Forum - View topicTen Years of Death Note: Is Light The Bad Guy?
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11553 |
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Do you think he was corrupted the first time he used it? If so, then okay. But as I said 5 pages ago, "He was clearly a bad guy in the first episode, when he walked calmly by a woman about to be raped in front of him, and his only reaction was to see it as an opportunity to test the DN, at a time when he truly believed the first death was merely coincidence and did not really expect it would work." He did not think, "Oh, I should call the police! I should say something, but they'd probably kill me if I did, so wait, I'll try the DN!" He had no reaction at all, no sympathy for her plight, no emotional response other than, "What a great opportunity this is!" Also, your pointing out that he had followers and people who actively supported his work despite not having their own DN undermines your argument that the DN was responsible for his corruption. Light was not a good person to begin with (though he was a master at presenting that facade), and having the Death Note's power brought out the worst in him, but it didn't need additional supernatural influence beyond killing people to accomplish that. |
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rinmackie
 Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
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Alright, guess I'm gonna have to rewatch Death Note again. I don't clearly remember the scene with the girl being harassed. (I doubt she was being actively raped in public since this was a pg13? show.) Plus i thought Light was inside a store when the guy starting messing with her. Also, I don't remember anyone else getting involved so I guess everyone else was evil too? Plus, he did kill the guy (though he wasn't sure it would work) and if he just pure evil, why didn't he start killing other people right then and there? And why not just criminals, what about people he didn't like or looked at him funny? He had a certain agenda from the start but it started spiraling out of control once people tried to stop him. As for other people, who helped him, even though they didn't have a Death Note, my point was that Light was not a special "evil" person, that lots of other people could have become corrupt if they had been the one to find the Death Note.
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Spoofer
 Posts: 356 Location: NY |
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As one or more posters tried to express to you before, correlation does not imply causation. With no additional evidence, theorizing that the Death Note explicitly corrupts individuals through supernatural means is as (in)valid as Lisa Simpson claiming that the rock she just picked up keeps tigers away. If you believe that there's actual evidence to back it up, then that's one thing, but I think most people interpret the evidence a different way. That aside, how would you describe the narrative of the show if Light's corruption was supernatural rather than as a result of human nature? What do you take away from the show that can be applied to your life, and how does it encourage you to contemplate? The show becomes a whole lot less interesting and worthwhile, imo, if it's instead about some curse rather than (to repeat myself) an examination of human morality and opposing ideologies. For instance, a number of people in this topic have spoken out in favor of using a hypothetical Death Note in real life to "do the right thing" and impose their own system of morality upon everyone else. That's perfectly understandable. The entirety of human history is full of such demonstrations of absolute power used in order to enforce self-righteous ideologies. Throw a rock and you'll hit one in today's world. It's not an aspect of humanity that is attributed to curses or the supernatural (well, aside from those so deeply religious that they attribute every human event to meddlesome gods). It's simply our nature and our conceit that each of us, to varying degrees, thinks we know better than others, and the effect that the availability of power (again to varying degrees) allows individuals to decide how much of their will they want to enforce upon others. Theorizing whether or not the Death Note had the power to supernaturally corrupt I feel is focusing on the wrong takeaways from the show. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Why is not using it not an option? Someone who stumbles across a Death Note and peeks inside, seeing it blank, might just go throw it into a recycling bin or something.
I would say the exact start of Light's downfall was right at the start: When L discovered there were limitations to Kira's power. This got L interested in the case and had him look for more weaknesses. That being said, Light was ultimately done in when his empire became too big for even him to run all by himself and he had to put part of the responsibility in Mikami's hands.
Good and evil are not completely separate. There are purely good people and purely bad people, but they're very rare, and I'd say good and evil exist in a continuum (gray morality) and can be pushed in one direction or another based on their experiences and the people around them. What I think is that a Death Note, as an object that grants immense power with no direct drawbacks, will swing people who choose to use it extensively towards the evil end. And since you use a common saying, I'll use one too: "It gets easier after the first time" in regards to killing a person. Psychopathy, by the way, IS something people are born with. That's why modern psychology considers it a mental disorder.
