Okay, you are probably thinking, “Who is Edison Chen?” I thought that same thing when I was browsing CNN and saw that his sex scandal had caused quite a stir in Hong Kong. So much so that this young actor (he is 27) has decided to call it quits.
Chen was discovered in 1999 while clubbing in Hong Kong and asked to star in a commercial. He gained almost immediate popularity as the girls swooned over him. He starred in Infernal Affairs, Infernal Affairs II, Initial D, and Dog Bite Dog. He also has expanded his horizons to include music and fashion, creating his own multi-media company Clot Media Division earlier this year.
However, today, he announced he intended to quit the entertainment industry due to the scandal. In January, hundreds of photos of him in compromising positions with several Hong Kong female celebrities surfaced on the Internet. The story is that the photos were stolen from his laptop while it was being repaired. He admitted to taking the photos and said they were private and never intended to be shown to anyone else. Because the photos were stolen, Hong Kong police are on the case, but apparently, the damage has already been done to Chen’s movie career. He also added in his press release, “To all the young people in our community, let this be a lesson for you all. This is not an example to be set for you.”
What drew me to this story was the fact that in America, scandal sells papers, but in the Far East, scandal still brings shame and ends otherwise promising careers. When our celebrities are caught with their pants down (some literally!), they often profess to not like being seen as role models and rarely is a career ended due to poor judgment. Lindsay Lohan continues to make movies, Keifer Sutherland is the star of a hit television show, even 80’s heartthrob Rob Lowe, who was scandalized when sex photos were taken with two girls (one underage), has been able to do damage control and resume his career.
So who is right and who is wrong? Should we forgive our celebrities with open arms? Has our culture lost all sense of wrongdoings?
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