Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana - further analysis

                                                 

This video is full of imagery with underlying significance. For example, most of the video takes place in a field of poppies growing next to dead trees, which reflects the contradictory quality of the song. The juxtaposition of life and death is perpetuated throughout the video, another example being the foetus in the hospital room IV, being fed into a dying old man. The poppy field is also reminiscent of the spilled blood of soldiers in war, as well as heroin, which is obtained from opium poppies, apposing heroism, strength and stoicism with heroin, weakness, addiction, and reliance. Sacrifice is also a running theme throughout: the man in a Santa hat crucifies himself, combining the traditional aspects of religion with the stark and harsh reality of Jesus dying on the cross to save sinners. The cross is ridden with crows, a well-known symbol of death, and one of the characters, a little girl dressed in an outfit similar to a bishop or a KKK member, is seen throwing flowers at the base of the cross, as a mourner would at a funeral as a tribute to the dead. A cross is also seen painted on the floor of the gloomy hospital room that the video opens and closes to, carrying the theme of religion throughout the whole video. The foetuses that can be seen hanging from trees and inside the drip in the hospital setting are significant as this video was made shortly after the birth of Cobain's first child, who was the focus of Kurt and Courtney's battle with the media, after it was falsely reported that the baby, Frances Bean Cobain, was born a heroin addict, and was subsequently taken from her parents during the first few weeks of her life.

 

This song was written by Kurt as a tribute to his wife, Courtney Love. It was written in 1993 shortly after the birth of their first child, Frances Bean Cobain. It was originally named 'Heart Shaped Coffin'. It is named after the heart-shaped trinket boxes Courtney sent Kurt after they met but before their relationship started. The lyrics combine violent imagery, nonsensical phrases, and more poetic references to angels, flowers, and babies, creating a song that, while appearing contradictory, are very personal and elegiac.

This video demonstrates fairly simple editing skills as there are no particularly complicated transitions between shots and no editing techniques used within the shots to allow them to look visually more interesting. This puts emphasis on the mise-en-scene, the most important factor in this video aside from the performance and music. In the shots where the band are performing, Cobain is extremely close to the camera looking crazed, and this out-of-focus extreme close-up effect was used in other bands' music videos from this point onwards, for example Soul Asylum's music video for their song Misery (1995). The frontman, Dave Pirner, has adopted Cobain's hair, clothing style, and style of performance in this video, although the song is vastly different from Nirvana's music. The screenshots below are excerpts from the Soul Asylum video showing the parallels between this and the Heart Shaped Box video.