By Anayanci De Paz

The L.A. Rebellion was a group of independent Black student filmmakers who during the late 1960’s to the mid-1980’s created some of the most powerful, revolutionary films which illustrated the beauty and humanity within Black people and their communities. The main goal of the L.A. Rebellion was to create a New Black Cinema: Black-oriented, firmly grounded in Black aesthetic traditions, and less dependent on Hollywood models of race that portrayed a Manichean and racist worldview. The L.A. Rebellion forged a New Black Cinema which celebrated multiple, differing, and intersecting Black voices and narratives, uncovered the structural oppression that Black communities face in the United States, and provided meaningful reflection on the past and present lives of Black people. The L.A. Rebellion was introduced to Third World Cinema theory, mode of production, and narrative and formal developments through the UCLA professor, Elyseo Taylor. Being Taylor’s teaching assistant, Charles Burnett built a strong connection to Third World Cinema goals.

Third World Cinema aims to create films that inspire self-realization within the neocolonialized spectator in order to emancipate themselves from a paternalistic relationship that encourages the belief of one’s own inferiority to the dominant culture. Third Cinema transforms the spectator into an actor of resistance; in decolonizing the spectator’s mode of perception, the neocolonialized subject is deconstructed as self-realization leads to the creation of another comrade committed to the fight towards universal liberation for all people. In the words of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, two of the originators of the movement: “...it provides discovery through transformation.” 

Charles Burnett’s film, Killer of Sheep (1978, released in 2017), is an excellent example of a film that provides discovery through transformation. Killer of Sheep tells the story of Stan, a devoted husband, father, worker, friend, and neighbor who has migrated his family from the Southeast of the United Statesto California, in South Central L.A, Watts district. Although the film centers on Stan, a community story is also told through his relationships to those around him; Stan’s commitment to his morals and values under the structural oppression that he and his community face is a celebration of the courage, compassion, and beauty within Black communities. The film episodically interweaves between following Stan in his different spaces (working in a butcher factory, helping a friend fix up his car, cashing in his check at a liquor store, and spending time at home with his family) and shots of neighborhood children playing in train yards, on top of roofs, and on porches, and shots of masses ofsheep herded through the slaughterhouse where Stan works. Burnett’s film completely rejects a Manichean worldview; instead, Burnett shows real people in real situations referenced from his own life. Burnett uncovers the structural oppression that Black communities face in the United States while revealing the nature of intergenerational trauma. One of these traumas is the violent psychic experience of double consciousness. 

In Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, the experience of double consciousness is expressed through the narration, cinematography, and dialogue; the representation of double consciousness provides a framework for understanding the position of oppressed people and reaches out to all spectators to unite each other in liberating ourselves and our U.S. culture from Hollywood’s racially demoralizing and divisive agenda. W.E.B Du Bois’ theory on double consciousness comes from his book,The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of Black folk songs, church songs, personal anecdotes, community stories, U.S. history and politics, and psychic theory. In many ways, Killer of Sheep is like another version of Du Bois’ book; the film updates the African American experience of double consciousness that Du Bois developed at the turn of the 20th century. In a key passage of the book, Du Bois attributes double consciousness of Black people to a modality of self-perception that is mediated through the eyes of the other:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, --a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, --this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.” (8-9) 

Double consciousness is the burden of the constant experience and awareness of interpreting oneself through the judgmental and suspicious eyes of the dominant ideology or culture. It seems that the art of film would be a fascinating way to articulate this experience of double consciousness; to see oneself through the eyes of another implies that there is a double spectatorship, one that society views from externally and one that comes from the interior, psychic experience. In the subsequent pages, I will examine how W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory on double consciousness is expressed within Killer of Sheep and how it provides a framework for understanding the position of hegemonically oppressed Black people in the U.S..

The film begins with a sweet and lovely lullaby sung by a child and woman’s voiceover a dark screen. The imagequickly changes to a cold and harsh vignette which shows a boy being violently lectured at by his father and then conclusively slapped by his mother. This vignette shows the generational imperative for children to embrace violence as a developmental part of adulthood. What is also being represented is the psychic violence that the boy must be initiated into through this intergenerational trauma that one carries as double consciousness. The father in the scene states:

I don’t care who started what or whether he was winning or losing you get a stick or, or, or, a goddamn brick. Get anything, and you knock the shit out of whoever’s fighting your brother cuz if anything was to happen to me or your mother, you ain’t got nobody except your brother.

