The smartphone has done what no revolution could: it has turned every person into a potential capturer of taboos. In 2024, a teenager live-streams a shoplifting; a nurse records a patient’s seizure for “awareness”; a tourist films a religious procession forbidden to cameras.
A digital "Safe Space" where users can share their own interpretations of modern-day taboos. 2. Algorithmic Feature (Tabu Search)
We are attracted to the forbidden because it promises knowledge of the unknown. Captured Taboos
While death is universal, it is largely taboo in modern, youth-focused cultures. Photojournalists documenting war, or artists exploring the aesthetics of mortality, "capture" death, forcing viewers to confront their own finitude.
But the taboo was not the death itself. It was displaying the corpse as if it were alive. These images (now collected under the euphemism “spirit photography”) were kept in locked drawers, shown only to blood relatives. They captured the uncanny valley between grief and horror — a boundary we still cannot comfortably cross. The smartphone has done what no revolution could:
The series doesn't shy away from its "taboo" namesake. It fully leans into the "forced" roleplay and strict submission tropes, such as a new employee being immediately subjected to extreme dress codes and tasks. Costuming:
A politician’s extramarital sext is leaked. The captured taboo is private erotic speech. The public argues it is “evidence of hypocrisy.” The individual argues it is “theft of intimacy.” Photojournalists documenting war
Librarians call this “the hard drive problem.” Do you delete the illegal video of a murder to protect its victim? Or do you keep it as evidence of a crime, a historical record of evil? Do you digitize a 1920s lynching postcard (a captured taboo of racist violence) for study — knowing that its re-circulation might cause trauma?
No captured taboo is more contested than the “snuff film” — a recording of an actual murder made for entertainment. Despite decades of moral panic, real snuff films are almost non-existent. But the idea of them haunts our culture because it represents the ultimate capture: the final taboo (murder) recorded and replayed.