This was written during my student days 3-4 years ago about Death Note. It has been edited to fit in line with the readers current viewpoints and writing style. This is the academic property of Christopher Teh, and as such, plagiarism is strictly forbidden. Those intending to use this material may do so, with proper accreditation to the author. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! The Death Note and the Failure of Communism Hello peeps; here I am hammering away at my keyboard for lack of anything better to do. Today I am going to share with you some of my long-nagging sentiments about my favourite TV show in the entire world, the Death Note (2006). It is, and perhaps will continue for a long time to be one of the most controversial pieces of modern literature.Basically, the Death Note centres on a brilliant but bored student named Light Yagami, who stumbles across a book called the Death Note, which is basically a magical notebook that allows its user to kill any human being by writing that persons name down in it. Light witnesses a crime one day, and decides to test it on the criminal to see if the note actually works. To his shock, it really does. An epiphany then dawns upon him. He realizes that he has the power make a difference in the world by discreetly killing off criminals (“cleansing off the scum of the earth”, as he puts it), and making the world a better place. He then gives himself the pseudonym of KIRA, and embarks on a surreptitious killing rampage, during which thousands of criminals are killed, including those already in prison. The authorities figure out that something is amiss when they notice a trend of undesirable members of society dropping dead one by one, and decide that its too big to be a coincidence. Thus begins a cat and mouse chase between KIRA and the authorities of modern-day justice. The point of this essay is not to elaborate the nitty-gritty details of Lights conquest to create his so-called utopia. It took 37 episodes of anime for that, so obviously it would be an impossible feat to elaborate all the details in one single essay. Rather, it serves as a case in which I present my opinion on Light and his ideals. One might notice a stark parallel between Light and Big Brother, the faceless communist authority in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. I claim neither to have read that novel, nor to have a very comprehensive knowledge of the communist government. However, I do know that the Death Note was banned in China on the basis of psychological disturbances it was causing in schoolchildren; schoolchildren were apparently writing down their classmates names down in DIY Death Notes. Frankly, I do not find such a rationale sufficiently plausible for an anime such as Death Note to be banned. They torture people in China. They EXECUTE people for launching scam websites, so how bad can writing in a little black notebook be in proportion to the heinous attrocities that the Chinese Government is responsible for against its people? I rather think of it as a pathetic excuse for the Chinese Government to ban the Death Note. The Death Note is, after all, a very obvious antithesis against communism, marking the failure of the communist government to control its population in a civil manner, hence resorting to fear and authoritarian policy, leftist policies you might say. As in Light’s case, his rule is pretty simple: You obey KIRA, you do as he commands, and you live. You tick off KIRA, and you die. In the first few episodes , KIRA becomes something of a celebrity; people actually believe that he can craft a brave, just world without fear. However, somewhere down the road, Light gradually becomes more and more, shall we say... radical. Not only does he kill criminals; he also deems anyone who gets in his way as a threat to his mission and thus fit to be eliminated. He treats those close to him as his pawns, he uses and callously disposes of innocent people, treating everyone as a means to his ends. He even has no qualms about killing his own girlfriend if it would serve to further his cause, as he sees her as merely another obstacle in his grand scheme of things. To make things worse, he even does all that without blinking an eye, all the while believing that he is crafting a utopia where people can live without fear or repression, when the contrary is in fact the case. He shows no remorse about his father’s death, even though he is most definitely indirectly involved in it: The final epic confrontation between Light and the authorities in episode 37 (SPOILER, BIG SPOILER, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW DON’T READ THE SCRIPT BELOW)illustrates this: Matsuda: What was it all for then?! What about your dad? What the hell did he die for?! Light: My dad? You mean Soichiro Yagami? Thats right, Matsuda! In this world, honest people like him fight for justice, and they always lose! You want a world where people like that are made to be fools?! I know you understand, so kill the others! SHOOT THEM!! Light gradually degenerates from an anonymous celebrity to a faceless tyrant, and people live in constant fear of being killed by KIRA. The irony of the matter is that he has become what he first sought out to destroy, and N (the detective who defeats him in the end) expresses this fact by telling him that he is nothing but a murderer. Light does not realize his hypocrisy; hypocrisy which can be reflected in the following contradictory lines of his: ‘’This world is Rotten. Rotten people should be killed off to cleanse this world’’ (Referring to the policeman Ray Penbars fiance) “I’ll make you trust me. And when you’ve told me everything I need to know, I’ll kill you.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty rotten to me. One might defend Light by saying that it was the Death Note (power) that corrupted him; it is really the book that is at fault, Light is really more of a victim to than a perpetrator of evil. Which leads to the million-dollar chicken and egg question: Is the Death Note a righteous book in the hands of an evil individual, or an evil book in the hands of a righteous intividual? As the famous saying goes, ‘’power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.’’ Does that mean that under similar circumstances, suppose you or I had picked up the notebook, we would have done the same? It depends. Obviously somebody who calls himself a God after attaining the power to kill with a magical notebook has to be a megalomaniac to some degree. And obviously any government that says everybody should be equal with the exception of its leader has to be well.. very megalomaniacal. So basically that is why nobody, and I repeat NOBODY should be granted absolute power because, power absolutely corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. History has had its fair share of Stalins and Maos to make that point pretty obvious. The message of Death Note is really quite ambiguous. It might possibly be interpreted as being Pro-Democracy, or ‘’power absolutely corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’’, or ‘’it’s okay to have power as you do not misuse it’’ or ‘’he who lives by the sword will die by it’’, and many many other possible messages. However, what might surprise you is that there are debates raging on, with some individuals actually rooting for Light, confessing they had hoped he would win in the end. I think it is a brilliant anime because it actually makes you think. As for myself, the utopia that Light intends to create is certainly not my idea of utopia. I don’t like being restrained in word and deed, living in fear that I might be killed, prosecuted or persecuted just for saying something wrong. Honestly, if the world were to go in that direction, it would in my opinion be a terrible place to live. Just look at countries such as North Korea, Malaysia during Mahathirs tenure, Robespierres France, and contemporary Iran, and you will see that the Light Yagamis of the world have not done any favours for humanity.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:15:42 +0000
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