an Episode of “Law and Order” from 2004 called “Darwinian” . For those of you who did not see it, the main storyline revolved around homeless people killing each other, however, the first part featured a situation where a rich, white, female executive was involved in a hit and run collision with a vagrant, who was thrown across the hood of her car and became lodged in her windscreen (or “wind shield” as it was an American programme) as the rich white executive lady had been drinking, she panicked and, rather than seeking medical help for the poor sod impaled on her dashboard, she drove home, with the moaning and seriously injured man still wedged in the glass, locked the car in the garage and left her victim to die slowly, whilst she had another drink.Oddly enough, this was not the first time that such a scene had featured in a US cop show, in a 2002 episode of the successful CBS series “CSI (Crime Scene Investigation)” entitled “Anatomy of a Lye” a rich white, male, lawyer also became involved in a collision with a homeless man who became stuck in his windscreen and was subsequently left to die a slow painful death in the wicked, white, lawyer's garage.
Clearly the “dying vagrant stuck in a windscreen scenario” is a popular one amongst script writers, and anyone seeking to discover the inspiration for it need look no further than the 2001 case of Chante Jawan Mallard an African American woman who, in real life, was was involved in a hit and run and run collision with a a homeless man called Gregory Biggs, who became lodged in her windscreen, like the fictional, white' lady executive, as the very real, black, Ms Mallard had been drinking she panicked and, rather than seeking medical help for her still live and semi-conscious victim, drove home, locked the car and the dying man in the garage (Sound familiar?). Ms Mallard then went inside, had sex with her boyfriend, and over the next few days occasionally checked on the hapless Biggs, still stuck in her wind shield, until she was sure he had stopped moaning.
Chante Mallard was clearly not a very nice person and, although some of us milksop liberals may have recoiled at the 50 year prison sentence she received when the case came to trial in 2003, she certainly deserved to be publicly reviled. It is however, interesting to note that whereas the two popular crime shows which were obviously inspired by her crime were so faithful to the details of the case, the only changes they made were in relation to her ethnicity, and, in the case of CSI, her gender.
There is nothing unusual about using real news stories as the inspiration for popular drama, indeed Dick Wolf, the producer and creator of Law and order, is quite open about the fact that many of the story lines are based on news items, and claims that many of the shows are, in his words, “ripped from the headlines” . However, it seems that, although many of the scripts may be based on real events, the resulting dramas do not accurately reflect real life.
What Wolf does not mention is that, after the plot lines are ripped from the headlines, they undergo a very thorough session of ethnic cleansing, so that the stories which the viewers eventually see comply with the requisite politically correct stereotyping. Given the level of crime in America (and increasingly in the UK) together with remarkable inventiveness of so many criminals , script writers are spoilt for choice and supplied with an endless source of inspiration. Unfortunately, however, in real life the majority of criminals do not fit the image which the TV producers want want to present. No problem there, the solution, of course, is easy, the writers just change the colour of those involved, and instantly PC programming is resumed. This is a technique which I referred to in an earlier article and it is one used regularly by the Community cohesion censors in their efforts to present a gullible audience with an ideologically enhanced version of reality with all the inconvenient facts airbrushed out.
(Can't wait to see how PC censors adapt this one!!)
Given that most people in Britain, and indeed many average Americans do not follow the US news very closely, they probably do not realise how frequently this revisionist race reversal happens. However examples abound, a December 2007 episode of CSI (Vegas), which aired in Britain a few weeks ago, was called “Lying down with Dogs” and featured a rich and glamorous white woman, who, although publicly a humanitarian philanthropist, was secretly involved in the sadistic sport of Dog fighting. This evil white woman died a nasty death, when one of her very white (and rather cute' as I recall) kennel boys set set some of her dogs on her.
Dog fighting seems a strange theme for a show like CSI, I wonder what inspired it?, could it have been the high profile case of (very) black, £130 million contract winning, American Football player Michael Vick who, days before CSI aired the dog fighting episode, was sentenced to 23 months in prison following discovery, in April 2007, of extensive facilities used for illegal dog fighting at his 15 acre ranch in Virginia, and evidence of horrific acts of animal cruelty.
Unlike “Law and Order” did with the Mallard case, CSI did not mirror the Vick situation quite so faithfully, for a start, Vick has, some might say regrettably, not yet been torn to shreds by hungry pit bulls (although his image, which was once worth millions in endorsements, does now feature as a popular dog chew toy) however, given that it was such a huge US news story in early 2007, it rather defies credibility to suggest that it and the late 2007 show are unconnected.
In which case, and in view of the fact that the prosecution of the Vick case caused considerable racial controversy not least because of the alleged popularity of illegal dog fighting in the US black community does it not seem odd that CSI chose to exaggerate the the involvement of white Americans in the “sport”?.
US cop shows have been doing this sort of thing for years now, a 2001 episode of Law and Order entitled “Myth and Fingerprints” involves the case of a, white, female forensics expert, who had been giving false trial testimony for years resulting many innocent men being convicted.
