A Crow Looked at Me and Voyeurism

Recently, I've been listening to the new Mount Eerie album, A Crow Looked at Me, and reading various reviews and think pieces that have been written in response to it. Common amongst these articles is a reluctance to engage the album critically because reviewers feel the subject matter doesn't warrant it. For those unaware, the album details the emotions of singer-songwriter Phil Elverum following the death of his wife last year from pancreatic cancer. It's an extremely sobering and harrowing listen, and no detail is spared in Elverum's personal depiction of his struggle with the fact that his wife is gone, leaving behind him and their newborn daughter. Many have described their own experience listening to the album as "voyeuristic", insofar as listeners are somehow reaping some enjoyment out of this man's cathartic depiction of loss. It's an interesting point, and strikes at the heart of why this album is such an uncomfortable listen.

This concept of voyeurism, and how it's mediated through technology, reminds me of our in-class discussion of the Jennicam. The mere fact that individuals could have uninhibited access to Jenni's life through a webcam installed in her bedroom certainly inspires a similar degree of discomfort. This discomfort is interesting precisely because I'm unsure it's warranted. Just as Elverum chose to promote and release his album, Jenni set up and marketed her website. Perhaps this discomfort is really a general anxiety towards the ways in which we feel technology is slowly dissolving our own sense of privacy. Relevant to this is the fact that Elverum reluctantly set up a GoFundMe page last year to seek donations for the health expenses related to his wife's cancer treatment. This transformed their struggle, and her untimely death, from a very personal and intimate one into something more public. Maybe this is why he felt compelled to release the album, as a sort of public statement for an event that - at that point - had clearly come to involve more than him and his family.

I've attached the first track from the album. One only need to look at some of the Youtube comments to get a sense of some of the discomfort I mentioned earlier.