A lot of people my age were confused about the video for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”. It’s my memory that I immediately grasped the intended meaning (Jeremy shoots himself in front of his class), but the video as aired on MTV was rather ambiguous and many people thought Jeremy opened fire on his classmates. This confusion was actually due to censorship – the unedited video showed Jeremy putting the gun in his mouth – but MTV zoomed/cropped the scene (about 5:00 into the video) so all that could be seen was Jeremy taking something out of his pocket and then closing his eyes. Both versions of the video shows Jeremy’s classmates splattered with blood, but only in the unedited version is it 100% clear whose blood it is.
I can understand why MTV was uncomfortable with showing a video where teenager puts a gun in his mouth, but I guess it didn’t occur to them that by editing the video they were leaving the door open for an even MORE violent school shooting interpretation. In fact, in the 1996 Frontier Middle School shooting case it was claimed in court that the “Jeremy” video had influenced the killer.