| Written by Thingfish,
on 13-02-2008 01:34
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Fact meets fiction. Edison and the demon Ryuk share a mutual love of apples. Unfortunately, that's not all Edison shared..
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Ever since the first pictures of Edison Chen and his remarkable collection of conquests hit the headlines last month, the story has developed relentlessly with all the twists and plot devices of a racy TV drama.
And like a low-budget cop show, this story has been driven by two principal characters - the bumbling, inept inspector Wong, and his cruel, gloating nemesis, Kira.
In case you hadn't noticed, Kira is the nom de plume of the mysterious distributor of Edison's embarrassing little secrets, and it's also the nickname of the corrupt vigilante in Japanese horror flick Death Note.
Stealing souls, eating apples
In Death Note, Light Yagami finds a notebook with a sinister, hidden power: anyone whose name appears in its pages will die. Now any sensible person would see that no good could come of this, and quickly destroy the thing. Or maybe they'd keep it private and just use it when no-one else is around.
But Light's soul is closer to the dark side than he realises, and he promptly embarks on a spree of sadistic vigilante justice, much to the amusement of the note's creator Ryuk, whose twin passions amount to stealing souls and eating apples.
Appointing himself as judge and executioner against humanity's moral turpitude, Light uses his notebook to punish anyone whose crimes or lifestyle he disapproves of. His activities win popular acclaim and he's given the nickname "Kira", or killer.
The police decide to clamp-down on Kira's hobby, and enlist a pale, basement-dwelling geek to help track down the mysterious killer. Light, who's a bit of a smart-arse, treats the investigation as a game, gloating at his investigators as he strings them along, only to kill them whenever they get too close.
Losing the plot
Sadly, Hong Kong's finest didn't have a geek to hand, so they enlisted Assistant Commissioner of Police Vincent Wong Fook-chuen and his boss, Tang King-shing. The appointment was a brilliant move, akin to appointing Inspector Clouseau in the Return of the Pink Panther.
Over the next few days, the police describe the pictures as fake, then admit they're not; they jail a man for possession of 12 pictures, then tell us that possession is not a crime; they call them obscene and back-peddle; threaten to arrest anyone who shares a picture, then absolve us on the proviso that we only share with friends; they miscount the number of women in the pictures, and the number of pictures in the wild; they announce they've blocked the source, and they watch as Kira uploads fresh images on an almost daily basis.
The most ballyhooed bullshit so far though, has been Wong's claim that the investigation has not been influenced by the victims' fame. If every crime was given the attention of 20 dedicated officers, a horde of part-timers and a call to Interpol, we'd be in a crime-free world.
That's the big difference between Clouseau and Wong: Clouseau was a bumbling idiot, but at least he was an honest idiot.
Back to our story
Enough of the Keystone cops, let's get back to my big conspiracy theory. While Light Yagami executed his fictional vendettas by scrawling names into a notebook, Edison Chen kept his own Death Note, in the form of a pink Apple MacBook. Into that tacky Mac, the falling star recorded the images of his victims, himself included.
In Death Note, Light jealously guards his book, knowing that if anyone else got hold of it, his days would be numbered. Edison wasn't so smart. As we all know, he stupidly shared his Death Note, and his career was its first victim.
Over the past fortnight, some person or persons unknown going by the name of Kira, has been using the contents of Edison's laptop to dish out death and misfortune to the careers of anyone whose image appears in it.
As Light grows increasingly cocksure, his campaign to clean up the planet turns into a game with the police that ultimately leads to his doom. Judging by his frequent updates and taunting messages, it seems the online Kira, like his celluloid namesake, is also a bit of a smartarse who's enjoying the game, no matter how many people get hurt in the process.
He must be enjoying the notoriety as well, because there's a disturbing number of people on Web forums applauding Kira's vigilante justice against what they see as hypocritical celebrities.
Grudge match
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| In The Grudge 2, Edison/Eason discovers too late that photography can have its darker side.
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There is one more movie connection, though this one's probably more coincidence than significance. In the far better Japanese horror The Grudge 2, Edison played the role of Eason, a photographer from Hong Kong who becomes fascinated with a vengeful ghoul named Kayako. As Eason develops pictures in his darkroom, Kayako emerges from a development tray to kill the photographer. In fiction as in reality, photography was Edison's undoing.
Incidentally, the sequel to Death Note, L: Change the World, opened in Hong Kong on Saturday. If Kira had planned it this way, we'd be watching the strangest movie tie-in of all time.
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