by Charles Burnett Writing Collective, Comparative Literature 143, Fall 2013, UC irvine
Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep explores the disempowerment of a black family living in 1970s South L.A. and the relationship of this disempowerment to the gendered sexual idiosyncrasies in this family’s life. Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) and his unnamed wife (Kaycee Moore) live in a dystopic, static universe, where they are rendered powerless and/or engage in a means of coping that looks very much like powerlessness. Their disempowerment is demonstrated in different modes of sexuality. The relationship between Stan and his wife is atypical in that Stan cannot or will not engage his wife sexually. The film complicates Stan’s impotence, however, by stylistically emphasizing his sexual objectification; the male protagonist is transformed from subject to object, thus emasculated, and his wife assumes the role of sexual aggressor, preventing norms in gender performance from coalescing for either character. The ambiguity of Stan’s impotence creates problems for interpretation, as willful disinterest suggests potentiality and agency within the world of the film, while physical impotence would remove that potentiality and create another layer of subjugation. Inaction, passivity, and a lack of conventional emotional display in Killer of Sheep may be interpreted as either products of or responses to the static dystopia in which the characters find themselves.This ambiguity in turn perpetuates the limited mobility within the film, as the characters themselves may not be able to tell which is which.
The lack of melodrama, and the tension that preserves the lack of drama and action, is generally visible in the lives of the characters. The movie is filled with a sort of tension, as if at any moment something could happen and that something almost shouldn’t happen. It’s as if Burnett’s film is set up so that any loss of balance would amount to tragedy. This tension is observable as a lack or impossibility of melodrama within the film. It is not that there is no emotion, action, or reaction, but rather that the emotion, action, or reaction that exists is subdued and suppressed, almost to the point of incredulity. This sort of nothingness, this lack of a positive direction for motion, and in turn the lack of possibility for melodrama to exist, speaks directly to the setting of the movie world, underscoring the peculiarity of its conditions.
Black Masculinity and Emasculation
Nothingness and an impossibility of positive action appears within Burnett’s South L.A., a space that is available only to certain people. It doesn’t seem as if the white lady in the liquor store experiences the same lack of possibility of “positive” action, and that seems to be supported by the fact that she even harbors a desire to actively participate in something, namely an illicit affair with Stan, to the point that she proposes it. The impossibility of positive action seems to be reserved for the black characters on which Burnett’s film directly centers. The relation of blackness to the immobility available to it is almost a prerequisite to the setting: it’s as if the qualities create the space. The static and futile space only exists in this way for black characters because there exists another world where the white characters live but that is entirely off-screen. If the condition of being black in the film’s world is a matter of social, economic, and spatial location, then South L.A. in the film’s world is the resulting physical construct. In essence, its space is blackness.
In Killer of Sheep, agency becomes lost on the most basic, physical level: that of the black body. The male black body loses its agency in South L.A. through fetishization and emasculation. The prevalence of this sexualized representation perpetuates the stereotype that the black body is a readily accessible sexual object while avoiding the stereotype of black male violence. The very first shot of Stan is framed to represent his emasculation. He appears without a shirt, on his knees, reflecting a symbolic sexual submissiveness. The figure of his friend stands in the unfocused foreground, with the camera and viewer posed looking down from his waistline in a phallic perspective. Stan is on all fours in the focused background, working and posed at the feet of the faceless friend.
The shot presents Stan in a submissive position, and his bare torso takes up much of the frame and is the focal point of the shot.
Stan also becomes hypersexualized in the scene in which he, once again shirtless, is drinking tea with his friend, an activity usually associated with female identities. Stan puts his cup of tea on his own cheek and tells his friend “doesn’t this remind you of when you’re making love?”
This scene implies a sexual arousal triggered by an inanimate object. Stan is aroused by something that he is putting in his body, which can be a marker of an oral fixation. Stan’s body is objectified much like a female body would be again through his interactions with the female white store owner. She fetishizes Stan’s body, as she offers him a job in return for sexual favors, and Stan’s economic agency becomes available only through prostitution: his body in exchange for money.
So, the objectification of Stan’s body works on two levels. First, Stan is dehumanized as a black man, as in the historical context of slavery. The condition of “slave” is an ontological one that strips the bearer of humanity and reassigns an identity of property. The camera’s focus on Stan’s laboring body and the exclusion of his face in the kitchen scenes mirrors the dehumanizing condition of slavery and the dehumanizing condition of blackness in U.S. modernity. Second, in the presentation of Stan’s body as a sexual object or fetish, traditionally assigned to the female body, Burnett’s film stylistically presents Stan’s emasculation, as he works scantily-clad in the domestic sphere.
