The Devil Inside Us: Metal Politics Taiwan, a Documentary On Freddy Lim

Freddy Lim (林昶佐) is a rockstar. He’s also a politician, elected to the national legislature to represent Wanhua and Zhongzheng Districts of Taipei City.

He performs with his band Chthonic in black leather, showing off his impressive ink. He wears a three-piece suit, tattoos hidden, to question the Ministry of Defense over missing names in a report. His long hair – with sides shaved – flips through the air as he headbangs on stage. He ties it back in a sleek ponytail to meet constituents and give speeches. He is a liberal death metal rocker elected to national office by citizens of a country thought of as traditional, conservative and Confucian. He is an unapologetic supporter of de jure independence for Taiwan, given power by an electorate that the international media depicts as overwhelmingly “supporting the status quo”. Through it all, he works as hard as two men, possibly three.

And now, he is the subject of Metal Politics Taiwan, a documentary of his first year in office by German filmmaker Marco Wilms, whose previous achievements include Art War (2014), a guerilla-filmed masterpiece following artists and musicians in Cairo during the height of the Arab Spring protests there. The film includes Wilms’ own narration, not just of how he came to be interested in Lim as one of the only (if not the only) metal frontman to hold elected office in the world, but also his impressions of Taiwan as a country and Lim as a person. The style of filming accentuates its subject matter: professionally done, yet with a gritty, down-to-earth aesthetic.

Metal Politics Taiwan basks in contradictions. Lim is not only a rockstar and a politician: he was a model student while causing “headaches” for his teachers. He works tirelessly as a musician and legislator, yet has a hip, informal office bedecked with images of David Bowie and the Dalai Lama – who Lim reveres as a personal spiritual leader –  that looks nothing like the stuffier quarters of other legislators. He is one of the most prominent progressive voices in Taiwan and was one of the founding members of the New Power Party, which grew out of the 2014 Sunflower movement, yet was not one of the initial Sunflower activists.

In a Q&A session after the first screening of the film on May 21st, Lim noted yet another contradiction: he had not originally wanted to be filmed, and even grew angry when the crew kept showing up. “You can’t just film my friends,” he remembers saying angrily at a pro-marriage equality rally while everyone was backstage (Lim spoke at the event). He hadn’t wanted Wilms to film his meeting with the Dalai Lama, either. Yet, upon seeing the screening of the film, he was visibly pleased with the final product, noting that he cried when he saw the moment that he told the Dalai Lama that he and his wife (Chthonic bassist Doris Yeh) were going to have a child.

In Metal Politics Taiwan, Taiwan as a nation is similarly depicted as embodying a score of contradictions. Taiwan’s democracy is one of the most vibrant and successful in Asia. Yet, as Lim notes in the film, the nation is still tethered to a name, constitution and political system imported by military occupiers from China and still boasts a memorial to dictator and mass murderer Chiang Kai-shek. Lim further remarks that Taiwan is on the forefront of the fight for freedom against authoritarianism (from the People’s Republic of China, which seeks to annex it). It is a sovereign nation that is unrecognized by the world.

Wilms further narrates his impressions of an orderly society, with queues that have clear rules followed by all residents and where disturbing “the collective” is seen as one of the worst things one can do, and drawing parallels to the former KMT dictatorship. This is a depiction which, from a subjective standpoint, I doubt many Taiwanese would agree with, or if they did, would trace its roots to the adoption of some Japanese social norms during the Japanese colonial era.

On the other hand, Metal Politics Taiwan remarks on Taiwan’s crumbling buildings, which stand in contrast to its status as a developed country, and shows the chaos and cacophony of the Qingshan Wang (青山王) temple festival – one of many such festivals held by temples across the country throughout the year. At such a festival, one constituent – a member of this “orderly” society – apologized for not having realized Lim was already his elected representative, saying he “drank too much” on voting day. The haphazard furniture barricades put up in the Legislative Yuan during the 2014 Sunflower occupation are shown, but it is noted that the student activists cleaned everything up when they ended the occupation. Lim himself would soon be elected to fight for a new Taiwan in that same Legislative Yuan just a few years later, riding on a wave of Sunflower support.

To borrow a tired cliche, this depiction of Taiwan as “a land of contrast” will be familiar to Taiwanese and visiting foreigners alike: a Confucian society that prizes “filial piety” where nevertheless social movements bring about real change and democracy can sometimes be seen at its messiest. This is not the real masterstroke of Metal Politics Taiwan: rather, it is marrying the idea of Freddy Lim, “Rockstar Politician” with the idea of “Taiwan” – land of orderly queues on the MRT, as well as a land where students might occupy a legislature and actually achieve something.

That is to say, it is exactly the sort of country that would elect a rockstar politician in the first place.

“He has a devil inside him,” quips Chthonic guitarist Jesse Black Liu late in the film. One might say the same of Taiwan. Citizens going from the office jobs of a developed economy to protest and shape their own democracy – from three-piece suit to protest t-shirts and bandanas. They work tirelessly (Taiwanese work some of the longest hours in the world on average), not just to earn a living, but to fight for recognition and to maintain its hard-won freedom in the face of angry tirades from authoritarian, expansionist China as the world blames it for “causing tensions.” Like Lim, Taiwan might just be “a rebel with a cause.”

As Lim himself says in the film, being a rockstar and a politician are two sides of the same coin. Chthonic’s music has always been political, Lim’s lyrics and personal message being one of fighting for what is right, and fighting for Taiwan. That he would take this activist zeal and apply it to working as an elected position in the legislature is hardly surprising.

The central question of the Q&A session after the film focused on how a film about a personality as interesting as Lim might be a vehicle of soft power for Taiwan. While there were disagreements on how successful such soft power has been to date, all concurred that it was vital for Taiwan to use it as a way to gain international visibility. If Taiwan truly is on the forefront of the fight against authoritarianism, “rebel with a cause” Freddy Lim – the Rockstar Politician – might just be the person to do that, taking Taiwan’s international image from just another “Chinese” place where people obey their leaders to a place that has a “devil inside it” in the best possible way.

Metal Politics Taiwan will screen again on Saturday, May 26th at 5pm.