https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS91knuzoOA

Might as well do this music video now. There’s no “good” time to do it. I never thought too much about the music video till now. It’s montage/collage shots of a kid who obviously has a very unhappy life played by Trevor Wilson. Eddie Vedder stands around as the narrator for the boy’s story. Finally, we have the ending where the kid goes and kills himself in front of the class as clearly shown by the kids holding up their arms to protect themselves from the splashes of blood.

That is what the video is about, but not what some people think it is about. Some people think it is about a kid who brought a gun to school, then shot his fellow students. Others have even tried to use this video as a scapegoat for their actions. I remember once reading about some people who were blaming their actions on The Matrix. Might as well give it a try. People sure ate it up in the 80s when people would blame Satan and Heavy Metal. So why not blame this music video for your actions? I won’t link to it here, but I have come across a site in the past that even though it acknowledges what Ozzy Osbourne’s song Suicide Solution is actually about, they still say they are sure kids have killed themselves a result.

Based on the Wikipedia article on this video, a lot of this nonsense seems to stem from real world school shootings. Enough. The song is about a kid who is so tortured by his life and the people around him that he sadly does what some people do. He kills himself, and in his case, does it in a manner that leaves a message for others. In the case of the story in this music video, it’s killing himself in front of all the kids who made fun of him while his home life was a personal hell, which the song talks about. In particular, the line about cleaning it from the blackboard. I have a feeling more people need to see Frederick Wiseman’s 1968 documentary called High School.

However, you can’t completely blame this on people misunderstanding the music video. The music video came in two stages. They filmed a prototype-like version of it before deciding to film the one above. Well, sort of the version above. The second version they filmed edited out the kid putting the gun in his mouth to commit suicide because of censorship restrictions. That’s why people looked at the kids afterwards and thought it represented them having been killed. Thanks, MTV!

With that out of the way, let me just say that I never particularly liked the music video. I love the song, but just like Smells Like Teen Spirit, it became annoying because it was overplayed. The music video has always been an example to me of why Pearl Jam shouldn’t have been making music videos at the time. Eddie Vedder looks ridiculous while trying to convey some very serious material. Still, it is another essential of the early 90s. It is devastating and heartbreaking. It is also a prime example of how editing–forced or not–without thinking can have serious consequences. It is also a prime example of how censorship can completely transform a work of art into something else for a portion of its’ audience.