The sexualization and fetishization of the black body in South L.A. and Stan’s resulting emasculation is understood through his impotence revealed later in the film. The film sets up the characters against a backdrop of sexual normalcy and traditional gender roles: Stan’s impotence alludes to a norm which dictates that sex is masculine. Since sex is masculine, Stan still must have some sort of sexual outlet (although it cannot be his wife, nor other women), so he releases his sexuality into his work. Stan works sexually with his body, as indicated by the scenes of domestic work mentioned previously. Scenes at the sheep slaughterhouse are similarly portrayed. Burnett’s film does not allow sexual release to be impossible for Stan, despite his impotence. This possibility implies that Stan’s impotence is held in place by his work.
Against the backdrop of sexual norms, Stan’s impotence creates a dynamic shift in gender roles in Stan’s marriage, as his wife becomes the sexual aggressor. This implicitly links his domestic position as a feminized husband to his social one as a limited black man.The scene in which Stan dances with his wife before breaking away reinforces his position as a sexual object. Stan’s wife takes physical and sexual dominance over his body as they dance—he again is shirtless, and Stan’s wife grabs handfuls of black flesh as they dance before he finally breaks away.
The gender dynamics are reversed; Stan becomes sexual territory. This scene shows a black male body that is not sexually available. From what is shown in other scenes, there is a possibility that he does not identify with his gender which could imply sexual orientation or gender performance. Due to his position, Stan loses regardless of which side of the sexualized spectrum he is placed on.
If Stan’s lack of sexual desire serves to emphasize his passivity, it also calls into question the existing “normal” gender roles of men as sexual aggressors and women as sexual objects or sexual territory. The genre of melodrama achieves generalization through exaggeration; in pinpointing the inappropriate behavior or action of the scene the viewer must compare it to his or her own standard of appropriateness, thus calling it into question. Here, instead, Stan’s objectified position is a sympathetic one, yet it becomes especially so because Stan is male. Were the roles reversed and Stan was the sexual aggressor with his wife as the sexual object, the dynamic would be a social norm that can easily become problematic. Burnett’s gender dynamic takes on a social criticism in gender roles and sexuality by presenting Stan in the position that is typically associated with female gender. Reversing the roles forces the viewer to take a more critical look at the gender norm. By presenting Stan’s position as unjust and sympathetic, Burnett also comments on the identical and very real position of woman as a relational identity.
Within the domestic space, Stan often comes across as lost and unfulfilled in his patriarchal roles. In these domestic scenes, he is often brooding and less talkative than when he is outside the home. Stan seems to neglect his wife and children in comparison to his attention to labor, as he works on the house in order to escape the burdens of his role while exercising his masculinity. His discomfort around his wife is evident as he avoids contact with her, as though he were worn and defeated and simply going through motions. When he is up late at night and his wife prods him to come back to bed, he instead uses his body to install new flooring in the kitchen.
This physical act reflects how masculinity exists in the domestic sphere. Stan’s discouraged and detached demeanor in the home contrasts with images of Stan at the slaughterhouse where he is seen energetically slapping sheep with their own coats. This scene reveals another side to Stan and proves that he is capable of pleasure outside the confines of the household. It is an ambiguous, tense kind of pleasure, however, where he can release his violent aggressions on the sheep. It is through Stan’s job, then, that expectations of black masculinity become twisted—as we know that Stan suffers in providing for his family and that he does so by offering mainly physical service. Labor is therapeutic for Stan and is an action in response to the inaction that rules his life, which is why he tries to overlap labor with the home. However, this masculinity stops short when it approaches intimate relations.
Stan’s rejecting his wife’s sexual and emotional embraces reveals the film’s self awareness, as it attempts to balance the acceptance of blackness and challenge exterior, stereotypical expectations of black desire, relationships, and the domestic space. The film accepts and reclaims blackness, specifically black masculinity, within both the work and domestic spaces. The reclamation of, and indulgence in, a constructed expected masculinity in the final scene–of Stan smiling as he skins and drains the blood of the sheep in the slaughterhouse–contributes to an acceptance of what blackness is amid the poverty and stagnation of 1970’s South L.A. Yet, Stan’s sexual and emotional distance forces us throughout to sympathize with his wife. By setting up the conflict in this way, the film avoids stereotypes of the black, male, hypersexualized brute. The threat of the over-masculine hypersexual black male is diminished; he does not fully exist in this space. And therefore domestic violence, rape, and abuse also become distant from Burnett’s film, from South L.A. and from black representation. Combined with the lack of mobility and advancement, however, this leaves Stan in gender limbo where he is incapable of fulfilling the parameters that construct the male gender.
