Into the Never: Nine Inch Nails and the Creation of the Downward Spiral by Adam Steiner

Author:Adam Steiner [Steiner, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617137310
Google: OUTOwwEACAAJ
Publisher: Backbeat Books
Published: 2020-03-15T23:40:01.294520+00:00

In “Big Man,” the narrator seems temporarily displaced, overcome by a nihilistic voice that talks flippantly about reducing the victim, presumably to a sexual object or even a corpse, an impulsive act of degradation which is done just for the fuck of it. Casual and callous, the Big Man displays an impersonality that marks him as an indiscriminate violator who holds life, sex, and death cheaply. Reznor is openly condemning the voice in the song. The listener is supposed to be shocked and appalled by his actions and the violence of his language, and in this surface-driven crudity, the song succeeds.

The chorus is driven like a command, chanting the order to “shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot”—at once a call to pull the trigger, conflating the firing of a gun with the mental and physical rush of ejaculation. The pop-simple one-word chorus is reminiscent of Nirvana’s “Rape Me” and “Lithium” and the Manic Street Preachers’ “Revol”; repeptition stands in for emphasis, and the crowds sing along, perhaps without knowing, or thinking about, what it means. The division that marks the individual from the herd has broken down. As with the pro-gun lobby, multiple voices become one; their call is in truth the baying and braying for blood of enemies, real and imagined.

It is important to consider Reznor’s own perspective on masculinity to give context to the song. The Big Man character conflates sexual aggression with carrying a gun, feeding into contemporary ideas of the toxic male. Exploring Reznor’s portrayal of relationships in his music, Vanessa Manchester noted that “masculinity for Nine Inch Nails is damaged” and damaging. Sometimes conforming to the expectations of physical strength and sexual aggression, as with Reznor’s frequent use of violent imagery and commanding stage performances, Reznor also expresses inherent flaws in traditional ideas of masculinity. He sees its internal contradiction as the inability and fear of fully expressing emotions, instead of allowing oneself to be vulnerable and exposed, a confessional mode he helped to define with The Downward Spiral. The song pushes the Big Man archetype as the internally broken but outwardly powerful individual into caricature.

For Kurt Cobain, the failure of his dad to be a father figure was put down to a lack of emotional strength and openness that caused deep division in their relationship. He recognized these same attitudes in what he typecasts as the backward, homophobic, wife-beating, and redneck males of his hometown of Aberdeen [Washington], a working-class logging community. In spite of his own parents’ divorce, and describing himself as coming from a “broken home,” Reznor had a positive relationship with his parents even after being raised largely by his grandparents, and he did not really experience material deprivation. Although, he has complained about the cultural atmosphere of Mercer being thoroughly agricultural and his school environment being largely dominated by sports and athletics, which only permitted Reznor to experience a narrow vision of what constitutes masculinity.

It is the strong-and-silent-type clichéd view of masculinity that has suppressed open conversation about mental health issues

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