Kate S. directs the first music video by TikTok sensation ERIC. - the rapper known for being impossibly polite - with a mission to toughen him up.

In fact, she gives him a rage fantasy and it's very entertaining, as ERIC. - a upstanding young American who finds himself in English suburbia - realises that, in this environment, he is just Too Polite. With the help of his wise and rather formidable Mum, it's time to address this problem. 

And the video really works. ERIC. is an intriguing character who gets good support from the supporting cast, while Kate S. creates a comic storyline that works right up to it's satisfyingly absurd conclusion. 

"For Too Polite, his first official single, we decided to make a video about everything he's never said, the shoulder-bumps he never hit back on, the confidence he never claimed, the person he could be if overt politeness didn't feel like his only option," she explains.

"The concept is simple: a neighborhood bully shoulder-bumps him. He trains with his mom to reclaim his power and a new sense of self. It's grounded in something real. Somehow I get shoulder-bumped quite often in real life, and I've always wondered what it would feel like to 'Bump' back. We pulled that friction and turned it into ERIC.'s.

"The beige color palette on screen is to mirror politeness itself, but we wanted to warp it ro be queasy, dreamlike, slightly suffocating. You're watching from inside his head. His mom becomes this absurd, loving figure training him in a logic that only exists in fantasy.

"We wanted to create heightened reality rather than straightforward narrative. It gets stranger the longer you watch, funnier and sadder at once. Something with enough detail that it reveals itself differently with each viewing."