Of course, given that the character was white, surely there was no connection to the infamous case of, black Oklahoma forensics expert, Joyce Gilchrist for long known as “Black magic” on account of a) her colour and b) her ability to produce evidence leading to conviction. Joyce was quite a celebrity, until it came to light that most of her evidence was false, leading the FBI to launch an investigation into 1,400 of her cases. (If you believe the one was not inspired by the other , you might want to invest in small lead to gold conversion system I am working on)
Also in 2001, another episode of Law and Order called “Teenage Wasteland” featured a group of, white, middle class, teenagers who murder a Chinese food delivery man instead of paying for the food they ordered. Of course in real like, in the real life case which “Teenage Wasteland” was based on, although the kids were indeed middle class, they were not white.
A 2003 episode called “Sheltered” involving a teen aged sniper and his older patron, was clearly based on the Washington (or Beltway) Snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo except that, in “Sheltered” all the characters were white
And I could go on
Of course TV shows like law & Order are merely following a tradition started by Hollywood, I am sure that most readers will have seen “The Accused” a grim crime drama in which Jodie Foster was raped across a pool table (or was it a pinball machine? I forget) by a number of white men, cheered on by a bar full of equally snowy white guys. Of course in the real life event on which the film was based, the alleged rapists were not quite so pale as the appeared in the movie . In fact Portuguese groups assailed the prosecution, saying the case would never have gone to trial if the defendants had not been Portuguese immigrants. One might, of course, conclude that it would never have been made into a movie had they had been portrayed as such.
I am sure that, in defence of these shows, some people will point to the disclaimer at the end of most episodes which state that the events depicted are fictional, and argue that would be less true if the characters were based on recognisable real life individuals, in which case that it is, therefore, legitimate to have the characters played by actors from different ethnic groups. My answer to that is, fine, but if so, how come it never works the other way round, why do we never see a real life white rapist or murderer played by a black actor? Could it be because if that ever happened, the howls of protest and accusations of racism would be heard from Tampa to Saskatchewan.
(Come to think of it, why do we rarely even see a fictional black rapist or murderer?)
Other apologists may say that these dramas are just stories and ask why does it matter? Why have I written two articles on this subject.
It matters because it is a lie, and it is a lie which is repeated day after day week after week, year after year, in show after show, reinforcing the false belief in the mind of the average viewer that rapists and murders are overwhelmingly white. They are not, and we are never going to solve the problems which beset out society while we refuse to acknowledge them, or worse, seek to falsify the record.
In which case, and in view of the fact that the prosecution of the Vick case caused considerable racial controversy not least because of the alleged popularity of illegal dog fighting in the US black community does it not seem odd that CSI chose to exaggerate the the involvement of white Americans in the “sport”?.
US cop shows have been doing this sort of thing for years now, a 2001 episode of Law and Order entitled “Myth and Fingerprints” involves the case of a, white, female forensics expert, who had been giving false trial testimony for years resulting many innocent men being convicted.
Of course, given that the character was white, surely there was no connection to the infamous case of, black Oklahoma forensics expert, Joyce Gilchrist for long known as “Black magic” on account of a) her colour and b) her ability to produce evidence leading to conviction. Joyce was quite a celebrity, until it came to light that most of her evidence was false, leading the FBI to launch an investigation into 1,400 of her cases. (If you believe the one was not inspired by the other , you might want to invest in small lead to gold conversion system I am working on)
Also in 2001, another episode of Law and Order called “Teenage Wasteland” featured a group of, white, middle class, teenagers who murder a Chinese food delivery man instead of paying for the food they ordered. Of course in real like, in the real life case which “Teenage Wasteland” was based on, although the kids were indeed middle class, they were not white.
A 2003 episode called “Sheltered” involving a teen aged sniper and his older patron, was clearly based on the Washington (or Beltway) Snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo except that, in “Sheltered” all the characters were white
And I could go on
Of course TV shows like law & Order are merely following a tradition started by Hollywood, I am sure that most readers will have seen “The Accused” a grim crime drama in which Jodie Foster was raped across a pool table (or was it a pinball machine? I forget) by a number of white men, cheered on by a bar full of equally snowy white guys. Of course in the real life event on which the film was based, the alleged rapists were not quite so pale as the appeared in the movie . In fact Portuguese groups assailed the prosecution, saying the case would never have gone to trial if the defendants had not been Portuguese immigrants. One might, of course, conclude that it would never have been made into a movie had they had been portrayed as such.
I am sure that, in defence of these shows, some people will point to the disclaimer at the end of most episodes which state that the events depicted are fictional, and argue that would be less true if the characters were based on recognisable real life individuals, in which case that it is, therefore, legitimate to have the characters played by actors from different ethnic groups. My answer to that is, fine, but if so, how come it never works the other way round, why do we never see a real life white rapist or murderer played by a black actor? Could it be because if that ever happened, the howls of protest and accusations of racism would be heard from Tampa to Saskatchewan.
(Come to think of it, why do we rarely even see a fictional black rapist or murderer?)
Other apologists may say that these dramas are just stories and ask why does it matter? Why have I written two articles on this subject.
It matters because it is a lie, and it is a lie which is repeated day after day week after week, year after year, in show after show, reinforcing the false belief in the mind of the average viewer that rapists and murders are overwhelmingly white. They are not, and we are never going to solve the problems which beset out society while we refuse to acknowledge them, or worse, seek to falsify the record.
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