Black Feminity and Defeminization
Normative understandings of the household call for the fulfillment of gender roles that are skewed in Burnett’s Killer of Sheep. While the house is unsurprisingly old and in need of repair, the exterior isn’t the only thing to differ from one’s idea of “home, sweet home.” Scenes shot within the home are darker, quieter, tense, and full of shadows. Stan’s wife quietly walks back and forth between the kitchen and her bathroom, powdering her nose and stirring up dinner with hopes that Stan may pay notice that night. Her femininity is expressed through her routine of household chores and physical appearance, similar to Stan’s expressions of masculinity through work at the slaughterhouse. The first scene of Stan’s wife getting ready is when she is waiting for Stan to come home from work towards the beginning of the movie. She is putting on mascara in the bathroom, with care and concern as done by someone eeking to impress, as though on a first date.
She steps back and looks at herself in the mirror, running her hands up and down her body and turning to get the right angle in the mirror.
She is simultaneously tired and relentless in her efforts to gain attention from her husband because she bases a significant part of her value in the acceptance of Stan. Stan’s wife appears to be trapped within the home and her roles as a wife and mother.
Since these usual roles fail to connect her with Stan, she puts her efforts into hypersexualizing herself in a way that fits the trope of the black temptress. This is displayed in the scene where Stan’s family is going to the horse race.Stan’s wife is dressed in a seductive way, with her arms, midriff, and most of her legs bare:
This scene takes her outside of the confines of her wife/motherhood position because she is physically outside of the home, and her outfit even contradicts those roles. She may even be trying to get Stan’s attention by attracting other men n a public setting, in an effort to recall the image of herself outside of her maternal domestic role. Here, she fits the social construct of the hypersexualized, black female body.
After being ignored countless times, first as wife and mother and then as seductress, she takes action and pursues Stan, but this leads to her defeminization. In one scene, Stan and his wife slow dance in the darkness and for once they have an intimate moment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvS8DQpt6c
Stan holds his wife, but he holds her coldly. His wife starts to touch and caress him, only for Stan to pull away and reject her. His wife feels uncomfortable in her role as the aggressor and the constant rejection leaves her feeling unwanted and unloved. Once Stan pulls away, his wife moves into the darkness and sobs. His refusal is greater than merely ignoring her, as has been seen in previous scenes. He wholly rejects his wife’s body as it is against him and his to take with her desperate permission. Her wail of torment verges on the melodramatic. She needs Stan to fulfill his role as a husband in order for her to fulfill her own. Here, Stan’s wife is assuming a more sexually “masculine” role in the film than her husband. This reversal subverts the stereotypical notions of gender, having Stan’s wife step into the territory that the viewer expects Stan to be in.
Stan’s wife’s sexual abandonment is one of the strongest sympathizing points that the film provides for its viewers. Her evolution from one female stereotype to another causes the most viewer emotion. Yet the scenes are not melodramtic in the sense of seeming exaggerated. Instead, they can be read as raw depictions of sadness, catching because they display a contained emotion. Stan’s wife does not lash out at him or throw a fit. Instead, she crumples up and sobs silently in the darkness. We aren’t shocked by “over the top” emotion, but left amazed and confused by Stan’s stoicism.
The range of possibilities for what it means to be a black woman at this place and time can be seen in Stan’s wife’s desperate attempts to tempt her husband in contrast with the other females’ nonchalant attitudes toward male attention. Stan’s wife’s inability to interest her husband sexually and her apparent disappointment in herself showcases her inability to meet the expectation of femininity according to the South L.A. community. She falls against the window, facing her neighborhood as though begging it to let her be a woman according to its standards.
Unlike her, the other black women in Burnett’s film present themselves to men with an air of disregard for their attention and lack of concern for their approval. The ease and regularity of such behavior indicates it is a generally accepted and expected standard. The film depicts two young girls walking together down the street. Stan’s son yells at them and their response is a snarky “Your daddy!” The girls are tough and do not rise to the boys’ taunts. Their response is a comeback, meant to be equally aggressive as a vulgarity yet endowed with a sense of completion. The girls deliver the response and walk on without appearing to care. The female friend of Stan’s who rubs lotions on her legs while her brother-in-law talks with her displays the same aloof manner as the young girls. She brushes off all her brother-in-law’s verbal advances, looking completely without care for what he has to say. She carries on with her own activity: rubbing lotion on her legs. Her replies are short and monotonous because she is hardly invested in the conversation. Like the young girls, she is secure in her own task and capable of all but ignoring the attempts of the man to infringe on it. Rather than rise to his remarks, she limits her concern to her own body.
