Surrealism in Music Videos

The two case studies we shall look at:

• Nirvana - "Heart-Shaped Box" (http://genius.com/Nirvana-heart-shaped-box-lyrics) 
• R.E.M. - "It's The End Of The World" (http://genius.com/Rem-its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine-lyrics) 

The definition of surrealism: "a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images."

With this we can look at both music videos with the lens of juxtaposing images, as well as analyzing the "unconscious mind". These images are thus abstract and may not have any relation to the music or theme emoted by the song itself. They are somewhat seemingly inspired by visions, illusions or even dreams. 

Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box

First off, we'd best discuss the background of the song of itself. As per Wikipedia:

Kurt Cobain wrote "Heart-Shaped Box" in early 1992. Cobain forgot about the song for a while, but began working on it again when he and his wife, Courtney Love, moved to a house in the Hollywood Hills. In a 1994 Rolling Stone interview, Love said she overheard him working on the song's riff in a closet. She said she asked him if she could use the riff for one of her songs, to which he replied, "Fuck off!" and closed the closet door. "He was trying to be so sneaky", said Love. "I could hear that one from downstairs." The couple shared a journal in which they would write lyrics; Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross noted that Love's songwriting sensibility informed Cobain's on the song. The song's name came from a heart-shaped box Love had given Cobain. However, Cobain had originally titled the song "Heart-Shaped Coffin".

Cobain said the song was inspired by documentaries about children with cancer. He told biographer Michael Azerrad, "Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of." Azerrad asserted in his biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana that despite Cobain's explanation, the song actually appeared to be about Courtney Love. Charles Cross wrote in his Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven that with the lyric "I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black", the frontman "sang in what has to be the most convoluted route any songwriter undertook in pop history to say 'I love you'". After a performance of the song by singer Lana Del Rey in 2012, Courtney Love asserted on Twitter that the song is about her vagina. The tweets were deleted shortly after. Cobain said that the song's chorus of "Hey/Wait/I've got a new complaint" was him giving an example of how he was perceived by the media.

As for the music video itself (from Wiki):

The video begins and ends with the band in a hospital setting watching an old man being administered medication through an IV drip. The majority of the video takes place in a surreal outdoor setting that incorporates imagery from the film The Wizard of Oz. During the song's first verse, the old man from the hospital climbs onto a crow-ridden Christian cross. The second verse introduces a young girl in a white robe and peaked cap reaching for human fetuses in a tree, and an overweight woman in a suit with human organs painted onto it and with angel wings affixed to her back. In the video's final cut, the band is only shown performing in the outdoor setting during the choruses, where Cobain's face moves in and out of focus in the camera. While most of the video was devised by Cobain, Corbijn added elements such as the intentionally artificial crows, a ladder for the old man to climb onto the cross with, and a box with a heart at the top that the band performs inside of during the song's final chorus. Corbijn created another cut of the video featuring alternate footage during the final verse, including more shots of the young girl and the woman, and scenes of Cobain lying on his back in the poppy field, with mist surrounding him. 

Concluding commentary: clearly there are various interpretations of the songs, with some members of the band, and even Courtney Love, are not quite sure what it entails. Cobain himself says the song was "inspired by documentaries about children with cancer", who said it made him "... sadder than anything I can think of." This does not really help cover much of the imagery shown in the music video itself; however, Cobain himself devised most of the music video, with only certain elements added afterwards by video director Anton Corbijn. So perhaps we are right to trust Cobain's interpretation of the song and video, as he created much of it. 

R.E.M. - "It's The End of The World..."

Here is some background to the song itself (from Wikipedia):

The track is known for its quick flying, seemingly stream of consciousness rant with a number of diverse references, including a quartet of individuals with the initials "L.B." (Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs). In a 1990s interview with Musician magazine, R.E.M.'s lead singer Michael Stipe claimed that the "L.B." references came from a dream he had in which he found himself at a party surrounded by famous people who all shared these initials.

The music video as per Wikipedia:

The music video was directed by James Herbert, who worked with the band on several other videos in the late 1980s. It depicts a young skateboarder, Noah Ray, rifling through an abandoned, collapsing farmhouse and displaying the relics that he finds to the camera.

Concluding commentary: "Overall, the song it decries various aspects of society that Stipe has a problem with. It does so with rapid-fire references to religion, media, patriotism, the Soviet Union, continental drift, and more. As a result, it’s hard to follow the song without a copy of the lyrics (and these annotations)." This is in context of the time period. Being released as part of their album in the year 1987, and makes reference to the corruption in the U.S. government with a reference to the Iran-Contra Affair, describing it as “government for hire”.  The Iran-Contra Affair revealed the Reagan administration sold no less than $30 million in arms to Iran (there’s never been a full accounting) and diverted most of the money to a covert operation in Nicaragua. Throughout R.E.M.'s career, its members sought to highlight social and political issues. According to the Los Angeles Times, R.E.M. was considered to be one of the United States' "most liberal and politically correct rock groups." The band's members were "on the same page" politically, sharing a liberal and progressive outlook.