With the case of Takuo, Light WAS in a store but could see and hear everything from the outside. And again, evil people don't just go around all day doing evil things. Or at least, intelligent evil people don't. They'll want to create a low profile, or better yet, look like a force of good, so they don't get in trouble with the general public. What's going to happen if someone who gets a Death Note starts killing everyone they don't like? They're going to soon get punished by people whose names they don't know. |
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rinmackie
Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
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Ok, maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing. But my point is that Light did not become a villain because he was a bad person to begin with, which is what people seem to be saying. In other words, only bad people would use the Death Note, good people never would; I don't believe that. To me, Light was a typical teenager, true he may not have been a really good, great person but he was nowhere near evil. The fact that the there were LOTS of people willing to follow Light and help him carry out his agenda. Well, maybe they were really bad people too. Wow, that's a lot of really bad people out there! Everyone has the capacity to do bad things, sometimes really bad things. But there is such a thing a free will and people can and do change, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. As for the Death Note being a corruptive force, I'm sure I read a review on this website for the recent tv live action show which mentioned that. So I believe Light would have just had a normal life if he hadn't found the Death Note. But everyone else thinks he would have been some sort of bad guy. Which I disagree with and is what I've been trying to argue this whole time.
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Whether the Death Note has a literal or metaphorical corrupting force is not ever made clear in any version of the series (and I think it's best kept that way).
However, some of the most destructive people in history might not have been so evil had their lives took different directions. Would L. Ron Hubbard have merely been a pulp writer if he was actually paid well? What would've happened had William Randolph Hearst never entered the newspaper business? Had communism never existed, what would Pol Pot have done? What people exist today whom you and I have never heard of who would've committed unspeakable evils were they given the opportunity to do so and not get in trouble over it? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11553 |
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They were harassing her when he walked by, he looks right at them (since he was thinking about how to test the Note during his walk, that appeared to be his "aha" moment, though we weren't privy to his thoughts), then enters the store without a word (a word which might have stopped them at that point, but saying nothing just told them to go ahead). There was no one else outside. They started ripping her jeans off shortly after he goes inside the store. And not just the girl, before her, he also watched bullies harass their victim in front of him without speaking up or feeling the slightest empathy with the victim, only disgust at the bullies, to the point of wondering if they're even worth killing. That doesn't make him evil, but after just one use, he's already intoxicated by the power, already coldly contemplating who he should kill next (just as an experiment, of course, not that it would happen) without getting caught. I think anyone could become evil if they had a DN at their disposal, but Light was particularly vulnerable to becoming especially corrupt because when he picked up the DN he already had a huge ego and an elitist disdain for all the rotten people in the world, which included the vast majority in his view. Even he acknowledges his existing temperament for this sort of thing at the end, when he declares that he had to do it because he was the only one who could. No one else would have had the intelligence and logic and drive to see it through. That's ego writ large right there. 
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Gan_HOPE326
Posts: 34 |
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I think you're underestimating a bit the fact that those scenes were represented as the kind of bad stuff that happens all the time, yet most people won't be able to stop because they'd just end up beaten up or killed too. The bullies scene especially, it's a pretty common trope, and I understand it's a big problem IRL as well; and it's probably not uncommon for teachers to leave it be because "kids need to learn how to deal with these things themselves". Within that sort of environment, people quickly would learn to just lay low and pretend to have seen nothing as a survival skill. THAT's what disgusts Light in the beginning; that he feels like the weak are completely broken by the strong who take advantage of them. He knows he wouldn't have a chance fighting the guys, that's why he doesn't even consider it. By the time he kills that biker guy he's still 'normal', in a way - the reality of the Note hasn't sunk in, but still, he tries to test it in a way that will help someone (whereas normally he doesn't think he could help at all). After that, he has a freak out, and it's only then that he suddenly decides "no, fudge it, imma kill 'em all" and basically loses his mind. His megalomaniac tendencies are certainly there, and he's a rather cold person, sure, but that doesn't make him by default evil. Having the Note, and the feedback loop of starting to dehumanise people so that he can justify his killings without feeling guilty so he ends up killing more people and so on, are what sets him on the road to complete madness. I wouldn't say not jumping in and saving the girl makes him evil. He's not some hot blooded guy who loses his mind when they see injustice but it's not like he thought that scene was okay. He wanted to help, he just thought he could do it smartly and efficiently with the Note.
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