The women of Watts who embody this aloof and detached manner exercise the maximum amount of power they can have as women: wholly owning their own bodies. The woman with the lotion and the young girls do as they wish with their own bodies. They might be less able than their male counterparts to provide for themselves or secure economic status, but they are capable of control over their physical persons. Stan’s wife, however, does not have the power of women such as the woman with the lotion, because her actions surround those of Stan. Her goal of intimacy forces her to respond and react to Stan’s actions, as when she throws herself against the window. Her body is not her own because she must attempt to fling it at Stan. While the aloof women exercise the height of power for women in South Los Angeles, Stan’s wife embodies the lack of power in her surroundings. It is through the melodramatic extremes of behavior – aloof to devastated – that Burnett’s film is able to display the spectrum of agency found in its conditions.
Latent Violence and Inaction
Within this setting, where a lack of possibility for positive action seems to create a tension for keeping a neutral balance, the threat of a negative turn of events seems to be constantly present in the margins of the film. This presence announces itself as the latent violence that laces the actions of the characters and the possibilities of violence as a result of their non-violent actions. The children who are consistently playing outside in a not so safe neighborhood, with not so safe materials and ways of playing are a constant reminder that this precarious state is inherent in the setting. It’s always as if one misstep is recipe for disaster and since actual violence is a tragic motion in the negative direction, latent, implicit violence takes its place. [Image of children playing in the dirt lot next to the train tracks]
Within the home, the children are quiet and restless. In one scene, Stan’s son pours large amounts of sugar into his cereal as he tells his sister, “I need money!” Ironically, this statement does not stop him from being wasteful as he continues to pour sugar into his cereal.
The image of the son mimicking Stan’s behavior as he worries about how to get money conveys the limited options for those in South L.A.. In another example of a similar means of expression, instead of expressing any discontent with her sex-less marriage the wife instead tries too hard to fix herself in front of a mirror. Stan himself engages in a violent, non-violence when he almost hypnotically kills sheep because the act itself is violent, yet it’s also an act that is legal and available to him. This sort of perversion of neutral and available acts into violent acts through intention suggests the nature of discontent the movie world is brimming with, but also depicts the unavailability of violence as a reaction and the nature of discontent available within the movie world. There are no positive avenues for action, and negative avenues must be avoided. However negative feelings are in existence, but they must be dealt with in ways that do not disrupt the neutrality that is so necessary to keep the characters from tragedy. No one is going to go to jail, and no one is going to blow up and ruin relations with one another; instead what’s available with regard to reaction is a slow, pent up, and ultimately harmless violence in which, again, nothing happens.
So, the children also use inaction to manage dissatisfaction with their home life. In one scene, Stan’s little girl leaves the closet where she was playing with her doll to see her parents in the kitchen. When she notices that they are simply sitting in silence, a look of disappointment comes across her face and she slams her cup on the table as if in protest. This scene implies that the tension between her parents is the norm in the household, preventing them from working past their issues and consequently, disrupting family life. Thus, he home is a space of repression. The scene where the kids are playing in the playground depicts the destitute lifestyle in South L.A.: the playground appears to be more like a wasteland and the kids are minimally playing with the objects around. In this scene the song in the background tells of kids happily playing in a beautiful playground with joy and laughter. At the climax of the songs the kids are all seen sitting on the wall doing absolutely nothing. This scene depicts how the absorption of a lack of possibility for action affects the youth in the community. In this scene, the kids also have the feeling of never being able to escape it. The audience views the children playing and doing nothing climactic or exciting. Yet, as inaction among the adults avoids melodrama and violence, the forms of play also contain and limit latent violence.
One facet of melodrama historically is that it used to mean “a play interspersed with songs and orchestral music that accompanies the action.” Killer of Sheep takes this aspect of melodrama and completely turns it on its head. The music is just as important and effectual in Killer of Sheep as in any melodrama but it is used as juxtaposition rather than accompaniment. While music in many melodramas spoon-feeds the audience the overwhelming dose of emotions they should be feeling, Burnett uses music that contrasts the scenes and speaks on historical levels. This leaves audiences with a discomfort that forces them to more closely examine the scenes and characters. While the children are playing and entertaining themselves any way they can in the desolate dirt lots, the overwhelmingly patriotic and naively optimistic song “That’s America To Me” is playing. There is a stark contrast between the lyrics and what is happening on screen. Since this song certainly is not applicable to the scene in a sincere sense, it suggests that it is used as an ironic critique of how the reality of 1970’s South L.A. falls drastically short. In other scenes, like when Stan’s wife is trying to rekindle some sort of affection in their marriage, Burnett uses “This Bitter Earth,” a 1960’s song. Throughout the film, there are songs from earlier eras that evoke nostalgia from the audience. However, it is a bitter nostalgia because when these old classics were first released there was hope for a better future. Burnett uses the nostalgia of those songs and contrasts them with the disappointing reality of present day to show that these characters are not hopeful for their own future.