What is beaten into the boy is a “us” versus “them” mentality; right and wrong are linked to family loyalty. If we interpret family loyalty or brotherhood as a commitment to one’s race, one could argue that a double consciousness is created because the subject becomes unable to unite both selves, the American and the Black man. When the world is constructed through a Manichean viewpoint, and races are dehumanizingly classified as “good” or “evil,” the addition of an “us” versus “them” mode of perception can, of course, lead to looking at one’s self through the eyes of others. What the father passes on to his son is also a sense of living under a constant existential threat, which shatters the boy’s childish carefree attitude towards life. In essence, but without any word of explanation, the boy is taught the violence of double consciousness.

This double consciousness experience is shown when we are introduced to Stan in the beginning of the film. The scene opens up with a claustrophobic, high angle of Stan as he crams his body into the cabinet underneath the sink to work on plumbing. Stan’s friend stands next to him and looks down at him as Stan depressingly admits: “I’m working myself into my own hell. When I close my eyes...I can’t get no sleep at night. No peace of mind.” The high angle of the camera illustrates the double consciousness that Stan feels in this moment; he is unhappy with his job, the strain that laboring causes his body and mind, and the humiliating emasculating experience of being a poor working-class husband and father. Stan’s friend jokes: “Why don’t you kill yourself? You’d be a lot happier. Go out like Johnny Ace.” The reference here is to a Black American rhythm and blues singer. This dark joke shows how men are not encouraged or accepted to be vulnerable, and how psychic violence is not taken seriously or commonly talked about among the people upon whom it is inflicted. The camera angle then changes and becomes level with Stan, as if the camera were sitting right next to him. There is a shot of Angela, Stan’s six-year-old daughter. She watches the adults’ conversation from behind her grotesque dog mask as Stan says: “No. I’m not gonna kill myself.” The equilibration of the camera represents Stan’s ability to remember his morals, values, and the need for self-realization when he thinks of his family, especially Angela. 

Angela’s character is very important to Killer of Sheep, as she provides a mode of perception that lacks a double consciousness. She reminds me of Du Bois’ description of his baby: 

He knew no color-line, poor dear, —and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse; and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I—yea, all men—are larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. (143)

Because Angela is a child, she doesn’t yet understand the System that is set up against Black communities in the U.S. and the social pressures that her father and mother endure, but her lack of double consciousness gives her the ability to see her mother and father’s depression and, instead of verbalizing solutions that hint at healing a double consciousness, she showers them with corporeal affection.

Angela’s lack of double consciousness shows the unconditional love that she feels towards her parents even though there is a barrier to what she can reason is the cause of their sadness. In another kitchen scene, Stan’s wife tells him: 

You never smile anymore. I used to think you was just tired. But I think deep down inside you’re very unhappy. Don’t nothing ever make you want to smile?

Angela, situated in the middle of her parents, looks at her father, then at her mother, thinks for a moment, slams her cup and leaves the room. She appears upset that this unnamed mode of perception is invading her family’s happiness. Stan’s wife asks that Stan get some sleep (suggesting that the answer to his deep discontent lies in a psychic rather than violent revolution); instead, Stan unravels flooring material and cuts away with a tool that looks like it could be used to shear the wool off of sheep--reminding us of his dehumanizing job at the sheep butchery factory. After maintaining a levelled angle for this entire sequence, the camera captures Stan working under a high angle with his wife watching over him; invoking the double consciousness that isolates Stan by not feeling like he can provide enough for his family. 

