Hollywood East
The amazing thing about the celebrity sex picture mess is not its unprecedented explicitness, the scandalous web of Hong Kong stars and pop idols ensnared, or the bizarre round of rumours about the source of the leak and the comeuppance awaiting the protagonists in this twisted epic farce. No, the truly unbelievable part is that Hong Kong politicians felt the need to comment on it.
By any measure, this sordid episode, no matter how much it has kept the populace rapt, is still a minor issue. Not surprisingly, it's been the leading story on entertainment pages for weeks. Understandably, it has crossed over to the news section. However, most regrettably, the matter has also reached government figures and legislators, who didn't just toss it back to their assistants and say, 'Why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?'
US President George W. Bush didn't feel compelled to address the nation on how sad he was that there were images of Britney Spears without underwear circulating. Tony Blair never thought Heather Mills' X-rated pictures a political issue important enough for comment. California's district attorney and judicial offices didn't review or tried to classify whether Paris Hilton's sex tape was 'indecent' or 'obscene' and didn't assign a team of officers to track down suspects spreading it online.
Presumably, they all had more important matters to deal with.
Certainly, Hong Kong is a smaller place and the closer quarters mean even the smallest local issue takes on a greater significance to us. I'm sure that while there are about six degrees of separation between people overseas, the separation between everyone in Hong Kong is more like two degrees. Yet that hardly excuses the police overreaction and hasty arrests. What exactly is being accomplished by the heavy-handed warnings and threats to Web-users?
Perhaps it's all to protect Hong Kong people from such immoral indecency - or would that be 'obscenity'? It reminds me of the campaign in the US in the late 1920s, when fear of the ability of a new medium, the movies, to spread sex, drugs and 'race' music led Hollywood to set up its own ethical guidelines. The result was the Hays Code, launched by the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association to set limits on what they could and could not show in film.
The internet is a different medium but the paranoia is the same. Those in authority consider themselves the guardians of social mores, and worry at the first provocative sign that Sodom and Gomorrah have been unleashed with the new media format. In a way, I suppose it has. Isn't something like 60 per cent of all internet traffic related to sex? And aren't the most popular searches on Google the word 'sex' and all things dirty?
That explains why the Commissioner of Police Tang King-shing felt he needed to warn people not to download or spread the pictures. I'm not sure how successful his warning is. Maybe officials need to embed warnings on offensive sites: 'This man is as bad as the sex pictures he takes. Smut is dangerous! Don't look at it!'
Also futile is Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Frederick Ma Si-hang wanting the government to review the laws on obscene and indecent material. Yeah, that'll halt the pervs' interest in nude pictures. The difference between movies and the internet is the democratic nature of the web. The Hays Code was self-regulated. How do you regulate the lawless, borderless internet?
Meanwhile, the mainland is trying to implement its own Hays Code. Its Film Bureau recently revised its own production code after the sex scenes in Lust, Caution caused officials much consternation. As a result, a new edict is cracking down on productions shot in China with too much sex, drugs, too many aggressive foreigners or content that might tarnish the country's reputation. Hasn't every music video by the 12 Girls Band already done that?
One casualty of this new restriction might be a Hollywood production called Shanghai, starring John Cusack and Gong Li. China wants script changes to make it more respectable or they won't be allowed to shoot in the title city. But Shanghai's loss might be Hong Kong's gain: the producers are thinking of moving the shoot here where they can film all the opium smoking, criminal activity and sex they want.
