Steve Huey of AllMusic called the song " an often overlooked but important building block in grunge 's ascent to dominance " and " a meeting of metal theatrics and introspective hopelessness . " The MTV music video for the track was released in 1991 and was directed by Paul Rachman , who later directed the first version of the " Sea of Sorrow " music video for the band and the 2006 feature documentary '' American Hardcore '' . The music video was nominated for Best Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards . The video is available on the home video releases '' Live Facelift '' and '' Music Bank : The Videos '' . The video shows the band performing in what is supposedly a barn , where throughout the video , a mysterious man wearing a black hooded cloak is shown roaming around the barn . Then , after the unknown hooded figure is shown , he is shown again looking around inside a stable where many animals live where he suddenly discovers and shines his flashlight on a man ( Layne Staley ) that he finds sitting in the corner of the barnhouse . At the end of the video , the hooded man finally pulls his hood down off of his head , only to reveal that his eyelids were sewn together with stitches the whole time . This part of the video depicts on the line of the song , " Feed my eyes , now you 've sewn them shut " . The music video was shot on 16 mm film and transferred to tape using a FDL 60 telecine . At the time this was the only device that could sync sound to picture at film rates as low as 6 FPS . This is how the surreal motion was obtained . The sepia look was done by Claudius Neal using a daVinci color corrector
1991 MTV Video Music Awards
1991 MTV Video Music Awards
Man in the Box