Killer of Sheep

Killer of Sheep, by Charles Burnett, is a film about the harsh realities of growing up and living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the inner city of Los Angeles. Visually, this film parallels the lives of the children in the neighborhood with the main character, Stan’s, life and work at a slaughterhouse to convey the idea that growing up in this faceless environment makes its inhabitants anonymous beings also.

The scene I chose to analyze is a scene between Stan working at a slaughterhouse and its parallels to three boys living in the neighborhood. At Stan’s slaughterhouse, countless numbers of sheep are seen being mechanically moved throughout the factory. Later, three sheep are hung up vertically next to each other presumably to be slaughtered. The following shot shows three boys riding on a single bicycle together away from the camera. The bicycle tips over and the boys are nearly run over by a car before scattering off down the street. The cut between the three sheep and the three boys is no coincidence. It is clear that these two visuals and the matching cut are used to say something about the deeper ideas and themes within this film. Burnett compares the sheep to the boys to perhaps suggest the tight confines of the inner city slums, as well as to perhaps suggest the plight of the boys; not that they will be slaughtered but rather to suggest the affects and the danger of the monotonous routines and faceless surroundings on the neighborhood’s inhabitants. The sheep are indistinguishable, as are the boys, who are generally faceless amongst the large group of youth that inhabit the personality-less environment.

  In summation, Killer of Sheep is in many ways a film about the seemingly never-ending plight of this neighborhood’s residents and Burnett’s use of cinematography and editing underline this. The scene with the sheep in the slaughterhouse paralleled with the three boys on the bike focuses the audience’s attention on the underlying message in Burnett’s film: that sometimes the most dangerous aspect of inner city poverty is the undistinguished environment’s affect on the neighborhood’s youth.