Saturday, February 16, 2008

Territorial war


Three days after good slave made the preaching on L in death note (New Year Resolution posted on 27 Jan 08), Hong Kong has become a site for the territorial war. Every citizen/non-citizen becomes a possible Kira to defend the last resort for free access of information (i.e. the internet).

First strike - the leakage of sex photos on the web, of rich star Edison Chen and a few starlets with naked postures and sexual act.
Second strike – police served warnings and arrested “anyone” who uploaded or kept any related photos. Many were arrested despite being the second tier distributors and police claimed to have captured the main source.
Third strike – Everyone became a potential Kira to led the war on cyberspace with the police and new photos on the web continue to surface.


The core of the incident is an age old war on territories among the have/have nots, public figure/general public. There are hundreds of private sex photos being uploaded on the internet daily, the police was alerted this time because the photos review the private life of the “have” while the “have not” not suppose to share. It is not about the obscenity that agitates the police, but the revealing of a general life style among the rich and famous. The arrest of chat room user was a retaliation on public by invading their cybernetic territories and Kira phenomena was the after effect that back fire the police, for any retaliation, more private photos to be revealed. The police took the role of Terminator, but only proven to be an obsolete machine. The general public is the cybernetic Kira T-1000, of no definite form nor identity, only perform fatal strikes to the authorities.

Remember the controversy paintings “Olympia & The Luncheon on the Grass” by Edouard Manet back in the 19th century? They agitated the bourgeois at that time because they led the general public to peek into their private life. Rather than being a naked Goddess (as in any conventional classical paintings), woman in there was naked only to be presented as any possible mistress for the bourgeois at that time. She gazed at the viewer (breaking the fourth wall) to flirt while enjoying the company with other males in the painting, a primordial form of Japanese AV idol and made Manet the avant garde of 19th century.

There is no bourgeois in Hong Kong, only rich and famous. Somehow they made belief to be living as bourgeois in a tabloid’s free 19th century society, and what’s remain private shall remain private under the privilege protection from the government… and that is fatal!