Killer of Sheep diverges from genre by presenting characters that habitually underreact. Usually, audiences want to see the dramatic events unfolding on-screen and are satisfied when the characters react to them with equal drama. In Killer of Sheep the opposite is true. The film is constantly leaving audiences unsatisfied with their “insufficient” response to any of the small “events” that occur. The main character, Stan, is particularly defined by his lack of action.This characteristic lack of action creates tension in the audience and leaves them with a sense of dissatisfaction. As opposed to creating a world for which the audience to escape into and to forget the struggles of ordinary life, the film’s dirty desolate settings are defining and limiting; they place the audience in 1970’s South L.A. and traps it there.
Burnett’s film establishes itself as anti-melodramatic in its structure and narrative, with very little exposition being offered to the audience and no clear resolution. In melodramas, there is almost always some sort of resolution and there is certainly always a plot and narrative story arc. The storyline may be unrealistic, but the outrageous twists of a melodrama exist to lead the plot to a neat and comprehensive (if implausible) conclusion. In Killer of Sheep, there is no plot or resolution; there are only scenes strung together by their common futility of hope. When the whole family piles into the car together to go the racetrack, there is a brief possibility of one simple moment of peace and contentment. However that happiness falls away when they discover they have a flat tire and, of course, no spare. When Stan decides to purchase a car engine in the hopes of making some extra cash, they carelessly ruin the engine and simply leave it there on street. There is no message of the power of perseverance or the incredible will of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
If anything, the final scene of the film, in which Stan is violently herding the sheep at the factory and enjoying it, leaves one feeling the most hopeless of all the scenes. The film could have just as easily portrayed a black man living in Watts who struggles with poverty but displays an incredible work ethic and optimistic outlook on life. But Killer of Sheep portrays a bleak reality in which the only time Stan seems to express active pleasure is when he is releasing his anger and hopelessness on these helpless creatures. This is a man who does not hope for a better future for his family or himself; he goes through the motions of “living” everyday with a sad sense resignation and vacancy.
But this lack of expression operates in the film to portray solidarity amongst the community in South L.A. In many scenes characters display a lack of expression even when dealing with heavy topics of conversation. In the beginning of the film, two of the characters attempt to steal a TV from someone else’s home. Another gentleman witnesses this and did not speak nor react to the guys caught in the act. This missing action depicts solidarity amongst the community: the witness does not inform on fellow members of his community. In another scene Stan tells his friend that the only escape to his current situation would be to end his life. Stan sees his daughter standing in the doorway and mentions that he could not even take his own life for the sake of his family. During this conversation Stan’s friend remains expressionless. The lack of expression in this scene comments on melodrama because one would normally have a significantly different reaction to such a bold statement. His daughter in this scene also stands in the doorway, unable to show response to her father’s words since she is wearing a mask.
The comment on melodrama nearly renders this film an anti-melodrama in this scene, for rather than an over-the-top reaction, the audience witnesses a lack of a reaction. The missing reaction becomes visible. In another scene when Stan is dancing with his wife, the audience may expect Stan to sweep his wife off her feet and kiss her. In this scene, however; Stan lacks any expression and ends up walking away from her. Here the lack of expression shows the film’s anti-melodramatic leanings, for the film undercuts the expectations of the viewers. Like a melodrama, the film undermines audience expectations in performance and character reaction; however, where a melodrama would show an overreaction wrought with high displays of emotion, Killer of Sheep presents underreactions, missing reactions, and absence of emotion; these performance choices reinforce the stasis of South L.A. and the futility felt by the characters.
It is ambiguous whether the sexual idiosyncrasies in the film are a result of the disempowerment that the characters experience or whether the sexual idiosyncrasies are an active response to disempowerment. This indistinction perpetuates Stan and his family’s lack of agency in South L.A. They do not know from where their sexual idiosyncrasies arise–whether they are a problem on their own or a response to a greater problem–and so it is impossible to resolve these problems. In Killer of Sheep, it’s actually as if the lack of melodrama is instead itself a means to address the conditions present in the film, not by resolving them but by limiting their effects: the condition of being black, the condition of being within South L.A., or even the condition of being discontent.
