Playing with Borders: Film Music and Social Criticism in Swedish Comedies by Hasse and Tage

This chapter discusses five films between 1964 and 1981 by two of the most popular comedians of all time in Sweden but practically unknown to a global audience: Hasse Alfredsson and Tage Danielsson, often branded as Hasse&Tage. They mixed social and political criticism with humor, and their films can be genre-classified as a sort of political art-comedy since they used many familiar devices in the European art cinema. Their films thematise the industrialised countries’ urgent problems: climate, global capital destroying the countryside, the modern society’s treatment of the ordinary people. They relate to Scandinavian comedy film music by using songs to comment on the narrative and societal challenges. Hasse&Tage often parodied other genres and styles through music. This is one of the salient characteristics of the film music in their films; others discussed are comic experiments through blurring the diegetic/non-diegetic border and playing with hierarchies through expressive contrast between visuals and music.