LyricsIn a 1992 interview with Rolling Stone, Layne Staley explained the origins of the song's lyrics:
I started writing about dropping out of mime school. Around the same time, we went out for dinner with some Columbia Records people who had also studied miming. They told me how all their first mime attempts were the "man in the box", and that image stuck in my head. So I went home and wrote about government censorship as seen through the eyes of a doomed mime.[12]
Jerry Cantrell said of the song:
But what it's basically about is, is how government--but ultimately the art of miming--shape the public's perception of events in the world or whatever, and they build you into a box by feeding it to you in your home, ya know. And it's just about a mime breaking out of that box and looking outside of that box that has been built for you.[13]
In a recorded interview with MuchMusic in 1991, Staley stated that the lyrics were only loosely based on media censorship, and rather "I was really really into miming when I wrote it, so it meant something different then", he said laughing.[14]
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, 4 January 2021 02:06 (three years ago) link