Breaking Down Nirvana's 'Heart-Shaped Box'

It all makes sense to me now.

I was doing a more-than-average bit of thinking earlier this year about Bob Dylan, since that movie about him came out, and Boomer critics predictably overstated its appeal. Was he really some great enigma, or just an asshole? Or possibly autistic? The movie honestly tilted me in the more uncharitable direction, but then I took a look at the lyrics for the first Bob Dylan song I remember registering, his '80s hit “Jokerman.” I remember thinking he looked so old on the video; now I see it and he's younger than I.

Nobody's entirely clear what “Jokerman” is about, though there are many interpretations. Looking at the lyrics, though, I was amused and impressed by the way he mixed classical metaphors and paired different mythological themes together. I could see the poetry to it even if I didn't fully grab the meaning. And then I thought of my own generation, and the only other music megastar to have a similar effect: Kurt Cobain.

Granted, not every Nirvana song is inscrutable. We all know by now that “Polly” is a song about a rapist singing to his victim, who escapes by the end. “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” is also self-explanatory. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” though, is a jumble of words and concepts I'm not sure anyone's fully clear on. And until recently, I thought the same of my favorite Nirvana single, “Heart-Shaped Box.”

[My favorite actual Nirvana songs, oddly enough, are covers: “Son of a Gun,” “Plateau,” and “Lake of Fire.”]

Now, I know somebody has probably independently come up with the same interpretation as I, but I assure you that if they have, I have not read it. So as far as I know, these are my thoughts and not plagiarized from anywhere else. What unlocked it for me was the realization that when the song first came out, I had never heard the term “box” used to mean “vagina.” I only learned it, ironically enough, when WWE put out a T-shirt for Eric Bischoff's catchphrase at the time, “Hot lesbian action!” and it featured the visual of lips and a tongue beside an actual box. I forget who the poor sucker was who had to explain that one to me.

It's no stretch from there to see female genitalia as a “heart-shaped” box. And after that, the other euphemisms in the song just appear. “Magnet tar-pit trap” and “Meat-eating orchid” suggest something flower shaped and magnetic that sucks in a man's “meat.”

“She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak.” Cobain was a Pisces, and after he died, Courtney Love referred to him embodying the stereotype of a sad Pisces. The line thereby suggests that when he's vulnerable, he's easy pickings for seduction.

And why? “Broken hymen of your highness.” “Angel hair and baby's breath.” “Your umbilical noose.” She's wanting to get pregnant and suck him into becoming a father when he's vulnerable and just wants intimacy. [Note: I am not implying this song has to be about Courtney or Frances. As “Polly” proves, Cobain was more than capable of writing and singing in character. Perhaps he was imagining his own “Billie Jean.”]

“I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black” is typically thought of as just a gross-out line, but take it on a more metaphorical level. A cancer is something that grows inside you. “You turn black” may not refer to her body – but a line on a pregnancy test turning black. And he wishes he could eat what is growing and stop it.

The chorus begins, “Hey! Wait! I've got a new complaint!” There are many ways to read that, but in context of my interpretation so far, it reads as, “Things are moving too fast! I'm not ready!” It's followed by the more sarcastic-sounding, “Forever in debt to your priceless advice.” Was it her advice to have sex anyway even if it wasn't “safe”? If so, he's both sarcastically “in debt,” because he got what he didn't want, and literally in debt to the tune of child support.

It's worth noting that the final song on the same album is “All Apologies,” which ends its chorus with the words, “I'm married, buried.” Yet it also could play out as an apology for not being up to the situation he has gotten himself into. Not every song on In Utero relates to this theme, but the album title does – maybe this is Kurt Cobain's Eraserhead.

For me, anyway, “Heart-Shaped Box” feels unlocked anew. Don't ask me what the emaciated, crucified Santa in the video stands for, though. An imminent delivery of a “present,” and its deliverer being stalled? Maybe.

Okay, I'll give it a shot. There are three characters in the video besides Nirvana, clearly representing father, mother, and daughter.

Father is first shown in bed dying, then later crucified, alternating between a Santa hat and a Pope hat. (He's surrounded by crows and poppies, also symbols of death.) Mother is large, and wearing an anatomy bodysuit, hungrily holding out her arms. Daughter wears what looks like a junior KKK robe, as she leaps up to try to grab fetuses hanging from trees. Father on his deathbed is later revealed to have a fetus in his IV drip.

It's slightly abstract, but it suggests to me a fear that being tied down by fatherhood equals death, and/or support of the white, homogenized, religious patriarchy. Mother might be buying too easily into this myth because her biology is ticking. Daughter could grow up to be a racist if Father is as bad at parenting as his fears suggest, because if a kid were to rebel against Kurt's values, that would be it.

And maybe I'm way off of what Kurt actually thought. I doubt I'll ever know, but this is the beauty of art. I do love when it lends itself to analysis this readily. Okay, Boomers, maybe I'm starting to see what you saw in Dylan.

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Nirvana screencap via Vevo on YouTube.