This strange videoclip comes from Sweden. It’a a good way for us who don’t live the country to understand the mixity in the swedish society.
“Pass This On” is a single from the Swedish electronic duo The Knife, released in 2003. It is the third track on The Knife’s second studio album, Deep Cuts. In Knife’s work we can obviously see their signature aesthetics: the blurring of gender and sexuality in their music.
The music video for the song was directed by Johan Renck and features female impersonator Rickard Engfors in a room lip-synching to the song. Both members of The Knife, Karin (also known as Fever Ray)(2) and Olof Dreijer, are visible in the video: Olof is seen dancing next to Engfors and flirting with him, and Karin appears at the end of the video, sitting at a table and looking at Engfors and Olof.
The narrative depicts a glamorous blonde singer — in real life, one of Sweden’s most well known female impersonators named Rickard Engfors — performing in what looks like a shabby community centre, to an initially disinterested audience. By the end of the song, however, the slinky diva has mesmerised not only one particular young man (Olof Dreijer from The Knife), who dances around her as though hypnotised, but also well and truly ‘owned’ the rest of the crowd whom similarly succumb to her charms.
