Killer of Sheep PDF

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Reading response to the film "Killer of Sheep"....

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Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep portrays life in the streets of the impoverished section of Los Angeles known as Watts. The film is unique because it does not have a beginning, middle, and end like most films where characters are presented, a story line develops, a conflict ensues, there is a solution to the conflict, and there is an ending. Instead, it was made as a series of scenes that take place in the lives of the main characters, Stan, his wife, and their two kids, and the lives of the people around them in the neighborhood. A common theme throughout these scenes is what poverty can do to hard working people and their families who are just trying to get by. Stan’s job working in a slaughterhouse under the most awful conditions reflects the hard work and values he tries to demonstrate to his family, but even with this hard work their lives go nowhere. He portrays a character wrapped in depression and sadness because he moved his family to LA for more opportunities than were offered to them in the deep South, but the best they can achieve is poverty. The movie is full of children playing in the streets with rocks and sticks and being witnesses to the rough behavior of the adults in the neighborhood. The children are compared with the sheep going to slaughter because their future is already set with few opportunities unless they can somehow overcome the obstacles they are born into. In the article, “Killer of Sheep (1977)” the author with regards to the children writes, “Killer of Sheep isn’t a thesis film that overtly argues for solutions to social problems, but it implicitly compares the children in Watts with the sheep going to slaughter and makes viewers think about what could be done to give them a reasonably secure future. To solve that problem, one needs to confront a wide range of social, political, and economic issues” (30). The children are innocent, yet well aware of the troubles they and the adults face daily. The only white person in the film is a white woman who runs the liquor convenience store that doubles as a bank. She controls the check cashing for the people in the neighborhood and furthers their oppression by

choosing whose checks she will accept to cash. In the article the author comments on the financial situation of the neighborhood when he writes, “Lack of money determines everything in the film. At one point Stan confronts a man who owes him money, and the man walks away, saying, “I ain’t got anything but my good looks.” At another point Stan gives a dollar and a can of peaches, wages he’s received from “Miss Sally” for “cleaning up behind the garage,” to his poor friends Gene and Dian” (37). The film does not portray violence and guns in the impoverished neighborhood, but the efforts of Stan and his wife to make a life for their kids and their community even though the film ends much like it began with them not moving ahead in life....