It was “Jeremy”—more than the Singles soundtrack, “Hunger Strike,” or any other song on Ten—that elevated Pearl Jam from popular rock band to genuine cultural phenomenon, and Vedder from budding rock star to generational spokesman. This was compounded by the relative slowness of pre-internet culture—“Jeremy” hung around for a long time, finally winning a Video of the Year trophy at the MTV Video Music Awards a full 13 months after it first aired in August 1992.
More than any other music video made by a commercially successful alt-rock band at the time, “Jeremy” was a scathing critique of conformist mainstream American culture. Not only is the American flag surrounded by flames—though not quite set on fire—but a classroom of students doing the Pledge of Allegiance is equated with their performing a Nazi salute. There’s also a reference to Genesis 3:6, a Bible verse about how the arrogance of humans led to the destruction of the Garden of Eden.
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In Pellington’s original edit—which is now commonly available on YouTube—Jeremy is clearly seen putting the gun barrel in his mouth. While you don’t see him literally commit suicide, the implication is obvious. MTV, however, insisted on cutting these crucial frames. This made it unclear whether the frozen, blood-splattered faces of his classmates we see at the video’s end signify their horror over Jeremy’s death or their own deaths at Jeremy’s hand. MTV’s prohibition inadvertently changed “Jeremy” from a video about suicide to a video about a school shooting.
This perception unwittingly was aided by Vedder’s lyrics, which could now be interpreted differently in light of the edit. The most underrated aspect of “Jeremy” is the cleverness of Vedder’s storytelling, which for the most part does not come from Jeremy’s point of view. Rather, he speaks on behalf of the classmates who abused him. In their eyes, Jeremy appeared to be a “harmless little ****” until their teasing “unleashed a lion,” causing him to lash out and bite “the recess lady’s breast.” (This detail suggests that the fictional Jeremy had already been an outcast for years, since his grade-school days.)
“Jeremy” is really a song about everybody around Jeremy. This narrative construction puts the listener in the place of the villains rather than the hero, an approach no doubt inspired by a multitude of Pete Townshend songs about marginalized loner freaks, from “Happy Jack” to Tommy. The exception is the first verse, in which Vedder writes from an omniscient perspective that paints Jeremy in a more sinister light—the pictures he draws by himself allude to fantasies of revenge and dominance, with Jeremy’s “arms raised in a V / as the dead lay in pools of maroon below.”
In the video, this is muddled further by the casting of Wilson, a darkly handsome young man whose rich brown hair and high cheekbones bear more than a passing resemblance to a teenaged Eddie Vedder. This puts the idea in the viewer’s mind that Jeremy is Vedder, who presumably eluded authorities all these years ago in order to relate his story. Again, this is possible only because viewers originally couldn’t see the gun go in Jeremy’s mouth at the end of the video.
Editing out the “offensive” content actually made “Jeremy” more dangerous and even irresponsible. “For 98 percent of people, it’s, ‘Oh, he shot them.’ And that’s just wrong. It’s just that the censorship made the meaning different than the real meaning,” Pellington maintained. “Later, real kids shot people and said, ‘I was inspired by ‘Jeremy.’”
In Pellington’s view, that’s the real reason Pearl Jam turned so hard against music videos. “I’d also be like, ‘See? Videos are ****** up, man.’”
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As for Pearl Jam, “Jeremy” marked a turning point in their engagement with the popular culture of the ’90s. The video put them at the center of public attention, which made them—particularly Vedder—extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the attention, but rather the culture itself, that proved incompatible with the band. Pearl Jam was part of a wave of artists in the early ’90s—many of whom were musicians, though it was also expanding to film and literature—who were against the mainstream status quo. But the anger and rebellion that fueled their rise quickly metastasized into something altogether gross and untenable.
Pearl Jam had helped to rapidly remake the culture. But the revolution no longer was theirs. Soon, they would look for a way out.
Pearl Jam - GAH Week 7 - 12.17.22
Originally Posted by Sting
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