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July 11, 2007

Killer of Sheep

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

By Tram

As I watched Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep last Sunday, Thursday's Supreme Court 5-4 desegregation ruling was not far from the back of my mind. In a world as fragmented as it is retrogressively neo-liberal, Killer of Sheep is a firm reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

During past interviews, Burnett has described Killer of Sheep as an ethnographic film. And while the word "ethnographic" has a tendency to be freely associated to (sub)cultures distant from Western civilization, Killer of Sheep, set in our own domestic backyard, nonetheless qualifies as such – it is worlds away from the white middle class affluence we are accustomed to seeing in the mainstream media.

If Killer of Sheep feels unclimactic, there's good reason for it: these are simply snippets of people as they drift in and out of their daily regimen; noticeably absent from the screen are the dramatic arcs, resolutions, and catharses one would find a three-act script. These people are born into de facto segregation, a reality that assures that black neighborhood properties are not worth as much, if anything at all, to their white counterparts in the real estate market; and replete with all the drawbacks that often overwhelm the poor, including the lack of access to fine higher education. In true neo-realist fashion, this reality remains as stark as it is vivid; the only sensible thing that these people can do to retain their humanity is to learn to cope with their status quo on a day to day basis; politics simmer in the background, and life, well, it goes on.

More Pather Panchali than Bicycle Thief, Burnett's neo-realist camera captures work and play in equal measures. When our main protagonist, Stan, isn’t slaving away in the slaughterhouse, he spends his time with friends, family, and neighbors. Humor appears in the unlikeliest of places; during a visit to the local liquor store, for instance, its proprietor, a white burly woman, makes a none-to-discreet pass at Stan, offering him a job as shelf stocker.

These fly-on-the-wall observations as described in the aforementioned paragraph not only familiarize us to these characters, they help us understand the emotional place they are coming from. The subjected poverty is ingrained in the facial expressions and bodily patterns of the adults, who are too impotent to dance but too restless to sleep. By contrast, the children live, as they should be, in their own little worlds, oblivious to the harsh, unforgiving Real World that awaits them from the outside. Random pillow shots scattered in Killer of Sheep – Stan’s daughter wandering around with a rubber droopy dog mask on her face, a girl crawling in the frame with her wobbly bike, neighborhood boys jumping across roofs – are remarkably bittersweet in nature. To many viewers, these children may serve as a respite from the unpleasant adult world. But while that is true, from an in-the-moment perspective, I could not help but think of the foreboding future: time will pass and poverty shall take a toll on these kids as well.

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