Later in the film, when Stan comes home from work, there is a family dinner sequence that depicts the eerie silence that indicates the invasion of the double consciousness within the family and house. We witness how Stan Jr feels isolated from his family as he finishes his meal and shoves his chair back into the table before he leaves the kitchen without saying a word. Angela picks up after the both of them, showing her desire to support the family and resist against falling into isolation. Angela watches as her father depressingly tries to make small talk with her mother; Angela’s parents are unable to connect as Stan reveals what is really on his mind: “I’ve got to find me a job.” Stan’s wife tries to get Stan’s mind off of work and invites him to bed, but this solution doesn’t move Stan either; what is clear is Stan’s physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. Stan’s wife feels rejected and mirrors Stan Jr’s slamming of the chair; her isolation grows as she feels separated from her partner and storms out of the kitchen. Stan moves his chair and Angela naturally stands in front of her father and massages his shoulders. A non-diegetic soft, sad melody begins; there are no lyrics to the song, suggesting that the music mirrors Angela’s energy (the inability to put words to observed pain) and longing to unite and heal her family. The scene concludes with a 3-shot of Angela caressing her father’s face as she gazes over at her flustered mother; she connects her parents corporeally (hands and eyes) and consciously, through her non-judgmental mode of perception. 

Angela’s character shows the spectator what it is like to see without a veil and the desperation that this child feels in wanting to save her family from drowning in double consciousness. Through the juxtaposition of children and adults throughout the film, especially through Angela’s child character, Burnett is able to capture such charming beauty in the ghetto while acknowledging the struggles within the community; in choosing to avoid visual representations of physical violence and centering on the internal psychic violence, Burnett invites the spectator to meditate on the paradoxical visibility of the invisible double consciousness experience. How can we heal these silent wounds within the community? How can we return to an Angela-like mode of perception, where we are unclouded by a double consciousness and self-realized through our own empowerment? 

In A guiding light, which records a conversation between Charles Burnett and bell hooks, critic and artist, address the problem of Hollywood repeatedly connecting extreme violence with Black lives and attributing negative stereotypes to Black characters, which can regrettably manipulate white/black spectators and their mode of perception. This mass influence makes it so that racism and double consciousness are normalized within the U.S. culture and completely deviates from any mission of establishing equality or promoting the liberation of Black people. Because most people, of any non-white race in the nation, are exposed to this normalized violence towards Black people through the media and culture, hooks underlines the important issue of creating a new audience which is similar to Solanas’ and Getino’s idea of providing discovery through transformation. In creating a new audience through criticism, hooks demonstrates how this process will lead to the decolonization and empowerment of Black people and the enrichment of U.S. culture. 

Manthia Diawara’s famous article on Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance (1988) is important to keep in mind when thinking of the decolonization and empowerment of non-white audiences in the U.S.. Diawara proposes the interchangeability of “black spectator” and “resisting spectator,” he points out that these ways of seeing are modes of perception that can be accessed or understood regardless of one’s race. Diawara agrees with hooks in that it is important to create a new audience through film, criticism, and debate in order to make revolutionary change in the culture: “...resisting spectators are transforming the problem of passive identification into active criticism which both informs and interrelates with contemporary oppositional filmmaking.” (75-76) In Charles Burnett - A Reconsideration of Third Cinema, Amy Abugo Ongiri engages in the debate of spectatorship asking what strategies to employ to make oppressed spectators visible to themselves? I would like to add, how do we bring attention to double consciousness, a psychic violent experience? Ongiri uses Burnett’s Killer of Sheep to demonstrate how moving away from visually violent representations of the ghetto and focusing on the beauty, even while maintaining the recognition of social deprivation, can open up a different sort of psychic space for the exploration of Black cultural life. It is important to underscore that violence is never posed as a righteous solution in the film and that the film suggests attention towards a psychic revolution that will heal our brothers and sisters suffering from living within the veil, in a double consciousness. By showing audiences that part of growing up within the U.S. culture can mean living under a double consciousness for oppressed adults and showing the struggle and pain that it causes all members of the family, even those who have not yet formed a double consciousness, humanizes Black communities, and provides a framework for all spectators to understand the position of oppressed people. If it is true, as I believe it is, that “all men—are larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life,” as Du Bois asserted in reference to his baby; then, as resisting spectators and actors of resistance, we have a responsibility to cultivate within ourselves and our culture a caring and unbiased way of being. Charles Burnett made a huge contribution to the push towards a new U.S. culture, it is now our responsibility to join the conversation and work for the universal emancipation of all people.

LINKS:
Killer of Sheep
Millstone Films
LA Rebellion
Los Angeles Watts Distrct CA
W.E.B Du Bois

Anayanci De Paz is a senior at Reed College, located in Portland OR. Her area of focus is Spanish Literature.