Urban Imaginaries of Waste: The Hole (2000) and Limbo (2021) As Scaled-Down Disaster Films

Garbage has become central to the inequalities of globalization, but waste can also flow in more subtle ways. Urban population generates approximately four times more solid waste than rural dwellers. This paper explores how spaces of the landfill and the dump form the visual core of the Chinese urban eco-horror film in the context of waste issues in the Chinese contexts. As the scale issues of the Anthropocene have been challenged, a shift in perspective can help to reinterpret the sense of place. Using the Taiwanese film The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2000) and the Hong Kong film Limbo (Soi Cheang, 2021) as case study, I seek to contend how urban trash can be the non-human perturbation that destabilizes the vulnerable social entities, such as families, resulting in what Enrico Terrone refers to as a scaled-down disaster film. As dumping is the least managed form of waste control, this paper investigates how environmental anxiety in the contemporary Sinophone world manifest as a focus on waste accumulation in more basic and smaller communities. On the one hand, The Hole uses dystopian imagery to foreshadow how the garbage crisis will shape the wasteful human bodies in domestic space. On the other hand, based in the realities of Hong Kong's garbage problem, Limbo implies that the hidden landfill mirrors the fear of losing citizenship. In a nutshell, both films broaden the disaster film genre by underscoring that contamination from trash is not an isolated incident, but an integral facet of our daily existence.