6 PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS | VOL 43 | 2025 and motherhood. Ultimately, to break free from the antagonizing entity’s grasp, both characters must confront personal failings and adhere to traditional expectations. In Incantation (directed by Kevin Ko, 2022), horror arises from violating inherited spiritual obligations. Li Ronan, the protagonist, disrupts a sacred ritual tied to her boyfriend’s family's cult, unleashing a generational curse that threatens her and her daughter. Unlike The Tag-Along, which ties supernatural punishment to filial neglect, Incantation explores the dangers of rejecting familial religious traditions. The film reflects modern skepticism clashing with deeply rooted spiritual practices, reinforcing anxieties that breaking from tradition invites supernatural retribution. Both The Tag-Along and Incantation illustrate how Taiwanese horror engages growing tensions between modern individualism and cultural expectations, portraying supernatural enforcers of tradition to evoke feelings of dread and fear in audiences. Fragmented Taiwanese identity Film can be used for constitution, destruction, or reconstruction of identity (Blake, 2013). Taiwan’s complex history and struggle to form a coherent identity lend themselves especially well to certain horror tropes. Body horror, in particular, has long been used to illustrate internal conflict. Kawin (2012) theorized that this subgenre, wherein the human body is a vehicle for disturbing or grotesque imagery, can powerfully depict identity crisis. Body horror has become a significant element in Taiwanese horror, serving to illustrate the disintegration of autonomy and the loss of self. The Sadness (2021), directed by Rob Jabbaz, exemplifies this connection between one’s body and one’s identity. The film follows a viral outbreak that violently transforms people into aggressive, sadistic creatures without rationale or self-control. As infected bodies mutate and descend into the grotesque, their physical transformations are not only horrifying but also symbolic of broader societal collapse and dehumanization in the face of external threats. The film effectively captures the terror of the loss of individual agency. Incantation follows a secluded religious sect, dedicated to worship of a mysterious deity whose true form is never fully revealed. The deity is represented throughout the film in fragmented and obscured images—its body appearing disjointed and its face concealed beneath a red cloth. When the cloth is lifted toward the end of the film only to reveal a gaping black void instead of a face, the imagery suggests an identity defined by absence, resonating with Taiwan’s geopolitical status, the contested sovereignty in a state of liminality. The horror of Incantation thus extends beyond the superficial into a broader allegory for invisibility where Taiwan, much like the veiled entity, is suspended between existence and erasure on the world stage. The fears of subjugation and erasure, seen in The Sadness and Incantation, are particularly relevant themes within horror in the context of Taiwan’s relationship with China. During the Cold War era, American horror films similarly served as allegories for geopolitical tensions and anxieties about the spread of communism. Narratives emphasized fear of infiltration, paranoia, and the struggle for autonomy, which directly mirrored the ideological standoff behind the Iron Curtain. Zombies, in particular, were used as a metaphor for unchecked expansion, dehumanization, and loss of individuality. In contemporary Taiwanese horror, parallel thematic elements emerge. In The Sadness, discussed earlier, the depiction of a rapidly spreading zombie-like virus has been widely interpreted as a symbol of an external threat related to the perceived rise of China’s political and economic power. Much like Cold War horror, the chaos portrayed in The Sadness echoes Taiwan’s contemporary geopolitical concerns and painful history of oppression at the hands of authoritarianism. Detention (2019), directed by John Hsu, further exemplifies how Taiwanese horror engages with historical trauma and political oppression. Set during the White Terror, the film follows a group of students and teachers who secretly participate in a banned book club, only to be persecuted by the KMT regime. Drawing on Jameson’s (1986) concept of national allegory in third-world texts, Detention transforms the horrors of state surveillance, ideological control, and betrayal into supernatural threats, mirroring Taiwan’s struggle for identity amid authoritarian rule (Wu, 2024). Taiwan’s ongoing struggle with its collective identity is deeply embedded in the politics of naming. In Taiwanese folklore, names hold power and can determine one’s fate and worth. Calling out a person’s real name, for example, is thought to break the spell of môo-sîn-á and restore the victim’s autonomy (Wu, 2024). The power of names extends beyond folklore into Taiwan’s political reality. Taiwan has had a number of international naming disputes, notably the 2018 referendum in which voters, under external pressure, rejected the proposal to compete in the Tokyo Olympics under “Taiwan” as opposed to “Chinese Taipei.”
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