Death Note and Edison Chen

I just finished watching Death Note today.

It really reminded me of the Flaming Lips’ song, Yeah Yeah Yeah:

“If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch, would you do it?…So we cannot know ourselves or what we’d really do”

I hadn’t made this connection earlier, but the “person” (more or less a group of people operating under a pseudonym) who posted the Edison Chen scandal photographs called themselves “Kira”.

This is most likely in reference to a popular cult anime called Death Note (what I finished watching–ah life imitates art!); the main character is dubbed Kira (romanji/engrish for Killer) by the news media in Japan. Kira, a very smart, successful, but bored high-school student, Yagami Light, discovers a celestial notebook from a Shinigami, Death God. The notebook has the power to kill when a person’s name is written in it, either by the hand of a shinigami, or by the human who possesses the notebook. Light realizes this ability to kill strategically can be used to reform the world (which he will rule over as God), and he sets out to cleanse the world of evil people. He begins by killing criminals whose names appear in the nightly news, newspapers, and on the internet.

I imagine that in some odd way, the Kira in real life felt it was justified to post the scandal photographs and to reveal the hypocrisy in Hong Kong media.

But this is where things get tremendously fascinating. Ah, the parallels!

What is most fascinating to me is the prominence of the media in both the fictional anime and the real life situation. The media, in Death Note, is both a tool that Kira uses to find victims, and eventually becomes a tool that Kira uses to announce his intentions to the fearful public (that proves to have a malleable, manipulatable opinion of Kira).

In the Edison Chen situation, Kira and the media fed off of each other. The media simply ate up everything Kira posted, and for an estimated 28 days, Edison Chen ran on the cover of at least 3 periodicals or newspapers each day. Newspapers, which have suffered from the same trend plaguing print news internationally, suddenly began making profits again (but unfortunately fell into the trap of tabloid exploitation).

In the words of Tupac Shakur (again, ladies and gentlemen), “The media’s full of dirty tricks”. I find it terribly intriguing that Death Note was able to predict a very realistic behavior of the media and news industry–the media will jump on the gory personal details if they will sell. I’m referring mostly to the media in Asia, but of course we see this in all the Britney Spears coverage in the U.S. too.

(Not to rag on the media industry; I hope one day, however far or near, I can work for print. I just pray to God that I won’t fall into the tabloid trap.)

“Netizens” also played a special role as well. Netizens would plead Kira to post more photos, Kira would make deals, announce that he would post more on certain days at certain times. He enjoyed the control, knowing that thousands would be waiting at their computers, searching forums to find the photos.

After a certain point, it wasn’t vigilante justice to show these photos. Kira became a sick sycophant, obsessed with the power to ruin lives and end careers. And people loved him.

Well, all of that is over now. In other news, Edison Chen has made the big conversion to Christianity. I hope that he’s genuine; it’s so hard to be genuine even when you aren’t rich and famous.

Ambitionz az a…writer [revisited]

I won’t deny it..

Cute puns and 2pac references aside, I have to admit, things have been eerily falling into place:

• Daily Bruin Writer

1. A lot of stories about writing

• English major

• Possible film minor (screenwriting classes?!?)

I find myself at the intersection of a lot of paths right now.  I think I like it right here, why choose now?